Troublesome Topic: “If Those Days Had Not Been Cut Short”

First let’s review the three questions that the disciples asked Jesus:

1) When will these things be (when will the temple be destroyed)?

2) What is the sign of your personal coming as a king?

3) What is the sign of the completion of the age (meaning the disciple’s age)?

Their questions reveal that they thought all three of those things would happen at the same time. The first several things Jesus said seem to indicate that the destruction of the temple would be the answer to all three of their questions; it would be the confirmation of the end of their age and beginning of the next age, and it would be a demonstration that He is the one in control. However, as we go on, we will see that His second coming will show Him to the all-powerful king even better than the destruction of the temple did. However, Jesus has not started talking about His second coming yet, so verse 22 is still talking about the destruction of the temple.

  Verse 22 indicates that things could have been even worse had they not been cut short. I take that to mean the following: God used the fighting factions among the Jews which were fueled by their religious fervor, as a means to ensure the destruction of the temple at that time. Indeed, Josephus reported that the Caesar at that time (Vespasian) told the Roman General outside Jerusalem (his son Titus) to spare the temple because they wanted to turn it into a temple for one of their gods. We can easily imagine that God did not want that to happen, so He had to do something to override Caesar’s order. However, it was easy, for the stage was already set.

It was also recorded that, in the midst of the fighting, when Titus saw that his soldiers were in no mood to spare anyone or anything, he called out loudly and reminded them of the order to spare the temple structure. He even told his personal guarding element (I don’t know how many guards that would have been) to club any soldier that did not follow the order. However, the Roman soldiers involved in this battle had seen how the religious fervor of the Jews turned them into frenzied fighters who were out of their minds with rage. They knew the reputation these people had for being the worst trouble-makers in the Roman Empire, and they knew this temple was a key element in that religious fervor. The Roman soldiers were unaffected by Titus’s command and one of them caused a fire to be ignited inside the temple. In the midst of intense fighting, no one could put out the fire, so it grew quickly and consumed anything that would burn. The descriptions of the carnage are so graphic I will not repeat them here. The point is that if the situation had not been as intense as it was, the temple structure, which was quite new, having been rebuilt by Herod the Great shortly before Jesus’ birth, would have been spared. God may have put into the hearts of the Roman soldiers, who were known for following orders no matter what, an attitude of not following the orders in this situation.

By saying “it could have been worse” and “it will be cut short” God may have meant that the siege could have lasted longer, resulting in even more lives lost, or the Romans could have wiped out everyone in the city, and the result could have been the temple structure, its altars, its holy place and the Holy of Holies, being used perpetually for the worship of a false god.

My conclusion is that these phrases refer to the destruction of the temple in AD 70, not to the second coming of Christ which is still in the future.

The next lesson is: “In the Barren Wastelands” and ” In the Inner Room”