Thread by @Josef1601

26. Part II-Destruction of Jerusalem

*Nahum, hated and rejected because prophesied that when the Messiah should be slain, the vail of the temple should be rent in twain, and that the Holy Spirit should depart from it.
*Habakkuk of the tribe of Simeon was stoned in Jerusalem.

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He prophesied concerning the Messiah, that He should come, and abrogate the laws of the Jews.
*Zephaniah was greatly opposed as he prophesied that the Messiah would suffer, and that the sun should become dark, and the moon be hidden.
*Haggai prophesied that Messiah,

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abrogate the temple sacrifices.
*Ezekiel the son of Buzi was of the priestly tribe, and was killed by the chief of the Jews in the land of the Chaldeans.
*Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah was imprisoned, starved, beaten stoned to death.

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*Zechariah the son of Berachiah, killed between the temple steps and the altar by King Joash. From that day, God forsook the temple, and angels were never again seen in it.
*John the Baptist, Son of Zecharias from the tribe of Levi, beheaded by King Herod.

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*Stephen, stoned to death. Acts 6:8-7:60.
*James brother of John, put to the sword by Herod Agrippa. Acts 12:2
*Phillip, killed by the Jews in Phrygia
*Matthew, beheaded at Nav-Davar

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*James the Lesser, brother of Jesus, thrown off the temple and beaten with a fuller’s club.
*Peter, crucified upside down as he thought himself unworthy of being crucified like Christ
*Paul, beheaded at Rome
*Andrew, crucified in Achaia
*Thomas, tortured and burned alive

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*Nathanael (Batholomew) flayed, crucified
*Matthias, stoned by Jews in Egypt
*Judas Thaddeus, beaten to death
*Simon the Zealot, killed in Syria

To say that the prophets of God suffered at the hands of scribes and leaders of Israel would be an understatement.

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Not counting Jesus, the condemnation of Israel realized in the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the Jewish era was prophesied by Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Zechariah, and John the Baptist, amongst many.

Jeremiah, the suffering prophet, foretold

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the destruction of Jerusalem as follows:

[Proclaim] And say, Hear ye the word of the LORD, O kings of Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem; Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, the which whosoever heareth, his ears shall

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tingle.
4 Because they have forsaken me, and have estranged this place, and have burned incense in it unto other gods, whom neither they nor their fathers have known, nor the kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of innocents;.....

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6 Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that this place [Jerusalem] shall no more be called Tophet, nor The valley of the son of Hinnom, but The valley of slaughter.
7 And I will make void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place; and I will cause them

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them to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hands of them that seek their lives: and their enemies and by the hands of them that seek their lives: and their carcases will I give to be meat for the fowls of the heaven
and the beasts of the earth.

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8 And I will make this city desolate, and an hissing; every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished and hiss because of all the plagues thereof. And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the

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flesh of his friend in the siege and straitness, wherewith their enemies...
11 And shalt say unto them, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Even so will I break this people and this city, as one breaketh a potter's vessel, that cannot be made whole again: and they shall bury them

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in Topeth, til there be no place to bury.

Jeremiah 19:1-11.

Every word of these prophesies came to pass in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

We must keep in mind that at the time Jesus spoke the words of Matthew 23:37-38, Jerusalem most beautiful and a heavily

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fortified cities in the Roman Empire. That is a mouthful when you consider the beauty of ancient Rome and other Roman enclaves. Josephus noted that Jerusalem was built within several sets of walls built in harmony with the many hills and steep valleys of the area.

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The three walls of Jerusalem as being as magnificently constructed as the temples they protected. Broad walls were protected by towers 40 feet and higher and the natural valleys made many approaches uphill. The city was thought to be impenetrable.

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The temple in Jerusalem was built by Herod the Great (great builder indeed) and was one of the most glorious buildings of all time. And that is really saying something, when you think of the temples and palaces in ancient Rome. The Jewish Temple was not just for worship.

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It was the pride of the nation, the proclamation that the God of Israel is King over all the earth and also served as a mighty, boastful military stronghold.
As sidebar, Herod built relentlessly ― cities, palaces and fortresses, some of which still stand to this day:

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•the fortresses at Masada, Antonia and Herodium
•the port city of Caesarea
•the huge edifice at the top of the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron
•the massive fortifications around Jerusalem as well as three towers at the entrance to the city

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(the remains of which are today erroneously named the Tower of David) and much more.
Despite all these great endeavors, no project compared in beauty as Herod’s Temple. It took 10,000 men ten years just to build the retaining walls around the Temple Mount.

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The Western Wall of the Fort of Antonia which protected the Temple. The grandeur of the fort is described by Josephus as follows:
The general appearance of the whole was that of a tower with other towers at each of the four corners;

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three of these turrets were fifty cubits (50 x 1.5 ft. = 75 feet) high, while that at the south-east angle rose to seventy cubits (105 ft.) and so commanded a view of the whole area of the temple.

Josephus attests to the importance of the Antonia: "For if

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the Temple lay as a fortress over the city, Antonia dominated the Temple & the occupants of that post were the guards of all three." Josephus' description of the siege of Jerusalem suggests that it was separated from the temple enclosure itself and probably connected by

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two colonnades with a narrow space between them. Josephus' measurements suggest about 183 metres (600 ft) of separation between the two complexes.
So, Antonia (Wailing Wall) is part of a 500-meter-long (1,500 ft.) retaining wall that was designed to hold a huge man-made

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platform that could accommodate twenty four football fields. When it was completed, it was the world's largest functioning religious site and until today it remains the largest man-made platform in the world.
Why did he make the Temple Mount so large?

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There's no question that Herod had a huge ego and liked to impress people with grandiose building projects. But there is also another more practical reason. Historians estimate that there were about 6-7 million Jews living in the Roman Empire (plus another 1 million in

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Persia), many of whom would come to Jerusalem for the three pilgrimage festivals: Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot. So you had to have a huge space to accommodate such a huge number of people. Hence the size of the platform.

When it came to building the Temple itself on top

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of this platform, Herod truly outdid himself, and even the Talmud acknowledges that the end-result was spectacular. "He who has not seen Herod's building, has never in his life seen a truly grand building." (Talmud-Bava Basra 4a).

The Holy of Holies was covered in gold;

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the walls and columns of the other buildings were of white marble; the floors were of carrara marble, its blue tinge giving the impression of a moving sea of water; the curtains were tapestries of blue, white, scarlet and purple thread, depicting, according to Josephus,

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"the whole vista of the heavens."
Josephus describes how incredible it looked:
Viewed from without, the Sanctuary had everything that could amaze either mind or eyes. Overlaid all round with stout plates of gold, the first rays of the sun it reflected so fierce a blaze of

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fire that those who endeavored to look at it were forced to turn away as if they had looked straight at the sun. To strangers as they approached it seemed in the distance like a mountain covered with snow; for any part not covered with gold was dazzling white...

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(The Jewish War, p. 304).

Herod saw fit however, to place at the main entrance a huge Roman eagle, which the pious Jews saw as a sacrilege. A group of Torah students promptly smashed this emblem of idolatry and oppression, but Herod had them hunted down, dragged in chains

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to his residence in Jericho, where they were burned alive.
Having built the Temple, Herod took pains to make sure it would be run without future problems of this kind. He appointed his own High Priest, having by then put to death forty-six leading members of the Sanhedrin.

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This was the Jerusalem of Jesus' time. In Matthew 24, we have Jesus and the disciples arriving at the temple where one said unto him: Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here!” Mark 13:1. And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily

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I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.” Matthew 24:2.

The disciples then asked: “when will these things take place?” What things? The end of the Jewish age. The end of the Jewish system, of the Jewish Temple.

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Jesus answered “Take heed no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am the Christ, and shall deceive many.”
Between the time of Jesus’ death and the destruction of Jerusalem, tens of false prophets such as Doceteius, the Samaritan, Theudus, Felix, and

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under Festus had led tens of thousands astray. If you ever heard of Eleazar ben Jair, false Zealot prophet leading to the suicidal deaths of all in the fort of Masada, you’ve heard of at least one false prophet envisioned by Christ.

Josephus wrote about the false

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prophets:

A false prophet was the occasion of these people's destruction, who had made a public proclamation in the city that very day, that God commanded them to get up upon the temple, and that there they should receive miraculous signs of their deliverance.

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Now, there was then a great number of false prophets suborned by the tyrants to impose upon the people, who denounced this to them, that they should wait for deliverance from God; and this was in order to keep them from deserting, and that they might be buoyed up above

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fear and care by such hopes. See Josephus, Book VI, Chapter V, Section 2.

God helped the Romans destroy Jerusalem.
As recounted by Josephus, Titus surrounded the city and even with it surrounded he allowed travelers to enter the city.

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This was to strain the supplies of the city in the event of a lengthy siege.

Despite the fortifications of the city, Titus decided to attack the city in February of 66 CE, his decision affirmed after one of the negotiators was wounded by a missile. Several siege engines

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worked to launch stones at the fortifications and rams approached to breach the walls. The defenders sent forth many assault parties to dismantle the siege weapons and had enough success that the breach was postponed for many months.

Jesus said "you shall see signs

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in the heavens and Josephus wrote of the omens preceding the destruction of Jerusalem:

•A star resembling a sword hung over the city for over a year
•A comet
•A bright light shining around the altar and the temple
•A vision of chariots and soldiers running around

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among the clouds and all cities of Palestine.
•Earthquakes-numerous of great magnitude throughout the entire nation
•At Pentecost as the priests were going by night into the inner [court of the] temple, as their custom was, to perform their sacred ministrations,

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they said that, in the first place, they felt a quaking , and heard a great noise, and after that they heard a sound as of a great multitude, saying, "Let us remove hence."
•a heifer, as she was led by the high priest to be sacrificed, brought forth a lamb in the midst

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of the temple.
•eastern gate of the inner, [court of the temple,] which was of brass, and vastly heavy, and had been with difficulty shut by twenty men, and rested upon a basis armed with iron, and had bolts fastened very deep into the firm floor, which was there

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made of one entire stone, was seen to be opened of its own accord about the sixth hour of the night
before sun-setting, chariots and troops of soldiers in their armour were seen running about among the clouds, and surrounding of cities .

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•Jesus, the son of Ananus, a plebeian, and an husbandman, who, four years before the war began, and at a time when the city was in very great peace and prosperity , came to that feast whereon it is our custom for every one to make tabernacles to God in the temple, began

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on a sudden to cry aloud, "A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the holy house, a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides, and a voice against this whole people!"

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"Woe, woe to the city again, and to the people, and to the holy house!" And just as he added at the last - "Woe, woe to myself also!" there came a stone out of one of the engines, and smote him, and killed him immediately: and as he was uttering the very same presages,

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he gave up the ghost.

After the fall of Jerusalem “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.”

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Galatians 3:28-29. The fall of Jerusalem was God’s exclamation point, “no one comes to the Father except through Christ”. John 14:6.

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Christ replaced the temple as God did not delight in the blood of sacrifices. E.g., Psalm 51:16. Christ was announced as the perfect sacrifice. Christ’s sacrifice was a once and for all offering. That is why in Christianity we offer no sacrifices for sin.

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It is also why baptism "for the remission of sins" (Acts 2:38) is not a repeated ceremony. We only need once to be "baptized into his death" (Romans 6:3-4) because he died "once for all".

All of this was taught as basic Christianity until the perversion of Zionism, another

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form of the heresies confronting the early church and tackled by the Apostle Paul in the epistle to the Galatians: "you foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?" We can hear him today speaking to the Western Church "you foolish Christian Zionists!

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The destruction of Jerusalem marked the end of the sacrificial system, the end of the Levitical priesthood, the end of animal sacrifices for the remission of sins, the end of the Temple as the ceremonial holy place.

After the destruction of Jerusalem, God would be

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worshipped in spirit and in truth. God's relationship with men, his love, his forgiveness, his promises, his word, and testimony would all be replaced by Him who we call Jesus of Nazareth, Messiah of Israel, Light of the Nations, King of all Kings.

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