Jerusalem, the destruction of the Temple; the second the end of the old
world, the reappearance of Jesus, the judgment of the merciful and of
the merciless, the beginning of the New Kingdom. The first prophecy
given is close at hand—this generation shall not pass before these
things shall have arrived—and is local and limited, since it is
concerned only with Judea and especially with Judea’s metropolis. The
hour and the day of the second are not known because certain events,
slow to take place but essential, must precede this end, which, unlike
the other, will be universal.
The first, as a matter of fact, was fulfilled to the letter, detail by
detail, about forty years after the crucifixion, while many who had
known Jesus were still living; the second coming, the triumphal Parusia,
is still awaited by those who believe what He said on that day, “Heaven
and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away.”
A few years after Jesus’ death the signs of the first prophecy began to
be seen. False prophets, false Christs, false apostles, swarmed in
Judea, as snakes come out of their holes when dog-days arrive. Before
Pontius Pilate was exiled, an impostor showed himself in Samaria, who
promised to recover the sacred vessels of the Tabernacle hidden by Moses
on Mount Gerizim. The Samaritans believed that such a discovery would be
the prelude to the coming of the Messiah, and a great mob gathered
threateningly on the mountain until it was dispersed by Roman swords.
Under Cuspius Fadus, the procurator who governed from 44 to 66, there
arose a certain Theudas, who gave himself out for a great personage and
promised great prodigies. Four hundred men followed him, but he was
captured and decapitated, and those who had believed him dispersed.
After him came an Egyptian Jew, who succeeded in gathering four thousand
desperate men, and camping on the Mount of Olives announcing that at a
sign from him the walls of Jerusalem would fall. The Procurator Felix
attacked him and drove him out into the desert.
In the meantime, in Samaria, arose the notorious Simon Magus, he who
bewitched people with his prodigies and incantations and announced
himself as the Power of God. This man, seeing the miracles of Peter,
wished to turn Christian, imagining that the Gospel was only one of
those Oriental mysteries into which an initiation gave new powers.
Repelled by Peter, Magus became the father of heresies. He believed that
Ennœa first came from God and that it is now imprisoned in human beings:
according to him Ennœa (or, the first conception of the Deity), was
incarnate in Helen of Tyre, a prostitute who followed him everywhere;
and faith in him and in Helen was a necessary condition of salvation.
Cerinthus, the first Gnostic, was one of his followers, against whom
John wrote his Gospel—and Menander, who boasted that he was Saviour of
the world. Another Elxai mixed up the old and new Covenant, told stories
of many incarnations besides those of Christ, and swaggered about with
his followers, boasting of his magic powers. Hegesippus says that a
certain Tebutis through jealousy of Simon, second Bishop of Jerusalem,
formed a sect that recognized Jesus as Messiah, but in everything else
was faithful to the old Judaism. Paul, in the Epistle to Timothy, puts
the “Saints” on guard against Hymeneus, and Phyletus and Alexander. For
such are false prophets, deceitful workers transforming themselves into
the apostles of Christ, “who twisted truth and sowed the evil seed of
heresy in the early church.” A Dositheus had himself called Christ, and
a certain Nicholas began with his errors the sect of the Nicolaitans,
condemned by John in the Apocalypse: and the Zealots fomented incessant
tumults, claiming that the Romans and all the heathen should be driven
out in order that God might return to triumph with His own people.
The second sign, the persecution, arrived promptly. The Disciples had
scarcely begun to preach the Gospel in Jerusalem when Peter and John
were thrown into prison: freed, they were captured again, and beaten and
commanded to speak no more in the name of Jesus. Stephen, one of the
most ardent of the neophytes, was taken by the priests outside the city
and stoned.
Under the rule of Agrippa the tribulations began afresh. In 42 Herod’s
descendant had James the Greater, the brother of John, killed by the
sword; and for a third time Peter was imprisoned. In 62 James the
righteous, called the brother of Our Lord, was thrown from the terrace
of the Temple and killed. In 50 Claudius exiled the Christian Jews from
Rome, “Impulsore Chrestus tumultuantes.” In 58, on account of the
conversion of Pomponia Græcina, the war against converts began in the
capital of the Empire. In 64 the burning of Rome, desired and executed
by Nero, was the pretext for the first great persecution. An innumerable
multitude of Christians obtained their martyrdom in Rome and in the
Provinces. Many were crucified: others wrapped in the “tunica molesta”
lighted up the nocturnal amusement of the Cæsar: others wrapped in
animal skins were given as food to dogs: many, enforced actors in cruel
comedies, made a spectacle for amphitheaters and were devoured by lions.
Peter died on the cross, nailed head downward. Paul ended under the ax a
life which since his conversion had been one long torment. Ten years
before his death in 57 he had been flogged five times by the Jews,
beaten three times with rods by the Romans, three times imprisoned,
three times shipwrecked, stoned and left for dead at Lystra. The greater
part of the other Disciples met with similar fates. Thomas met a
martyr’s death in India, Andrew was crucified at Patras, Bartholomew was
crucified in Armenia. Simon the Zealot and Matthew, like their Master,
ended their lives on the cross.
Nor were there lacking wars and rumors of wars. When Jesus was killed,
the “peace of Augustus” still existed, but very soon nations rise
against nations and kingdoms against kingdoms. Under Nero the Britons
rebel and massacre the Romans, the Parthians revolt and force the
legions to pass under the yoke; Armenia and Syria murmur against foreign
government; Gaul rises with Julius Vindex, Nero is near his end, the
Spanish and Gallic legions proclaim Galba Emperor; Nero, fleeing from
the Golden House, succeeds in being abject even in suicide. Galba enters
Rome, but brings no peace; Nymphidius Sabinus at Rome, Capito in
Germany, Clodius Macer in Africa, dispute the power with him. All are
dissatisfied with him: on the 15th of January, 69, the Prætorians kill
him and proclaim Otho. But the German legions had already proclaimed
Vitellius and move on Rome. Conquered at Bedriacum Otho commits suicide,
but Vitellius does not rule long either; the Syrian legions choose
Vespasian, who sends Antonius Primus into Italy. The followers of
Vitellius are defeated at Cremona and at Rome; Vitellius, the voracious
hog, is killed on the 20th of December, 69. In the meanwhile
insurrection breaks out in the north, with the Batavians, with Claudius
Civilus, and the insurrection of the Jews is not stamped out in the
east. In less than two years Italy is invaded twice, Rome taken twice,
two Emperors kill themselves; two are killed. And there are wars and
rumors of wars on the Rhine and on the Danube, on the Po and on the
Tiber, on the banks of the North Sea, at the feet of Atlas and of Tabor.
The other afflictions announced by Jesus accompany in these years the
upheaval of the Empire. Caligula the Mad complained because in his reign
nothing horrible happened: he desired famines, pestilences and
earthquakes. The degenerate and incestuous epileptic did not have his
wish, but in the time of Claudius a series of poor crops brought famine
even to Rome. Under Nero pestilence was added to the famine, and at Rome
alone in one autumn the treasury of Venus Libitina registered thirty
thousand deaths.
In 61 and 62 earthquakes shook Asia, Achaia, and Macedonia: especially
the cities of Hierapolis, Laodicea and Colossæ were greatly damaged. In
63 it was Italy’s turn: at Naples, Nocera and Pompeii the earth shook.
All the Campagna was a prey to terror. And as if this were not enough,
three years later, in 66, the Campagna was devastated by cloudbursts,
which destroyed the crops and rendered more threatening the prospects of
famine. And while Galba was entering Rome (68) the earth shook under his
feet with a terrible roar. All the signs were fulfilled: now had come
the fullness of time for the punishment of Judea.
JUDEA OVERCOME
The earthquake which shook Jerusalem on the Friday of Golgotha was like
a signal for the Jewish outbreak. For forty years the country of the
god-killers had no peace, not even the peace of defeat and slavery, up
to the day, when of the Temple not one stone was left upon another.
Pilate, Cuspius Fadus and Agrippa had been forced to disperse the bands
of the false Messiahs. Under the Roman procurator, Tiberius Alexander,
the conflict began with the raging sect of the Zealots and ended with
the crucifixion of the leaders, James and Simon, sons of Judas the
Galilean. The procurator, Ventidius Cumanus, 48-52, did not have a day’s
peace: the Zealots and their allies, the Sicarii, did not lay down their
arms. Under the procurator Felix the disorders knew no truce: under
Albinus the flames of the revolt flared out more boldly. Finally at the
time of Gessius Florus, 64-66, the last procurator of Judea, the fire,
which for some time had been flickering, spread all over the country.
The Zealots took possession of the Temple: Florus was obliged to flee,
Agrippa, who went as peace-maker, was stoned, Jerusalem fell into the
power of Menahem, another son of Judas the Galilean. Zealots and Sicarii
now in power massacred the non-Jews and also those among the Jews who
seemed tepid to their fanatic eyes.
And then finally came the abomination predicted by Daniel and recorded
by Christ. The prophecy of Daniel had already been fulfilled when
Antiochus IV Epiphanes had profaned the Temple by placing there the
statue of Olympian Jove. In 39 Caligula the Mad, who had set himself up
as God and had himself adored as God in various places, had sent the
order to the procurator Petronius to put the imperial statue in the
Temple, but he died before the order was executed. But Jesus was
alluding to something quite other than statues. The holy place during
the great rebellion occupied by the Sicarii had become a refuge for
assassins, and the great courts were soaked with blood, even with
priestly blood. And the Holy City underwent also the abomination of
desolation, when in December of 66 Cestius Gallus, at the head of forty
thousand men, came to crush the insurgents, camped around Jerusalem with
those imperial insignia which the Jews held in horror as idolatrous, and
which through a concession of the Emperors had not till then been
introduced into the city.
But Cestius Gallus, finding more resistance than he had anticipated,
retreated and the retreat was turned into flight to the great jubilation
of the Zealots, who saw in this victory a sign of divine help.
In those days, between the first and second assault, when already the
double abomination had contaminated the city, the Christians of
Jerusalem, obeying the prophecy of Jesus, fled to Pela, beyond the
Jordan. But Rome had no intention of giving way to the Jews. The command
of the punitive expedition was given to Titus Flavius Vespasian, who,
gathering an army at Ptolemais in 67, advanced against Galilee and
conquered it. While the Romans were taking up winter quarters, John of
Gischala, one of the heads of the Zealots, having taken refuge in
Jerusalem at the head of a band of Idumeans, overturned the aristocratic
government and the city was full of uproar and blood.
Vespasian, going to Rome to become Emperor, gave the command to his son
Titus, who on Easter Day in the year 70, came up before Jerusalem and
began the siege. Horrible days began. Even at the height of danger, the
Zealots, carried away by wild frenzy, quarreled among themselves, and
split up into factions, who fought for the control of the city.
John of Gischala occupied the Temple, Simon Bar Giora the city, and
their partisans cut the throats of those whom the Romans had not yet
killed. In the meantime Titus had taken possession of two lines of wall
and of a part of the city: on the fifth of July the Tower of Antonia
fell into his power. To the horror of fratricidal massacre and of the
siege was added that of hunger. The famine was so great that mothers
were seen, so says Josephus, to kill their children and eat them. On the
10th of August the Temple was taken and burned, the Zealots succeeding
in shutting themselves up into the upper city, but conquered by hunger
they were obliged to surrender on the 7th of September.
The prophecies of Jesus had been fulfilled: the city by Titus’ order was
laid waste: and of the Temple already swept by fire, there remained not
one stone upon another. The Jews who had survived hunger and the swords
of the Sicarii were massacred by the victorious soldiery. Those who
still remained were deported into Egypt to work in mines, and many were
killed for the amusement of the crowd in the Amphitheaters of Cæsarea
and Berytus. Some hundreds of the handsomest were taken prisoners to
Rome to figure in the triumphal procession of Vespasian and Titus, and
there Simon Bar Giora and other heads of the Zealots were executed
before the idols which they hated.
“Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these
things be fulfilled.” It was the seventieth year of the Christian era
and His generation had not yet gone down into the tomb when these things
happened. One at least of those who heard Him on the Mount of Olives,
John, was witness of the destruction of Jerusalem and of the ruin of the
Temple. Within the destined time the words of Jesus were fulfilled,
syllable by syllable, with atrocious exactness, by a story of blood and
fire.
THE PARUSIA
The end of the god-killing people, the partial and local ending, had
taken place. According to the sentence of Christ, the statues of the
Temple were scattered among the ruined walls and the faithful of the
Temple had met their death by torture or were scattered among other
nations.
The second prophecy is left. When shall the Son of Man come on the
clouds of Heaven, preceded by darkness, announced by angels’ trumpets?
Jesus says that no one can be sure of the day of His coming. The Son of
Man is likened to lightning which flashes suddenly in the east, to a
thief who comes by stealth in the night, to a master who has gone far
away and returns suddenly to take his servants by surprise. We must be
vigilant and ready. Purify your hearts, because you do not know when He
may come; and woe to him who is not ready to appear before Him. Take
heed to yourselves lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with
surfeiting, and drunkenness, and the cares of this life; and so that day
come upon you unawares, for as a snare shall it come upon all them that
dwell on the face of the whole earth.
But if Jesus does not announce the day, He tells us what things must be
fulfilled before that day. These things are two: the Gospel of the
Kingdom shall be preached to all the nations and the Gentiles shall no
longer tread down Jerusalem. These two conditions are fulfilled in our
own time and perhaps the great day approaches. There are no longer in
the world any civilized nations or barbarous tribes where the
descendants of the Apostles have not preached the Gospel: since 1918 the
Moslems have no longer trodden down Jerusalem and there is talk of a
reëstablishment of the Jewish State. According to the words of Hosea,
the end of the time shall be near when the sons of Israel, left so long
without altar and without King, shall be converted to the Son of David
and shall turn, trembling, towards God’s goodness.
If the words of the second prophecy are true, as the words of the first
prophecy were shown to be true, the Second Coming cannot be far distant.
Once again in these years nations have risen against nations, the earth
has quaked, destroying many lives, and pestilences, famines and
seditions have decimated nations. For more than a century the words of
Christ have been translated and preached in all languages. Soldiers who
believe in Christ, although they are not all faithful to the heirs of
Peter, are in command over that city, which after its downfall was in
the power of the Romans, the Persians, the Egyptians and the Turks. And
still men do not think of Jesus and His promise. They live as if the
world were always going to continue as it has been, and they work and
mortify themselves only for their earthly and carnal interests.
“For as in the days that were before the flood, they were eating and
drinking, marrying and given in marriage, until the day that Noah
entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them
all away: so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. Likewise also,
as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought,
they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went
out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them
all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.”
The same thing happens in our day in spite of the wars and the
pestilences which have cut down millions of lives in a few years. People
eat and drink, marry and have children, buy and sell, write and play.
And no one thinks of the Divine Thief who will come suddenly in the
night, no one waits for the Real Master, who will return unexpectedly,
no one looks at the sky to see if lightning is flashing from the east.
The apparent life of the living is like the delirious dream of a fatal
fever. They seem awake because they hurry about without rest, occupied
by those possessions which are clay and poison. They never look up to
Heaven—they fear only their brothers. Perhaps they are waiting to be
awakened in the last hour by those dead of old, who will rise up at the
approach of the Resurrected Christ.
UNWELCOME
While Jesus was condemning the Temple and Jerusalem, those maintained by
the Temple and the lords of Jerusalem were preparing His condemnation.
All those who possessed, taught and commanded were waiting only for the
right moment to assassinate Him, without danger to themselves. Every man
who had a name, dignity, a school, a shop, a sacred office, a little
authority was against Him. He came to oppose them and they opposed Him.
With the idiocy natural to those in power they believed that they would
save themselves by putting Him to death, and they did not know it was
exactly His death which was needed as the beginning of their punishment.
To have an idea of the hatred which the upper classes of Jerusalem felt
towards Jesus, priestly hatred, scholastic hatred and commercial hatred,
we must remember that the Holy City apparently lived by faith, but in
reality on the Faithful. Only in the Jewish metropolis could valid and
acceptable offerings be made to the Old God, and therefore every year,
especially on great feast days, streams of Israelites poured in there
from the Tetrarchates of Palestine and from all the provinces of the
Empire. The Temple was not only the one legitimate sanctuary of the
Jews, but for those who were attached to it and for all the others who
lived at its feet, it was the great nourishing breast which fed the
Capital with the products of the victims, the offerings, the tithes and,
above all, with the profits accompanying the continual influx of
visitors. Josephus says that at Jerusalem on special occasions there
were gathered together as many as three million pilgrims.
The stationary population depended all the year round on the Temple:
business for the animal-sellers, dealers in victuals, money-changers,
inn-keepers, and even artisans depended on the fortunes of the Temple.
The priestly caste, which without the Levites (and there were a great
crowd of them) numbered in Christ’s lifetime twenty thousand descendants
of Aaron—got their living from the tithes in kind, from the taxes of the
Temple, from the payments for the first-born—even the first-born of men
paid five shekels a head!—and got their food from the flesh of the
sacrificial animals, of which only the fat was burned. They were the
ones who had the pick of herds and crops; even their bread was given
them by the people, for the head of every Jewish family was obliged to
hand over to the priests the twenty-fourth part of the bread which was
baked in his house. Many of them, as we have seen, made money on the
raising of the animals which the Faithful were obliged to buy for their
offerings; others were associated with money-changers, and it is not
impossible that some of them were really bankers, because people readily
deposited their savings in the strong-boxes of the Temple.
A net-work of self-interest thus bound to the Herodian edifice all the
inhabitants of Jerusalem, down to the vendors at fairs and the
sandal-makers. The priests lived on the Temple and many of them were
merchants and rich men: the rich needed the Temple to increase their
profits and keep the common people respectful: the merchants did
business with the rich people who had money to spend, with the priests
who were their associates and with the pilgrims from every part of the
world drawn towards the Temple: the working men and the poor lived from
the scraps and leavings which fell from the tables of the rich, the
priests, the merchants and the pilgrims.
Religion was thus the greatest and perhaps the only business in
Jerusalem: any one who attacked religion, its representatives, its
visible monument (which was the most famous and fruitful seat of
religion), was necessarily considered an enemy of the people of
Jerusalem, and especially of the prosperous and well-to-do.
Jesus with His Gospel threatened directly the positions and fees of
these classes. If all the prescriptions of the Law were to be reduced to
the practice of love, there would be no more place for the Scribes and
Doctors of the Law who made their living out of their teachings. If God
did not wish animal sacrifices and asked only for purity of soul and
secret prayer, the priests might as well shut the doors of the Sanctuary
and learn a new profession: those who did business in oxen and calves
and sheep and lambs and kids and doves and sparrows would have seen
their business slacken and perhaps disappear. If to be loved by God you
needed to transform your life, if it were not enough to wash your
drinking-cups and punctually pay your tithes, the doctrine and the
authority of the Pharisees would be reduced to nothing. If in short the
Messiah had come and had declared the Primacy of the Temple fallen and
sacrifices useless, the capital of the cult would, from one day to the
next, have lost its prestige and with the passage of time would have
become an obscure settlement of impoverished men.
As a matter of course, Jesus, who preferred fishermen, if they were pure
and loving, to members of the Sanhedrin; who took the part of the poor
against the rich, who valued ignorant children more than Scribes,
blear-eyed over the mysteries of the Scriptures, drew down on His head
the hatred of the Levites, the merchants and the Doctors. The Temple,
the Academy and the Bank were against Him: when the victim was ready
they would call the somewhat reluctant, but nevertheless acquiescent
Roman sword, to sacrifice Him to their peace of mind.
For some time the life of Jesus had not been safe. The Pharisees said
that Herod had sought to kill Him from the days of His last sojourn in
Galilee. Perhaps it was the knowledge of this that sent Him into Cæsarea
Philippi, outside Galilee, where He predicted His passion.