Out with the Old – In with the New
First order of business:
Dissolving the Old Temple
for ‘New Spiritual Temple’
Jesus set the parameters for the signs of His return in his discourse on the Mount of Olives just before going to sacrifice Himself as the ultimate essential act of the Messiah. He informed his disciples that the first of all signs signaling that the world had moved into the Messianic interregnum (that period between the First and Second Comings, commonly termed the Age of Grace) would be the dismantling of the Temple - stone by stone ‘until not one stone was left upon another’. At the other end of the interregnum, the final ‘moments’ of the last perilous days, would be the rebuilding of a new Temple (the Temple is rebuilt) and the Mosaic Law re-established in Israel, including the Levitical blood sacrifices and oblations. The Gentiles would trodden down and defile Jerusalem and the Temple, especially when the Antichrist would set up his throne in the inner sanctum, or Holy of Holies. There he would make himself God in it, bringing in a very brief moment in time in which the Age of Grace would be shrouded in desolation, removed of all remedy against sin, the natural result of rejection and severance from God. The way the Bible puts it: this is the time in which iniquity’s cup would be filled to the absolute brim. The bookends of the signs of the times roughly consist, therefore, around and about the Jewish Temple, in many ways it is the symbol of God’s dealing with his chosen seed. To inaugurate the Age of the Gentiles, the Temple and the religion it stands for are wholly and aptly dismantled. At the conclusion of the Age, the Temple is rebuilt signaling the beginning of God’s renewal of His Messianic dealings with the Jewish race - His chosen seed. The destruction signals the beginning of the age, the rebuilding signals the end of the age.
The Destruction
With the destruction of the Temple there was now no need for a sacred place of blood sacrifice, which was the Temple’s main purpose. The redemption of sin through the shedding of innocent blood, all relegated and firmly established by the cleansing process of washing laver, incense offer and ritual sacrifice, ordered carefully in the setup of the outer and inner courts, the holy place and the Holy of Holies where God’s invisible presence had been established, would be irrelevant in the Age to come thanks to Christ’s once-and-for-all sacrifice made on Calvary. The arc of the Covenant, that symbol of God’s presence housed in gopher wood, covered by the wings of two great cherubim creatures crafted in gold, that container which once had held the sacred staff of Aaron, the bowl with the Manna and the tablets of the Ten Commandments was at the time of Christ’s prophecies of the ‘Signs of His Return’ nowhere to be seen, lost in the fog of sin and indifference of the Jewish people. No one in Israel even knew what had happened to the sacred arc which David had brought up at no small cost, even at loss of life and divorcement of one of his wives, to be housed in the tabernacle at Jerusalem. In 60 BCE Pompey the Great, the Roman General seized the city of Jerusalem and unable to deter his curiosity had the audacity to enter the forbidden Holy of Holies to see what was there. To his utter astonishment he found that the inner place, that most holy place was entirely empty. In the old religion, under the Law, God was nowhere to be seen. Or so it seemed. But in that moment when Jesus said the Temple was going down, God was being looked upon by mortal eye. The people saw Jesus, the new wine put into new bottles, testifying and manifest in the flesh, that God does not dwell in buildings and temples and churches made by man, but came to earth to dwell among men and to save them. So it was fitting that the dissolution of the Temple should be the first sign of the new Age. Actually, the temple of worship and glory is to be the temple of our own bodies in which God intends to find a dwelling place there, for the kingdom of God dwells within us when Christ is allowed into it. (Mystery of Godliness) The next Jewish Temple will loom as an unmistakable sign of the soon return of its true God to Jerusalem. Though the Temple shall initially be empty and desecrated by a usurping man which we call Antichrist, it will be cleansed and the Coronation of Christ as King of Kings and Lords of Lords will take place. Only upon the return of Christ will the Temple be filled by the presence of God once again, only this time His presence will be in the form of that glorified body which the Father has prepared for His Son, Jesus Christ, both Man and God.
The Jews misinterpreted the Messianic prophecies
The Jewish nation and its leaders had misinterpreted the prophecies of the Messiah, thinking that he would appear and set up a world empire, such as described by the Prophet Daniel, Isaiah after His Second Advent. They could not reconcile a notion of two advents, one as a lamb; the other as a lion. That would have necessitated that they believe in the salvation of the despised ‘goyem’ (the filthy Gentiles), for whom they felt about as much love as Jonah had felt for the poor, ignorant people of Nineveh, of which God pointed out, did not even know their left hand from their right. The Sadducees wanted to dominate the world by imperialistic oppressive force and exact their revenge on the heathen who had often oppressed and robbed them. Because this was the fondest wish of their heart, it became their general interpretation of all prophecies which they deemed to be connected with the Messiah. It is normal that what man hopes in his heart is the way that he will interpret all Scripture and the prophetic Scriptures are of no exception. They expected the Messiah to come as a great military leader and miracle worker – no other advent of the Messiah was even conceivable in their minds. The rabbis of the Talmud were already in the process of compiling hundreds of scriptural references which they supposed were about the Messiah . (See the Messianic Idea and History of False Messiahs as Signs of Christ’s Return.) They wanted to turn the tables on Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, the Romans and the rest of the world for all the aggression and hatred it had perpetrated upon them. They wanted their pound of flesh, to dominate and oppress the unworthy world. So this was the only Messiah their eyes could see. This is one reason why they handed Jesus off to their heathen oppressors for execution. He was not the man they hoped for and therefore was dispensable, even the perfect sacrifice, in their view a false Messiah because He claimed to be God. They continued, even after his resurrection, appearance, the miracles at the Temple in his name, and the day of Pentecost, to look with hope for politico-military deliverance, but not spiritual life. They ran the course of deception to the fullest expression, and finally total destruction of their nation, trying to prop up their own fantastical false Messiah, a man named Bar Kochba 135 AD a hundred years later, but it only led to the dissolve of the nation called Israel and the destruction of all Jewish presence in Jerusalem and the land being renamed Palestina and Jerusalem demolished and being rebuilt under the name Aelia Capitolina by the Roman Imperial Government.
The militia organization of the zealots, already established at the time of Christ, constantly agitated for liberation from Roman occupation. Jesus had warned them against agitation and rebellion, told them to render to Caesar what was his, counseled that the kingdom of God would not come by observation, but was within them, and had escaped from them when they offered him the crown as king of Israel and ruler of the House of David. But the nation and its leaders had no interest in the Spirit of Truth, or of patiently waiting for God’s full plan of redemption, which had often been prophesied by Isaiah and others, that salvation must be offered to the Gentile world for as long as God pleased and then, and only then, would it find its way, in God’s good time, back to the House of David and the nation of the seed of Israel.
When those men, on the day of The Discourse, began to boast about the gifts and jewels and magnificence of the Temple, we sense Jesus became a little perturbed in His spirit. He did not try to ingratiate himself to them with a polite rebuttal, nor did he feign some concern for the injury it would do to their pride when he told them that the Temple was, to the mind of God, a dispensable item. He simply told them that the Temple was destined to be torn down, he didn’t even tell them by whom or for what reason. He didn’t get into that directly because he didn’t want them to think this worldly regard of the Temple was shared by God or the Spirit of God. The fact that Jesus so quickly blew-off the Temple piqued the interest of his close disciples who upon reflection figured out that he was actually getting at some greater point. It caused them to ask when and what would be the signs of the end of the age, hoping to get Christ to lay out God’s plan for the coming age right up to the end. Christ obliged the inquisitive disciples with joy; this was his intent in pointing out the widow who had given her last penny and for discouraging hope and pride in the Temple.
He then began his real purpose which was prophesying about the entire Age, its signs and wonders, and how they were to be considered as God’s universal gifts always pointing Man’s attention toward having faith in His promised return to earth. The understanding of any part of the whole concept of which he was about to relay would require a dismissal of religious presumption and a full reliance upon the spirituality of the Christian life. The discernment of the spiritual goals and purposes behind God’s plan of salvation and the ultimate redemption through Himself, the Son of God was at stake. The symbol of the Temple, its earthly riches and glory, and its total destruction, perhaps shows best God’s lack of concern for earthly wealth and those things which are highly esteemed by man. The real temple which He is interested in is the one which houses Man’s eternal soul.
The Jewish nation was intent on returning to the days of the Maccabees when the Hasmonean Dynasty had sovereign rule over the Jewish nation for about one hundred years until the Romans slithered their way in to power. The Romans had been invited by the Jews themselves to arbitrate the political and military instability in the region. This was a fatal mistake on their part (one which had been repeated numerous times by many peoples and nations with the end result of Rome invariably taking possession of their government and wealth). The Jews were always resentful of Roman occupation and the annexation of land and nation as a province with procurators, such as Pontius Pilate, placed over them. Unlike many other nations they were unable to accept bondage and were willing to oppose Rome to the bitter end, which came just as Jesus had warned that it eventually would. And it came with a vengeance.
The Temple ransacked and burned
Roman slaves carry the booty away from the Temple.
On or about the same year that the apostle Paul was being held prisoner in Rome, thirty odd years after the beginning of the Church and the spread of the Gospel around the known world a full scale rebellion broke out in Israel. In 66 AD, the Emperor Nero had the army of the East under the generalship of Vespasian dispatched to quell the rebellion and restore order. It was not as easy a task as the Romans probably expected but within a couple of years, resistance in the northern part of the province had been stamped out and the Romans besieged the stronghold of Jerusalem. That same year, the Emperor Nero committed suicide which created a power vacuum in Rome. After a succession of a few other brief Emperors, Vespasian surfaced as Emperor and had to return to Rome. His son, Titus, was left with the mop up job and the assault on Jerusalem.
Roman legions surrounded the city and began an effective embargo on the city that left it without food and necessities. By the year 70, the attackers finally found their way into the city and began a systematic ransacking of homes and citadels. The assault ended with the looting and burning of the Temple. Thousands were slaughtered. Those thousands who were spared from death were enslaved and sent to toil in Egyptian or Sicilian mines; others were dispersed to arenas throughout the Empire, butchered as sport for the people who frequented the welfare program for the masses of Roman citizens called ‘bread and circuses’. The Temple's sacred relics were taken to Rome where they were displayed in celebration of the victory. Overall, the rebellion held out for three years but was finally extinguished for good when the final holdouts at the famed citadel of Masada committed mass suicide.
The Fall of the Temple as described by Josephus
The following account of the Romans breach into the inner sanctum of the Temple is from Josephus the Jewish historian who was in the hire of Vespasian as an advisor for the Romans:
“The fires raged around Jerusalem but the fierce fighting continued "the rebels shortly after attacked the Romans again, and a clash followed between the guards of the sanctuary and the troops who were putting out the fire inside the inner court; the latter routed the Jews and followed in hot pursuit right up to the Temple itself. Then one of the soldiers, without awaiting any orders and with no dread of so momentous a deed, but urged on by some supernatural force, snatched a blazing piece of wood and, climbing on another soldier's back, hurled the flaming brand through a low golden window that gave access, on the north side, to the rooms that surrounded the sanctuary. As the flames shot up, the Jews let out a shout of dismay that matched the tragedy; they flocked to the rescue, with no thought of sparing their lives or husbanding their strength; for the sacred structure that they had constantly guarded with such devotion was vanishing before their very eyes.”
The very idea which Jesus had conveyed thirty years before literally was coming to pass; the fulfillment of the first sign of the sure promise of Christ’s Return. Josephus continues;
“Most of the slain were peaceful citizens, weak and unarmed, and they were butchered where they were caught. The heap of corpses mounted higher and higher about the altar; a stream of blood flowed down the Temple's steps, and the bodies of those slain at the top slipped to the bottom.
When Caesar failed to restrain the fury of his frenzied soldiers, and the fire could not be checked, he entered the building with his generals and looked at the holy place of the sanctuary and all its furnishings, which exceeded by far the accounts current in foreign lands and fully justified their splendid repute in our own.
As the flames had not yet penetrated to the inner sanctum, but were consuming the chambers that surrounded the sanctuary, Titus assumed correctly that there was still time to save the structure; he ran out and by personal appeals he endeavored to persuade his men to put out the fire, instructing Liberalius, a centurion of his bodyguard of lancers, to club any of the men who disobeyed his orders. But their respect for Caesar and their fear of the centurion's staff who was trying to check them were overpowered by their rage, their detestation of the Jews, and an utterly uncontrolled lust for battle. …
While the Temple was ablaze, the attackers plundered it, and countless people who were caught by them were slaughtered. There was no pity for age and no regard was accorded rank; children and old men, laymen and priests, alike were butchered; every class was pursued and crushed in the grip of war, whether they cried out for mercy or offered resistance.
Through the roar of the flames streaming far and wide, the groans of the falling victims were heard; such was the height of the hill and the magnitude of the blazing pile that the entire city seemed to be ablaze; and the noise - nothing more deafening and frightening could be imagined.
There were the war cries of the Roman legions as they swept onwards en masse, the yells of the rebels encircled by fire and sword, the panic of the people who, cut off above, fled into the arms of the enemy, and their shrieks as they met their fate. The cries on the hill blended with those of the multitudes in the city below; and now many people who were exhausted and tongue-tied as a result of hunger, when they beheld the Temple on fire, found strength once more to lament and wail. Peraea and the surrounding hills, added their echoes to the deafening din. But more horrifying than the din were the sufferings.
The Temple Mount, everywhere enveloped in flames, seemed to be boiling over from its base; yet the blood seemed more abundant than the flames and the numbers of the slain greater than those of the slayers. The soldiers climbed over heaps of bodies as they chased the fugitives."
Thus the Temple was entirely destroyed, every stone toppled from off the other, every burnable thing incinerated. Every bit of booty, down to the last gift and tiniest jewel haled off by the vengeful assailants. A new era, the epoch of the ‘Signs of Christ’s Return, had officially begun.
By the end of the Talmud’s writings of a few centuries the rabbis had compiled no less than 456 citations asserted to be Messianic in nature: 75 from the Pentateuch; 243 from the Prophets and 138 from the Hagiographa (the so-called philosophical and poetical books of OT canon). As supported by more than 558 separate quotations from Rabbinic writings. These quotes are from the Targumim, the two Talmuds, and the most ancient Midrashim.