JERUSALEM; ROME; REVELATION - The Preterist Archive

261. Almost prophetically, the final Roman stranglehold of April A.D. 70 started just a
few days before the ‘bloodshed’ of the annual Jewish Passover. Huge crowds were inside the
city for that Feast. Before long, as a result of the siege, hunger and disease plagued the city.
Hundreds of thousands of Jewish corpses were thrown down, from off the top of the city’s
walls, to the outside of the metropolis. After Titus penetrated the outer walls of the city,
writes Schaff, 98 the Romans began effecting “the crucifixion of hundreds of prisoners...a day.”
Famine continued to “sweep away thousands daily, and forced a woman to roast her own
child.” See too Josephus’s Wars of the Jews VI:3:4.
262. “At last,” continues Schaff, 99 “in July (A.D. 70), the castle of Antonia was
surprised and taken by night. This prepared the way for the destruction of the temple, in
which the tragedy culminated. The daily sacrifices ceased July 17th, because the hands were
all needed for defence. The last and bloodiest sacrifice at the altar of burnt offerings, was the
slaughter of thousands of Jews who had crowded around it. The temple was burned on the
tenth of August, A.D. 70.... The hill on which the temple stood was seething hot, and seemed
enveloped to its base in one sheet of flame. The blood was larger in quantity than the fire,
and those that were slain [were] more in number than those that slew them. The ground was
nowhere visible. All was covered with corpses.” Such was the lesser holocaust against those
who had aided and abetted the Greatest Holocaust of Calvary against the true Messiah.
263. Adds Schaff: “The Romans planted their ‘eagles’ [ cf. Matthew 24:28] on the
shapeless ruins, over against the eastern gate; offered their sacrifices to them; and proclaimed
Titus Imperator [or Caesar] with the greatest acclamations of joy. Thus was fulfilled the
prophecy concerning the ‘abomination of desolation standing in the holy place’ [Daniel 9:27;
Matthew 24:25; Luke 21:20; Josephus’s Wars VI:6:l].”
264. Earlier in that same generation, those “Jews...killed the Lord Jesus” and
subsequently “persecuted” Christian Ministers. Such behaviour “does not please God” - so
that now “the wrath came upon them to the uttermost.” First Thessalonians 2:15-16. That
wrath lasted for half-a-week-of-years, alias 1260 days, from A.D. 66.5 to A.D. 70. Cf. Daniel
9:24-27 with Revelation 11:2-3. Indeed, a further 3.5 years after the destruction of Jerusalem
in A.D. 70, even the small remnant of the Jewish resistance to Rome left in Judaea was
annihilated at Massada during th Passover of 74 A.D. See Josephus’s Wars VII:8:l to
VII:10:1.
265. Records the A.D. 78 account of Josephus: more than a million Jews had been
slaughtered; less than a hundred thousand survived (and, even then, only to be sold into
slavery). The whole multitude of the Jews destroyed during the entire seven years’ “Great
Tribulation” before A.D. 70, was one million three hundred and thirty-seven thousand four
hundred and ninety (1,337,490). As predicted, if that people were to become obstinate in
their idolatry and wickedness, they would be punished by either death or re-enslavement.
Deuteronomy 28:68; Jeremiah 44:7f & 44:7f ; and Hosea 8:13 & 9:3 & 11:3-7. And so it
came to pass.
266. States Josephus: 100 “The number of those that were carried captive during this
whole war, was collected to be ninety-seven thousand [97,000].... The number of those that
- 45 -