Mark 13:30 Commentary and Bible Study

This is an intriguing verse; it puzzles many. The first possible meaning is that everything that the Lord speaks of would happen while the people who heard him were still alive. Well, that is clearly not the sense of the passage, because all these things have still not happened, let alone happened to those who heard the Lord speak. So it cannot have that meaning: ‘Verily I say unto that this generation shall not pass.’ A second meaning it may have is this: when the Lord says, ‘This generation’, he is talking not about the people in front of him but about the generation that shall be alive at the time when these things happen. But most people think that is very far-fetched. That is a very unnatural way of reading the passage: ‘Verily I say unto you, that the generation that shall be alive in the last days shall not pass.’ It is not only unnatural, but why say it? It is pretty obvious that the generation who live to see these things will not pass until they happen. Nothing of any substance is said, so that can't be the meaning either. Another possible meaning is this: that people from this present generation, representatives of the generation who were hearing the Lord, would see the beginning of it all happening. Well that is possible, and that is a very popular traditional interpretation, because among the people who heard him, there were those who would still be alive in A.D. 70. This is 35 to 40 years before the destruction of Jerusalem. Some people in that generation would still be alive when the city fell. They would see the first mountain peak of prophecy, the destruction of Jerusalem; they would see the beginning of all these events, and the end of the Jewish era with the destruction of Jerusalem. So you could say, that is a valid interpretation, and that is certainly the most popular interpretation among Reformed exegetes. But there is another interpretation held by Reformed exegetes, a fourth one, and it is this: that the term ‘this generation’ doesn't mean this group of people currently alive, this age group. We speak of generations in the Bible. We speak of the wilderness generation, the group of people who were alive during that forty-year period. Today we speak loosely of this or that generation, meaning younger people, middle-aged people, old people. We divide people alive broadly into generations. But it doesn't have that meaning here at all, because actually the Greek word translated ‘generation’ is the word that simply means kin, ethnic group, ethnic nation. Often in the Bible it is stretched to mean group of people living at a certain time, but its literal sense is kin, and it is used four times in the New Testament in that sense. Maybe this is another such use, in which case the meaning of the verse would be this: ‘Verily I say unto that this [ethnic group, these kin] – the Jews, the Israelites – shall not pass, till all these things be done.’ Now that is a different meaning. Christ is saying there will always be Israelites to the end of time, as a distinct nation. That is actually a remarkable prophecy. Usually in olden times when a smaller nation was overrun by a larger nation, and massacred and obliterated, it disappeared, and such people who were left got merged into the different nations, and that group, that family people, vanished. But this would then be saying that the Jewish people will be preserved until all the events have been witnessed by them. That is very surprising, especially when we consider how they have been so widely persecuted. It doesn't mean they will all be saved, but they will be preserved to see these things. ‘Verily [assuredly], I say unto you, that this generation [this nation, the Jewish people] shall not pass.’ It would be fitting for the Lord to say that. All this talk about the destruction of Jerusalem and the terrible suffering! Is our nation going to disappear? No. It will not pass until both mountain peaks of prophecy have been accomplished. In spite of the heavy judgment about to fall on Israel, and the severe trials that will come in the future, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will not pass away but will play their part in future events on earth. The Jews will not pass away because God still has among them an elect remnant who he will call.