Now learn the parable from the fig tree: when its branch has already become tender, and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near; even so you too, when you see all these things, recognize that He is near, right at the door. Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words shall not pass away. (24:32-35)

The blessed hope of every Christian is the return of his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. “In the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness,” Paul wrote, “which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing” (2 Tim. 4:8). God’s Word instructs believers not only “to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age,” but also to be “looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus” (Titus 2:12-13). Nothing in this world, Paul says, can compare “with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18), “the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (v. 21), “the redemption of our body” (v. 23), and “the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 1:7).

Believers anticipate the day when they will “all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye” and their perishable and mortal bodies put on the imperishable and immortal (1 Cor. 15:51-53), when “death is swallowed up in victory” (v. 54), and when “the saints will judge the world” (6:2). They look forward to the day when they will be “absent from the body and . . . at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8) and when the church will be presented to Christ as His pure virgin bride (11:2). They look forward to the day when they will see Him just as He is and become like Him (1 John 3:2).

The theme of Christ’s second coming permeates the New Testament and is the great anticipatory reality of Christian living. The Lord’s return will be as real and as historical an event as His first coming. Believers look back to the moment of saving faith in Christ, when their souls were redeemed. They look forward to the return of Christ, when their bodies will be redeemed and they will enter into the promised fullness of salvation. In that day Satan will be defeated, the curse lifted, Christ worshiped, the creation liberated and restored, sin and death conquered, and the saints glorified.

Among the many passages in Scripture that describe the Lord’s coming again, Matthew 24-25 is unequaled because it is the message from Jesus’ own lips about His return. After He told them of the series of signs that will precede His coming, including the supreme sign of His personal appearance, the disciples no doubt were still wondering about the time when those dramatic signs would begin, about what their duration would be, and about how long it would be from the sign in heaven of His appearing to His establishing the kingdom.

In Matthew 24:32-35 Jesus gives another parable about a fig tree. The parable summarizes and illustrates what He had just said and acts as a transition to His answer to the disciples’ question about when His coming would be (see v. 3). In this parable and its explanation, four elements can be discerned: an uncomplicated analogy (v. 32), an unmistakable application (vv. 33-34), an unprecedented alteration (v. 35a), and an unchanging authority (v. 35b).

AN UNCOMPLICATED ANALOGY

Now learn the parable from the fig tree: when its branch has already become tender, and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near; (24:32)

Parables had a two-fold purpose in Jesus’ ministry. When unexplained, they concealed truth; when explained, they revealed truth. When Jesus gave a parable to the multitudes or to the unbelieving religious leaders without also giving an explanation, it was a riddle to them. When He gave a parable to His disciples and explained it, it was a vivid illustration that made a truth clear and understandable.

When the disciples asked Jesus, “Why do You speak to them [the multitudes] in parables?” He replied, “To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted. . . . Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand” (Matt. 13:10-11,13). Then He said to the disciples, “But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear,” and He proceeded to tell them the meaning of the parable of the sower (vv. 16-23).

In light of the fact that Jesus’ parables were given for the sake of helping the disciples understand His teaching, it is evident that He told the parable from the fig tree to give them further light about His second coming.

Unfortunately, this parable, like many others, has often been made confusing and misleading by those who view it as a complicated allegory rather than a simple analogy. Some interpreters, for instance, contend that the fig tree represents Israel. A popular version of that view is that the budding of the fig tree refers to Israel’s becoming a political state in 1948. Because Jesus does not identify the fig tree as Israel, that meaning would have been totally obscured to the disciples and to every other believer who lived before the twentieth century. In that view, Jesus would not have been employing the parable to clarify His meaning but to conceal it. Some who hold to that interpretation suggest that the budding of leaves on the fig tree represents a spiritual revival in the new state of Israel. But modern Israel, though very much alive physically, is one of the most secular nations on earth. As a state, it is very resistant, if not hostile, to the gospel.

This parable is simple and uncomplicated, and in the context of what the Lord had just been saying, its meaning should not be hard to discern. Palestine had an abundance of fig trees, which were not only grown commercially but were also found in many family yards, for the sake of the delicious fruit as well as for the shade they provided during the hot summer months.

Jews were used to the fig tree’s functioning as an illustration. Jotham used it in his story shouted to the inhabitants of Shechem from the top of Mount Gerizim (Judg. 9:10-11); Jeremiah saw two baskets of figs in his vision after Nebuchadnezzar took captives from Judah to Babylon (Jer. 24:1-10); Hosea used it as a figure in his prophecy about Israel (Hos. 9:10); and Joel used a splintered fig tree to illustrate the devastation of Judah by a plague of locusts (Joel 1:4-7).

Few figures would have been better known to the disciples than that of the fig tree, which Jesus Himself had used on numerous other occasions as a teaching aid (see Matt. 7:16; 21:19; Luke 13:6-9).

Manthan (learn) means to genuinely understand and accept a teaching, to accept it as true and to apply it in one’s life. It was sometimes used of acquiring a life-long habit. Paul declared that he had “learned [manthan] to be content in whatever circumstances” he was in (Phil. 4:11). That sort of learning is much more than mere head knowledge; it involves genuine acceptance of a truth and determination to live a life consistent with it. Jesus wanted the disciples to learn in their inmost beings what He was teaching, to understand and receive it with regard to its great importance.

He reminded them of a commonly known fact about a fig tree: when its branch has already become tender, and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. In other words, when the sap begins to flow into the branches, making them tender, and new leaves appear on the tree, you know that summer is near. Even children knew that a budding fig tree meant it was spring and that summer would soon follow, when the ripened figs would be harvested.

Throughout the gospel of Matthew, the figure of harvest represents judgment, the time of separating unbelievers from believers and of condemning the unbelievers to judgment. John the Baptist spoke of the Lord’s coming with “His winnowing fork . . . in His hand [to] thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (Matt. 3:12; cf. v 10). As He looked out over the multitudes in Galilee who came out to see Him, Jesus said to the disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest” (Matt. 9:37-38). Without saving faith in Him, those thousands of people, and millions of others like them, were destined to judgment. That field of people was ripening for God’s judgment just as a field of wheat or a budding fig tree ripens for the harvesters. In the parable of the wheat and tares Jesus spoke of the farmer’s allowing the good wheat and the bad tares to grow together until harvest time, when the tares could be accurately identified and destroyed (Matt. 13:30).

In all of those instances, the harvest symbolizes a time of rewarding the righteous and punishing the wicked. In this present parable of the fig tree Jesus was simply illustrating to the disciples that, when the signs He had just been describing begin to transpire, the time of His return will be very near.

AN UNMISTAKABLE APPLICATION

even so you too, when you see all these things, recognize that He is near, right at the door. Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. (24:33-34)

When the context is studied carefully, Jesus’ application of the parable is as unmistakable as its analogy is uncomplicated. All these things can only refer to what He has been talking about—the birth pains (vv. 4-14), the abomination of desolation (v. 15), the need to flee because of the impending perils (vv. 16-28), and the catastrophic upheaval of the universe (v. 29). Those things will indicate that He is near, just as the budding fig tree indicates that summer, the harvest time, is near.

In the NASB text, He translates the Greek verb estin, which literally means “it is,” as the term is most commonly rendered. In Luke’s account Jesus says, “the kingdom of God is near” (21:31), which is consistent with the reading of “it” (KJV) in Matthew 24:33. The supreme event of the last day, and the event about which the disciples had queried Jesus (v. 3), was the Lord’s personal coming to establish His kingdom. The basic idea is therefore the same, whether the pronoun is He or “it” or whether the antecedent is the appearance of Christ, Christ Himself, or Christ’s kingdom. When Christ’s appearing is near, He Himself will be near and His kingdom will be near. When those signs occur, the divine King will be right at the door, knocking and ready to come in.

Giving further application, Jesus said, Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. As explained in chapter 2 of this volume, this generation refers to the generation living during the end time. The signs of Matthew 24-25 will be experienced within one generation, the generation living when Christ returns.

This generation cannot refer to the disciples’ generation, as many interpreters have maintained. Some who hold that view believe Jesus simply made a human guess and was mistaken. “After all,” they argue, “didn’t Jesus say that ‘of that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone’?” (Mark 13:32). But that is a spurious argument. Jesus does not here specify the historical time of His coming but rather the events that will identify it. And it is one thing to recognize that it was in God’s sovereign plan for the Son not to have certain knowledge during His incarnation, so that He did not know the exact timetable and knew He did not know it. It is quite another thing to contend that He was capable of bad guesses and liable to propagating an idea He had no idea was wrong or questionable. If Jesus was wrong about the time of His coming, He could have been wrong about any or every other thing He taught. His temporary, divinely-imposed limitations during His time of humiliation in no way imply that what He taught may have been less than perfectly truthful or authoritative.

Some of those who believe Jesus was speaking of the disciples’ generation claim the terrible events He mentions here refer to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 70. But as we have noted before, the events of Matthew 24 are much too universal and cataclysmic to represent the dreadful but geographically limited devastation of Jerusalem. That did not involve “famines and earthquakes” (Matt. 24:7), believers’ being “hated by all nations” (v. 9), false Christs and false prophets (vv. 5, 11), the preaching of the gospel to the whole world (v. 14), or the abomination of desolation (v. 15). Nor were the sun darkened, the moon extinguished, or the stars dislodged from their places (v. 29). Most important of all, Jesus certainly did not appear then. It is strange logic to argue that Jesus could accurately foretell the destruction of Jerusalem some forty years hence but be mistaken about His returning at that time. Or if, as some suggest, the teaching here was merely symbolic and allegorical, with the limited destruction of Jerusalem representing the vastly greater destruction of the end time, what event in A.D. 70 could possibly have symbolized Jesus’ return, which is the main subject of the discourse?

Those who hold that the fig tree is Israel usually affirm that this generation refers to the Jewish people, indicating they would not pass away as a race until these things take place. That idea is true, and the perpetuity of the Jews is clearly taught elsewhere in Scripture, but it does not seem to fit this context. All Jews firmly believed in God’s promise of an everlasting kingdom of David, and for Jesus to have meant that the Jews would survive until the Messiah ushered in His kingdom would have been superfluous and pointless. And if Jesus had intended that meaning, He could easily have referred to the Jews as “My people,” “God’s people,” or the like. To allude to them as this generation would seem obtuse and confusing.

Another interpretation is that this generation refers to the Christ-rejecting people of Jesus’ day. In that case Jesus would have been saying that ungodly, rebellious mankind would survive until the Messiah’s coming. Genea (generation) was sometimes used to represent a particular kind of people. In the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) the term is used to refer to a righteous people as well as an unrighteous people. But again, although that interpretation is linguistically possible, it does not fit the context and also would have been superfluous and pointless, because no Jew doubted that many unbelieving, ungodly people would be alive to be judged when the Messiah came. In the minds of most Jews, the essential work of the Messiah would be to deliver Israel from its ungodly oppressors. He could hardly judge the nations and put His enemies under His feet if they had already been eradicated.

We are left then with the simple and most reasonable interpretation that the leaves of the fig tree represent the birth pains and the other signs of His coming Jesus has mentioned in this chapter and that this generation refers to the people living at the end time who will view those signs. In partial answer to the disciples’ question concerning the when of His coming, Jesus said that it will occur very soon after those signs are witnessed, before the generation who sees them has time to pass away. He is speaking to the same prophetically distant “you” He has been addressing throughout the chapter (see vv. 4, 6, 9, 15, 25). As mentioned previously, Jesus was speaking as some of the Old Testament prophets often spoke, as if they were standing directly before future generations (see, e.g., Isa. 33:17-24; 66:10-14; Zech. 9:9).

Matthew 24:34 is an explanation of the parable of the fig tree. The idea is that, just as the budding of fig leaves means it is not long until summer, so the generation alive when the signs occur will not have long to wait for Christ’s appearance. Those who witness the birth pains will witness the birth. As the books of Daniel and Revelation make clear, the total time of the Tribulation will be but seven years, and the period of the Great Tribulation, in which the signs will appear, will only be three and a half years (cf. Dan. 12:7; Rev. 11:2-3; 12:6).

Among those who believe that this generation refers to those who will be alive during the end time, there are two basic views as to the makeup of that future people. Posttribulationists, who hold that the rapture will take place after the Tribulation, believe that this generation could include the redeemed presently living if the Tribulation were to occur during their lifetimes. In other words, any believer alive at the beginning of the Tribulation would be subject to its calamities, including possible martyrdom. Only those believers who survive that great holocaust would therefore be raptured, after enduring seven years of hell on earth. Then they would almost immediately come back to earth with the Lord when He appears with His saints to establish the millennial kingdom.

Pretribulationists, on the other hand, maintain that the church, defined as believers of this present age, will be raptured just before the Tribulation. This generation could not, in this view, include any of the redeemed alive now. For many reasons, the pretribulation view seems most faithful to New Testament teaching.

First of all, chapters 2-3 of Revelation speak of the church on earth, and chapters 4-5 speak of the church in heaven. But beginning with chapter 6, which introduces the Tribulation, there is no further mention of the church until chapter 18.

Second, there is the total absence of New Testament instruction to the church as to how it should endure and conduct itself during the Tribulation.

Third, if it is to occur at the end of the Tribulation, the rapture would seem to be pointless. The church not only would not be spared the torments of the Tribulation but would almost immediately turn around, as it were, and come back to earth with Christ. Otherwise, who would be left on earth during the Millennium? The unredeemed will have been destroyed, and the returning saints from heaven will have spiritual bodies and will not be married or have families (Matt. 22:30). Yet human life will carry on during the Millennium, with children being born just as before.

Fourth, Jesus’ promise to the church at Philadelphia is more than a promise to that local body of believers and more than a promise to keep them from ordinary testing. That “hour of testing” will “come upon the whole world,” and it will test all those “who dwell upon the earth.” The Lord promises that the whole church, those who “have kept the word of My perseverance,” will be kept from the perils and agonies of the Tribulation (Rev. 3:10).

Fifth, Jesus promised those who believe in Him that He was going to prepare places for all of them in His Father’s house and that He would come again and receive them to Himself. According to the posttribulation view, He would not be taking believers back to heaven to dwell with Him but simply meeting them quickly in the air and returning with them immediately to earth. Yet He said He was preparing a place for His people to dwell, not just to visit briefly.

Sixth, The first 69 weeks of the 70-week period of Daniel’s prophecy lasted from “the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem,” the decree issued by King Artaxerxes in 445 B. C. (see Neh. 2:5-6), “until Messiah the Prince” (Dan. 9:25), that is, the time of Christ. As mentioned in chapter 3 of this volume, it has been calculated that exactly 483 years (69 weeks of years) elapsed from that decree of Artaxerxes until Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, when He was acclaimed Messiah and King by the multitude. That prophecy of Daniel was given to and about Israel, and it seems inappropriate to involve the church in the last week (the seven-year Tribulation) when it clearly was not involved in the first 69.

Finally, if the rapture will not occur until after the Tribulation, Paul’s words of assurance to the Thessalonian church beg for relevance. Some of the Thessalonian Christians thought their believing loved ones who had died would miss the rapture. Paul therefore encouraged them with the words:

We do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve, as do the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, and remain until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord. (1 Thess. 4:13-17)

Had the early church been expecting to endure the Tribulation rather than enjoy the rapture, they would have rejoiced that their loved ones had already died and thereby escaped that horrible trial. But they were obviously looking forward to something joyous, which they thought their departed loved ones and friends would not experience. They were not looking forward to the Antichrist but to Christ. They were not looking for the ordeal of the Tribulation but for the glory of the rapture. They were not looking for the terror of the Antichrist’s appearing but for the blessed hope of Christ’s appearing.

This generation will therefore be composed of Jews and Gentiles who are alive at the rapture but are not taken up because they do not know the Lord Jesus Christ. Among that generation, however, will be many who will later come to salvation during the Tribulation through the witness of the divinely called and protected 144,000 Jewish believers (Rev. 7:38) and the supernatural preaching of the angelic messenger (14:6-7).

AN UNPRECEDENTED ALTERATION

Heaven and earth will pass away, (24:35a)

Jesus says explicitly that both heaven and earth will pass away. That expression first appears in 5:18, where it is not primarily used as a prophecy but as an analogy to express the enduring quality of the Word of God. It is used similarly in this text. The universe will fail, but what Jesus has just said will not fail to come to complete fulfillment. That analogical use of this phrase does not, however, preclude a directly prophetic intent. It is clearly predicted in the Old and New Testaments that the universe will be dramatically affected in the divine judgment of God. But that event will occur a thousand years after the return of Christ, when heaven and earth as we now know them will cease to exist (cf. 2 Pet. 3:10; Rev. 21:1).

AN UNCHANGING AUTHORITY

but My words shall not pass away. (24:35b)

Finally, Jesus declared, although the heaven and the earth will pass away, My words shall never pass away. On another occasion He said, “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter of the Law,” that is, His Word, “to fail” (Luke 16:17). It is not possible for the Word of God to be broken (John 10:35), including what Jesus says here about the end time. The psalmist established the same great truth when he wrote that Scripture is “clean, enduring forever” (Ps. 19:9). Whatever is touched by sin must pass away. The Word is untouched! It is like silver refined seven times in a furnace of fire—utterly pure (Ps. 12:6).