Omens of Disaster

All the predictions Christ had given about Jerusalem's destruction were fulfilled to the letter. Signs and wonders appeared. For seven years a man continued to go up and down the streets of Jerusalem, announcing disasters to come. This strange man was imprisoned and whipped, but in the face of insult and abuse he answered only, “Woe, woe to Jerusalem!” He was killed in the siege he foretold.^{1Henry Hart Milman, History of the Jews, book 13.}LF 16.3

Not one Christian died in the destruction of Jerusalem. After the Romans under their leader Cestius had surrounded the city, they abandoned the siege unexpectedly when everything seemed ready for the attack. The Roman general withdrew his forces for no apparent reason. The waiting Christians recognized the promised sign (Luke 21:20, 21).LF 16.4

God so overruled events that neither Jews nor Romans would prevent the Christians’ escape. When Cestius retreated, the Jews pursued, and while both forces were fully engaged, the Christians throughout the land were able to make their escape without interference to a place of safety, the city of Pella.LF 16.5

The Jewish forces pursued Cestius and his army and attacked the fleeing forces from behind. Only with great difficulty did the Romans succeed in making their retreat. The Jews returned to Jerusalem in triumph with their spoils. Yet this apparent success brought them only evil. It inspired their spirit of stubborn resistance to the Romans, which soon brought indescribable suffering on the doomed city.LF 16.6

Terrible were the disasters that fell on Jerusalem when Titus resumed the siege. The city was surrounded at the time of the Passover, when millions of Jews were assembled within its walls. Supplies of food had previously been destroyed through the revenge of the warring factions. Now the inhabitants experienced all the horrors of starvation. People gnawed the leather of their belts and sandals and the covering of their shields. Great numbers slipped out at night to gather wild plants growing outside the city walls, though the Romans put many to death with cruel torture. Often those who returned in safety were robbed of what they had found. Husbands robbed their wives, and wives their husbands. Children snatched the food from the mouths of their aged parents.LF 17.1

The Roman leaders made efforts to strike terror to the Jews and so cause them to surrender. Prisoners who resisted capture were scourged, tortured, and crucified before the wall of the city. Along the Valley of Jehoshaphat and at Calvary, the Romans erected crosses in great numbers. There was scarcely room to move among them. These things fulfilled that awful curse spoken before Pilate's judgment seat: “His blood be on us and on our children” (Matthew 27:25).LF 17.2

Titus was filled with horror as he saw bodies lying in heaps in the valleys. Like someone under a spell, he looked at the magnificent temple and gave a command that not one stone of it was to be touched. He made an earnest appeal to the Jewish leaders not to force him to defile the sacred place with blood. If they would fight in any other place, no Roman would violate the sacredness of the temple! Josephus himself begged them to surrender, to save themselves, their city, and their place of worship. But with bitter curses, they hurled darts at him, their last human mediator. Titus's efforts to save the temple were in vain. Someone greater than he had declared that not one stone was to be left on another.LF 17.3

Titus finally decided to take the temple by storm, determined if possible to save it from destruction. But the troops disregarded his commands. A soldier threw a flaming torch through an opening in the porch, and immediately the cedar-lined rooms around the holy house were in a blaze. Titus rushed to the place and commanded the soldiers to put out the flames. His words went unheeded. In their fury the soldiers hurled blazing torches into the rooms attached to the temple and then slaughtered those who had found shelter there. Blood flowed down the temple steps like water.LF 17.4

After the temple was destroyed, the whole city fell to the Romans. The leaders of the Jews abandoned their unconquerable towers. Titus declared that God had given them into his hands, for no war machines, however powerful, could have won against those stupendous defenses. Both the city and the temple were destroyed to their foundations, and the ground on which the holy house had stood was “plowed like a field” (see Jeremiah 26:18). More than a million people died. The survivors were carried away as captives, sold as slaves, dragged to Rome, thrown to wild beasts in the amphitheaters, or scattered as homeless wanderers throughout the earth.LF 17.5

The Jews had filled for themselves the cup of vengeance. In all the troubles that followed in their scattering, they were reaping the harvest that their own hands had sown. “O Israel, thou has destroyed thyself”; “for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity.” (Hosea 13:9; 14:1, KJV.) People often say that the Jews’ sufferings were a punishment by the direct decree of God. This is the way the great deceiver tries to conceal his own work. By stubbornly rejecting divine love and mercy, the Jews had caused God's protection to be withdrawn from them.LF 18.1

We cannot know how much we owe to Christ for the peace and protection we enjoy. The restraining power of God prevents mankind from coming fully under the control of Satan. The disobedient and unthankful have every reason to be grateful for God's mercy. But when people pass the limits of God's patient appeals, restraint is removed. God does not act as an executioner of the sentence against transgression. He leaves the rejectors of His mercy to reap what they have sown. Every ray of light rejected is a seed sown, and it yields its unfailing harvest. The Spirit of God, persistently resisted, is finally withdrawn. Then there is no power left to control the evil desires of the heart, no protection from the malice and hatred of Satan.LF 18.2