Coming Tribulations
Our Lord departed from the Temple, never again to enter its sacred precincts or to open His mouth in public teaching. When He withdrew, the whole system of Judaism was given over to desolation, and the predictions spoken at this time were minutely fulfilled in the fall of Jerusalem under Titus. The Temple was blotted out-indeed, a ploughshare passed over its site; the people were sold into slavery or butchered in the gladiatorial shows; their nationality was obliterated; and their land given to strangers. For more than eighteen centuries the holy places have been defiled.
Christ's words contain a further reference to His second advent. The signs here mentioned were carefully scanned by the early Christians, as one after another they were fulfilled. They saw the Roman world convulsed by rival claimants for the imperial purple; they knew by bitter experience the brunt of the world's hatred; they realized that by the labors of the great apostle of the Gentiles, and others, the gospel had been preached throughout the known world-and when these signs were being fulfilled, and the Roman eagles gathered to prey on the carcass of Judaism, from which the life had passed, they hastened to flee to Pella, from whence they beheld the collapse of the Jewish state.