Matthew 24:34

After this, that they might not straightway return to it again, and say, "When?" he brings to their remembrance the things that had been said, saying, "Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled!" All these things. What things? I pray thee. Those about Jerusalem, those about the wars, about the famines, about the pestilences, about the earthquakes, about the false Christs, about the false prophets, about the sowing of the gospel everywhere, the seditions, the tumults, all the other things, which we said were to occur until His coming. How then, one may ask, did He say, "This generation?" Speaking not of the generation then living, but of that of the believers. For He is wont to distinguish a generation not by times only, but also by the mode of religious service, and practice; as when He saith, "This is the generation of them that seek the Lord." For what He said above, "All these must come to pass," and again, "the gospel shall be preached," this He declares here also, saying, All these things shall surely come to pass, and the generation of the faithful shall remain, cut off by none of the things that have been mentioned. For both Jerusalem shall perish, and the more part of the Jews shall be destroyed, but over this generation shall nothing prevail, not famine, not pestilence, not earthquake, nor the tumults of wars, not false Christs, not false prophets, not deceivers, not traitors, not those that cause to offend, not the false brethren, nor any other such like temptation whatever.

All these things are confirmed with great certainty when the sentence is added which says: "Amen I say to you, this generation shall not pass away until all things come to pass. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." For nothing in the nature of corporeal things is more enduring than heaven and earth, and nothing in nature passes as quickly as speech. For words, as long as they are incomplete, are not words; but when they have been completed, they no longer exist at all, because they cannot be completed except by passing away. Therefore he says: "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." As if he were saying openly: Everything that is enduring among you is not enduring unto eternity without change; and everything that is seen to pass away in me is held fixed and without passing away, because my speech which passes away expresses judgments that remain without mutability.

He has made it manifest therefore by a similitude; now he makes it manifest by an assertion, namely, with an oath, saying, amen I say to you, i.e., it is infallibly true, that this generation shall not pass away until all these things be done. …

"Generation" here means, not that which was then, but the generation of all believers. It is as if He were saying, "The generation of believers shall not pass away till all these things have occurred." But when you hear of famines and plagues, do not …

Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass,....

This generation shall not pass - Η γενεα αυτη, this race; i.e. the Jews shall not cease from being a distinct people, till all the counsels of God relative to them and the Gentiles be fulfilled.

In this part of our Lord’s prophecy he describes his own second coming to judge the world. This, at all events, seems the natural meaning of the passage: to take any lower view appears to be a violent straining of Scripture language. If the solemn words here used mean nothing more than the coming of the Roman armies to Jerusalem, we may explain away anything in the Bible.

In this part of our Lord’s prophecy he describes his own second coming to judge the world. This, at all events, seems the natural meaning of the passage: to take any lower view appears to be a violent straining of Scripture language. If the solemn words here used mean nothing more than the coming of the Roman armies to Jerusalem, we may explain away anything in the Bible. The event here described is one of far greater moment than the march of an earthly army; it is nothing less than the closing act of the present dispensation—the second personal advent of Jesus Christ. These verses teach us in the first place that when the Lord Jesus returns to this world he shall come with peculiar glory and majesty. He shall come “in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.” Before his presence the very sun, moon and stars shall be darkened, and “the powers of heaven shall be shaken.” The second personal coming of Christ shall be as different as possible from the first. He came the first time as “a man of sorrows, and aquainted with grief.” He was born in the manger of Bethlehem, in lowliness and humiliation; he took on him the form of a servant, and was despised and rejected of men; he was betrayed into the hands of wicked men, condemned by an unjust judgment, mocked, scourged, crowned with thorns and at last crucified between two thieves. He shall come the second time as the King of all the earth, with royal majesty: the princes and great men of this world shall themselves stand before his throne to receive an eternal sentence: before him every mouth shall be stopped, and every knee bow, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. May we all remember this! Whatever ungodly men may do now, there will be no scoffing, no jesting at Christ, no infidelity at the last day.

This generation ... - This age; this race of people. A generation is about 30 or 40 years. The destruction of Jerusalem took place about forty years after this was spoken. See the notes at Mat 16:28. Till all these things ... - Until these things shall be accomplished. Until events shall take place which shall be a fulfillment of these words, if there were nothing further intended. He does not mean to exclude the reference to the judgment, but to say that the destruction of Jerusalem would be such as to make appropriate the words of the prediction, were there nothing beyond. Compare the notes at Mat 1:22-23. So when “death” was threatened to Adam, the propriety of the threatening would have been seen, and the threatening would have been fulfilled, had people suffered only temporal death. At the same time the threatening had “a fullness of meaning” that would cover also, and justify, eternal death. Thus the words of Christ describing the destruction of Jerusalem had a fulness of signification that would meet also the events of the judgment, and whose meaning would not be “entirely filled up” until the world was closed.