Luke 21:32

Truly I say to you, This generation will not pass away, until all things be accomplished.”

And indeed, He declares, all ‘these things' that He has described as necessary before His coming will be accomplished within the lifetime of the current generation. It must necessarily be so. The blood of all the prophets would be required of this generation because of what they were going to do to God's beloved Son (Luke 11:50). The judgment on Jerusalem must therefore necessarily happen within this generation.

This would then indicate that His return  could  also be within that time period, but would not necessarily be so, for His coming is not part of ‘these things', it is the fulfilment resulting after ‘these things'. So the claim is that while all ‘these things' that must take place before His coming will occur within a generation, the coming itself would not necessarily occur within that time period (for He did not know when it would be). All they could know when all these thing had occurred was that it was ‘near', that is, could possibly arrive at any time.

That Jesus was at this point no more aware than His disciples of how long would be the period between the destruction of Jerusalem and His coming comes out in these words. Later revelation would reveal that it would be a long, indeterminate, unlimited period, cited as a round ‘thousand years' (Revelation 20:3), a period which to first century man would indicate immeasurable time.

However, the word genea can in fact mean, 1) the descendants of a common ancestor, that is, those ‘generated' from such an ancestor (thus a particular race, e.g. the Jews); 2) a group of people born at the same time (‘generation' thus for example being seen as shorthand for ‘the people in that generation'); or 3) a period of time occupied by such a group of people (roughly a period of forty years). It has therefore been suggested that ‘this generation' could be interpreted in any one of a number of different ways as follows:

1). ‘This generation' (this ‘race') could mean the race of the Jews as ‘generated' from Israel/Jacob, those who were born of Israel/Jacob. This would then be promising that the Jews as a race would not cease to exist before all these things were accomplished. It would be declaring that they would still be around at the end, and unlike other nations, would not just have disappeared. It would be a word of hope for the Jews. Certainly the fact of the survival of the Jews as a distinct entity through the centuries must be seen as quite remarkable. But there are other explanations for their survival, (the Arabs have also survived, and also see themselves as descendants of Abraham), and it is not a natural meaning of the phrase in this context without further amplification.

2). ‘This generation', which is a phrase used regularly by Jesus of unbelievers who do not respond to His words (see Luke 7:31; Luke 9:41; Luke 11:29), could be seen as signifying people with a certain attitude against Him, like the ‘generation of vipers' (those born of vipers) in Luke 3:7, thus indicating a type of people who will not die out before the second coming. But it would again be an unusual use of the word without further amplification.

3). ‘This generation' could indicate a generation in which certain of the events described will happen in the future, a generation which will then not pass away before all is fulfilled, e.g. the final generation at the end. The idea here would be to stress that all that is described must occur within the one generation, although in this case it is a later generation, ‘this' referring to the generation who will actually be involved.

4). ‘This generation' could mean the current generation when Jesus was speaking which would not pass away before all that necessarily had to lead up to His coming, especially the destruction of Jerusalem, was fulfilled. This is the most natural and straightforward meaning of the term.

We opt for the fourth as being Jesus' intention, simply because it is the most natural significance of the phrase and ties in with the thought that the blood of the prophets will be required of this generation. The point that He is then also stressing is that all that must necessarily lead up to His coming will be fulfilled within that generation so that His coming need not necessarily be looked at as something that will happen only in a remote future, long after that time. This holding out of the future as imminent, part of which had not yet been fulfilled by the time of Jesus, is seen as constant in the prophets. The aim was to keep people in expectancy. On the other hand it always left open the options that what was to happen might be soon, or might be in the more distant future. The point then is that by the time the current generation is passing away His coming will be ‘near', that is, will be such that it could possibly occur at any time. Jesus did not want His followers to lose sight of the fact that the time of His return was unknown, even to Him. Thus he wanted them to see it as ‘imminent' (that is, as possibly happening at any time), so that they must always be anticipating the possibility of it. Not knowing when it would be He knew that it could be near or far. There was no other way of presenting it.