Matthew 23:36

Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.

It is the beginning of the judgment upon the Jewish nation for their consistent refusal to accept the Messiah, visited first of all upon their leaders. With great seriousness Jesus states this fact, because the present generation is about to fill up the measure of iniquity to the very brim. He would send His messengers again, but their hearts would be hardened by their message, against the message and against the bearers. Their false worship would not want to permit the worship in spirit and in truth. They would kill, and crucify, and scourge, and persecute the messengers of Christ. No form of inquisition and cruelty is too horrifying when people vent their spite against the messengers of the true Gospel. And so the Jews, in being punished for the murder of Christ and the messengers of the New Testament, in having their blood come upon them, would incidentally receive punishment for the murders of the prophets of the Old Testament. They have their fathers' spirit, the same hatred for the truth and its bearers; and so the sins of the fathers will be visited upon the children. Abel was the first one to die, a martyr of his convictions, of his faith. And the hatred of the children of God continued down through the ages, one of the most conspicuous cases being that of Zacharias, the son of Jehoiada, also called Barachias, 2 Chronicles 24:20, not to speak of other murders recorded in history. All the accumulated wrath of God was visited upon the Jews of the generation of Jesus, because they rejected the Messiah Himself. "As though He would say: It is one people, one kind, one generation; as the fathers, so the children. For the stubbornness that resisted God and His prophets in the fathers, resists in the same way in the children: the child is like the mother. All the blood that they have shed is bound to come upon them."