JERUSALEM; ROME; REVELATION - The Preterist Archive

the Jews to the Christian religion, had been stoned by his hardened brethren for whom he daily
[had] interceded in the temple.... With him, the Christian community in Jerusalem had lost its
importance for that city. The hour of the ‘Great Tribulation’ and fearful judgment drew near.
The prophecy of the Lord approached its literal fulfilment. Jerusalem was razed to the
ground, the temple burned, and not one stone was left upon another.” Cf. Matthew 24:1-2;
Mark 13:1; Luke 19:43 44 & 21:6.
255. Palestine, continues Schaff, 96 was from 52 to 66f A.D. “under the last [Roman]
Governors Felix and Festus and Albinus and Florus. Moral corruption and the dissolution of
all social ties (but at the same time the oppressiveness of the Roman yoke) increased every
year.... Assassins called ‘Sicarians’ (from sica, a dagger) - armed with daggers and
purchasable for any crime - endangering safety in city and country, roamed over Palestine.
256. “Besides this, the party spirit among the Jews themselves, and their hatred of their
heathen oppressors, rose to the most insolent political and religious fanaticism. [This] was
continually inflamed by false-prophets and [false-]messiahs, one of whom, for example,
according to Josephus, drew after him thirty thousand men. Thus came to pass what our Lord
had predicted: ‘There shall arise false-christs and false-prophets, and shall lead many astray.’”
Matthew 24:24 cf. 24:5 & Acts 5:36-37.
257. Now the ‘outer court’ of the temple in Jerusalem - which, among yet-later events,
John referred to around 69 A.D. in his book of Revelation (11:2) - had been ‘trampled’
underfoot by the [Pagan-Roman] Gentiles for 42 months. That period ran from 66.5 A.D.
onward - until the destruction of the ‘inner temple’ itself (42 months or 3.5 years later, in 70
A.D.). See Revelation 11:1-8.
258. As Schaff remarks, 97 in the month of May, A.D. 66,” the Jews rioted. At that
time, “an organized rebellion broke out against the Romans - but at the same time, a terrible
[Jewish] Civil War also, between parties of the revolters themselves.... Reports of comets,
meteors, and all sorts of fearful omens and prodigies were interpreted as signs of the coming
of the Messiah and His reign over the Heathen.... The Emperor Nero, informed of the
rebellion, sent his most famous general, Vespasian, with a large force, to Palestine.”
259. “After Nero killed himself” in A.D. 68, “Vespasian, in the year 69, was
universally proclaimed Emperor” - even while he himself was still in the Eastern
Mediterranean. Meantime, Vespasian’s younger son Domitian was himself acclaimed Caesar
in Rome. And, shortly after that, Vespasian’s elder son Titus attacked Jerusalem from
“Mount Scopus and the adjoining Mount Olivet” with “an army of not less than eighty
thousand trained soldiers.”
260. The Roman Titus’s siege of Jerusalem entered into a far more grave phase in the
April of A.D. 70. After the previous escape of the Hebrew Christians at the arrival of the
attacking Roman armies in 66.5 A.D. to besiege the city (Matthew 24:14-22), no further
escape from Jerusalem was possible. For the Roman “eagles” or vultures had finally
descended on the city. Like birds of prey, they pounced on the ‘carrion’ of the apostate Jews
altogether dead in their sins. Matthew 24:28.
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