Why Such Desolation?
We can readily see that the prophesied desolation of Jerusalem, which Jesus called "great tribulation," was completely fulfilled in explicit detail through the events which occurred in the forty years following His ministry. But why would God bring such desolation upon a nation which He had chosen to be His own?
Luke 19:44 tells us why this desolation occurred: "because you did not recognize the time of your visitation." NASB.
Just what does that mean? The Lord, God, in order to redeem fallen man, sent His only begotten son to bring the way of salvation. After the prophets had prophesied of Jesus, the Jews, instead of receiving Him, crucified Him. He was too much of a threat to them.
Jesus spoke before the multitudes and His disciples, saying: "woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!"
Then, as recorded in Matthew 23, to the Jews, He said: "Therefore, behold I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Truly I say to you, all these things shall come upon this generation.
"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. Behold your house is being left to you desolate!" Matthew 23:34-38, NASB.1
R. V. G. Tasker, in THE TYNDALE NEW TESTAMENT COMMENTARIES, 1st Ed., 1961, Matthew, pp. 218-219, makes this statement about the desolation of Jerusalem: "This terrible prophecy of Jesus [Matthew 23:37-39] was uttered in no spirit of vindictiveness, but, as the most moving lament over Jerusalem bears eloquent testimony, was truth spoken in love . . . and He recalled the numerous occasions when He would have sheltered them, if only they had been willing, from the wrath that was coming upon them in the onslaught of the Roman legions . . ." On page 222 we read: "The blood of innocent men that is to be unjustly shed by the death of the Messiah and His servants will make it possible for the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 to be in effect a judgment upon the murderers of all God's servants whose deaths are recorded in the canonical Scriptures."
The exceeding wickedness of the Jews is shown through the historical and Biblical records of the lives and deaths of the followers of Jesus. Among those who were brutally murdered were Stephen, James, Andrew, Peter, Paul, Simon the Canaanite, James son of Zebedee, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, Jude Thaddeus, John Mark, Barnabus, Matthias, Luke and Jesus.
The Bible records the stoning of Stephen Acts Chapters 6 & 7.
Acts 6:8, "And Stephen, full of grace and power,
was performing great wonders and signs among the people.
9. But some men from what was called the Synagogue
of the Freedmen, including both Cyrenians and Alexandrians, and some from
Cilicia and Asia, rose up and argued with Stephen.
10. And yet they were unable to cope with the
wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking. 11. Then they secretly
induced men to say, "We have heard him speak blasphemous words against
Moses and God."
12. And
they stirred up the people, the
elders and the scribes, and they came upon him and dragged him
away, and brought him before the Council.
13. And they put forward FALSE witnesses
who said, "This man incessantly speaks against this holy place, and the
Law;
14. for we have heard him say that this Nazarene,
Jesus, will destroy this place and alter the customs which Moses handed
down to us."
Acts 7:58. And when they had driven him out of
the city, they began stoning him, and the witnesses laid aside their
robes at the feet of a young man named Saul.
59. And they went on stoning Stephen as
he called upon the Lord and said, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!"
60. And falling on his knees, he cried out with
a loud voice, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them!" And having said
this, he fell asleep.
History tells us that James, the just, was thrown down from the pinnacle of the temple, and it did not kill him, so they finished him off with a fuller's club.2
In Luke 21:12, Jesus warned His disciples that the Jews would persecute and scourge them in their synagogues. You can also see this in Matthew 24:9.
The Jews persecuted many followers of Jesus, including Peter and Paul, from city to city (1 Thessalonians 2:15).3 All this, Jesus said, would occur that the guilt of all the blood of the righteous from Abel to that day would fall upon those Jews, and it would all come upon that generation. And indeed, it did.
That generation of Jews, Josephus said, was the "most ungodly generation to live on the earth."
Paul said, "For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you also endured the same sufferingsat the hands of your own countrymen, even as they did from the Jews, who both killed the Lord and the prophets, and drove us out. They are not pleasing to God, but hostile to all men, hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved; with the result that they always fill up the measure of their sins. But wrath has come upon them to the uttermost." 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16, NASB.
It is also interesting that Paul credited the Jews with the death of Jesus, when most people today are persuaded that the Romans were responsible for killing Him. Perhaps the Roman soldiers nailed Him to the cross, but it was at the insistence of the Jews who shouted "crucify Him!"
The prophecy of Jesus that the Jews would kill the prophets, scourge some of them in their synagogues and persecute some of them from city to city was fulfilled over and over in the book of Acts. Let's look at some of those scriptures:
Acts 9:29, "And he was talking and arguing with the Hellenistic Jews; but they were attempting to put him to death."
Acts 10:39, "And we are witnesses of all the things He did both in the land of the Jews and in Jersalem, And they also put Him to death by hanging Him on a cross."
Acts 14:2, "But the Jews who disbelieved stirred up the minds of the Gentiles, and embittered them against the brethren." 19. But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and having won over the multitudes, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing him to be dead."
Acts 17:1, "Now when they had traveled through
Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a
synagogue of the Jews. 2. And according to Paul's custom, he went
to them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures."
5. But the Jews, becoming jealous
and taking along some wicked men from the market place, formed
a mob and set the city in an uproar; and coming upon the house of Jason,
they were seeking to bring them out to the people.
13. But when the Jews of Thessalonica found
out that the word of God had been proclaimed by Paul in Berea also, they
came there likewise,
agitating and stirring up the crowds.
Acts 20:3, "And there he spent three months, and
when a plot was formed against him by the Jews as he was
about to set sail for Syria, he determined to return through Macedonia."
19. "serving the Lord with all humility and with
tears and with trials which came upon me through the plots of the
Jews.
Acts 21:27, "And when the seven days were almost over, the Jews from Asia, upon seeing him in the temple, began to stir up all the multitude and laid hands on him, 28. crying out, "Men of Israel, come to our aid! This is the man who preaches to all men everywhere against our people, and the Law , and this place; and besides he has even brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place."
Acts 23:12, "And when it was day, the Jews formed a conspiracy and bound themselves under an oath, saying that they would neither eat nor drink until they had killed Paul."
Acts 24:9, "And the Jews also joined in the attack asserting that these things were so."
Acts 25:2,"And the chief priests and the leading men of the Jewsbrought charges against Paul; and they were urging him, 3. requesting a concession against Paul. . ."15. "and when I was at Jerusalem, the chief priests and the elders of the Jews brought charges agains him, asking for a sentence of condemnationupon him." 24. "And Festus said, "King Agrippa, and all you gentlemen here present with us, you behold this man about whom all the people of the Jews appealed to me, both a Jerusalem and here, loudly declaring that he ought not to live any longer."
Acts 26:2, "In regard to all the things of which I am accused by the Jews. . ."21. "For this reason some Jews seized me in the temple and tried to put me to death."
Is it any wonder that God destroyed those wretches?
It should come as no great surprise that God spent His wrath on the Jews of that time. He had foretold it through His prophets, and Jesus had made it perfectly clear as well.
The prophet Jeremiah wrote numerous times of the coming of the first desolation of Jerusalem: "For thus hath the Lord said, The whole land shall be desolate; yet I will not make a full end.. For this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens above be black: because I have spoken it, I have purposed, and will not repent neither will I turn back from it." Jeremiah 4:27-28.
Although this prophecy concerned the first destruction of the temple and the city, the fact of its fulfillment indicates that God would do that which He foretold. Therefore, we should not be surprised that He did it again. God caused the temple and city to be destroyed twice because of the wickedness of the people. The second destruction was prophesied in Daniel 9:26. Many people have overlooked this prophecy.
Warning
Jesus gave the Jews plenty of warning about the impending doom of Jerusalem and the temple. It was the subject of several of His parables.
Luke 19:12-28, He said therefore, "A certain nobleman went to a distant country to receive a kingdom for himself, and then return. 13. "And he called ten of his slaves, and gave them ten minas, and said to them, 'Do business with this until I come back.' 14. "But his citizens hated him, and sent a delegation after him, saying, 'We do not want this man to reign over us.' 15. "And it came about that when he returned, after receiving the kingdom, he ordered that these slaves, to whom he had given the money, be called to him in order that he might know what business they had done. 16. "And the first appeared, saying, "Master, your mina has made ten minas more.' 17. "And he said to him, 'Well done, good slave, because you have been faithful in a very little thing, be in authority over ten cities.' 18. "And the second came, saying, 'Your mina, master, has made five minas.' 19. "And he said to him also, 'And you are to be over five cities.' 20. "And another fame, saying, 'Master, behold your mina, which I kept put away in a handkerchief; 12 for I was afraid of you, because you are an exacting man; you take up what you did not lay down, and reap what you did not sow.' 22. He said to him, 'By your own words I will judge you, you worthless slave. Did you know that I am an exacting man, taking up what I did not lay down, and reaping what I did not sow? 23. 'Then why did you not put the money in the bank, and having come, I would have collected it with interest?' 24. "And he said to the bystanders, 'Take the mina away from him, and give it to the one who has the ten minas." 25. "And they said to him, 'Master, he has ten minas already." 26. "I tell you, that to everyone who has shall more be given, but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away. 27. "But these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here, and slay them in my presence."
Matthew 21:33-45 "Listen to another parable.
There was a landowner who planted a vineyard.and put a wall around it and
dug a wine press in it, and built a tower, and rented it out to vine-growers,
and went on a journey. 34. "And when the harvest time approached, he sent
his slaves to the vine-growers to receive his produce. 35. "And the vine-growers
took his slaves and beat one, and killed another, and stoned a third. 36.
"Again he sent another group of slaves larger than the first; and they
did the same thing to them. 37. "But afterward he sent his son
to them, saying, 'They will respect my son.' 38. "But when the vine-growers
saw the son, they said among themselves, 'This is the heir; come, let us
kill him, and seize his inheritance.' 39. "And they took him, and cast
him out of the vineyard, and killed him. 40. "Therefore
when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vine-growers?"
41. They said to Him, "He will bring those wretches to a wretched
end, and will rent out the vineyard to other vine-growers, who
will pay him the proceeds at the proper seasons." (Luke 20:16,
"He will come and destroy these vine-growers. . .")
42. Jesus said to them, "Did you never read in the Scriptures,
'THE STONE WHICH
THE BUILDERS REJECTED,
THIS BECAME THE
CHIEF CORNERSTONE;
THIS CAME ABOUT
FROM THE LORD,
AND IT IS MARVELOUS
IN OUR EYES'?
43. "Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of
God will be taken away from you, and be given to a nation producing the
fruit of it. 44. "And he who falls on this stone whill be broken to
pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust." 45. And
when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard His parables, they
understood that He was speaking about them. 46. And when they sought
to seize Him, they became afraid of the mulitudes, because they held Him
to be a prophet.
Matthew 22:1-7 "And Jesus answered and spoke to them again in parables, saying, 2. "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king, who gave a wedding feast for his son. 3. "And he sent out his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding feast, and they were unwilling to come. 4. "Again he sent out other slaves saying, 'Tell those who have been invited, "Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and my fattened livestock are all butchered and everything is ready; come to the wedding feast."' 5. "But they paid no attention and went their way, one to his own farm, another to his business, 6. and the rest seized his servants [the prophets] and mistreated them and killed them. 7. "But the king was enraged and sent his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and set their city on fire."
Luke 19:41-44, And when He approached, He saw the
city and wept over it., 42. saying, "If you had known tin this day, even
you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from
your eyes. 43. "For the days shall come upon you when your enemies will
throw up a bankbefore you, and surround you, and hem you in on every
side. 44."and will level you to the ground and your children
within you, and they will not leave in you one stone upon another,
because you did not recognize the time of your visitation."
Clay in the Potter's Hand
In Jeremiah, chapter 18, there is a principle which God gave through the prophet, which enlightens us as to how God deals with mankind. "O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the LORD. Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand, o house of Israel. At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; If it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them. Now therefore go to, speak to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying thus saith the LORD; Behold, I frame evil against you, and devise a device against you: return ye now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good. And they said, There is no hope: but we will walk after our own devices, and we will every one do the imagination of his evil heart." Jeremiah 18:6-12.
God made it very clear, through Jeremiah, exactly what Israel could expect from Him. In Jeremiah 18:17, God said that He would scatter Israel before their enemy. "Because my people hath forgotten me..." Jeremiah 18:15.
So if Israel had followed God, He would have preserved and blessed them, but because they chose their own way, He destroyed and scattered them.
This, of course, again spoke of the first destruction of Jerusalem, but it shows the principle by which God dealt with the Jews in the latter desolation as well.
In the forty years from the death of Jesus to the desolation of Jerusalem and the temple, God gave the Jews ample opportunity to receive the gospel, repent and accept Jesus, the Messiah, but they refused (except for a few who believed and repented). So God was not free to change His mind concerning the calamity that He had pronounced upon them through Jesus and the prophets.
Because of the principle in Jeremiah chapter 18, in which God responds according to man's obedience to Him, many of the prophecies made in the Old Testament, concerning God's promises to natural Israel, have not, and will never come to pass. They were conditional upon Israel's obedience. God has shown us through their example that He will bring calamity upon disobedient people when they continually refuse to be corrected and to repent and turn from their evil ways. He will also bring blessing upon those who walk according to His statutes.
As we have gone, verse by verse, through the Olivet discourse, we can now see the fulfillments more clearly.
The exactness of these predictions of our Lord Jesus confirm again in our hearts that He was indeed the Christ, the Son of God. Every word which He spoke has been, or shall be, literally fulfilled. Jesus said: "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away." Mark 13:31.
Since the time when Jesus spoke the prophesies recorded in Matthew 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21, the only period of tribulation in recorded history, which dealt with the Jews, that could possibly be the fulfillment of Luke 21:20-24, was that destruction of Jerusalem in A. D. 70. No other such period has included all the specific predictions of time-table, location, severity, exact sequence, etc., as did that desolation.
After the A. D. 70 destruction, the city of Jerusalem was not under Jewish control again until A. D. 132. This was only for a brief period of about three years, during the reign of Roman emperor Hadrian.
At that time, there was a man named Simon, called Bar-Cocheba (Bar-Kochba), whom the Jews proclaimed and supported as their long-awaited "Messiah."
Simon led the insurrection, achieving independence for Jerusalem, which apparently lasted until A. D. 135 (history is not complete concerning this).
The finds near the Dead Sea in 1951-52 included two letters from a "Simon ben Koseba" who could have been one and the same as "Simon Bar Cocheba" (a name given him by a Scribe, based on Numbers 14:17, believing that he was the Messiah). Bar Cocheba means: "son of the star."
Simon ruled at Jerusalem for three years, as indicated by the so called "insurrection coins" minted with Hebrew inscriptions. These numbered "year 1" and "year 2," and dated from the "liberation" of Israel. This numbering shows that the Jews thought it the beginning of a new era under their "Messiah." The coins proclaimed him "Simon, the Prince of Israel."
This movement was finally crushed by Roman general Julius Severus, governor of Britannia, and Simon Bar-Cocheba was killed about A. D. 135. The spelling of his name was then perverted by the Rabbis to "Simon Bar-Kosiba" (son of lies).
After this time, the area known as Judea, now called "Palestine," (land of Philistines) became a Roman Province. Jews were forbidden to enter on pain of death. Its population was by then heathen.4
Since the A. D. 70 destruction, the temple in Jerusalem has never been rebuilt. It, therefore, could not be destroyed again. For this reason, the destruction of A. D. 132-135 must be totally ruled out as a possible fulfillment of the "great tribulation" prophesied by Jesus. The temple destruction was to be a major part of that fulfillment.
From the crucifixion of Christ, to this day, the Jews have been visited by calamity and persecution. They had invoked upon their race the most far-reaching indictment that man could ever conceive. They said of the Christ, "Let His blood be upon our heads and upon our children." Matthew 27:25.
There is only one hope for the Jew, and that is
the same hope that exists for any man; to call upon the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ, accepting His forgiveness and salvation, and being taken
from under this self-appointed curse.
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If we stopped at this point, we would have given sufficient evidence to establish that the "great tribulation" of Matthew 24 is past history; that the events of A. D. 70 did, indeed, fulfill all that Jesus prophesied concerning the "great tribulation."
At this point, we press into some other areas of events which were to happen after the tribulation of those days. They do not make or break our case for the already past fulfillment of the "great tribulation," but do, by the very fact of their occurrence, support our belief that the "great tribulation" is past.
These chapters will help us to better understand
Bible prophecy. The possibility of more than one fulfillment of some of
them is not precluded by Scripture, however, only one fulfillment is necessary
to establish the authenticity of a prophecy.
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Continue with: "After The Tribulation"
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