Christ Jesus, who had pronounced fiery destruction against Jerusalem and to whom judgment was committed, was the one Jehovah used to supervise the execution of judgment from heaven, and the Roman general and prince, Titus, son of Emperor Vespasian, along with his armies, was the human agency used to bring it about. The prophet Daniel, when speaking of the disgusting and abominable rejection of Messiah and choosing of Caesar, said: “He [Messiah] shall destroy the city and the sanctuary with the prince [Titus] that is coming.” Or, “Afterwards he [Messiah] shall waste the city and the sanctuary, by the prince [Titus] that is to come.” (Dan. 9:26, LXX; Houbigant) True to Daniel’s prophecy and Jesus’ words concerning the temple that “by no means will a stone be left here upon a stone and not be thrown down,” the Roman armies under Titus did desolate the city and its temple, A.D. 70.—Matt. 24:2, NW.

STRIKING HISTORICAL DETAILS

22-24. What warnings did the Jews ignore, and with what results?

²² When Cestius Gallus withdrew A.D. 66 and flight to safety became possible, the warning of Jesus applied from that time onward: “Let those in the nearby regions not enter into her.” (Luke 21:21, NW) The faithless Jews ignored these words, and as a result when Titus came A.D. 70 he found the city overcrowded with visitors from all Palestine, “for they were come up from all the country to the feast of unleavened bread, and were on a sudden shut up by an army. . . . Now this vast multitude is indeed collected out of remote places, but the entire nation was now shut up by fate as in prison, and the Roman army encompassed the city when it was crowded with inhabitants.”c

²³ Jesus warned against any delay in fleeing. (Matt. 24:16-18) Yet this warning was also flouted, and when many Jews did desire to flee it was too late to do so successfully. Luke 19:41-44 (NW) states: “And when he [Jesus] got to a nearby position, he viewed the city and wept over it, saying: ‘If you, even you, had discerned in this day the things having to do with peace—but now they have been hid from your eyes. Because the days will come upon you when your enemies will build around you a fortification with pointed stakes and will encircle you and distress you from every side, and they will dash you and your children within you to the ground, and they will not leave a stone upon a stone in you, because you did not discern the time of your being inspected.’” The Jewish religionists did not discern the things having to do with the Prince of Peace, but in stubbornness they closed eyes and ears to the evidence concerning him and embraced Caesar. They did not discern that when Jesus was on earth it was a time of inspection and judgment for the nation of Israel. They were found barren of fine fruit to Jehovah’s praise. (Isa. 6:10; 9:6; Matt. 13:14, 15; 21:19) Nor would they flee doomed Jerusalem when they had the chance, but delayed till the Roman armies returned and not only surrounded the city themselves but circled it with a wall or “fortification with pointed stakes,” just exactly as Jesus had forewarned thirty-seven years earlier. This five-mile-long wall was completed in three days, and because of it Josephus said: “So all hope of escaping was now cut off from the Jews, together with their liberty of going out of the city.”d They had delayed till flight to safety was impossible!

²⁴ Nevertheless, Jews did attempt belated flight, but even yet persisted in ignoring features of Jesus’ warning. For instance, Jesus told them not to try to take their material possessions with them, as it would slow them down and put in jeopardy a successful flight. (Mark 13:15, 16) Yet when some deserted the city they swallowed their gold in order to take it with them, without the Jews within the city and the Romans outside it knowing they had it. Josephus tells what resulted: “But when this contrivance was discovered in one instance, the fame of it filled their several camps, that the deserters came to them full of gold. So the multitude of the Arabians, with the Syrians, cut up those that came as supplicants, and searched their bellies. Nor does it seem to me that any misery befell the Jews that was more terrible than this, since in one night’s time about two thousand of these deserters were thus dissected.”e Though Titus threatened death to those guilty of this infamous practice, Roman soldiers joined the others in this gruesome prospecting for gold in the bellies of men. So, “They dissected them, and pulled this polluted money out of their bowels; which money was still found in a few of them, while yet a great many were destroyed by the bare hope there was of thus getting by them, which miserable treatment made many that were deserting to return back again into the city.”f

25. How did the Jews add to their difficulties?

²⁵ What further added to the difficulties of flight was the Jews themselves. Years before they falsely charged Jesus with sedition against Caesar and implied that anyone favorable toward him was also of questionable patriotism. They accused Christ’s followers of sedition, though the disciples only shunned politics and supported Christ’s kingdom. (Luke 23:2; John 19:12; Acts 17:7; 24:5) But by A.D. 70 the Jews were seditious as far as Rome was concerned, and any who sought to escape the deathtrap at Jerusalem by fleeing was counted seditious against the Jews and was put to death. So if the Jews caught any trying to flee the charge was sedition and the sentence death; if the fleeing ones escaped the Jews and reached the Roman lines it was captivity at best. But to remain behind meant ultimate death, either by sword or pestilence or famine. When the Jews were not fighting the Romans they were fighting among themselves, being divided into several political and religious factions, each of which was intent upon controlling the doomed city. It was a case of every man’s hand being against his brother. In their internal fighting they even destroyed their own food supplies, thereby hastening famine and pestilence and Roman victory.

26, 27. What calamities did Jehovah foretell for disobedience, and when and how were they strikingly fulfilled?

²⁶ Fifteen centuries before the disastrous events of A.D. 70 Jehovah God had foretold that they would come as a result of disobedience: “They will indeed besiege you within all your gates until your high and fortified walls in which you are trusting fall in all your land, yes, they will certainly besiege you within all your gates in all your land, which Jehovah your God has given you. Then you will have to eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your sons and your daughters whom Jehovah your God has given you, because of the tightness and stress with which your enemy will hem you in. And Jehovah will certainly scatter you among all the peoples from the one end of the earth to the other end of the earth, and there you will have to serve other gods whom you have not known, neither you nor your forefathers, wood and stone. And among those nations you will have no ease, nor will there prove to be any resting place for the sole of your foot, and Jehovah will indeed give you there a trembling heart and a failing of the eyes and despair of soul. And you will certainly be in the greatest peril for your life and be in dread night and day, and you will not be sure of your life. And Jehovah will certainly bring you back to Egypt by ships by the way about which I have said to you, ‘You will never see it again,’ and you will have to sell yourselves there to your enemies as slave men and maidservants, but there will be no buyer.”—Deut. 28:52, 53, 64-66, 68, NW.

²⁷ History testifies to the striking fulfillment of these calamities upon the Jews from and after A.D. 70. Josephus gives a graphic and horrifying account of a woman in the siege of A.D. 70 that “slew her son, and then roasted him, and eat the one half of him, and kept the other half by her concealed. Upon this the seditious came in presently, and smelling the horrid scent of this food, they threatened her that they would cut her throat immediately if she did not show them what food she had gotten ready. She replied that she had saved a very fine portion of it for them, and withal uncovered what was left of her son.” The men, amazed and horror-struck, tremblingly left the sickening scene.g When Titus finally took the city the toll was 1,100,000 dead and 97,000 captives.h The surviving Jews were scattered to all parts of the earth, and nowhere did they find rest, but wandered with hearts filled with despair and dread and fear for their life. Not only that, but large numbers of these captives were returned to slavery in Egypt, reduced to the very status from which Jehovah delivered their nation more than fifteen centuries before. Josephus says their captors “put them into bonds, and sent them to the Egyptian mines.”i A Jewish Bible commentary, edited by J. H. Hertz, states in considering Deuteronomy 28:68 that “at the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, both Titus and Hadrian consigned multitudes of Jews into slavery; and Egypt received a large proportion of those slaves.” It continues to show that the Romans had a fleet in the Mediterranean by which they transported the enslaved Jews to Egypt, and that though the Jews sought to sell themselves as slaves there were no buyers for many of them, so despised were they and so glutted was the market. How forcefully was the prophecy in Deuteronomy fulfilled fifteen centuries later!

28. What observations does Josephus record? and, though only a side feature, how in a literal way did an abomination stand in the holy place?

²⁸ These calamities befell a generation that was notoriously wicked. Of it Josephus said: “Neither did any other city ever suffer such miseries, nor did any age ever breed a generation more fruitful in wickedness than this was, from the beginning of the world.”j It was Josephus’ belief that God brought the Romans to punish the Jews, and he quotes Titus as saying: “We have certainly had God for our assistant in this war, and it was no other than God who ejected the Jews out of these fortifications; for what could the hands of men or any machines do towards overthrowing these towers?”k Divine vengeance was due in recompense for the disgusting political alliance the Jews made with pagan Rome to secure the execution of Christ Jesus. Their putting Caesar in the position of kingship reserved for Messiah was the great overt act that was so disgusting and caused their desolation, but it is also interesting to note that after Jerusalem’s fall “the Romans, upon the flight of the seditious into the city, and upon the burning of the holy house itself, and of all the buildings round about it, brought their ensigns to the temple, and set them over against its eastern gate [near the altar]; and there did they offer sacrifices to them.”l Thus in a very literal way abominable idols stood in the Jews’ holy place.

29. What remarkable parallel of events is there between 607 B.C. and A.D. 70?

²⁹ There is a remarkable parallel of certain events occurring both in 607 B.C. and A.D. 70. It is fittingly so, since both those periods foreshadowed happenings now befalling this present generation. Preliminary to the disasters of both 607 B.C. and A.D. 70 the people claiming to be in covenant with Jehovah and posing as a faithful “wife” were guilty of many sins. Because of their religious straying and political meddling they were spiritually adulterous, and were repeatedly warned that Jehovah would destroy them if they did not reform, and that to do this he would use nations they had made alliances with but from whom they were now alienated. They could expect a visitation from Jehovah, and a desolating from him through their former political paramours. In both instances the desolating forces came to destroy, yet thereafter withdrew for a time, allowing an opportune period for flight to safety. The rebellious ones delayed to flee and branded as seditious any who did try to flee. The opportunity for flight slipped by, the destroyers returned, and desolation fell with a vengeance. As foretold, however, the powers used to bring this vengeance were themselves later destroyed. Babylon fell after it was used in 607 B.C. The Roman Empire disintegrated and collapsed after it was used A.D. 70. Revelation 17:10 showed that that sixth world power would not endure but would be succeeded by a seventh world power. How all of these momentous happenings of the past are pictorial of events befalling the present generation will be shown in the succeeding article.

This Generation’s Disgusting Alliance

1. How was Israel perpetuated after both of her desolations?

JEHOVAH gave the nation of Israel a good start, but it refused to hold to the divinely marked path of true worship: “I planted you a choice vine, all true seed; how, then, are you changed to a rank vine, a wild plant? Though you wash yourself with lye, and use much soap, your guilt stands ingrained in my sight.” (Jer. 2:21, 22, AT) Israel’s sins brought on her desolation in 607 B.C. But long before that Isaiah had foretold that a remnant of Israel would return to Jerusalem to reestablish true worship, which in time did happen. (Ezra 1:3, 4; 2:64, 65; Isa. 10:22) Centuries later when Christ came Israel had again backslidden and he foretold the desolation that came A.D. 70; yet again a faithful remnant was delivered and spread true worship, becoming the first members of the Christian organization. Showing how parallel these two periods of Israel’s history were, Isaiah’s prophecy was applied as also having fulfillment in this second deliverance of a remnant.—Rom. 9:27; 11:5.

2. Who now compose the “Israel of God,” and why is Christendom well pictured by rebellious Israel?

² To this Israelite remnant persons from other nations were added, till in time the complete ordained number of the “Israel of God” was attained. Thus those from many nations became Israelites, spiritually