I will now bring a few excerpts from historian of that day, Josephus F., The Wars of the Jews.
Firstly, I refer to Matthew 24: 1 and 2[1]. Jesus and His three closest disciples had just departed the glorious temple of Jerusalem and there had been comments as to its beauty and the stones adorning it. Jesus then tells the disciples that it will be destroyed and these stones they were admiring “thrown down”.
Jesus’ disciples then ask, “Tell us when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming and the end of the age?” Jesus then answers them, not only with general time indicators, but with warnings and advice for their own safety at the “end of the age”.
We note that this “end of the age” is equated with “the sign of Your coming”. So, these three knew that history would soon change gears from the Old Covenant into the Messianic Age – the Age of the Kingdom of God, AKA, The Kingdom of Heaven. It was something they had already tasted. Now it was going to come in fulness. How it was going to happen was still beyond their minds as these were yet carnal men with large L plates on. Jesus hadn’t been to the cross at this stage.
Still, it was important, however, for them to receive sufficient information for the survival of the nascent ekklēsia which would grow over the next generation. Jesus’ concern was for their safety during the coming war. This would occur at the end of that generation of forty years. These 40 years were to be the anti-type of their shadow / type of Israelites in the wilderness. It would be a testing tme in which believers would need to stick together and encourage one another while preaching the good news. This was because they would be opposed by false Israel, aka “the bad figs” aka, “the kings and rulers” of that age (Psalm 2:2, Acts 4:23-30 and Revelation 6:15; 16:16; 17:18; 18:3,9).
One of the very early signs was given “You will hear of wars and rumours of wars.” But then Jesus explains, that such political turmoil would not yet mean the end had come.
They needed the signs, or Jesus would not have given them. They needed to know that this was the end because there was no physical manifestation that some have imagined. If it were to be a physical manifestation, as imagined, then no-one would have been able to convince the Thessalonians in the AD 50s that it had already happened. Clearly, “the end of the age” would come in “the day of the Lord” with the earthly judgment in the first instance. This is about apostate Jerusalem / Israel suffering her death as foretold in the shadow of the day of Atonement. It is about physical Israel in 70AD. She had not attended the festival provided for salvation – and death of the material nation is her penalty.[2]
One of the signs Jesus said would happen was the arising of false prophets. We read of one of those in Josephus Book 2 Chapter 10 point 5. This was early in the piece. There is another account in Book 6 Chapter 5 point 2. I will read both of these shortly. These are just two of the fulfilments of the various false prophets and false information that that occurred just as Jesus had warned in the Gospels and in Revelation.
Now the end Jesus indicated was coming after these signs, was never intended as the end of the world, nor even the “earth”. As we have explained, the word for earth and the word for “the land” as in Israel, are the same Greek word used in the Bible (ge). So, the end He is speaking of is the end of the physicality of the Kingdom of God in Israel, and the beginning of the Kingdom in human hearts (Daniel 2:44; Matthew 12:28; Luke 17:20,21; John 18:3; Romans 14:17; Colossians 1:13). This is the new heaven. If we are waiting for those cosmic signs to be literal (they are typical of symbolic literature of their day), then we are still living in physicality in the world instead of living within heaven while in the world. Big difference.
Josephus, a non-Christian, in his history The Wars of the Jews: The History of the Destruction of Jerusalem, in Point 4 of the Preface (and then in the body of Book 1 onwards) felt such emotional regret in seeing the fall of his own capital and nation, Jerusalem / Judea, along with its temple that he wrote the following even against his own stated principles of a reporting historian in not interposing his opinions or personal comment.
Archaeology has verified the authenticity of Josephus’ writing. God doesn’t leave Himself without a witness in the earth. It is providential that the set of circumstances which have given us these histories, happened for us. It is strange to me that so many of my clerical friends can have a copy of this book on their shelves without seeing the high correlation between the events described and the pericopes of Revelation.
Here, in his Preface to The War of the Jews, Josephus sincerely laments the national loss, owning to the breaking of his own principles as an historian:
“… because it had so come to pass that our city Jerusalem had arrived at a higher degree of felicity than any other city under the Roman government
(See Revelation 18:1-18), and yet, at last fell into the sorest of calamities again. Accordingly, it appears to me, that the misfortune of all men, from the beginning of the world, if they be compared to these of the Jews, are not so considerable as they were, while the authors of them were not foreigners either.” In other words, the atrocities committed were by Jew upon Jew, not just by those foreign to Jews in the beginning. We note that in all the histories of wars he had studied, our historian had never seen or heard recorded – verifying Jesus words of Matthew 24:21 as pertaining to tribulation, which is elsewhere called Jacob’s trouble 66 to 70 AD.
Josephus, in his history The Wars of the Jews: The History of the Destruction of Jerusalem, in Point 2 of the Preface (and then in the body of Book 1 onwards) writes about this political upheaval in the Roman Empire which occurred around the same time as the rise of Jewish zealotry at home and in the dispersion, which impacted and was impacted by tumultuous times across the empire :
“Now at the time when this great concussion of affairs happened, the affairs of the Romans were themselves in great disorder. Those Jews also who were for innovations, then arose when the times were disturbed; they were also in a flourishing condition for strength and riches, insomuch that the affairs of the East were then exceeding tumultuous, while some hoped for gain, and others were afraid of loss in such troubles; for the Jews hoped that all of their nation which were beyond Euphrates would have raised an insurrection together with them. The Gauls also, in the neighbourhood of the Romans, were in motion, and the Geltin were not quiet; but all was in disorder after the death of Nero. And the opportunity now offered induced many to aim at the royal power; and the soldiery affected change, out of the hopes of getting money.”
Excerpt Preface page 545
“After this (I shall relate) how the Jews’ affairs had become very bad; Nero died, and Vespasian, when he was going to attack Jerusalem, was called back to take the government upon him; what signs happened to him relating to his gaining that government and then what mutations of government then happened at Rome…. (then) the affairs of the Jews became very tumultuous; as also how the tyrants rose up against them and fell into dissentions among themselves.” (civil war in Judea). Then…
“Titus marched out of Egypt unto Judea a second time” the state of Judea being sedition by this time. “What attacks he (Titus) made and how many ramparts he cast up; of the three walls that encompassed the city ….”
“After that I shall relate the barbarity of the tyrants towards the people of their own nation … I shall also distinguish the sufferings of the people, and their calamities; how far they were afflicted by the sedition, and how far by the famine, and at length were taken. Nor shall I omit to mention the misfortunes of the deserters, nor the punishments inflicted on the captives as also how the temple was burnt against the consent of Caesar; and how many sacred things that had been laid up in the temple, were snatched out of the fire; the destruction also of the entire city with the signs and wonders that went before it…and the taking of tyrants captive, and the multitude of those that were made slaves, and into which misfortunes they were everyone distributed.”
Josephus also details at various times, other parts of the empire where zealots had risen up and Jews were defeated. This sort of thing didn’t happen overnight. There had been coming wars and rumours of wars throughout the empire.
Book 2 Chapter 20.2 “The people of Damascus, when they were informed of the destruction of the Romans, set about the slaughter of those Jews that were among them and as they had them already cooped up together in the place of public exercise, which they had done out of the suspicion they had of them, they thought they should meet with no difficulty in the attempt…. So, they came upon the Jews and cut their throats, as being in a narrow place, in number ten thousand and all being unarmed, and this in one hour’s time without anybody to disturb them.”
Book 2 Chapter 10 point 5 (which I note as 2.10.5) explains one of the early instances of false prophets, but this was by no means the first. There had been many.
“But there was an Egyptian false prophet that did the Jews more mischief than the former; for he was a cheat, and pretended to be a prophet also, and got together thirty thousand men that were deluded by him; these he led round about from the wilderness to the mount which was called the Mount of Olives, and was ready to break into Jerusalem by force from that place; and if he could but once conquer the Roman garrison and the people, he intended to domineer over them by the assistance of those guards of his that were to break into the city with him. But Felix prevented his attempt, and met him with his Roman soldiers, while all the people assisted him in his attack upon them, insomuch that when it came to a battle, the Egyptian ran away, with a few others, while the greatest part of those that were with him were either destroyed or taken alive; but the rest of the multitude were dispersed every one to their own homes, and there concealed themselves.”
Book 2 Chapter 20.3
“But as to those who had pursued after Cestius, when they were returned back to Jerusalem, they overbore some of those who favoured the Romans by violence, and some they persuaded by entreaties to join them, and got together in great numbers in the temple, and appointed a great many generals for the war.”
Jesus had warned “there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.” Matthew 24:7,8.
In Book 4 Chapter 1 Josephus details the siege of Gamala in which he speaks of “the want of food”. One can imagine the 600 of Vespasian’s Roman horsemen headed towards Mt Tabor where a great multitude of Jews had gathered during the siege, making use only of rainwater. Each side had treacherous strategies, but the Jews were beaten by the superior stratagem of Placidus, so that those who were not beaten fled towards Jerusalem.
Thus, this almost impregnable city, Gamala, which was reputed to be the home of the zealotry which sparked the wars – a well-fortified city of some 9000 men, fell to the Romans. This city and its long-hidden history were discovered by archaeologists in 1969, verifying the accuracy of Josephus’ record, for he indeed was not only there, but had been in charge of those fortifications. He was a Jewish lawyer of no small standing in Judea. Had these very people attended to the teachings of Jesus and been His faithful family, they would have known how to still the storm that brought their demise. https://www.biblewalks.com/Gamla/
Many believed the false prophets of those days. False, because the promised safety in the temple didn’t materialise. Rather the treachery from their own people, the horrors and slaughter therein, was as Jesus had predicted in Matthew 24:21.
You can see in Josephus 5.6.3 that, in the end, Josephus writes of the irony of the zealots self- fulfilling the true prophecies of God regarding this conclusion to the destruction of natural Judea / Israel.
“These men, therefore, trampled upon all the laws of men, and laughed at the laws of God; and for the oracles of the prophets, they ridiculed them as the tricks of jugglers; yet did these prophets foretell many things concerning [the rewards of] virtue, and [punishments of] vice, which when these zealots violated, they occasioned the fulfilling of those very prophecies belonging to their own country; for there was a certain ancient oracle of those men, that the city should then be taken and the sanctuary burnt, by right of war, when a sedition should invade the Jews, and their own hand should pollute the temple of God. Now while these zealots did not [quite] disbelieve these predictions, they made themselves the instruments of their accomplishment.” (from the speech by Eleazar)
No tribulation so terrible had been seen before “since the beginning of the world (kosmos)” nor was to be seen again, as in those days. The Roman Jewish War of 66 to 70AD is little spoken of in orthodox churches. Yet this “Gehenna” is the most prophesied physical reality that Jesus spoke of and the apostles pointed to in the New Testament. Without an understanding of
- Why these things happened – for the completion of the shadow of the Day of Judgment of sin and liberty in Christ.
- The “setting up of thrones”
- How Jesus had wept forty years beforehand at the thought of Jerusalem in such suffering
- And what was accomplished to fulfill the last type and shadow – the Day of Atonement.
But before we look at Part 8, where we’ll look at who the “two witnesses” are in Revelation, we can see more of the verification of NT prophecies in Josephus in Part 7A.
[1] See also Luke 21:5 and 6; Mark 13: 1 and 2.
[2] The formation of a state of Israel in 1948, fostered by global warring interests, in no way relates to any Bible prophecy. The book of Revelation does not mention a time 2000 + years hence; only events which were soon to take place. The conflicts in the middle east, as elsewhere are the product of human interest and plans, not Bible prophecy. We see from a 2012 study at John Hopkins University, that “found that the European Jewish population featured a mix of Caucasus, European, and Semitic ancestries.”[2] In that respect, they are like many other countries – mixed races today.
While the information from John Hopkins University challenges the validity of the dispensational view, it makes no difference to the value of those identifying as Jews today, as Maarschalk has stated, “To whatever degree the …information (regarding the Khazars) is true, it doesn’t make Jews today, whether they are Semitic or non-Semitic, any more or any less valuable, human, or worthy of respect. What it does likely do, however, is further confirm that key claims within Christian Zionism are false.”
- Arthur Koestler was a Jewish author and journalist from Hungary (later a British citizen) who wrote a book in 1976 entitled, “The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and Its Heritage” available online http://www.fantompowa.info/13th%20Tribe.pdf accessed 12th October 2022.
- Maarschalk, A, https://adammaarschalk.com/2014/08/21/who-are-the-jews-in-israel-today/ accessed 12th October 2022. The abstract is available at https://academic.oup.com/gbe/article/5/1/61/728117 accessed 11th November 2022. No pagination.
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