Matthew 24:1 ¶ And Jesus
went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him
for to shew him the buildings of the temple. 2
And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto
you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be
thrown down. 3 And as he sat upon the
mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when
shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of
the end of the world?
Some of you are pretty sure about when the events as described are
going to happen so I’m not going to argue with you or imply that I am sure
about when certain things will take place, most notably the Rapture of the
Church. As Jesus leaves the temple with His disciples He lets them know that
this magnificent temple, began by Zerubabel hundreds of years before, after the
Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Solomon’s Temple;
2Chronicles 36:19 And they
burnt the house of God, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem, and burnt all the
palaces thereof with fire, and destroyed all the goodly vessels thereof.
Ezra 5:2 Then rose up
Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua the son of Jozadak, and began to
build the house of God which is at Jerusalem: and with them were the prophets
of God helping them.
…and finished by Herod the Great, history tells us, will be
utterly destroyed and it was so in 70AD.
The Jews would rebel against their Roman overlords and fight among
themselves as Jerusalem is besieged by Roman general and future emperor, Titus,
son of the Emperor Vespasian. The temple will burn, something Titus insisted
was accidental and against his specific orders. The Arch of Titus, which was built
in Rome to commemorate
Titus's victory in Judea, depicts a Roman victory procession with
soldiers carrying spoils from the Temple, including the Menorah. According to an
inscription on the Colosseum, Emperor Vespasian built the
Colosseum with war spoils in 79 CE – possibly from the spoils of the Second
Temple, Wikipedia tells us.
It is now only represented by the famous Wailing Wall, represented
because the Wailing Wall may not have been part of the actual Herod’s temple.
It is here that the disciples ask about Christ’s return to rule
Israel and the end of the world which gives us a clear context of what is to
come next. A type of Bible interpretation called Preterism, which originated in
the Catholic church or at least was first fully expounded on by that Church at
Rome, insists that all of these events took place when Jerusalem fell, that
Christ is actually, if not physically, ruling over Israel and the events of
Revelation have already taken place. There are full Preterists and partial
Preterists, though.
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