---
title: Mark 13:30
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/mark-13-30/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/mark-13-30.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Mark 13:30
testament: NT
section: Gospels
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Mark 13:30

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have happened.

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (2013 revision): "Truly I say to you that this generation will by no means pass away until all these things happen."

## JW Usage

Mark 13:30 is one of the synoptic parallels to Matthew 24:34 and Luke 21:32 that the Watchtower marshals for its "overlapping generations" doctrine. Because Mark's Olivet Discourse is shorter and more compact than Matthew's, JW publications usually quote Matthew 24:34 as the primary text and treat Mark 13:30 as confirmatory. The 1914 framework rests on reading the demonstrative phrase "all these things" as pointing forward to events still future in our day, with the "generation" stretched by a chain of overlapping anointed lifespans.

## Protestant Usage

Mark 13:30 is the strongest of the three synoptic "this generation" verses for the AD 70 reading because Mark preserves the demonstrative "all these things" (panta tauta) in the NWT itself — there is no softening to fall back on. The "things" in question are everything Jesus has just described in Mark 13:5-29: the wars, the rumours, the abomination of desolation, the flight to the mountains, the tribulation. All of those happened in the lifetime of his hearers, fulfilled in the Roman siege that climaxed in AD 70. Pair with Luke 21:20's parallel ("Jerusalem surrounded by armies") to make the fulfilment concrete. The Watchtower's stretch of "this generation" to mean two overlapping classes of anointed Witnesses born nearly a century apart is unsupported by any Greek lexicon in 2,000 years and exists only because the prior reading required it.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- ["This Generation" — Matthew 24:34](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/this-generation.md) — Jesus meant the generation standing in front of Him [Eschatology]