---
title: Matthew 24:8
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/matthew-24-8/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/matthew-24-8.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Matthew 24:8
testament: NT
section: Gospels
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Matthew 24:8

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> All these are the beginning of birth pains.

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (2013 revision): "'All these things are a beginning of pangs of distress.'"

## JW Usage

The Watchtower reads "the beginning of pangs of distress" as describing the period of escalating troubles that began in 1914 — the wars, famines, earthquakes, and pestilences increasing in frequency and intensity like birth pangs as Armageddon approaches. The metaphor is taken to support the JW empirical apologetic: things should be getting worse, and Witnesses are trained to see escalation in current events.

## Protestant Usage

Read Matthew 24:8 carefully. Jesus says these things are "the beginning" — not the climax, not even the middle. And the verb is descriptive, not predictive: these events are how every generation begins. Birth pangs in classical and koine Greek describe purposeful, painful events leading to a defined outcome — not a pattern of increasing frequency. And the data contradicts the escalation reading anyway: famines, wars, and pestilences have dramatically decreased over the past century (Jonsson and Herbst, "The Sign of the Last Days — When?", 1987). Jesus's birth-pangs metaphor describes the painful, purposeful, providential nature of these events, not a graph trending upward toward Armageddon.

## NWT Issue

The NWT renders ōdinōn ("birth pains, labour pains") as "pangs of distress" — flattening the specific eschatological metaphor Jesus borrows from Jewish apocalyptic and Pauline usage (Romans 8:22; 1 Thessalonians 5:3). Standard English translations preserve "birth pains" because the metaphor carries theological weight — labour pains lead to a defined birth, with directional purpose. "Pangs of distress" is more generic and removes the directional-purposeful element. The shift is small but cumulative across the JW last-days apologetic — Jesus's specific labour-pain imagery is recoded into a vaguer "things will hurt" register that fits Watchtower exhortations more easily.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- ["Signs" Are Not "The Sign"](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/signs-not-the-sign.md) — Matthew 24:6–8 / Luke 21:8 [Eschatology]