21. Whom does history show to be the “people” and the “leader” that brought desolation, in agreement with Luke 21:20, 21?

²¹ Whom does history show to be the “people of a leader that is coming,” the people that did come after Jesus was anointed as “Messiah the leader” in 29 C.E. and that did bring the city of Jerusalem and the holy place of its temple to ruin and desolation? It was the military “people” under the “leader,” General Titus the son of the Roman Emperor Vespasian.

The “encamped armies” surrounding Jerusalem in the year 70 C.E. were the four Roman legions under General Titus, the twelfth legion on the west, the fifth and fifteenth on the north and the tenth on the east. These legions were finally supplemented by a fortified wall built by the Romans all around the city to starve out the resistant Jews.

24. (a) Thus the role of “disgusting thing” was fulfilled by whom specifically? (b) Did this win God’s favor for the desolator?

²⁴ Of course, in 70 C.E. the “encamped armies” under General Titus were the agents of the Roman Empire and did represent that empire, the Sixth World Power. But those “encamped armies,” because of directly doing the desolating work upon the city that was considered “holy” and with which God’s name and worship had been connected, were the “disgusting thing that causes desolation.”