What did Jesus mean when he said to the Pharisees, Scribes and the lawyers, "The blood of all the prophets which was shed from the foundation of the world may be required of this generation"?
Luke 11:1 - 54
ESV - 1 Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples. 2 And he said to them, "When you pray, say: "Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.
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Asked October 11 2017
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Gregory Jones
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Tim Maas
If the focus of the question is on the word "may" in the passage cited, I would say that Jesus was not using it in the sense of something that might or might not happen. Instead, He was pointing out that, rather than listening to the prophets whom God had previously sent to Israel over hundreds or thousands of years to witness to Him, and to warn Israel of His coming judgment of it for its disobedience and idolatry, Israel had persecuted and killed those prophets instead. Israel had thus been "storing up wrath" for itself from God for a long time. That process was now reaching its climax in the generation to which Jesus was speaking, and would be concluded by Israel's rejection and murder of Him. Therefore, God's accumulated wrath and judgment for all those past events would be manifested in the coming destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70 and the end of Israel as a nation, which would be within the lifetime of many of those hearing Jesus' words. In other words, all those past events involving Israel had occurred for a purpose -- that God would hold the generation to which Jesus was speaking accountable for them.
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