1. The Destruction
The Bible gives us a clear idea of the time of the advent of Jesus Christ the second time. But no, we are waiting for a kind of Big Bang before our Lord comes to separate the tares from the wheat. It has to be a great disaster that would bring the world to an end. For, thus was the world created, our secular pundits tell us, and thus shall it be destroyed, they fear.
The prophets and poets in the Bible have sometimes been, among other things, very hyperbolic. That is not unique to any language, at any time. When God was angry and planned to destroy Babylon in the hands of the Medes, He said, in the words of Isaiah, 'Therefore I shall shake the heavens and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of hosts ...', Isaiah 13:13. Again we see how angry God is with the Assyrians and how he wants to punish them. 'And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine and as a falling fig from the fig tree' Isaiah 34:4. Micah speaks of the wrath of God against the transgression of Jacob, 'For behold, the Lord cometh forth out of his place ... and the mountains shall be molten under him, and the valleys shall be cleft, as wax before the fire ...' Micah 1: 4 - 5. ). Daniel in his vision saw a powerful he goat 'cast down some of the host (of heaven) and of the stars to the ground and stamped upon them' Daniel 8:10. . Deborah and Barak sing the victory over Sisera thus: the stars in their courses fought against Sisera, Judges 5:20. The Jews were not annoyed nor did they quarrel with God when they arrived at their promised land and found no rivers flowing either with honey or with milk (Exodus 3:8). They just expected a fertile land that yielded easily, without much toil.
The end time prophecy in Revelation 6:13 and 14 ( And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places) and Revelation 20:11 (And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them,) cannot be taken literally.
But to the Jewish nation such a thing truly happened. While the great temple, once the pride and glory of a nation that people in the countries around marveled at, was burning, there was mayhem. Here is what we find in Josephus' writing of the incident: 'Everywhere was slaughter and flight. Most of the victims were peaceful citizens, weak and unarmed, butchered wherever they were caught. Round the alter the heaps of corpses grew higher and higher, while down the Sanctuary steps poured a river of blood and the bodies of those killed at the top slithered to the bottom.
But when they went in numbers into the lanes of the city, with their swords drawn, they slew those whom they overtook, without mercy, and set fire to the houses wither the Jews were fled, and burnt every soul in them, and laid waste a great many of the rest; and when they were come to the houses to plunder them, they found in them entire families of dead men, and the upper rooms full of dead corpses, that is of such as died by the famine. ...they ran everyone through whom they met with, and obstructed the very lanes with their dead bodies, and made the whole city run down with blood to such a degree indeed that the fire of many of the houses was quenched with these men's blood.
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... But together with those whom they had orders to slay, they slew the aged and the infirm; but for those that were in their flourishing age, and who might be useful to them, they drove them together into the temple and shut them up within the walls of the court of the women; ... There perished for want of food, eleven thousand.' The tallest and the most beautiful of the young were set aside for the triumph, and those who were above seventeen years of age were put into bonds and sent to Egyptian mines. A great many were sent to the Roman provinces, as present to them, that they might be destroyed upon their theatres, by the swords and by the wild beasts; but those that were under seventeen years of age were sold for slaves.
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Now the number of those that were carried captive during this whole war was collected to be ninety-seven thousand, as was the number of those that perished during the whole siege eleven hundred thousand.'
After the fall of Masada, two years later, few others that were left, fled to the areas around the Mediterranean. The land lay desolate. The nation's pride and eminence trampled. Suddenly the nation ceased to be. To them the sky fell on their head or in Biblical hyperbole and heavily symbolic description as though 'the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places'.
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'Caesar gave orders that they should now demolish the entire city and Temple. ... but for all the rest of the wall, it was so thoroughly laid even with the ground by those who dug it up to the foundation, that there was left nothing to make those that came thither believe it had ever been inhabited.' This was the end which Jerusalem came to by the madness of those that were for innovations; a city otherwise of great magnificence, and of mighty fame among all mankind.
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... nor could any foreigner that had formerly seen Judea and the most beautiful suburbs of the city, and now saw it as a desert, but lament and mourn sadly at so great a change. ... Nor had anyone who had known the place before, had come on a sudden to it now, would he have known it again. But though, he were at the city itself, yet would he have inquired for it.'
This is the end time destruction the Bible speaks of.
Please read the Olivet Prophecy. Mathew 24:16 - 21; Mark 13: 15 - 20; Luke 21: 20 - 24.
