A few days ago, I shared a brief statement from Gary DeMar on Facebook: “The great tribulation mentioned in Matthew 24:21 took place before that generation passed away. Verse 34 demands it.” I simply replied, “Yup.” Shortly afterward, a pastor who opposes preterism responded, claiming that “verse 34 does not demand it,” and posted a lengthy excerpt from an article to support his objection. What follows is a summary of the key ideas from his critique, and then my rebuttal. I do not address every minor detail of his post, because the central issue—his handling of “all these things” and the structure of the discourse—renders the rest of his points irrelevant.
Before offering a response, it’s helpful to note the main thrust of the critique I’m addressing. The critic argues that “all these things” in Matthew 24:34 does not include the coming of the Son of Man in vv. 29–31, but refers only to preliminary first-century signs. On this basis, he separates vv. 29–31 into a distant, future event and claims Matthew presents two different timeframes inside the discourse. He maintains that v. 33 teaches a chronological gap between the destruction of the temple and the Son of Man’s coming, appeals to Luke 21 to reinforce this distinction, and concludes that the preterist reading wrongly collapses AD 70 and the Parousia into the same event. In his follow-up comments, he clarified that he also affirms a first-century fulfillment of "all these things," including the signs, but argues for a built-in eschatological delay between the signs and the coming of the Son of Man—an inherited Jewish expectation, he says, rooted in texts like Habakkuk 2 and reflected in Jesus' parables. What follows is my interaction with those ideas.
While the critic spends time on making an artificial separation between 24:29–31 and 33–34, thus leading to an arbitrary conclusion as to what “all these things” must be (to support his paradigm), he misses crucial contextual-grammatical clues grounding the events in the first century context: Jesus’ use of the second person plural direct address.
V.33: “In the same way,” Jesus connects what he says in V.33 to V.32 which is connected to the vv. 29–31 and all the way back to V.1. V.33 – “. . . when you see all these things, recognize that he is near — at the door.” Grammatically, this passage is a second person plural (SPP) direct address, in which the “you” is Jesus’ direct audience, not some nebulous audience 2000+ years from now. Below is a literal translation that better shows the grammar of the passage:
οὕτως καὶ ὑμεῖς, ὅταν ἴδητε πάντα ταῦτα, γινώσκετε ὅτι ἐγγύς ἐστιν ἐπὶ θύραις
Thus, also you [SPP: all], when you [SPP: all] see these things, you all are to recognize [SPP and an imperatival form] that he is near at the doors [plural].
The opening of the passages is an emphatic particle “Thus, also you,” showing the importance of this conclusive statement for Jesus’ disciples. The SPP connects these statements before and after, with an imperative, a command for them to know what is to happen when they ( again Jesus direct audience) witness these things taking place. While English translations render that last clause as “that he is near—at the door,” the door is in the plural, so it should be doors. In line with a contextual scenario of the Temple being destroyed according to Jesus’ prediction, the plural form makes sense because the Temple has doors, not a door. So, the analogy is not issued primarily for effect, but to show when Jesus’ presence (parousia) is at the doors of Temple he is to destroy, as the Son of Man. Therefore, a fulfillment of passages 1–35 in the first century is contextually warranted.
All the jumping around to various clauses to string them in a way that supports a futurist reading is a move for doctrinal reinforcement rather than genuine exegesis. Lastly, when looking over the author’s statement, one must ask, “Is this what the first-century audience would conclude?” Why are there no clarifying questions or any element of the disciples lacking understanding just like the parables? The Gospel writers have no problem showing statements of confusion. We have to conclude the reason is because all that Jesus was talking about was related to them in their current situation.
The
author’s temporal separation violates the discourse structure; if two stages
were in mind, why is there no literary marker or shift in audience, change of
subject, or redirection indicating that Jesus has moved on from his direct
audience to a topic for thousands of years from now? The critic’s view requires
a shift, even though Matthew does not provide one. What are the indicators that
show the continuity of the discourse, which the critic overlooks?
Matthew uses a series of τότε transitions (vv. 9, 10, 14, 16, 21, 23, 30) to
show unfolding sequence. The discourse flows forward, not sideways:
• then they will deliver you
• then many will fall away
• then the end will come
• then let those in Judea flee
• then there will be great tribulation
• then the sign of the Son of Man will appear
• then all tribes will mourn
• then he will send the angels
The critic wants to say: “The ‘then’ of vv. 29–31 is actually not the ‘then’ of everything before it.” But Matthew’s syntax won’t allow that. The temporal markers thread the entire discourse together.
Another contextual clue indicating Matthew is presenting 1–34 as a discourse unit is that “all these things” mark the boundaries, an inclusio, around the content. V. 2 opens with “all these things,” and v. 34 concludes with “Truly I tell you [SPP], this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things take place.” It is a natural reading of the unit; a futurist must pry the inclusio apart to fit his doctrinal assumptions. Furthermore, the fig tree parable becomes the capstone, as it functions as a summary. A summary comes after the teaching one summarizes. The parable summarizes everything taught in vv.4–31; he doesn’t break anywhere else to summarize or indicate a change in thought, context, or timing of the events of which he speaks.
Regarding the critic’s follow-up claim about “eschatological delay”:
Even granting that Jewish literature sometimes wrestles with the tension between imminence and delay, that tradition does not override Jesus’ own grammatical and narrative signals within the Olivet Discourse. Jesus does not say, “When you see all these things, know that it may still be delayed,” but rather, “When you see all these things, know that he is near—at the doors.” The parabolic delays elsewhere in the Gospels involve explicit statements of delay (e.g., “the master was delayed”), which Matthew 24 pointedly lacks. One cannot import delay language into a text whose entire point is the recognizable nearness of the Son of Man to the very audience who would live to see the signs. “Near at the doors” functions precisely as the climax of the discourse, not as the resetting of a prophetic clock.
In conclusion, I believe Matthew 24:34 does demand a first century fulfillment. To make the text say otherwise one must leap out of the immediate context to make it say what the direct audience did not hear.
One last nugget: The phrase “this generation” (ἡ γενεὰ αὕτη) always refers to Jesus’ contemporaries in the Gospels—without exception (cf. Matt 11:16; 12:41–42, 45; 23:36). There is no exegetical justification for redefining it only in Matthew 24:34. The critic’s view must break Matthean usage to preserve a futurist timeline; the preterist view simply takes Matthew at his word. You can see my more substantial exposition of the Olivet Discourse in The Olivet Discourse: A Preterist Reading
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