44 - Matthew 24:2

’Verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.’ -Matthew 24:2. This is not by any means our Lord’s only reference to the destruction of Jerusalem. On a certain occasion mention was made in Christ’s presence of some Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices; Christ took the opportunity to say to his audience, ’Ye shall likewise perish unless ye repent;’ and he went on to speak of the falling of a tower in Siloam by which eighteen persons lost their lives; these and the slaughtered Galileans were not to be considered sinners above all in Jerusalem and in Galilee because they had thus suffered death in the very precincts of the temple; except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish. The pregnant word here is likewise; not merely perish, but likewise perish. Here is an unobtrusive but sufficiently distinct prophecy of the destruction that was to come upon the Jewish people gathered together in Jerusalem. These Galileans had come up to one of the great feasts; they met with their death by the Roman sword, in the very temple where, if anywhere, they might reckon themselves safe; and the eighteen of Jerusalem were killed by the falling of one of the temple towers. All this was just a slight fore-shadowing of the terrible doom that should come upon the impenitent Jews. In the City of the great king, under the shadow of their glorious temple recently completed after eighty-six years of toil and art and revenue had been lavished upon it, here, surely, strong in their God and in the traditions of twenty centuries, and in the marvellous infallible prophecies of future glory, and in the bones of prophets, priests, and kings buried among them, here they might laugh to scorn the powers of the Gentiles, the armies of the aliens, the legions of an idolatrous and cursed empire. Here surely they were in a position of incomparable safety, because they were in a position of antagonism to that which God hated, and because they trusted God and looked to him alone for defence, casting to the winds that abominable political expediency which had made them so long bow their necks to the yoke of idolatrous Romans. ’Let myriads come, in the name of our God we will put them to flight. In coming against us they are rushing upon the bosses of God’s buckler. We are his chosen people; we have been trampled down as our fathers were in Egypt; but we arise in the might of the Lord our God; a prophet like unto Moses will the Lord our God raise up unto us; our extremity shall only be God’s opportunity; he has proved us unto the uttermost, and he will now appear in his glory, and pour confusion upon all our enemies. The seventy weeks of Daniel have gone by; the lines of prophecy stretching unto the Messiah have now spent themselves; heaven and earth may pass away, but God’s word cannot pass away; now shall we arise, and the glory of our God be seen upon us, and the arrows of our King shall be sharp in the hearts of his enemies, and we shall have sevenfold compensation for all our sorrows and humiliations.’ Ah, there is some dreadful mistake at the basis of their confidence. The Roman armies compass them about, and cut them effectually off from all supplies; one or two millions of God’s elect, in God’s chosen city; does manna fall from heaven? No, a terrible famine rages, and multitudes of men, women, and children perish by the most cruel of all deaths; pestilences break out; day by day the enemy closes in upon them; day by day the king of terrors mows them down. The fountain of Siloam and other springs upon which the city was dependent, most strangely cease to flow; and afterwards, when the enemy has advanced and taken possession of them, they flow again; showing unequivocally that Heaven is fighting against the wretched multitude. Great numbers, maddened by thirst and hunger and terror, make their escape to the Romans; and now behold them, scourged, tortured, and crucified, five hundred at a time, on all the surrounding hills in the very face of Jerusalem. What is the meaning of this ghastly scene? Is this an echo of the words, On us and on our children be His blood? But soon there are terrible slaughters beneath falling walls and towers; and then the crowning scene of all in the very temple itself, when, with fire and sword, the vial of the divine wrath is fully poured out upon the infatuated people.

"Now, round about the altar lay dead bodies heaped one upon another; as at the steps going up to it ran a great quantity of their blood, whither also dead bodies that were slain above (on the altar) fell down." So tells us the Jew Josephus (Wars, v. 9. 4; vi. 5. 6).

Yet, humanly speaking, how little probability there was, when Jesus sat on the Mount of Olives uttering these predictions about Jerusalem, that they would be fulfilled! Why should the Romans destroy the city? now for a long time it had been theirs. But where was the nation that could take it and destroy it in the face of the Roman legions? Shall the Jews as a nation rebel, and draw down upon themselves the imperial vengeance? If they had had no ability to resist the imperial forces when they were free, how much less could they obtain it now that they were tributary! Humanly speaking, Jerusalem was now more secure against destruction than she had ever been. Yet Jesus plainly announced that their city should be razed, their temple utterly destroyed, with great tribulation such as never had been witnessed by any nation from the beginning of the world, and the carrying away of the survivors into captivity, and all within the lifetime of some then living. But as there were among the Jews many who rejected the word of God to their own destruction, so are there now many scoffers who deny that these prophecies were spoken, alleging that the Gospels were written after the destruction of Jerusalem by unscrupulous writers. These avoid one difficulty, and encounter many that are more formidable. For the prophecies of Christ are but the re-utterance of those that were written by Moses, and had existed for centuries in the Greek tongue. This 24th chapter of Matthew contains very much that cannot possibly be accounted for on the supposition of having been written deceptively; for one so writing would never have blended a description of Christ’s second advent with that of the destruction of Jerusalem. But if the very Jews that saw the miracles of Christ found means of rejecting his claims, and persevered in unbelief till the last drops of the predicted vial of wrath had been poured upon them, what wonder that the natural heart of this proud century of ours, self-glorified because of all its achievements and discoveries, should fail to discern the claims of him who died on Calvary, and now sitteth at the right hand of the Majesty on high?