A lot of skeptics point to Matthew 24:34, and say Jesus was saying he would back in the lifetimes of the people listening to him. How do Baptists interpret these verses?
This is a rather tricky verse that has caused lots of debates over the years. It states: 'Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place' (ESV).
It has created a number of challenges with interpretation, so much so that it has been included in this wonderful resource that is now available as a pdf document online: Gleason L. Archer 1982.
Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Regency Reference Library (Zondervan Publishing House). Available at:
http://www.tsbalan.com/books/Difficulties.pdf.
Gleason Archer makes the following comments on Matt 24:34 on pp 343-344 (I have reformatted from pdf to make it html friendly):
Did Jesus mean in Matthew 24:34 that all the signs of His second coming were really fulfilled before His generation passed away?
Matthew 24:34 reports our Lord as saying, "Truly I say to you, this generation [genea] will not pass away until all these things take place" (NASB). What things? The rise of false teachers and prophets, the persecution and martyrdom of believers, and all the horrors of the Great Tribulation will occur (vv. 9-22). Also, there will be false Christs, deceitful miracles, and strange phenomena in the heavens (vv. 23-29). Then at last the "sign of the Son of Man" (v.30) will appear in the heavens; and all the world will witness His return to earth with power and great glory, when he sends forth His angels to gather together all the "elect" from every part of the earth.
Obviously these apocalyptic scenes and earth-shaking events did not take place within the generation of those who heard Christ's Olivet discourse. Therefore Jesus could not have been referring to His immediate audience when He made His prediction concerning "this genea." What did He mean by this prophecy?
There are two possible explanations. One is that genea ("generation") was used as a synonym of genos ("race," "stock," "nation," "people"). This would then amount to a prediction that the Jewish race would not pass out of existence before the Second Advent. Whatever other races would die out before that event—and most of the races contemporaneous with Jesus of Nazareth have in fact died out already--the Jewish race, however persecuted and given from one country to another, would survive until our Lord's return. No other nation has ever managed to live through all the dispersions and persecutions and uprooted conditions to which the Jews have been subjected. Yet they live on until this day and have reestablished their independence in the State of Israel. Although this meaning for genea is not common, it is found as early as Homer and Herodotus and as late as Plutarch (cf. H.G. Liddell and R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., [Oxford: Claredon, 1940], p. 342).
The other possibility is that genea does indeed mean "generation" in the usual sense of the word, but refers to the generation of observers who witness the beginning of the signs and persecutions with which the Tribulation will begin. Many of these will live to see the Lord Jesus come back to earth, as Conqueror and Judge, with great power and glory. This interpretation has the merit of preserving the more common and usual meaning of the word. But it suffers from the disadvantage of predicting what would normally be expected to happen anyway. Whether the Tribulation will last for seven years or for a mere three and a half years, it would not be so unusual for most people to survive that long. Seven years is not a very long time to live through, even in the face of bloody persecution.
Perhaps it should be added that if the Olivet Discourse was originally delivered in Aramaic (as it probably was), then we cannot be certain that the meaning of this prediction hinged entirely on the Greek word used to translate it. Genea and genos are, after all, closely related words from the same root. The Aramaic term that Jesus Himself probably used (the Syriac Peshitta uses
sharbeta' here, which can mean either "generation" or "race") is susceptible to either interpretation, and thus could mean the Jewish race rather than the circle of Christ's own contemporaries.
In Christ,
Oz
