Matthew 24

Questions from you...

Anonymous said...

In verse 34, why does Jesus say that this generation will not pass away before this happens?

Jennings Response: Jesus is saying that it will be soon. generation can also be translated as race. Many of these things are prophecy of what was coming. Some came true right around and after Jesus death. Remember 70 A.D. Some will take place at the end time. The real answer is that these are spiritual matters and we can only speculate. We are not sure when or how or even why these things must take place. This is def a chapter of the coming judgment...
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This chapter is all about the coming Judgment and seeing Christ come into His glory. It is also about everything that must happen. Jesus was very clear about what was coming. The only thing that was really not clear was When. Not even the angels in Heaven or Jesus will know.

70 A.D. was the destruction of the temple by the Romans ending the Jewish Revolt (66-70AD). In this chapter Jesus makes a prediction about the coming destruction.
Josephus a Jewish historian and eyewitness to the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. wrote in Wars, "No pity was shown on account of age or out of respect for anyone's dignity-children and elderly, lay people and priests alike were slain. The battle surged ahead and surrounded everybody, including both those who begged for mercy and those who resisted. The flames spread out to a great distance and its noise mixed with the groans of the perishing; and such was the height of the ridge and the magnitude of the burning that one would have imagined the whole city was aflame" (-Wars, 6.5.1)


Verses 36ff Jesus tells his disciples about his second coming. We very often don't have a messianic expectation as Christians. How can we be thinking constantly and thus living constantly as though Jesus was to come any second?