Mark 13:30

Or else, the leaves which come forth are words now spoken, the summer at hand is the day of Judgment, in which every tree shall show what it had within it, deadness for burning, or greenness to be planted with the tree of life. There follows: Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till these things be done.

(Epist. 119, 11) All that is said by the three Evangelists concerning the Advent of our Lord, if diligently compared together and examined, will perchance be found to belong to His daily coming in His body, that is, the Church, except those places where that last coming is so promised, as if it were approaching; for instance in the last part of the discourse according to Matthew, the coming itself is clearly expressed, where it is said, When the Son of Man shall come in his glory. (Matt. 25:31) For what does he refer to in the words, when ye shall see these things come to pass, but those things which He has mentioned above, amongst which it is said, And then ye shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds. The end therefore shall not be then, but then it shall be near at hand. Or are we to say, that not all those things which are mentioned above are to be taken in, but only some of them, that is, leaving out these words, Then shall ye see the Son of man coming; for that shall be the end itself, and not its approach only. But Matthew has declared that it is to be received without exception, saying, When ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors. That which is said above must therefore be taken thus; And he shall send his angels, and gather together the elect from the four winds; that is, He shall collect His elect from the four winds of heaven, which He does in the whole of the last hour, coming in His members as in clouds.

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."

(ubi sup.) Under the example of a tree the Lord gave a pattern of the end, saying, Now learn a parable of the fig tree, when her branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is near. So ye in like manner, when ye shall see these things come to pass, know that it is nigh, even at the doors.

(ubi sup.) This fruitbearing of the fig tree may also be understood to mean the state of the synagogue, which was condemned to everlasting barrenness, because when the Lord came, it had no fruits of righteousness in those who were then unfaithful. (Rom. 11:25) But the Apostle has said, that when the fulness of the Gentiles is come in, all Israel shall be saved. What means this, but that the tree, which has been long barren, shall then yield the fruit, which it had withheld? When this shall happen, doubt not that a summer of true peace is at hand.

(ubi sup.) By generation He either means the whole race of mankind, or specially the Jews.

(ubi sup.) The heaven which shall pass away is not the ethereal or starry heaven, but the heaven where is the air. For wheresoever the water of the judgment could reach, there also, according to the words of the blessed Peter, the fire of judgment shall reach. (2 Pet. 3) But the heaven and the earth shall pass away in that form which they now have, but in their essence they shall last without end.

Amen, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. By the name of generation, he either signifies every kind of people or specifically the Jews. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. The heaven that will pass away must be understood not as ethereal or sidereal but as the aerial, from which even the birds of heaven and clouds of heaven are named, as Peter attests saying: "The heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water, by the word of God; by which the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished." The heavens that now exist and the earth, are stored up by the same word, reserved for fire for the day of judgment and the destruction of ungodly men (II Peter III), clearly teaching that not other heavens will perish by fire than those that perished by water, that is, these empty and nebulous spaces of windy air. For it is not to be believed that the water of the flood, which surpassed the tops of mountains by fifteen cubits only, reached beyond the boundaries of the air and ether. However, wherever it could reach, there indeed, according to the aforementioned opinion of blessed Peter, the fire of judgment will also reach. But if heaven and earth will pass away, it can be questioned how Ecclesiastes says: "A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever" (Eccl. I). But, with clear reason, heaven and earth pass away by the form they now have; however, they persist without end by essence. For the figure of this world is passing away (I Cor. VII). And to John, the angel says: "There will be a new heaven and a new earth" (Rev. XXI); which indeed are not to be newly made, but these same ones are to be renewed. Therefore, heaven and earth both pass away and will be, because they are purged by fire from the form they now have, yet are always preserved in their own nature. Hence also it is said through the Psalmist: "You will change them, and they will be changed" (Ps. CI). Indeed, this last change of theirs, they now declare to us by these revolutions by which they unceasingly alternate for our uses. For the earth fails from its winter form through dryness, flourishes again with spring moisture. The heaven is daily covered with the darkness of night, and renewed by divine light. Hence, therefore, hence let each faithful person gather, that these things both perish and yet are renewed through their renovation, which now evidently seems to be continually repaired as though from defect.

As if He had said, As when the fig tree puts forth its leaves, summer follows at once, so also after the woes of Antichrist, at once, without an interval, shall be the coming of Christ, who will be to the just as summer after winter, but to sinners, winter after summer.

Or else, This generation shall not pass away, that is, the generation of Christians, until all things be fulfilled, which were spoken concerning Jerusalem and the coming of Antichrist; for He does not mean the generation of the Apostles, for the greater part of the Apostles did not live up to the destruction of Jerusalem. But He says this of the generation of Christians, wishing to console His disciples, lest they should believe that the faith should fail at that time; for the immoveable elements shall first fail, before the words of Christ fail; wherefore it is added, Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

But there is worse to come. Say what you like, we shall be told. The apocalyptic beliefs of the first Christians have been proved to be false. It is clear from the New Testament that they all expected the second coming in their own lifetime, and, worse still, they had a reason, and one which you will find very embarrassing. Their master had told them so. He shared, and indeed created, their delusion.

He said, in so many words, ‘This generation shall not pass till all these things be done.’ And he was wrong. He clearly knew no more about the end of the world than anyone else. It is certainly the most embarrassing verse in the Bible. Yet how teasing, also, that within fourteen words of it should come the statement, ‘But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.’ The one exhibition of error and the one confession of ignorance grow side by side.

That they stood thus in the mouth of Jesus Himself, and were not merely placed thus by the reporter, we surely need not doubt. Unless the reporter were perfectly honest, he would never have recorded the confession of ignorance at all. He could have had no motive for doing so except a desire to tell the whole truth. And unless later copyists were equally honest, they would never have preserved the apparently mistaken prediction about this generation after the passage of time had shown the apparent mistake.

This passage, Mark chapter 13, verses 30-32, and the cry, ‘Why hast Thou forsaken Me?’ Mark chapter 15, verse 34, together make up the strongest proof that the New Testament is historically reliable. The evangelists have the first great characteristic of honest witnesses. They mention facts which are, at first sight, damaging to their main contention.

The facts then are these, that Jesus professed Himself in some sense ignorant, and within a moment showed that He really was so. To believe in the Incarnation, to believe that He is God, makes it hard to understand how He could be ignorant, but also makes it certain that if He said He could be ignorant, then ignorant He could really be. For a God who can be ignorant is less baffling than a God who falsely professes ignorance.

The answer of theologians is that the God-Man was omniscient as God and ignorant as man. This, no doubt, is true, though it cannot be imagined. Nor, indeed, can the unconsciousness of Christ in sleep be imagined, nor the twilight of reason in His infancy. Still less is merely organic life in His mother’s womb.

But the physical sciences, no less than theology, propose for our belief much that cannot be imagined. A generation which has accepted the curvature of space need not boggle at the impossibility of imagining the consciousness of incarnate God. In that consciousness the temporal and the timeless were united. I think we can acquiesce in mystery at that point, provided we do not aggravate it by our tendency to picture the timeless life of God as simply another sort of time.

We are committing that blunder whenever we ask how Christ could be, at the same moment, ignorant and omniscient, or how He could be the God who neither slumbers nor sleeps while He slept. The italicized words conceal an attempt to establish a temporal relation between His timeless life as God and the days, months, and years of His life as man. And, of course, there is no such relation.

The incarnation is not an episode in the life of God. The Lamb is slain, and therefore presumably born, grown to maturity, and risen from all eternity. The taking up into God’s nature of humanity, with all its ignorance and limitations, is not itself a temporal event, though the humanity which is so taken up was, like our own, a thing living and dying in time.

And if limitation, and therefore ignorance, was thus taken up, we ought to expect that the ignorance should, at some time, be actually displayed. It would be difficult and, to me, repellent, to suppose that Jesus never asked a genuine question, that is, a question to which He did not know the answer. That would make of His humanity something so unlike ours as scarcely to deserve the name.

I find it easier to believe that when He said, ‘Who touched Me?’ Luke chapter 8, verse 45, He really wanted to know.