Luke 21:20-24 (NIV) “When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, you will know that its desolation is near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those in the city get out, and let those in the country not enter the city. For this is the time of punishment in fulfillment of all that has been written. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! There will be great distress in the land and wrath against this people. They will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.”
The incontrovertible sign that Jerusalem was about to fall under God’s judgment would be the massing of Roman troops against it. Once the city was surrounded, escape would be impossible, so anyone who wanted to get out had to do it before the troops completely hemmed the city in.
The nearly seven-month-long siege was horrible for those left in the city. Not only were conditions inside the city increasingly difficult with food stores being rapidly drained (the siege began when the population of the city was ballooned with pilgrims there for the Passover), but the terror of watching the Romans relentlessly moving in, and the sounds of their trumpets and battering rams, were completely unnerving. The Roman’s job was to take the city, and they were not subtle about it. They worked earnestly. And the few successful counter-attacks that the Jewish people were able to pull off only served to make them pursue their goal more earnestly.
When they finally breached the wall, the Roman troops flooded into the city and ruthlessly killed nearly everyone they encountered. Josephus recorded that 1.1 million non-combatants died during the siege and final attack, and about 97,000 were taken away “to all nations” as slaves. A big chunk of the city and all of the temple were leveled to the ground.
These events were forecast by Jesus in all of their grueling detail. Included in this prophecy was the very clear fact that this was not something that just happened; it was God’s direct judgment on the people who had rejected and murdered His one and only Son. A part of that judgment was that Jerusalem would be occupied by gentiles (a Hebrew term including all non-Jewish people in the world) until “the times of the gentiles are fulfilled.”
Father, the thing that amazes me is that, even after Jesus’ resurrection and the explosive growth in the number of His followers, the leaders of the Jewish people were still completely unwilling to repent and turn to You. Despite Jesus’ warnings, they still had absolutely no idea of the doom that was hanging over their heads until it fell on them. And then it was too late! Lord, help us, Your people, to never grow so calloused that we become deaf to Your voice and cold to Your leading, so that we never make ourselves liable to any kind of punishment from Your hand. Amen.