The Hard Questions: This Generation?

This post is a bit of a misnomer, because it isn’t a hard question in the sense of being difficult to parse. But it is a statement that is often made against Jesus’s return in the far future, because of His word choice.

The atheist will say that Jesus promised to return during the lifetime of those to whom He was speaking in Matthew and Mark.

The problem with this is there are no chapter breaks in Greek. Meaning the following verses directly follow Jesus’s words in Matthew 16. This means He was saying they would see His transfiguration and all His heavenly, shekinah glory.

“Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom” (Matthew 16:28 [ESV]).

[NO CHAPTER BREAK IN THE ORIGINAL TEXT]

“And after six days, Jesus took with Him Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And He was transfigured before them, and His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became white as light. And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with Him. And Peter said to Jesus, ‘Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.’ He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.’ When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were terrified. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, ‘Rise, and have no fear.’ And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only. And as they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, ‘Tell no one the vision, until the Son of Man is raised from the dead’” (Matthew 17:1-9 [ESV]).

Jesus never once claimed He would be returning in their generation. In fact, many of His words show He would be delayed for a long time.

The idea Jesus said He would return in their lifetime is ridiculous when we take into context all the Bible.

He was speaking about His transfiguration vision, not the End of the Age when He returns in full glory to crush Israel’s enemies.

The fact is, all the disciples would taste death, since Jesus’s return was far in the future apart from this one vision.

He said they would see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom, not that they would live and experience that kingdom.

What we know from prophecy is 1,000 years of peace and a restored Earth where animals will change their nature and the physical world will be bountifully blessed to where farming will be overtaken by those who reap harvests.

Why not zero in on those aspects if He was truly returning in their lifetime?

He simply said they would “see” Him. Not experience being resurrected (Daniel 12) and Isaiah’s many poetic verses about the Millennium (wolf will lie with the lamb, etc.).

And in a vision, they saw exactly that.

The glory of the Holy One of Israel is in the Messiah.

When discussing His return in the Olivet Discourse, He states, “This generation will not pass until all these things take place.” Atheists will say He meant “this generation” as in the first-century generation.

But this can’t be the case, because Jesus described the Abomination of Desolation from Daniel 11:31, which is the sign that for sure shows His return is in that generation.

The angel Gabriel explains that the events of Daniel 11 are about the eschaton, the End Times of the last days right before final judgment in Daniel 10:14—and Gabriel also states this as well in Daniel 8:19, which is a related chapter to Daniel 11. Daniel 11 is a fuller expansion of the events of Daniel 8.

“He said, ‘Behold, I will make known to you what shall be at the latter end of the indignation, for it refers to the appointed time of the end’” (Daniel 8:19 [ESV]).

Jesus is quoting events that would happen in the designated eschatological timeframe, not events that would happen soon after He spoke the words.

The obvious conclusion is Jesus meant the generation that sees all the signs He spoke of, such as the Seals of Revelation (these are parallel to Matthew 24 in false messiahs, wars, famines, earthquakes etc.) and the Abomination of Desolation, which comes from the Antichrist and his forces in the chronology of Daniel’s End Times events.

The final nail in the coffin for the idea that Jesus meant He would return in that generation is in the Book of Acts.
“So when they had come together, they asked him, ‘Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?’ He said to them, ‘It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.’ And when He had said these things, as they were looking on, He was lifted up, and a cloud took Him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as He went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw Him go into heaven’” (Acts 1:6-11 [ESV]).

They had asked Him if at that time He would restore the Kingdom of Israel, and He countered with their not needing to know when God had set His timing for it. As of this writing, this still has not happened.

Interestingly, we know it has to be during a time when the Temple is standing, because Revelation was written around 95 A.D., after the Temple had been destroyed in 70 A.D., yet it assumes a standing Temple in Revelation 11.

Meaning, since the Temple has not yet been rebuilt, we aren’t in the time He described for these events to happen. The Abomination of Desolation can only happen when the Temple is standing, because that is what the prophecy requires.

Since Revelation promises Jesus’s return to Earth and assumes this Temple standing when He comes back, we can safely say Jesus never once promised to return in the first-century generation.

It is the only logical conclusion. He promised His return quickly in Revelation, but what does quick mean to an eternal being outside of time?

I hope this succinctly addresses the common issue atheists have with the notion of the Second Coming, the Parousia of Christ.

Jesus didn’t say He would return then, but only when the Father had affixed the time for Him to come back.

Using deductive reasoning, we can exclude the first century as being the timeframe.

May He come quickly in the generation He decided long ago, whether that be late into ours or in 8,000 years.

Blessings and shalom to you!