SRR 119 The Danielic Imperative (23) The Sign of Matthew 24, Mark 13 & Luke 21 to leave Judæa

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Justification by Faith Alone and Polemical Ministry

The anathema of God was for those who denied justification by faith alone. When that is at stake, we need to be on the battlefield, exposing the ear and combating the ear.

We are unabashedly, unashamedly Clarkian. And so the next few statements that I'm going to make, I'm probably going to step on all of the Vantillian toes at the same time. And this is what we do at Simple Riff around the radio, you know.

We are polemical and polarizing Jesus style.

I would first say that to characterize what we do as bashing is itself bashing. It's not hate. It's history. It's not bashing. It's the Bible.

Jesus said, Woe to you when men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way, as opposed to blessed are you when you have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness.

It is on. We're taking the gloves off. It's time to battle.

Daniel, the Timeline, and the Purpose of This Episode

Welcome to episode 23 of the Danielic Imperative, a podcast in which we examine the eschatology of the people of God in the light of the timeline revealed to us by the prophet Daniel. Through the prophet Daniel, the Lord revealed to us a timeline of the people of God and their future.

And six centuries later, Jesus and his apostles reveal the future to us using explicitly and implicitly Danielic language. It is imperative that Christians understand that timeline in order to understand God's plan for his people.

In today's episode, we will demonstrate again why that foundational principle is so important to our studies of the Gospels and Revelation, as we analyze the sign Jesus said would indicate that it is time to flee from Judea.

But first, a recap from our last episode. In our last episode, we identified 13 ways in which traditions of men have nullified the revelation of God, blinding us to what God has plainly spoken to us. The clarity of the revelation of God has been obscured by the traditions of men in such a way as to make God's word to us void of its meaning.

We have missed what Daniel, Jesus, and John have told us because we have made assumptions that are not supported by the text of Scriptures. We have assumed that the stone of Daniel 2 only strikes the statue once, instead of twice, as evidenced not only by Daniel chapter 2, but also by Daniel 7 and the book of Revelation, all of which depict a first strike against the Roman Empire and a second strike against the little horn, the beast of Revelation 13.

We have assumed a 10-way division of the Roman Empire, causing us to miss the 13-way division clearly borne out in the text when Daniel 7 is harmonized with Revelation 12, 13, and 17. We have assumed Daniel 9 was a Messianic prophecy of the coming of Christ rather than a Mosaic prophecy fulfilled in the restoration of Levitical purity of the altar and the temple in accordance with Leviticus chapter 26.

We have assumed that Daniel changes his frame of reference repeatedly in chapter 11, which causes us to miss the fulfillment of the last six verses of the chapter, and that, in turn, would have shown us that the abomination of desolation mentioned earlier in the chapter must have occurred under the Greek Empire, 200 years before the death and resurrection of Christ.

And those assumptions have caused us to miss what Jesus was plainly telling us in Matthew 24 and Mark 13 about the return of that same abomination of desolation as a harbinger of doom for the nation of Israel.

And what is more, we have assumed that Jesus said the abomination was to be placed in the holy place, which would be a reference, of course, to the temple. But that is not what the Scripture says. Jesus only said that the abomination foretold by Daniel would be placed in a holy place, which is not a reference to the temple at all.

It was Daniel who said that it would be placed in the sanctuary, and it was, during the Greek Empire. Jesus said when it returned, it would be found in a holy place where it should not be, and it was, in the synagogue at Doris in 41 A .D.

He did not say the holy place. He said a holy place. But we have assumed that Jesus really must have meant the holy place, so we have ignored what the Scriptures plainly say, and filled in with tradition what God has not revealed to us in His Word.

Some translations actually say, the holy place, even though the definite article is missing in the Greek. There is no better way of obscuring the revelation of God than by editing it to conform to our traditions.

And yet, that is what we have done, repeatedly. There were several other similar points we made in our previous episode, and our listeners can go back and listen again, since it has been several months now since our last podcast.

But, if we are to understand God's revelation to us, we must first set aside our traditions, especially those that have caused us intentionally to mistranslate the text of Scripture. And if we are to understand what Jesus meant by His reference to the abomination of desolation, as foretold by the prophet Daniel, we need to get our arms around the Danielic timeline, because Jesus was using it to communicate something important to us.

So, that is where we left off last time, with episode 22. And in our next episode, after this one, we will dive into the prophetic ministry of the two witnesses of Revelation chapter 11, and show, beyond doubt, that the book of Revelation was written not just before 95 AD, as is traditionally believed, and that it was written not only before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, and not only before the Jewish war began in 67 AD, but rather, that it was written no later than 63 AD, and likely even earlier than that, because the apocalypse was revealed to John as a warning of events that were to begin to occur just before the onset of winter in Jerusalem in 63 AD.

John was on the Greek island of Patmos, which means that it would have had to have been revealed to him with sufficient time for someone to make the journey to Jerusalem from Patmos, a journey no one would have undertaken at the onset of winter.

For the revelation to be meaningful and actionable to the people of God, the revelation to John would have had to have taken place much earlier than the winter of 63 AD. That, of course, is contrary to all scholarship and tradition, and we will discuss that in our next episode as we explain the two witnesses of Revelation 11.

But I'll lay down the gauntlet now. The book of Revelation foresaw events that occurred as early as 63 AD, and to be prophetic, the revelation to John must have occurred before the prophesied events took place.

But today we are going to address the accounts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and what Jesus said would be the indication that it was time to leave Judea, and we will see very quickly why it is so important to understand the Danielic timeline.

It is imperative. In Matthew and Mark, Jesus told his listeners that they should flee Judea when they saw the abomination of desolation foretold by Daniel the prophet, standing in a holy place where it ought not.

And as we have shown in previous episodes, that happened about ten years after Jesus' resurrection, under the reign of Herod Agrippa, who was king of Judea from 41 to 44 AD. We can place the return of the abomination of desolation in 41 AD because it occurred just after Agrippa instated Simon as high priest, as recorded in Josephus' Antiquities, Book 19, Chapter 6, Paragraph 2.

The abomination of desolation was set up in the synagogue at Doris that same year. As the listener will recall, the abomination of desolation has been identified for us in the Scriptures, in Daniel 8, 9, 11, and 12, which foresaw the Greek king Antiochus IV placing a statue of the Roman god Jupiter on the altar in the Temple of Jerusalem.

The abomination of desolation returned to Judea when Emperor Caligula demanded that statues of himself, disguised as Jupiter, be placed in all the temples of the empire. The Jews resisted this, but after Caligula's death, some young rascals in the city of Doris in northern Israel installed one of those statues in the synagogue there, as described by Josephus in Antiquities, Book 19, Chapter 6, Paragraph 3.

The appearance of the statue of Jupiter in a synagogue was the fulfillment of Jesus' prophecy from barely ten years earlier, as recorded in Matthew 24, 15 and Mark 13, 14. Upon seeing the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not, Jesus' listeners were encouraged to depart from Judea and take refuge in the mountains.

And from Jesus' words, the departure from Judea was a matter of considerable urgency. The hearers are warned not even to look back, but to depart immediately to the mountains. Here is what Jesus said, now citing from Matthew 24, 17 to 21.

No, nor shall ever be. Again, Matthew 24, 17 to 21. That was Jesus' advice to his listeners on what they should do when they saw that abomination of desolation returning to Israel. Mark recorded something similar.

But Luke recorded Jesus' message slightly differently. Instead of saying that the return of the abomination of desolation would be the sign of warning, that it was time to leave Judea, Luke says instead that the sign would be that Jerusalem is surrounded with armies.

At least, that is how the English translation renders it. In Luke 21, 20 to 21, Jesus said,. And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let them which are in the midst of it depart out, and let not them that are in the countries enter therein too.

Again, Luke 21, 20 to 21. In this case, the hearers are told that this is the sign that the desolation of Jerusalem is near at hand. And Jesus warns similarly to the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, saying,.

For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days! For there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people.

And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations. And Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the time of the Gentiles be fulfilled. Again, Luke 21, 22 to 24.

So, two Gospel accounts say the warning sign is the return of the abomination of desolation. And one says the warning sign is when Jerusalem is surrounded with armies. But either way, it is time to leave Judea and hide because bad times are coming.

The intent of the message, of course, is that the hearers escape the coming tribulation by leaving before it occurs. I think we can all agree on that. Matthew and Mark say the hearers must leave Judea immediately, not even pausing long enough to go back to the house to get their belongings.

Because it is the time of the great tribulation. And Luke says to leave Judea because these are days of vengeance, when the Jews will be killed by the sword or carried off captive to all nations. And Jerusalem will be trodden underfoot by the Gentiles.

So, here are the facts before us. Matthew and Mark say the sign of the end of the age is the abomination of desolation standing in a holy place where it ought not, which appears to have occurred in 41 AD, based on our knowledge of the identity of the abomination of desolation.

And Luke says the sign of the end of the age is when Jerusalem is surrounded by armies, presumably Roman armies, as the commentaries typically say. And Jerusalem is not surrounded by armies until 70 AD, when the Romans besieged Jerusalem.

How could the signs of the end of the age be 29 years apart? How could the Gospels be so far off from each other? So, assuming that the Gospels really aren't contradicting each other and really aren't that far off from each other, then we really have an important choice before us.

We can assume that the phrase, when you shall see Jerusalem encompassed with armies, refers to the Roman siege of Jerusalem and use that assumption to determine the identification of the abomination of desolation.

Or, we can assume that we know the identification of the abomination of desolation from the Scriptures and use that knowledge to determine the meaning of when you shall see Jerusalem encompassed with armies.

But before we do that, I want to highlight a significant point of similarity between the three Gospel accounts, and that is the warning of woe to pregnant and nursing women. All three accounts basically say the same thing.

Woe unto them that are with child and to them that give suck in those days. That's Matthew 24, 19, Mark 13, 17, and Luke 21, 23. The hardship in mind here is the flight of pregnant women and nursing mothers as they leave Judea, because Matthew and Mark add that they should pray that their flight not take place in the winter or on the Sabbath.

That's an important point, and we'll come back to it shortly. Just keep it in mind. We're going to use that to perform a thought experiment in a few moments. Okay, so let's see what happens if we approach the text in ignorance of the Danielic timeline and use our understanding of the Roman siege to determine what the abomination of desolation is.

When we do that, a completely useless understanding of Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21 results. As we will see, when we approach Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21 without first establishing the Danielic timeline, it completely empties Christ's warning of any meaning at all.

So, let's assume for now that we do not understand what the abomination of desolation is from Daniel and the fulfillment of his prophecies in 167 BC. We'll assume Daniel 9 is a Messianic prophecy, and Daniel 11 occurs in two, three, four, or five different frames of reference, and the abomination of desolation, whatever it may be, is expected to manifest shortly after the time of Christ or possibly even in the more distant future.

Neither we nor Jesus' hearers know what he meant in Matthew 24, 15, and Mark 13, 14 when he referred to the abomination foretold by Daniel, but we can infer its identity from Luke 21, 20, which appears to say that the sign of the end of the age is when we see Jerusalem besieged by the Romans.

Therefore, we can expect the abomination of desolation, whatever it may be, to manifest around the same time Jerusalem is sacked by the Romans in 70 AD. The abomination has to be erected in the Holy of Holies in order to pollute the sanctuary of strength, as prophesied in Daniel 11, 31.

And, of course, this does not happen until September of 70 AD when the victorious Roman soldiers brought their standards, or ensigns, to the Temple Mount. Because Romans are known to revere those standards above all gods, making them idols after a fashion, then the bringing of the ensigns to the Temple must be the abomination of desolation Daniel had foretold, and that must be the sign of the end of the age, as Jesus mentioned, and therefore the signal indicating that it was time to flee from Judea.

As an example of that interpretation, I offer for the consideration of the listener John Wesley's commentary on Matthew 24, a link for which will be provided in the show notes. A similar interpretation is offered by Daniel Doriani of the Gospel Coalition, in which he writes that the abomination of desolation is the Roman armies themselves because they carried with them the idolatrous images of the emperor.

Okay, let's assume the abomination is the Roman armies or their ensigns. So, what should the people of Judea do? Millions have already died in famines, slaughters, earthquakes, and insurrections throughout Judea for the last 30 years, as village after village erupted in civil strife, collapsed under the onslaught of Roman sieges culminating in the sack of Jerusalem as people waited patiently for the sign of the end, the abomination of desolation to be placed in the Temple.

And now that everyone is either dead, dying, or on their way to captivity, the abomination is finally revealed to be the Roman standards, or the armies, and it is finally time to leave Judea. As Jerusalem lies in ruins and all the villages and cities of Judea have been captured by the Romans and they erect their ensigns at the Temple Mount to celebrate their triumph, you can just imagine the thoughts going through the minds of the few surviving Jews as they are being led into slavery.

A little more advanced notice would have been nice, Jesus. Maybe even a sign before everyone was already dead or in slavery. That would have been a little more helpful, so at least we would have had a fighting chance.

I'm being facetious here, but I'll just say the obvious. If the Roman soldiers surrounding Jerusalem, the Roman standards on the Temple Mount, or the armies on the Temple Mount were the abomination of desolation, the sign we were waiting for as an indication that we need to leave Judea for our own safety, it is simply one of the most useless warnings ever given.

It did nothing. And that is why I wanted to highlight the one point of similarity between all three gospel accounts. What Matthew, Mark, and Luke all agree on is that pregnant and nursing women will suffer the most in their flight from Judea.

So, indulge me as I relate three deplorable incidents that occurred three years before the Romans ever besieged Jerusalem and three and a half years before they ever erected their ensigns on the Temple Mount.

The sieges of Jaffa, Jodhpata, and Geshala, as recorded in Josephus, Wars of the Jews, Book 3, Chapter 7, and Book 4, Chapter 2. In the case of Jaffa, after 15 ,000 Jews were slaughtered, 2 ,130 women and infants were taken captive, according to Book 3, Chapter 7, Paragraph 31.

And at the siege of Jodhpata, 40 ,000 were killed, and 1 ,200 women and infants were taken captive, Book 3, Chapter 7, Paragraph 36. And that's not even the worst of it. At the siege of Geshala, when one of the robbers, John of Geshala, opted to flee to Jerusalem for safety, he led a large part of the populace with him, but abandoned the women and children several miles from the city.

And when the Romans captured them, they killed 6 ,000 of them and took almost 3 ,000 captives. That's Book 4, Chapter 2, Paragraph 5. All of these occurred in 67 A .D., three years before Rome was encircled with armies, three and a half years before the Roman standards were ever erected on the Temple Mount.

Now just think about that. Was Jesus warning pregnant and nursing women to wait until Judea had been completely subjugated by the Romans and then flee from Judea? Or was he warning them to flee before the danger arrived?

Clearly, he was warning them to leave before it got too dangerous to leave. So what do you suppose was going through the minds of those thousands of women as they and their children were slaughtered or taken into captivity?

A little more advanced notice would have been nice, Jesus. Maybe even a sign before it was too dangerous to flee. That would have been a little more helpful, so at least we and our children could have gotten out before things got bad.

But again, of course, I'm being facetious. My point in all this is not to make light of the plight of these women and infants and the utter destruction faced by the cities of Judea and the ultimate destruction of Jerusalem.

My point is that if the Roman ensigns were the sign of the end, the sign that it was time to flee Judea, the sign was so late as to be almost capricious. It is simply one of the worst warnings in all of Scripture.

At least the people of Nineveh had 40 days to repent. That warning came in advance of the punishment. But in the case of the Great Tribulation, the great vengeance upon the Jewish nation, the great sorrows that were coming upon them, the people were told that it was fine to stay in Judea until after everyone had already been killed or taken captive.

Honestly, what kind of warning is that? And even if we simply go by the encircling of Jerusalem with armies in the spring of 70 AD, six months before the ensigns were erected at the temple, it was still too late to flee Judea safely, as evidenced by the slaughter and capture of thousands of women and infants at Jaffa, Jotapata, and Geshala three years earlier.

There is just something horribly, horribly wrong with having Jesus say the sign to leave Judea comes after it is too late to leave Judea. Another problem with that interpretation is that the ensigns were never even erected within the temple.

The historical record says the ensigns of the Roman army were erected on the East Gate, which hardly counts as a pollution of the sanctuary, which is what Daniel prophesied, at least in that interpretation.

To have the prophecy of a pollution of the sanctuary occur by erecting idolatrous ensigns at the East Gate basically nullifies the prophecy. To address that, some commentaries say the armies are the abomination and the dead bodies in the temple after the massacre are the desolation.

But Daniel's prophecy was that the abomination of desolation would pollute the sanctuary by being set up in the sanctuary. Having the abomination outside the sanctuary and the desolation inside the sanctuary effectively nullifies the prophecy.

And again, all this takes place after all of Judea had been subjugated by the Romans and Jerusalem had already been sacked and its inhabitants either killed or captured to be sold in the slave markets.

As signs go, those are all pretty useless if the purpose was to warn people to leave before the tribulation and the vengeance and the sorrow. Now, there are also some who would appeal to church historian Eusebius who said Christians received a revelation just before the war and left Jerusalem just in time taking refuge in Perea.

That's in Eusebius' Church History, Book 3, Chapter 5, Paragraph 3. But that too nullifies Jesus' warning in the Scriptures. Why would Jesus say to his own disciples that the sign that it is time to flee from Judea is when Jerusalem is encircled with armies or when the abomination of desolation was erected, assuming that he was referring to the Roman ensigns or the dead bodies in the temple, and then have a different revelation indicating that it was time to leave Judea three years before Jerusalem was encircled with armies and three and a half years before those ensigns were erected at the temple?

Besides, the legend of a revelation to Christians to leave Judea before the war is just that, a legend. The first record of it is in Eusebius' Church History, almost 300 years after the war. There is no other evidence of it anywhere in the historical record.

Other commentaries have suggested that perhaps the prophecy of Jerusalem being encircled with soldiers was fulfilled in 66 AD when the Roman general Cestius besieged Jerusalem. But the problem with that interpretation is that Cestius did not encircle Jerusalem.

He set up camp about a mile from Jerusalem and then moved his camp within the outer walls, marched into the city, and then continued the siege at the inner wall from within the city. But at no point did he surround the city.

The account of his siege of Jerusalem is in Josephus' Wars of the Jews, Book 2, Chapter 19. So none of that works. None of it makes any sense, and none of it satisfies the prophetic voice of Daniel, who said the abomination would be set up and pollute the sanctuary.

And none of it satisfies the prophetic voice of Christ, who ostensibly was warning people to leave Judea before the tribulation began, not after it was over. He said explicitly, Then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains, for then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world.

To this time, no, nor ever shall be. That's Matthew 24, verses 16 and 21. Then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let them which are in the midst of it depart out. And let not them that are in the countries enter therein too.

For these be days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. That's Luke 21, verses 21 to 22. Does that sound like people should leave Judea before all the cities of Judea had been taken by the Romans and Jerusalem was leveled and the Jews were either killed or sent into captivity?

Or does it sound like people should leave Judea after all the cities of Judea had been already taken by the Romans and Jerusalem was leveled and the Jews either killed or sent into captivity? So, let's set aside the traditional position and think through this from the perspective of the timeline revealed to us in Daniel.

We have spent considerable time in this series showing that Daniel chapter 11 was written in a single frame of reference and covers the entirety of the Greek period of Daniel's visions, from the rise of Alexander all the way through the final apocalyptic conflict between General Pompey and the pirates of Pamphylia Bay, which set the stage for the rise of the Roman Empire.

And right in the middle of that chapter is the abomination of desolation placed in the temple by the Greek ruler Antiochus IV. Daniel 11 .31, along with Daniel 8 .13, 9 .27, and 12 .11 definitively set the timeline for the abomination of desolation in the Greek period of Daniel's visions, the statue of the Roman Jupiter placed in the temple by the Greek king Antiochus IV in 167 BC.

There is simply no way around the fact that the scriptures by this means established not only the time period when the abomination of desolation manifests in the temple, that is, 167 BC, but also the identification of that abomination, the statue of Jupiter, the foreign god worshipped by the Greek king, as foretold in Daniel 11 .38.

These facts must govern our understanding of Jesus' reference to the abomination of desolation in Matthew 24 .15 and Mark 13 .14. Jesus was not saying that the abomination of desolation had not yet been placed in the temple at all.

It had been, and Jesus knew it. Jesus merely stated that the same abomination placed in the temple by Antiochus IV in 167 BC would return to Judea as the harbinger of Israel's doom, and that occurred in 41 AD.

And we know from the historical record that the political, social, agricultural, and geographic conditions of Judea declined rapidly from 41 AD onwards, as wars, rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes, pestilence, and lawlessness quickly followed, just as Jesus said they would after the sign of the abomination.

Jesus' warnings in Matthew, Mark, and Luke must all be understood in that context and on that timeline. It is established for us in the Scripture. That is the Danielic timeline, and it is imperative upon all Christians to approach Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21 in that context.

The Danielic timeline establishes the foundation of Jesus' prophecy and establishes for us that the sign of Israel's impending doom occurred in 41 AD. The coming of the abomination of desolation was the warning sign that it was time to leave Judea.

Miss that sign, and you risk getting caught up in the calamities that would shortly follow, as experienced by those who attempted to flee Judea only after things got too dangerous. Now, even though at first blush Luke 21 -20 appears to place the sign in 70 AD instead of 41 AD, the Gospels must be consistent, and we will find that all three Gospels actually do place the warning sign in the early 40s AD.

They do, in fact, agree, as we will see. In the Greek, Jesus' warning in Luke 21 -20 was not that Jerusalem would be surrounded by armies, but rather that Jerusalem would be surrounded by encampments, which is not exactly the same thing.

And we will find that Jerusalem was indeed surrounded by encampments decades before the Romans besieged Jerusalem. It is a matter of simple inspection to determine what those encampments were. So, instead of assuming the meaning of Luke 21 -20 and the surrounding of Jerusalem with armies, and then using that to determine the identity of the abomination of desolation, let's instead assume that we can know, and indeed that the Jews in Jesus' audience did know, or at least ought to have known, the identity of the abomination from the Scriptures, and then use that to understand Luke 21 -20.

We'll assume Daniel 9 is not a Messianic prophecy because it was mosaic, and that Daniel 11 occurs in a single frame of reference, not multiple frames of reference, and covered the entire Greek period, from the fall of the Medo-Persian Empire to the rise of the Roman Empire.

And the abomination of desolation manifested in the Greek Empire under the Greek king Antiochus IV, and that it is the statue of Jupiter that polluted the Sanctuary of Strength when Antiochus erected it there in 167 BC.

Jesus' hearers knew what Jesus meant in Matthew 24 -15 and Mark 13 -14 when he referred to the abomination of desolation as foretold by Daniel, and we know that it returned in 41 AD when some young men in Doris erected it in the synagogue there.

And now, because we know what the abomination of desolation was in the first place, and we can recognize it when it returned in 41 AD, we can use that information to understand what Jesus must have meant in Luke 21 -20.

In short, instead of assuming that we know when Jerusalem was surrounded with encampments and using that to determine the identity of the abomination, let's assume that we know the identity of the abomination and use that to determine what Jesus meant by when you shall see Jerusalem encompassed with encampments.

A completely different picture emerges. And yes, in fact, a sign emerges that gave people plenty of time to leave Judea. So, let's rewind the clock to 30 AD when Jesus' disciples first asked him, Tell us, when shall these things be?

And what shall be the sign of thy coming and of the end of the world? That's Matthew 24 -3. And similarly in Mark 13 -4 and Luke 21 -7. And keep in mind, the end of the world is literally the end of the age, a reference to the visions in the book of Daniel that after four kingdoms shall come upon the earth, the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom.

That's the end of the age that they were asking about. That is what they were wondering about. And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you, for many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive many.

That's Matthew 24, verses 4 -5. Mark 13, 5 -6 says essentially the same thing. And Luke 21, 8 adds, The time draweth near, go ye not after them. Later in Matthew, additional details are added about this particular phenomenon about the false prophets as Jesus expands.

If any man shall say to you, Lo, here is Christ, or there, believe it not, for there shall arise false Christs and false prophets and shall shew great signs and wonders, insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.

Behold, I have told you before. Wherefore, if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert, go not forth. Behold, he is in the secret chambers, believe it not. That's Matthew 24, verses 23 -26.

Okay, so his listeners should be cautious. Take heed that no man deceive you. Many shall come in my name, showing great signs and wonders, saying, I am Christ, do not follow them. The time draweth near.

Well, apparently at the time of Jesus' warning, the beginning of the tribulation was not far away at all. And the indication of the arrival of the time of tribulation and the vengeance of God and the time of sorrows is the return of the statue of Jupiter.

False Prophets, Robbers, and the Early Signs of Tribulation

Now, let's fast forward 10 years to 40 A .D. Emperor Caligula has shipped statues of himself in the image of Jupiter to all temples of the empire. The Jews threaten to revolt and Caligula dies before the command can be carried out, but the people of Judea are scandalized to hear that someone erected one of the statues in the synagogue of Doris.

Shortly after this, Judea is overrun with false prophets, robbers, and seditions, resulting in the deaths of thousands upon thousands of Jews as they are led into the wilderness to be robbed, slaughtered, or taken captive to be sold in the international slave market, or simply trampled and murdered as they are caught up in the chaos.

When Cuspius Fetus was procurator of Judea from 44 to 46 A .D., false prophets began to deceive the Jews, leading them to their deaths and to captivity. For our first example, we turn to Jewish historian Josephus, eyewitness to the events in his Antiquities of the Jews, Book 20, Chapter 5, Paragraph 1.

He wrote,. Now it came to pass, while Fetus was procurator of Judea, that a certain magician, whose name was Theodos, persuaded a great part of the people to take their effects with them and follow him to the river Jordan.

For he told them he was a prophet, and that he would, by his own command, divide the river and afford them an easy passage over it. And many were deluded by his words. However, Fetus did not permit them to make any advantage of his wild attempt, but sent a troop of horsemen out against them, who, falling upon them unexpectedly, slew many of them and took many of them alive.

This was what befell the Jews in the time of Cuspius Fetus's government. Again, Josephus, Antiquities, Book 20, Chapter 5, Paragraph 1. Okay, under the next procurator, Tiberius Alexander, from 46 -48 AD, a terrible famine struck Judea and many Jews died of starvation.

Under the next procurator, Ventidius Cumanus, from 48 -52 AD, more robbers and false prophets and insurrections emerged. At the Festival of Unleavened Bread, a single Roman soldier taunted the Jews and a riot ensued when some of the robbers and insurrectionists stirred up the crowds.

In the panic that ensued, between 10 ,000 and 20 ,000 Jews were trampled to death, according to Josephus, Antiquities, Book 20, Chapter 5, Paragraph 3, or Wars of the Jews, Book 2, Chapter 12, Paragraph 1.

Shortly after this, those same robbers attacked and robbed one of Caesar's servants, and procurator Cumanus was so indignant that he immediately sent soldiers out to the neighboring villages with orders to arrest anyone they came across, including innocent bystanders, on the charge that they had not pursued the thieves and stopped them.

That's recorded for us in Antiquities, Book 20, Chapter 5, Paragraph 4, and Wars, Book 2, Chapter 12, Paragraph 2. Under the same procurator, Cumanus, a disagreement arose between the Jews and the Samaritans, and the Jews enlisted the help of the robber Eleazar to avenge the people of Judea.

When Cumanus heard of this, he armed the Samaritans with four regiments of footmen, marched out against the Jews and caught them and slew many of them and took a great number of them alive. Afterward, the robbers went away again to their places of strength, and after this time all Judea was overrun with robberies.

That's Antiquities, Book 20, Chapter 6, Paragraph 1. And keep in mind, the robbers went away again to their places of strength. That's important, and we will come back to it. Keep it in mind as we move on.

The next procurator, Antonius Felix, from 52 to 60 AD, attempted to rid Judea of the robber threat, but no sooner did he overcome the multitude of robbers, than another brand of robbers and false prophets also rose up.

These new robbers were known as the Sicarii because of the sickle-shaped weapons each one carried with him, according to Antiquities, Book 20, Chapter 8, Paragraph 10. And along with the new breed of robbers who murdered people with impunity in the city during the festivals, a new breed of false prophets also arose, inciting the people to follow them into the wilderness under the pretense of divine inspiration.

That's from the same chapter. But Felix saw them both together, the robbers and the false prophets, as just one more threat to the civil order, and he sent his soldiers out to kill the false prophets and their followers.