What does "this generation" mean in Matthew 24:34?

The Greek word is genea, which normally means the people alive at one time. Four readings are seriously defended: the contemporaries of Jesus, the Jewish people as a race, the future generation that sees the signs begin, and unbelieving humanity as a type. The first is the most natural use of the word; the others are proposed because of what "all these things" is taken to include.

Did Jesus get the timing wrong?

Only if "all these things" must include the final judgment. Preterists answer that the passage is about the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, which happened inside forty years. Futurists answer that "this generation" is not the one Jesus was addressing. Both readings preserve the accuracy of the saying by different routes.

Can genea mean "race"?

It is contested. Greek has a separate word, genos, which does carry the sense of race or stock, and Matthew 24:34 does not use it. Defenders of the race reading point to the shared root and to Jerome's Latin rendering; critics say the New Testament never clearly uses genea that way.

Where did the idea come from that the generation is the one that saw Israel founded in 1948?

It was popularised by Hal Lindsey in The Late Great Planet Earth in 1970, reading the fig tree of Matthew 24:32 as national Israel and a biblical generation as roughly forty years. That pointed to 1988. The date passed and the reading was widely revised.

Does Matthew 24:34 settle the preterist versus futurist argument?

No. It is the verse each side most wants and each side finds hardest. Preterism has the plainest sense of "this generation" and the harder time with the cosmic language of verses 29 to 31. Futurism has the reverse problem.

What Did Jesus Mean by "This Generation Will Not Pass Away"?

Jesus said it near the end of a long answer about the destruction of the temple, and Christians have argued about it ever since. Here is the honest starting point. The most natural reading of "this generation" is the people standing in front of him. That is how the word is used everywhere else in the gospels, and no serious commentator on any side disputes that this is the ordinary sense.

So the real disagreement is not about "this generation" at all. It is about what "all these things" covers. If it means the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, the saying came true inside forty years, when Roman legions under Titus burned the temple in AD 70. If it must also include the visible return of Christ and the final judgment, the plain reading creates a problem, and four different solutions have been offered to solve it. Each is held by careful people. Each costs something.

The verse

Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled. Matthew 24:34

The same saying appears in Mark 13:30 and Luke 21:32. C. S. Lewis, writing in The World's Last Night in 1960, called it "certainly the most embarrassing verse in the Bible", which tells you that the difficulty is felt well outside the circles that argue about prophecy charts.

The word itself

"Generation" translates the Greek genea, built on the root gen-, meaning to be born or come into being, the same root behind genesis and genealogy. In older Greek it could carry the sense of descent, and so occasionally something like stock or kind.

By the time of the New Testament, though, genea is the standard Greek rendering of the Hebrew dor, meaning an age or the people alive during one. That is how the gospels use it: "an evil and adulterous generation" in Matthew 12:39, "O faithless and perverse generation" in Matthew 17:17.

There is a neighbouring Greek word, genos, which does mean race, stock or descent. Matthew 24:34 does not use it. That single fact carries a great deal of weight in the argument below.

The four readings

1. The generation alive when Jesus spoke. This is the preterist reading, from the Latin praeter, "past". It takes "all these things" as the events of verses 4 to 34, fulfilled in the Jewish war and the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. R. C. Sproul argued the case at length in The Last Days According to Jesus in 1998, describing himself as a partial preterist rather than a full one. N. T. Wright reads the Olivet Discourse the same way in Jesus and the Victory of God, as a prophecy of Jerusalem's fall and Jesus' own vindication.

Its strength is that it does not have to strain the word. Its difficulty is verses 29 to 31, where the sun is darkened and the Son of man is seen coming on the clouds. Preterists read that as Old Testament judgment language, the kind Isaiah uses about Babylon, applied to Jerusalem. Critics answer that it reads more naturally as the end of history.

2. The Jewish people as a race. This reading takes genea in its older sense, so the promise is that Israel as a people will survive until everything is fulfilled. Jerome moved in this direction in his Latin commentary, and the Scofield Reference Bible of 1909 made it standard in dispensational circles, arguing that the worldwide preaching of the kingdom and the visible return did not happen under Titus and so the promise must be about the preservation of the nation.

Its strength is that it lets a futurist read verses 29 to 31 literally without a timing problem. Its difficulty is the word. Greek has genos for race, and the New Testament does not use genea that way anywhere the lexicons agree on. Most dispensational scholars today have quietly moved to reading 3.

3. The generation that sees the signs begin. Here "this" points forward, to whichever generation watches the events of the chapter start. It leans on the fig tree of verses 32 and 33: when the branch is tender and puts forth leaves, summer is near.

Hal Lindsey gave this reading its widest audience in The Late Great Planet Earth in 1970, treating the fig tree as national Israel, the founding of the modern state in 1948 as the budding, and a biblical generation as roughly forty years. The arithmetic pointed at 1988. Edgar Whisenant's 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988 sold millions of copies into the expectation Lindsey had built. Nothing happened, and the reading was revised rather than dropped: a generation was restated as seventy or eighty years, on Psalm 90:10, or the starting point was moved from 1948 to 1967.

Its strength is that it fits the fig tree image. Its difficulty is that "this" is a demonstrative pronoun pointing at something present, and 1988 is a matter of public record.

4. The wicked or unbelieving generation. This takes genea qualitatively rather than chronologically, as a kind of people rather than a slice of time, drawing on the gospels' habit of using the word with a moral edge. The sense is that unbelieving humanity will persist until the end.

Its strength is that the gospel usage really does carry that flavour. Its difficulty is that a moral sense does not remove the time element; in Matthew 12 and 17 the evil generation is still a specific set of people alive then.

The four side by side

Reading	"This generation" is	"All these things" fulfilled	Strongest point	Main difficulty
Preterist	Jesus' contemporaries	AD 70, Jerusalem and the temple	Uses genea in its ordinary sense	Verses 29 to 31 read as more than a local judgment
Race	The Jewish people, preserved	Still future	Removes the timing problem entirely	Greek has genos for race; genea is not used that way
Signs	A future generation that sees the signs start	Still future, within that generation	Fits the fig tree image in verses 32 to 33	"This" points at something present; 1988 came and went
Wicked kind	Unbelieving humanity as a type	Still future	Matches the moral tone of genea in the gospels	A moral sense does not cancel the time reference

Why this verse is worth knowing honestly

Notice what the table shows. Every system is strained at exactly this point, and each is strained in a different place.

Preterism has the easiest time with verse 34 and the hardest time with verses 29 to 31. Futurism has the easiest time with 29 to 31 and the hardest time with verse 34. That is not a coincidence and it is not a failure of anyone's scholarship. It is what happens when a single chapter is read as one continuous prediction rather than as an answer to the two questions the disciples actually asked in verse 3: when will the temple be thrown down, and what will be the sign of your coming.

A great deal of writing on Matthew 24 works by picking the verse where your own view is strong and treating the other side's difficulty as proof. It is more useful to hold both difficulties at once. If you know which verse strains your position, you know something about your position that most people who hold it do not.

The rest of the Olivet Discourse works the same way. Almost every paragraph in it is read as past by some Christians, as future by others, and as both by a third group who see a first fulfilment in AD 70 and a fuller one still to come. Once you can see which reading is doing the work in any given verse, the chapter stops being a puzzle you have to solve and becomes a map you can read.