This Generation Will Not Pass Away:

[Overcomer]

Jesus talks about the destruction of the temple and signs of the end times in Matt. 24:1-35:

1 Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. 2 Do you see all these things? he asked. Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.

3 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. Tell us, they said, when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?

4 Jesus answered: Watch out that no one deceives you. 5 For many will come in my name, claiming, I am the Messiah, and will deceive many. 6 You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 7 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are the beginning of birth pains.

9 Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. 10 At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, 11 and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. 12 Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, 13 but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

15 So when you see standing in the holy place the abomination that causes desolation,[a] spoken of through the prophet Daniel"let the reader understand" 16 then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 17 Let no one on the housetop go down to take anything out of the house. 18 Let no one in the field go back to get their cloak. 19 How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! 20 Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. 21 For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now"and never to be equaled again.

22 If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. 23 At that time if anyone says to you, Look, here is the Messiah! or, There he is! do not believe it. 24 For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. 25 See, I have told you ahead of time.

26 So if anyone tells you, There he is, out in the wilderness, do not go out; or, Here he is, in the inner rooms, do not believe it. 27 For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 28 Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather.

29 Immediately after the distress of those days


the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.

30 Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth[c] will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.[d] 31 And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.

32 Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. 33 Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it[e] is near, right at the door. 34 Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

Verse 34 has been the subject of many a debate. My questions are as follows:

What did Jesus mean when he said "this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened?" Who is "this generation"?

[marco]

We will always have problems with his statements if we take them all at face value and do not factor in that he was a spiritual teacher of spiritual values using spiritual concepts.

To an extent this is fair enough; supernatural concepts are troublesome to the greatest thinkers. Figurative speech is always in danger of being misunderstood. However, the key word here is "teacher" and a teacher who uses language which he knows is beyond the capacity of his listeners is a bad teacher. I could quite readily confuse students by couching my instructions in arcane figurative language that would still be correct, but opaque to my listeners. And what would be the point of that?


When Christ said "You must be born again," the literal meaning is absurd, and the challenge is to discover the intended meaning. Even so, there will be variations in that interpretation. When he says "This generation will not pass away ...." there is nothing absurd in what he says for a literal translation to be possible. If I was listening to Christ delivering this (assuming his Aramaic was rendered correctly) it would certainly mean for me that the people of my time period will experience what he's predicting as the end. The only reason for rejecting this is that it obviously didn't happen, so Jesus was wrong. To make him correct we have to use obscure explanations that his listeners would not guess.

[brianbbs67]

We will always have problems with his statements if we take them all at face value and do not factor in that he was a spiritual teacher of spiritual values using spiritual concepts.

To an extent this is fair enough; supernatural concepts are troublesome to the greatest thinkers. Figurative speech is always in danger of being misunderstood. However, the key word here is "teacher" and a teacher who uses language which he knows is beyond the capacity of his listeners is a bad teacher. I could quite readily confuse students by couching my instructions in arcane figurative language that would still be correct, but opaque to my listeners. And what would be the point of that?

.

I think you should try arcane figurative speech..It is a lost art that i enjoy every time I read. Adding a "mystery" to instruction will make the minority think and seek to understand. That alone may be worth it. Flowery prose of yester year is a joy to read to some. So much detail is contained and delivered. Old English perked my eye when only 10 years old. I read every book I could find that was written in that vernacular. I read it still. Josephus Flavius' Antiquites of the Jews in its originality is my current read.

IMG_1102 by brianbbs67, on Flickr

All that said, I can decipher Beowulf as written. To hear it spoken as we think it was, not so much. n

[Checkpoint]

We will always have problems with his statements if we take them all at face value and do not factor in that he was a spiritual teacher of spiritual values using spiritual concepts.

To an extent this is fair enough; supernatural concepts are troublesome to the greatest thinkers. Figurative speech is always in danger of being misunderstood. However, the key word here is "teacher" and a teacher who uses language which he knows is beyond the capacity of his listeners is a bad teacher. I could quite readily confuse students by couching my instructions in arcane figurative language that would still be correct, but opaque to my listeners. And what would be the point of that?

Jesus was not a lecturer, or an ordinary teacher like the teachers of the law.

He made followers into disciples. Sometimes they did not understand, or misunderstood.

He let the chips fall where they may. Matthew 13:10-17 spells it out.

When Christ said "You must be born again," the literal meaning is absurd, and the challenge is to discover the intended meaning. Even so, there will be variations in that interpretation. When he says "This generation will not pass away ...." there is nothing absurd in what he says for a literal translation to be possible. If I was listening to Christ delivering this (assuming his Aramaic was rendered correctly) it would certainly mean for me that the people of my time period will experience what he's predicting as the end. The only reason for rejecting this is that it obviously didn't happen, so Jesus was wrong. To make him correct we have to use obscure explanations that his listeners would not guess.

What I have been proposing is not obscure explanation at all.

Unlike most others, it is based on how he used the word "generation" at other times.

It is not a guess.

[marco]

Flowery prose of yester year is a joy to read to some. So much detail is contained and delivered. Old English perked my eye when only 10 years old.

I am seduced here into irrelevance, describing the tiny corner of literature's garden to which I gained access while vast orchards spread far beyond my seeing.
In Tennyson's Morte d'Arthur there are passages of ethereal beauty; his vast poem In Memoriam which Victoria read for consolation is like David's lament, but rhythmically heart-rending; Housman's likeable Shropshire Lad brings the cold wind of death beautifully close. And if we can dabble in other tongues we find comparable beauties, melodic in their home parlance, even in ancient texts where life flows in long-dead words.


But that is life whispering elsewhere; Jesus proclaimed his presence some two millennia ago and it seems to me certain that he was no deity, any more than was Augustus or Alexander, who thought he was the son of Zeus - and acted as if he was. Jesus without the miracless is a small book of words, indistinguishable from the many that we read with interest and admiration. Perhaps he's not a Chaucer, with saucy tales to tell, nor a Shakespeare, at least not in translation; but he impresses; he stamps his authority on the small men he cultivated and seems to have breathed fire into them to the degree that cleverer men, afterwards, used his script to build an empire, with canticles, cathedrals and clarion calls for second birth.


Christ was self-aware but perhaps self-deceived into believing he was God-graced, an emissary from a place like Olympus. His ignorance of what his Father had prepared, then his guesswork about THIS generation, are low points in his 3-year stardom. Do we really accept that God bellowed from the sky praise for some wandering Nazarene? Strip Christ of the embroidery and we have an articulate speaker who honestly believed the generation he was born into would see the finality of things, with himself in a starring role. His later glory fell from human hands, not divine. Much of Christ's substance is imagination and through imagination we reform his words to offer new meaning. As with "this generation"!

[marco]

Jesus was not a lecturer, or an ordinary teacher like the teachers of the law.

He made followers into disciples. Sometimes they did not understand, or misunderstood.

I don't see what the distinguishing feature is between Jesus and any other teacher, such as Plato or Socrates, other than the latter seemed endowed with a grasp of philosophy not evident in Christ.

Matthew 13:10-17 spells it out.

Ah, yes: " But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it."

Christ understood the magic of flattery. We learn that the fisherfolk have a remarkable intellect while other mortals stumble over the meaning of Christ's words. And I thought silk purses could not be made from sows' ears. I wonder how this relates to "this generation." Can it be that those of us who don't accept the unusual reading are cursed with word blindness?

What I have been proposing is not obscure explanation at all.

Unlike most others, it is based on how he used the word "generation" at other times.

It is not a guess.

What a world we would have if truth came through declaration.

"The generation I'm in now won't die out before this happens." Clear.

"This generation thousands of years away from us will somehow live through tribulations and then having been tribulated, will pass away." Unclear. What possible concern can this be for Christ's listeners? Or is that unimportant?


We must agree to differ, Checkpoint.

[polonius]

Jesus announced that he would return during "this (his) generation."

He told the apostles that they would not have gone through all the towns in Isreal before he returned.

He told the High Priest that he would see Jesus' return.

Paul claims that "on the word of the Lord" that those then living would be caught up in the Jesus return.

None of these things happened. Thus "God breathed " scripture was in error.

And yet fundamentalists want us to believe that everything in the Bible is inspired by God. If so, then didn't God made some mistake with these passages?:?

[marco]

None of these things happened. Thus "God breathed " scripture was in error.

God-breathed Scripture recorded the sayings of individuals but since Jesus wasn't God he could make little mistakes, and did. Like many preachers today - and some have founded religions - Jesus felt he was favoured. His followers alleged God shouted from his temporary residence in the rain-clouds that Jesus was doing awfully well. And Jesus was thrilled when Peter mistook him for a divinity. Little wonder the poor man thought he'd be back soon. How much was fraud and how much was just a pious mistake we cannot say.


But your view of "this generation not passing away" is the most reasonable one, if not the only one, that can be taken.

[polonius]

Macro posted:

God-breathed Scripture recorded the sayings of individuals but since Jesus wasn't God he could make little mistakes, and did.

.

I think that most Catholics and very many Christians would disagree with your statement. But I'm not one of them.

[marco]

Macro posted:

God-breathed Scripture recorded the sayings of individuals but since Jesus wasn't God he could make little mistakes, and did.

.

I think that most Catholics and very many Christians would disagree with your statement. But I'm not one of them.

Christ lectured at a period when human gods were popular and it would have been an insult for his wide-eyed followers to accord him less respect than Greeks and Romans gave to their V.I.Ps. Inventing his origins in straw and then having a veil drawn over his thirty years adds to the mysterium fidei, the mystery of faith. Then having him physically fly up to heaven is God's crowning glory. That people accept that a sweaty homeless vagrant in soiled robes from an unremarkable area is God's second cousin or some such thing is a tribute to the human brain's ability to cope with complex ideas. This is the man who carefully placed devils into the bodies of pigs and made them run into the sea. In pantomime that would cause smiles; in theology, adoration. Man is a strange creature.

We have sent men to the moon.

[tam]

Peace to you EJ,

Perhaps I am misunderstanding your words here, Marco, but if He stated outright that He did not know that day or hour (at that time at least), then it does not make sense to me, to suggest that He might also have commented as though He did know that day or hour.

Not the day nor the hour, but he did predict his return in the lifetime of his apostles. (Matthew 16,28 and several other passages)

Just another example of Biblical contradiction.

You know I do not have a problem with biblical contradictions - unless someone is suggesting that Christ contradicted Himself (how can truth contradict truth?) - but there is no contradiction here. The only contradiction is coming from individual interpretations.


But at this point it seems to just be repetition.

And evidence that Jesus is not God, and that the Good Book is not infallible.

You don't need to go looking for (or be keen on accepting) some kind of evidence that Christ is not God, when He never made the claim that He was God (JAH) to begin with.



Peace again to you,
your servant and a slave of Christ,
tammy