Who Is “This Generation”?

The 1914 Generation

“Most important, this magazine builds confidence in the Creator’s promise of a peaceful and secure new world before the generation that saw the events of 1914 passes away.”

Awake! masthead, through October 22, 1995

For decades, nearly every issue of Awake! carried that sentence on its masthead: the Creator Himself had promised a new world before the generation that saw 1914 died out. The promise rested on one verse — Jesus’ words that “this generation will not pass away till all these things take place” (Matt. 24:34) — read as a divine deadline attached to 1914. Millions of Witnesses ordered their lives around it. Then, between the October 22 and November 8 issues of 1995, the sentence was gone.

This page asks the question that sentence raises. Who is “this generation”? The Watchtower has answered at least five different ways — the anointed in 1927, the people who saw 1914, the wicked who see the sign in 1995, the anointed again in 2008, and since 2010 two overlapping groups of anointed ones; the date of each is in the left panel. The left panel presents the current teaching in the Society’s own words. The right panel walks the sequence, then does what none of the redefinitions do: it reads Matthew 24:34 in its own context, where Jesus’ sentence turns out to be not a failed prophecy in need of repair, but a kept one. The neighboring pages on the last days and the fall of Jerusalem take up the dates themselves; this one is about the deadline that kept moving.

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Watchtower View

Jump to the Catholic View ↓

The Watchtower’s teaching on “this generation” is presented here as the Society itself presents it, from its own current publications.

The Sign Was Given to a Generation

In the Watchtower’s reading, Jesus’ great prophecy of Matthew 24 has a major fulfillment in our time: the wars, earthquakes, famines, and preaching work since 1914 form the composite “sign” that Christ has been ruling invisibly since that year. And Jesus attached a time frame to the sign: “this generation will by no means pass away until all these things happen” (Matt. 24:34, New World Translation). The generation that witnesses the sign will also witness the end. The verse is therefore a guarantee of nearness — Armageddon must come within the span of a particular group of lives.1

The Current Understanding: Two Overlapping Groups

Since 2010, the Society has taught that the generation of Matthew 24:34 consists of the anointed — and of two connected groups of them. As the Watchtower explains: “Jesus evidently meant that the lives of the anointed ones who were on hand when the sign began to be evident in 1914 would overlap with the lives of other anointed ones who would see the start of the great tribulation.” The generation is thus a single unit spanning two overlapping lifetimes: anointed Christians alive in 1914, and anointed Christians whose lives overlapped with theirs. Governing Body member David Splane has illustrated the teaching with the example of Fred Franz, anointed before 1914, whose life overlapped with anointed ones still living — keeping the generation, and therefore the nearness of the end, intact.2

Why the Understanding Has Been Refined

The Society does not hide that its explanation of “this generation” has been adjusted over the years; it presents the adjustments as evidence of humility and of Jehovah’s progressive revelation. The watchword is Proverbs 4:18: “the path of the righteous is like the bright morning light that grows brighter and brighter until full daylight.” As Jehovah’s organization studies the Scriptures further, the light grows brighter, and earlier understandings are refined. In 2008 the Watchtower explained that the anointed, “as a class,” “make up the modern-day ‘generation’ of contemporaries that will not pass away ‘until all these things occur’” — correcting the 1995 view that the generation meant the wicked who see the sign but fail to mend their ways.3

What the Teaching Means for Witnesses

The practical force of the doctrine is urgency. Because the first group of the overlapping generation is gone and the second is aging, the great tribulation must be very near — nearer than most imagine. The teaching thus preserves what the older “1914 generation” teaching preserved: the conviction that this is the final generation, that the remaining time is short, and that everything — education, career, family planning — should be weighed against the nearness of the end.4

Endnotes
  1. The Watchtower, study articles on Matthew 24 passim; for the composite sign and 1914, see the discussion on the last-days page. ↩
  2. The Watchtower, April 15, 2010, p. 10, par. 14, where the overlapping understanding was first published; reported from the Annual Meeting in The Watchtower, June 15, 2010, pp. 3–5; David Splane’s explanation aired on JW Broadcasting, September 2015. ↩
  3. The Watchtower, February 15, 2008, p. 24 (“Christ’s Presence—What Does It Mean to You?”); The Watchtower, November 1, 1995, p. 19. Proverbs 4:18 quoted from the New World Translation (2013). ↩
  4. The application to life decisions is long-standing; for its earlier form, see the 1968–1975 material on the last-days page. ↩

Watchtower sources checked against jw.org and the Watchtower Online Library through 7 September 2026.

Catholic View

Two questions decide this page, and they must be kept separate. First: what has the Watchtower actually taught about “this generation,” in its own words and in order? Second: what did Jesus mean? The first question has a documented answer. The second has an old and simple one — and it is the one answer the Watchtower’s chronology cannot accommodate.

A Deadline That Kept Moving

Set the definitions in a row, each from the Society’s own publications. In 1927, “this generation” was the anointed. By mid-century it had become the people who saw 1914: in 1968 Awake! was calculating that the youngest of that generation were “nearly 70 years old”; in 1984 The Watchtower put elderly faces on its cover under the title “1914—The Generation That Will Not Pass Away.” In 1995, as that generation reached its actuarial end, the definition changed: the generation was now “the peoples of earth who see the sign of Christ’s presence but fail to mend their ways” — no time limit at all. In 2008 it changed again: the anointed, “as a class” — the 1927 answer, returned after eighty years. And in 2010 came the current form: two overlapping groups of anointed, so that a “generation” now spans people who never met the events it is a generation of. The dates speak for themselves: the 1995 change came as the 1914 cohort reached its actuarial end, and the 2010 form removes any calendar limit. Whether each change was driven by the previous one’s running out of time is an inference; the reader can draw it from the chronology, which is why the phases are given below in the Society’s own words rather than paraphrased.1

The major phases, dated, with the wording of each:

  • 1927 — the anointed (The Watch Tower, February 15, 1927, p. 62).
  • 1968–1984 — the people who saw 1914: the youngest “nearly 70 years old” (Awake!, October 8, 1968, p. 13); “1914—The Generation That Will Not Pass Away” (The Watchtower, May 15, 1984, cover).
  • 1995 — “the peoples of earth who see the sign of Christ’s presence but fail to mend their ways” (The Watchtower, November 1, 1995, p. 19).
  • 2008 — the anointed “as a class” (The Watchtower, February 15, 2008, p. 24).
  • 2010 — two overlapping groups of anointed (The Watchtower, April 15, 2010, p. 10).

Refinements within a phase are not counted as new definitions.

The Masthead That Changed

The change of 1995 was not an obscure adjustment. For years, nearly every issue of Awake! told its readers on the masthead that the magazine “builds confidence in the Creator’s promise of a peaceful and secure new world before the generation that saw the events of 1914 passes away.” That is not a speculation; it is presented as the Creator’s promise. With the November 8, 1995 issue the words “before the generation that saw the events of 1914 passes away” disappeared, and the same month the generation was redefined. No retraction was published; no apology to the readers who had deferred education, children, and careers on the strength of the promise. A promise attributed to God was withdrawn by editing.2

What Jesus Actually Said

Now read the verse where it lives. In Matthew 24 Jesus has just left the temple, and His disciples point out its buildings; He answers that “there will not be left here one stone upon another” (Matt. 24:2). The discourse that follows answers the disciples’ question about that — and when Jesus says “this generation will not pass away till all these things take place” (Matt. 24:34), the phrase means in chapter 24 what it means everywhere else in Matthew. “This generation” asked for a sign (Matt. 12:41–42); “this generation” is like children in the marketplace (Matt. 11:16); upon “this generation” will come the blood of the prophets — “all this will come upon this generation” (Matt. 23:36). Every time, without exception, it means the people standing in front of Him. No reader of Matthew would take the same phrase, one chapter later, to mean a class of anointed persons twenty centuries away whose lives overlap.3

A Prophecy Kept, Not Broken

And on that reading, the prophecy came true — spectacularly. Within forty years of the words, one lifetime almost to the year, Roman armies surrounded Jerusalem and the temple went down stone from stone, exactly as Jesus had said, while the generation that heard Him was still alive to see it. Luke’s version even names the event: “when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near” (Luke 21:20). The discourse also looks past A.D. 70 to the Lord’s final coming — of which Jesus says in the very next breath that “of that day and hour no one knows” (Matt. 24:36) — the double horizon the Church has read here from the beginning. Verse 34 is not an embarrassment Christians must explain away. It is a fulfilled prophecy: Jesus attached a deadline to the temple’s fall, and He kept it. Only a religion that moved the prophecy to 1914 has to keep moving the generation.4

The Test the Watchtower Chose

Scripture supplies a test for exactly this situation: “when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word which the LORD has not spoken” (Deut. 18:22). The Watchtower accepted that test when it printed the Creator’s name over the 1914-generation promise. The generation passed; the promise did not come to pass; the generation was redefined five times; the question Deuteronomy poses was not put in print. Set beside it the sentence Jesus spoke: one generation named, one deadline given, one temple down on schedule. The contrast is this site’s theme in miniature — the difference between a word that stood and human reasoning that must keep revising itself, which is the mark of a man-made religion. The dates behind the system are examined on the chronology page; what the last days actually are, on the last-days page.5

The Strongest Reply

The Society’s best argument is lexical. A generation, it says, “usually refers to people of varying ages whose lives overlap during a particular time period; it is not excessively long; and it has an end,” and it cites Exodus 1:6, where “Joseph died, and all his brothers, and all that generation” — a generation made up of people of different ages whose lives overlapped. Jesus, on this reading, spoke to disciples who would be anointed, and “evidently meant that the lives of the anointed who were on hand when the sign began to become evident in 1914 would overlap with the lives of other anointed ones who would see the start of the great tribulation” (The Watchtower, April 15, 2010, p. 10). The sign was given to the anointed; the anointed are the generation; and the generation is still here.

Exodus 1:6 says the reverse of what it is cited for. Joseph, his brothers, and “all that generation” were contemporaries — people alive together who died together — which is what the word means everywhere: those born about the same time, living out one span. It never means a group formed by adding a second cohort whose lives merely touch the first, and no standard lexicon gives it that sense; on that definition a generation could be extended indefinitely by overlap, which is exactly the use being made of it. Nor does anything in Matthew 24 say the generation is the anointed. “This generation” in Matthew is always the people in front of Jesus (11:16; 12:41–42; 23:36), and in the discourse itself it is the people who “see all these things” (Matt. 24:33) — the reading the Society itself gave for sixty years, of the people who saw 1914, until they died.

The test is the one the doctrine sets for itself: does it have an end? An anointed Witness born in 1990 whose life overlapped a 1914 anointed one who died in 1995 belongs, by the definition, to “this generation,” and may live to 2080. A generation of a hundred and seventy years is not “not excessively long.” It is a term with no expiry, adopted at the moment the previous term expired — which is the whole of what needed explaining.

What remains if this claim fails. A failed timetable does not mean Jesus failed. What this page establishes is that the Society’s definition of the generation has moved five times, and that Jesus’ own words fit the generation He was speaking to. What it does not establish is that the Olivet discourse has no further horizon; Matthew 24 can be read without a date-setting system, and the Church reads it so.

The full essay documents every redefinition with its source, walks Matthew 24 whole — both horizons — and takes up the honest questions: whether “generation” can mean “race,” what verse 36 does to every dating scheme, and what the first Christians expected. Download it from the summary below — and the comments are open, without your name if you prefer.

Endnotes
  1. The Watch Tower, February 15, 1927, p. 62 (the generation identified with the anointed); Awake!, October 8, 1968, p. 13 (“the youngest of ‘this generation’ nearly 70 years old”); The Watchtower, May 15, 1984, cover and p. 5; The Watchtower, November 1, 1995, p. 19; The Watchtower, February 15, 2008, p. 24; The Watchtower, June 15, 2010, pp. 3–5, with April 15, 2010, p. 10. ↩
  2. The masthead wording ran through the October 22, 1995 Awake!; the November 8, 1995 issue replaced it with “a peaceful and secure new world that is about to replace the present wicked, lawless system of things.” ↩
  3. Matt. 11:16; 12:41–42; 23:36; 24:2, 34 (RSV). The same usage runs through Mark (8:12, 38; 13:30) and Luke (7:31; 11:29–32, 50–51; 17:25; 21:32). ↩
  4. Luke 21:20; Matt. 24:36 (RSV); Josephus, The Jewish War, Books 5–6, for the siege and destruction of A.D. 70. On the discourse’s two horizons, Catechism of the Catholic Church §§585–586, 668–679. ↩
  5. Deut. 18:22 (RSV). ↩

Summary

Questions to Answer
  • In Matthew, “this generation” always means the people in front of Jesus (11:16; 12:41; 23:36). Why does 24:34 alone mean a class of anointed twenty centuries later?
  • The Society has defined “this generation” at least five times since 1927. Which definition was the truth?
  • Jesus said this generation would not pass away till all these things took place — and within forty years the temple fell, as He said. Why move a prophecy that was already kept?
  • The masthead of Awake! promised a new world before the 1914 generation died, and called it the Creator’s promise. When that generation died, whose promise failed?

These are the questions the Society’s own texts raise, and they deserve answers.

One verse, five major definitions. The Watchtower has taught that “this generation” (Matt. 24:34) means the anointed (1927), the people who saw 1914 (through the 1980s), the wicked who see the sign but fail to mend their ways (1995), the anointed again (2008), and — since 2010 — two overlapping groups of anointed, so that a “generation” now includes people born decades after the events it is a generation of. The 1995 change came as the 1914 cohort reached its actuarial end; the 2010 form has no calendar limit. The reader may draw the inference.

A promise printed as the Creator’s was withdrawn by editing. For years the masthead of Awake! promised “a peaceful and secure new world before the generation that saw the events of 1914 passes away.” Between the October 22 and November 8 issues of 1995, the deadline vanished from the masthead and the generation was redefined — with no retraction and no apology to readers who had planned their lives around it.

In Matthew’s Gospel, “this generation” always means Jesus’ contemporaries. The generation that asked for a sign, the generation like children in the marketplace, the generation on whom the blood of the prophets would come (Matt. 11:16; 12:41–42; 23:36) — every occurrence means the people in front of Him. Nothing in chapter 24 changes the meaning.

Read that way, the prophecy was kept. Jesus said the temple would come down and that the generation hearing Him would live to see it. Within forty years, Roman armies leveled it stone from stone. Verse 34 is not a failed prediction Christians must explain; it is a fulfilled one. Only a religion that moved the prophecy to 1914 must keep moving the generation — while Jesus’ own next sentence, “of that day and hour no one knows” (Matt. 24:36), stands against every dating scheme.

Scripture’s own test settles the rest. A word spoken in the LORD’s name that does not come to pass “is a word which the LORD has not spoken” (Deut. 18:22). The 1914-generation promise did not come to pass. The honest conclusions are two: the promise was never the Creator’s, and the sentence of Jesus it borrowed was kept on schedule nineteen centuries ago.

For a more complete essay on this topic, download Who Is “This Generation”? (.docx) or (.pdf)

Watchtower quotations cited on this page were checked against the Society’s current online publications in September 2026; the overlapping-generation teaching remains current.

Next on the path: What Is the Parousia? Next in the section: When Did Jerusalem Fall?