Amen, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

The line”this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place,” has led to great confusion over the years, especially during the modernist reforms in the early 1900’s. The modernists wanted to try to understand all of scripture in the context of scientific analysis. So they studied weather and star charts, and tried to explain all of the miracles of the bible, through scientific observation, instead of trusting that the bible is without error, and looking at these events and prophecies in the way that He meant for us to understand them, rather than what we think He meant.

Thus, these scientific modernists looked at this line “that generation did pass away” and said to themselves, all of these things did not happen. So they concluded that there was error in scripture, and if there is error in scripture, then all of the claims and miracles of Jesus can also be called into question. And so began the gradual dismantling of the meaning and the purpose of the bible. What they missed is that bible prophecy must be intrepreted as having both an imminent and distant fulfillment. Meaning that there is a purpose of the prophecy that applies to the time when it is being made but also a distant prophecy about the end times, when all will be brought to fulfillment. Prophecy is never to be considered as “either, or” but rather as “both, and”. The prophet Isaiah did this frequently. Many of his predictions about the fall of the first temple were also a prophesy of the coming of Jesus and the ultimate destruction of the second temple.

It has been suggested by the early church fathers, and again more recently by traditionalist scholars, that this apocalyptic narrative can be read as a prediction of both the destruction of the temple in 70AD, and also of the coming of end times. The scholar Josephus reported in his writings that many ominous celestial events occured during the time of the temple destruction and thus fulfills the propecy at that time. And the “Generation” that He is speaking to here did indeed live to witness the temple being destroyed in 70AD. But the “generation” here is not meant to be only understood as the current generation but also of a perpetual generation of man for all time. Not only those that are alive at the time of Jesus, who will see the destruction of the temple. But also understood as the sons of adam, and the daughters of eve, that will not be destroyed until the Lord comes at the end times, to bring justice and final judgement.

So for our studies of scripture we must not pigeon hole the scriptures into our world view, and political agendas, but instead read the 2000 year history of the church, and the voluminous commentaries on the scriptures by the church fathers. And when we better understand what greater minds concluded, about these things, then we can come to better understand what the scriptures are saying to us now at this moment.

Oh lord, please today help me to read the scriptures in the way that you intended for us to read them. Amen.