From Post 1:
Jesus said said to his followers that some of them would live to witness his return to earth:“Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom”. Matthew16: 27-28.
And that happened in AD 70. They understood Jesus had come into His kingdom. The previous verse says,
27 For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and will then repay every person according to his [a]deeds.
1) This verse speaks of judgment, repaying every person according to their deeds.
2) How did the Father come in His glory in the OT? Did He come in a physical manner? No. Coming in the glory of the Father can mean two things, to my mind, (i) Sharing the the glory that is only God's, and (ii) coming in judgment to reward those faithful and punish those unfaithful.
Jesus then goes further telling them which “signs” to look out for but this time including the whole “generation” and ending again with:
“Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened “Matthew24:25-34.
Mark13:26-30 says the same as does Luke21:27-32.
So it is clearly Jesus himself states that he will be seen again in that generation of that time and that it was to happen some time during the generation of those to whom he was speaking. It cannot be made more clear to his audience that this event would not be in the distant future, he told them that some of them who were there listening to him would still be alive to see it.
Those "signs" are present throughout the NT after the resurrection of the Savior. I will demonstrate that after I make a few more points.
First, what is a generation? How does the Bible define it?
Hebrews 3:9-11 (NASB)
9 Where your fathers put Me to the test,
And saw My works for forty years.
10 Therefore I was angry with this generation,
And said, ‘They always go astray in their heart,
And they did not know My ways’;
11 As I swore in My anger,
‘They certainly shall not enter My rest.’”
Hebrews 3:16-19 (NASB)
16 For who provoked Him when they had heard? Indeed, did not all those who came out of Egypt led by Moses? 17 And with whom was He angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose dead bodies fell in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient? 19 And so we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief.
Also, your sons will be shepherds in the wilderness for forty years, and they will suffer for your unfaithfulness, until your bodies perish in the wilderness.
So the Lord’s anger burned against Israel, and He made them wander in the wilderness for forty years, until the entire generation of those who had done evil in the sight of the Lord came to an end.
There, the definition of a generation is forty years!
Forty years from AD 30 is AD 70. In AD 70 Jesus did come in judgment, just as He promised in Matthew 16:27. Just as you have the first Exodus with Moses at the helm, so you have the Second Exodus with Jesus at the helm. Where Moses fails (he never led his people into the Promised Land, only to it) Jesus succeeds. He takes His people into the heavenly country. What did Moses say of a prophet like him?
Deuteronomy 18:15-18 (NASB)
15 “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen; to him you shall listen. 16 This is in accordance with everything that you asked of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying, ‘Do not let me hear the voice of the Lord my God again, and do not let me see this great fire anymore, or I will die!’ 17 And the Lord said to me, ‘They have [a]spoken well. 18 I will raise up for them a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them everything that I command him.
For I did not speak on My own, but the Father Himself who sent Me has given Me a commandment as to what to say and what to speak.
Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own, but the Father, as He remains in Me, does His works.
What does Peter say in Acts?
Acts 3:12
12 But when Peter saw
this, he replied to the people, “Men of Israel, why are you amazed at this, or why are you staring at us, as though by our own power or godliness we had made him walk? 13 The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers,
has glorified His [d]servant Jesus, the one whom you handed over and disowned in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release Him. 14 But you disowned the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, 15 but put to death the [e]Prince of life, whom God raised from the dead, [f]a fact to which we are witnesses...
19 Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord; 20 and that He may send Jesus, the [i]Christ appointed for you, 21 whom heaven must receive until the [j]period of restoration of all things, about which God spoke by the mouths of His holy prophets from ancient times. 22 Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your countrymen; to Him you shall listen regarding everything He says to you. 23 And it shall be that every soul that does not listen to that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.’ 24 And likewise, all the prophets who have spoken from Samuel and his successors onward, have also announced these days. 25 It is you who are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God ordained with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ 26 God raised up His [k]Servant for you first, and sent Him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways.”
What does Peter say? He blames the Jews for the death of the Lord. He says that the
Father has received Him until the time of restoration of all things? The restoration of all things is when Jesus comes in judgment of the Jews within "this generation." "
This generation" that Jesus spoke of in the Gospels is a period of time in which they live. He is giving them 40 years until the day of judgment, the day of God's wrath, happens to these people. As Peter said, in quoting Moses, "every soul that does not listen to that prophet (Jesus) will be put to death" and he says it to the generation he lives among. He says that all the prophets spoke of THESE DAYS. And who are the sons of the prophets? They are the descendent of Israel in that generation, Jesus' and Peter's generation. In Jesus, the
SEED of Abraham, there is a forty year period of transition and grace in which those how
hear His voice may still come into the kingdom and receive/enter their rest.
Next, the kingdom of heaven is a spiritual kingdom, a heavenly country.
Finally, His coming would be a spirtiual coming. Just like the Father
came on the clouds in the OT, so was to be the coming of the Son of Man. When the Father came in judgment of a nation He used another nation to administer that judgment. We see the same thing in Ad 70. The Roman armies surround Jerusalem.
Jesus, on the Mt of Olives, speaks to the disciples about the signs of His coming and the end of the age. What age, Stephen? Let me tell you. It is the end of the Old Covenant age, the end of that economy, of temple worship and yearly animal sacrifices for sin through the mediation of the Levitical priesthood. That is because Jesus came to establish a better covenant (as Hebrews states throughout), with a better High Priest, a better Mediator, and a better sacrifice, one that only has to be made once for all time.
Hebrews 9:24-28
24 For Christ did not enter a holy place made by hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; 25 nor was it that He would offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the Holy Place year by year with blood that is not his own. 26 Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been revealed to put away sin [w]by the sacrifice of Himself. 27 And just as it is destined for people to die once, and after this comes judgment, 28 so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.
As I said before, there is a forty year transition between the OT and Nt after the resurrection of the Lord. That is the grace period.
Hebrews 8:13 (NASB)
13 [a]When He said, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is [b]about to disappear.
When the author of Hebrews wrote these verses he describes the Old Testament as obsolete and about to disappear. It did in AD 70.
