Is this the most embarrassing verse in the Bible?

It’s a Bible verse that has puzzled Christians and been used by critics to attack the trustworthiness of Christ Himself. When Jesus, speaking of His return, said, “Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place” (Matt. 24:34), did He believe His second coming would happen before those hearing Him would die?

At first blush, it sure looks like it.  

Skeptical philosopher Bertrand Russell thinks so. In his essay “Why I am not a Christian”, he argued that Jesus got it wrong, saying: “For one thing, he certainly thought that his second coming would occur in clouds of glory before the death of all the people who were living at that time. There are a great many texts that prove that.”

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C. S. Lewis mimics Russell’s thoughts in his “The World’s Last Night” essay when he puts these words in the disbeliever’s mouth: “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.”

Lewis then transitions back to himself and goes on to make a somewhat startling statement:

“It is certainly the most embarrassing verse in the Bible. Yet how teasing, also, that within 14 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.”

Hoo boy!

You see the problems, right? If Jesus didn’t know certain things, maybe He wasn’t God as orthodox Christian doctrine teaches. Even worse, it’s one thing for Him to be ignorant about a matter, but something entirely different to be wrong in what He said.

That would cause both you and me to wonder, if He was wrong about His own second coming, what else was He wrong about?

So, what are we to do here? How about we start at the top and work our way down to what I believe is the right position on this?  

What did Jesus know?

While the traditional Christian position on Jesus is that He is the Son of God, and therefore sinless, infallible, and in essence God, plenty of people say otherwise. For example, skeptic Bart Ehrman wrote a book entitled How Jesus Became God claiming that the New Testament writers and the church invented Jesus’ divinity (a good refutation of Ehrman’s book is found in the work, How God Became Jesus).

In an interview with the Boston Globe, Ehrman delivered the crux of his argument when he said:

“The problem is that Jesus only makes claims for himself as being divine in the Gospel of John … But what scholars have long noted is that Jesus doesn’t say any of those things in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and that Matthew, Mark, and Luke are [written] much earlier than John … What I argue in the book is that it’s virtually inconceivable that if it was known Jesus called himself God, that Matthew, Mark, and Luke would just leave that part out.”

To see how incorrect a statement that is, see this article I wrote showing how Jesus’ divinity is splashed around in the synoptic Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. I think you’ll see it’s hard to miss. 

So, that being true, if we accept what Scripture says about Jesus being God, then what gives with the above verses which caused one of the best Christian thinkers of the 20th century (Lewis) to declare Jesus was both embarrassingly wrong and ignorant about His return?

Regarding Matthew 24:34: “Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place,” the key question is, what does the term “generation” represent? The Greek word genea can mean a race of people, the total of those born during a certain timeframe, or a specific time (i.e., an age).  

While Bible commentators assume different positions on what genea represents, none that I know of believe it refers to those alive at that time because “all these things” described earlier by Jesus in the chapter did not take place back then and still have not taken place today. Further, Jesus could not be referring to the generation listening to Him then because He had previously said the kingdom had already been taken away from that very same generation and they would not see it (Matt. 21:43).

That being the case, some, like theologian Charles Ryrie think genea means the Jewish race, while a slight majority (including myself) believe Jesus was referring to those alive who would see “all these things” that make up the Great Tribulation period in human history. Either interpretation could be valid, but the main point is that the text, given His previous statements in Matthew, isn’t saying Christ meant those alive in the first century.   

In other words, Jesus wasn’t wrong in what He said.

Next, when it comes to, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone” (Matt. 24:36), and Jesus’ knowledge on earth, we take a deep breath and realize we are staring into the face of the Incarnation’s mystery. The best we can do is piece together what the Bible tells us.

We’re told that Jesus aged like all of us, “increased in wisdom” (Luke 2:52), and that He voluntarily set aside some of His divine attributes like omniscience, during His kenosis, when He “emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men” (Phil. 2:7).

Scripture also says that Jesus, during His time in this world, knew just what the Father showed Him. The Old Testament predicted this, saying: “I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him” (Deut. 18:18).

On this, Jesus Himself said: “I do nothing on my own authority but speak just as the Father taught me” (John 8:28), “For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment — what to say and what to speak” (John 12:49).

That being true, Jesus evidently was shielded from the exact time of His return while alive then but has no doubt resumed His omniscience now that He has returned to His glorified state.

So, even though I’m a C. S. Lewis fan, I think ol’ Clive got this one wrong. The bottom line is there is nothing embarrassing about Jesus’s words regarding His return and the “generation” who would be alive to see it.