Truly I tell you, all this will come upon this generation.
With these words Jesus sums up the previous condemning statements, prophetically showing that the generation listening to him would bear the consequence of accumulated sins. “All these things” refers to the avenging of the blood of the righteous, the filling up of the measure of evil, and God’s judgment, which, according to some commentators, was historically carried out with the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. Yet the saying also has another meaning: it reminds us that when a people continually rejects God’s truth, its spiritual decline becomes unavoidable. Jesus’ word is a prophecy filled with sorrow, not in a tone of anger but of warning: he does not judge without first urging repentance.