This generation

[jgr]

Copy @Spiritual Jew @DavidPT
Luke 1
46 And Mary said, My soul magnifies the Lord,
47 and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.
48 For He looked on the humiliation of His slave woman. For, behold, from now on all generations (Strongs 1074 geneá) shall count me blessed.
49 For the Mighty One has done great things for me; and holy is His name.
50 And His mercy is on those who fear Him from generation (Strongs 1074 geneá) to generation (Strongs 1074 geneá).

Luke 16:8
And the unjust steward's lord commended him because he had done wisely. For the children of this age (Strongs 0165 aiṓn) are in their generation (Strongs 1074 geneá) wiser than the children of light.

Acts 14:16
"..who in past generations (Strongs 1074 geneá) allowed all nations to walk in their own ways."

In other words, 1074 geneá can refer to any generation. It can refer to the generation that was alive during 70 A.D, it can refer to a generation that lived prior to 1 A.D, and it can refer to the generation that will be alive when Christ comes to "gather His elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other" (Matthew 24:31).

The Olivet Discourse was about:-

(i) The coming destruction of the temple (Matthew 24:1-2; Mark 13:1-2; Luke 21:5-6).
(ii) The coming distress of the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the coming wrath of God upon the city (Luke 21:20-24) *

* Luke uses the words distress and wrath in Luke 21:20-24 (not the word tribulation).

The coming of the Son of man at the end of the Age
The coming of the Kingdom of Christ
The coming tribulation of the disciples of Jesus

(iii) The coming of the Son of man (Matthew 24:3, 30, 36-39; Mark 13:26, 32, 35; Luke 21:27, 31, 36).
(iv) The coming of the kingdom of Christ (Matthew 24:14 & Matthew 25:1; Mark 13:10; Luke 21:31).

(v) The coming tribulation of the disciples of Jesus in the days leading up to the coming of the Son of Man (Luke 21:12-19 & 27-28; Matthew 24:9-44; Mark 13:9-13).

It's important to take note of the fact that whereas Luke uses the words distress and wrath to talk about the wrath of God coming upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem when it was surrounded by armies (Luke 21:20-24), the tribulation of the disciples of Jesus in the days leading up to the coming of the Son of man is being spoken about in Luke 21:12-19 & 27-28; Matthew 24:9-31, and Mark 13:9 & 11-13.

The Olivet Discourse was about two groups of people: The unbelieving Jews, and the disciples of Jesus. One group was to suffer the wrath of God in 70 A.D and the other group was to suffer great tribulation in the days leading up to the coming of the Son of man.

In my opinion what we need to ask ourselves is if the resurrection of all who died in Christ has occurred yet. If it has not yet occurred, then Christ has not yet come, His second appearance in the clouds of heaven has not yet been seen. If it has occurred, then Christ has returned.

Jesus was speaking about different groups of people and about different generations: One of the generations He was speaking about was the generation that would be alive in 70 A.D. The other one was the generation that would be alive at the time of His return.

Not only was He speaking about different generations, but He was also speaking to every generation of Christian believers that would ever live in-between His ascension and His return.

We're discussing the meaning of the expression "this generation" in the Gospel of Matthew.

If Matthew was consistent in his usage and application of the meaning of that expression, (and he was, confirmed by Bro. Strong, which you seem to have overlooked), then Matthew is the authoritative interpreter of Matthew.

Mark didn't write Matthew.
Luke didn't write Matthew.
Matthew alone wrote Matthew.

You seem to be off on multiple irrelevant tangents.

 

[Eloy Craft]

In the below statement Jesus defines what generation means.

Matthew 11

11 Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

This is Jesus revealing He is not of 'this' generation.
Everyone there would be familiar with the term ' born of woman ' as meaning descendants of Adam and Eve.

 

[jgr]

The Holocaust was worse than what was experienced around 70AD.

Far from it.

Ask any historically cognizant Jew which of the following represented the worst death:

1. Gas
2. Bullet
3. Crucifixion

 

[Jamdoc]

Far from it.

Ask any historically cognizant Jew which of the following represented the worst death:

1. Gas
2. Bullet
3. Crucifixion

How about tortured through medical experiments
how about starved and worked to death
and the Romans didn't kill 6 million of them.

and you're assuming that the poison gas is what killed them when in those gas chambers.
It wasn't. The dosage they used was not high enough to poison everyone in the hundreds to thousands they packed in like sardines.
Rather, a few died from poison, and the weight of their collapsing bodies bore down on everyone next to them, and the end result was crushing deaths and suffocating.

which is ultimately, not unlike what actually causes death in crucifixion. It's not blood loss from the wounds. It's the act of gravity pulling on the body crushing the lungs in that suspended state, slowly asphyxiating you because it becomes harder and harder to breathe.

 

[3 Resurrections]

We should allow the light of the NT to interpret the more obscure OT for us. John made it very clear that there would be no more death, sorrow, crying or pain in the new heavens and new earth (Rev 21:1-4), so how could wickedness still exist with that being the case? You're not understanding that Isaiah spoke of eternity in a way that his audience back then could understand. The concept of eternity and eternal life was almost completely foreign to OT saints.

That's not exactly what Revelation 21:1-4 said. John made it very clear that there would be no more death, sorrow, crying or pain in the New Jerusalem city. It would be best to stick precisely to what Revelation 21:1-4 was describing.

Within that city of New Jerusalem was the tree of life, guaranteeing eternal life to the inhabitants; a tree whose leaves were for "the healing of the nations". The tree would bear fruit every month picturing a continual benefit year round. Why would there even need to be something to "heal" the surrounding nations if there were not still evil things present in those nations in need of healing? If everything in the entire world were completely righteous at this point, the tree of life's healing properties would be pointless, and it would not be mentioned in Revelation 22:2.

The "no more sorrow" within this New Jerusalem city is contrasted with "the beginning of sorrows" and the subsequent Great Tribulation period in the Old Jerusalem city. It was a particular period of sorrows that ended - not the end of sorrow for all time in the entire world.

Isaiah 60's new "city of the Lord" called "The Zion of the Holy One of Israel" would have its days of mourning ended (Isaiah 60:20). And Isaiah says that "Thy people also shall be all righteous..." (the fulfillment of righteousness dwelling in the NHNE). There is nothing within this New Jerusalem city that defiles, works abomination, or makes a lie (Revelation 21:27), because it has the covering of Christ's imputed righteousness over all those within its walls of "Salvation" (Isaiah 60:18). It is outside the gates of the New Jerusalem where wickedness is still practiced.

There is "no more death" in the New Jerusalem city, since Christ in His actions on our behalf had "abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel" (2 Timothy 1:10). No more sacrificial death takes place in this New Jerusalem city either.

 

[3 Resurrections]

How about tortured through medical experiments
how about starved and worked to death
and the Romans didn't kill 6 million of them.

You are missing the point of the Great Tribulation period that would never be duplicated. What made that AD 66-70 period one which would never be duplicated after then was the 7-fold presence of the entire demonic realm that descended upon that "wicked generation in its "last state", just as Christ predicted in Matthew 12:43-45. There has never been a city in the entirety of history where every devil and unclean spirit was concentrated within its walls at one time. This is what happened to Jerusalem for the duration of the Great Tribulation period. Every unclean spirit was confined within its walls, as Revelation 18:2 and Isaiah 24:21-23 said would happen. God used that setting to "cause the unclean spirits to pass out of the land", as Zechariah 13:2 predicted.

Sheer numbers of casualties and level of bloodshed and / or genocide were not the determining factor that made this Great Tribulation period in Israel an unprecedented time. It was the demonic, Satanic torment of the inhabitants in the city of Jerusalem that would never come upon a city like that again in the future.

 

[Jamdoc]

You are missing the point of the Great Tribulation period that would never be duplicated. What made that AD 66-70 period one which would never be duplicated after then was the 7-fold presence of the entire demonic realm that descended upon that "wicked generation in its "last state", just as Christ predicted in Matthew 12:43-45. There has never been a city in the entirety of history where every devil and unclean spirit was concentrated within its walls at one time. This is what happened to Jerusalem for the duration of the Great Tribulation period. Every unclean spirit was confined within its walls, as Revelation 18:2 and Isaiah 24:21-23 said would happen. God used that setting to "cause the unclean spirits to pass out of the land", as Zechariah 13:2 predicted.

Sheer numbers of casualties and level of bloodshed and / or genocide were not the determining factor that made this Great Tribulation period in Israel an unprecedented time. It was the demonic, Satanic torment of the inhabitants in the city of Jerusalem that would never come upon a city like that again in the future.

The Great Tribulation has not happened yet, but in fact, world events are leading closer to the things revealed in the bible, such as the mark of the beast. We have technology they did not have in Roman times that can actually prevent buying and selling. In Roman times, someone with gold could buy regardless of any mark, it's gold, it spends.

When everyone's relying on a cashless economy, they can just straight freeze your account and you can't purchase anything, with electric vehicles with a kill switch they can remotely prevent you from leaving, and with the billions of facial recognition cameras, not to mention everyone having a smartphone with GPS tracking (therefore they'd know all your bolt holes before you could flee to them, because they'd have a history of where you like to go), anyone targeted by the system will have a far harder time trying to escape persecution than in the Roman times.
Even the Third Reich will look primitive in comparison to what happens when you can use the technology we have today or the near future to persecute a targeted group of people.

also the discussion of the TYPES of death in the Great Tribulation whether they're worse or more "humane" than previous sieges or waves of persecution is not even relevant. It's going to be scale that is the determining factor that Jesus was talking about because we know from scripture the principal means of execution during the Great Tribulation will be beheading. That's Revelation 20.

But anyway, nothing supports what you posted.

 

[jgr]

How about tortured through medical experiments
how about starved and worked to death
and the Romans didn't kill 6 million of them.

and you're assuming that the poison gas is what killed them when in those gas chambers.
It wasn't. The dosage they used was not high enough to poison everyone in the hundreds to thousands they packed in like sardines.
Rather, a few died from poison, and the weight of their collapsing bodies bore down on everyone next to them, and the end result was crushing deaths and suffocating.

which is ultimately, not unlike what actually causes death in crucifixion. It's not blood loss from the wounds. It's the act of gravity pulling on the body crushing the lungs in that suspended state, slowly asphyxiating you because it becomes harder and harder to breathe.

Ask a Jew. Give him/her the three choices. Tell us the result.

Ask him/her about the toll from Jew-to-Jew bestiality which was unique to AD70.

Contemporary Jewish historians concur:

"The scene was now set for the revolt's final catastrophe. Outside Jerusalem, Roman troops prepared to besiege the city; inside the city, the Jews were engaged in a suicidal civil war. In later generations, the rabbis hyperbolically declared that the revolt's failure, and the Temple's destruction, was due not to Roman military superiority but to causeless hatred (sinat khinam) among the Jews (Yoma 9b). While the Romans would have won the war in any case, the Jewish civil war both hastened their victory and immensely increased the casualties. One horrendous example: In expectation of a Roman siege, Jerusalem's Jews had stockpiled a supply of dry food that could have fed the city for many years. But one of the warring Zealot factions burned the entire supply, apparently hoping that destroying this "security blanket" would compel everyone to participate in the revolt. The starvation resulting from this mad act caused suffering as great as any the Romans inflicted."

The Romans killed approximately the same percentage of Jews living in the AD70 era as the Germans did in the WW2 era.

There has never been a tribulation surpassing that of AD70.

 

[Timtofly]

No, I said that God never intended for their to be a physical or political country called Israel in response to what you said about John not seeing Israel becoming a nation during the first century. I responded with:

So what is Jesus going to be the Prince of? Just a city or a Nation? The promise was to Abraham. It was not to the first century Jews. God took the National status away, until Jesus takes over at the Second Coming.

The church itself is not supposed to be a physical government on earth. But that stipulation was never given to Abraham, nor Israel.

 

[Timtofly]

It wasn’t written post 70 AD. But to your question, it’s the same use as all other fulfilled prophecy. And it was very useful to the original audience. If nothing else, they knew when to flee Judea.

Not the writings. Only the words they remembered Jesus saying. Even the writings of each Gospel is slightly different, and may not even be the exact words. You seem to be imposing modern methods. We do not even know the precise date of the written form, and it was not prior to 70AD. Of course there is a minority view, just as with Revelation. That generation that heard, was not the same generation that would later read Matthew. The book of Matthew was not published as a hand book handed out at the Cross. The Gospels were written years after the Cross, and were not even written nor explained in such a way that they were written merely for a 70AD date of fulfillment.

 

[Jamdoc]

Ask a Jew. Give him/her the three choices. Tell us the result.

Ask him/her about the toll from Jew-to-Jew bestiality which was unique to AD70.

Contemporary Jewish historians concur:

"The scene was now set for the revolt's final catastrophe. Outside Jerusalem, Roman troops prepared to besiege the city; inside the city, the Jews were engaged in a suicidal civil war. In later generations, the rabbis hyperbolically declared that the revolt's failure, and the Temple's destruction, was due not to Roman military superiority but to causeless hatred (sinat khinam) among the Jews (Yoma 9b). While the Romans would have won the war in any case, the Jewish civil war both hastened their victory and immensely increased the casualties. One horrendous example: In expectation of a Roman siege, Jerusalem's Jews had stockpiled a supply of dry food that could have fed the city for many years. But one of the warring Zealot factions burned the entire supply, apparently hoping that destroying this "security blanket" would compel everyone to participate in the revolt. The starvation resulting from this mad act caused suffering as great as any the Romans inflicted."

The Romans killed approximately the same percentage of Jews living in the AD70 era as the Germans did in the WW2 era.

There has never been a tribulation surpassing that of AD70.

I don't see remembrance days for AD70 or Museums to depict the horrors of AD70.

But they have their own word for the Holocaust. The Shoah.
6x as many perished at the hands of the Nazis during the Shoah than during the Siege of Jerusalem.

and ultimately irrelevant, because scripture says the method of execution will be beheading.

 

[JosephZ]

That generation that heard, was not the same generation that would later read Matthew. The book of Matthew was not published as a hand book handed out at the Cross. The Gospels were written years after the Cross, and were not even written nor explained in such a way that they were written merely for a 70AD date of fulfillment.

Regardless, that generation was their generation, the generation in which Jesus spoke the words, not the generation of today in which we are now reading the words; but, the generation in which Jesus was carrying out His ministry in the first century A.D.. While Jesus did say that nobody would know the “hour or the day” of his return, Jesus definitely prophesied that all things would take place before the end of that generation.

 

[Eloy Craft]

Regardless, that generation was their generation, the generation in which Jesus spoke the words.

It was to those alive at the time. I agree.
But is there a reason to think He didn't also mean all descendants of Adam and Eve?

 

[jgr]

I don't see remembrance days for AD70 or Museums to depict the horrors of AD70.

But they have their own word for the Holocaust. The Shoah.
6x as many perished at the hands of the Nazis during the Shoah than during the Siege of Jerusalem.

and ultimately irrelevant, because scripture says the method of execution will be beheading.

They can be excused for not wanting to commemorate a war of Jew against Jew.

There were 6x as many Jews before WW2. Mortality percentages were roughly equivalent.

Execution in AD70 was mass crucifixions with multiple victims per cross. Unheard of in WW2.

 

[Jamdoc]

They can be excused for not wanting to commemorate a war of Jew against Jew.

Percentages were roughly equivalent.

Execution in AD70 was mass crucifixions with multiple victims per cross. Unheard of in WW2.

and.. that actually kinda points to it not being the Great Tribulation, because executions are done by beheading during the Great Tribulation.
It is worth noting, that beheading is the proscribed means of execution of infidels in Islam.

 

[jgr]

and.. that actually kinda points to it not being the Great Tribulation, because executions are done by beheading during the Great Tribulation.
It is worth noting, that beheading is the proscribed means of execution of infidels in Islam.

Jesus declared it to be great tribulation that would never be surpassed ("nor ever shall be"), with no mention of execution methods.

 

[John Mullally]

We're discussing the meaning of the expression "this generation" in the Gospel of Matthew.

If Matthew was consistent in his usage and application of the meaning of that expression, (and he was, confirmed by Bro. Strong, which you seem to have overlooked), then Matthew is the authoritative interpreter of Matthew.

Mark didn't write Matthew.
Luke didn't write Matthew.
Matthew alone wrote Matthew.

You seem to be off on multiple irrelevant tangents.

Seems like if you are going to analyze Jesus's speech patterns and how he uses a particular phrase, why would you limit yourself to Matthew? Quotations from Mark, Luke, John, and even Revelations would also be fair game.

 

[jgr]

Seems like if you are going to analyze Jesus's speech patterns and how he uses a particular phrase, why would you limit yourself to Matthew? Quotations from Mark, Luke, John, and even Revelations would also be fair game.

Because Matthew wrote Matthew 24, and is consistent throughout his gospel in his usage of "this generation", and is the best interpreter of himself.

 

[Jamdoc]

Jesus declared it to be great tribulation that would never be surpassed ("nor ever shall be"), with no mention of execution methods.

Jesus didn't return within 1 generation of it happening, therefore it was not the Great Tribulation.
You cannot separate the Great Tribulation from the Second Coming, because Jesus Himself connects the two together, and ties it within 1 generation, which is the sole point of the statement in question of this thread.

Jesus was saying "when these things happen, it means my return is going to happen very soon"

so because we don't currently physically have Jesus on earth ruling and reigning, and we aren't living in the New Heavens and New Earth, where righteousness dwells and all evil is in the lake of fire....

It hasn't happened yet.
Disconnecting the events to say that some were fulfilled in AD70 and the second coming comes 2000 years after the "signs" that were intended to precede it is unbiblical, and frankly makes no sense.

Again, it's presented with the illustration of delivering a baby. You don't go through the hard labor at the beginning of the pregnancy, settle down, and then the baby pops out months later suddenly without any contractions and pain.
The contractions and pain intensify until the baby is delivered.
Having worked in labor and delivery I can tell you, no woman ever expressed to me that the pain was worst during month one of her pregnancy than it was during the delivery.

 

[Zao is life]

But when it’s this generation, it always means the generation which is being spoken to.

So by that logic even if Jesus is speaking to them about a future generation and says this generation because it's the same future generation He is speaking to them about, it's the generation of the people He's speaking to.

I'm not too sure about that. The context is speaking about (a) the great distress to be experienced by those in Jerusalem when the wrath of God spoken of in Luke 21:20-24 comes to pass; and (b) the great tribulation that the disciples of Jesus will experience when the Son of man comes spoken of in all the other verses in Matthew, Mark and Luke.

We can limit what the Lord was saying to the same generation Jesus was talking to, OR to the generation that would be alive in 70 A.D (if we want to limit God), or we could allow God to remain unrestricted by our favorite interpretations of His prophetic Word, and keep our minds open.