Some vain attempts have been made to ascertain the time at which the
apostle John left Jerusalem; but it becomes an honest investigator
to confess, here, the absolute want of all testimony, and the total
absence of such evidence as can afford reasonable ground even for
conjecture. All that can be said, is, that there is no account of his
having left the city before the Jewish war; and there is some reason,
therefore, to suppose that he remained there till driven thence by the
first great alarm occasioned by the unsuccessful attack from Cestius
Gallus. This Roman general, in the beginning of the Jewish war, (A. D.
66,) advanced to Jerusalem, and began a siege, which, however, he
soon raised, without any good reason; and suffering a fine opportunity
of ending the war at once, thus to pass by, unimproved, he marched
off, though in reality the inhabitants were then but poorly provided
with means to resist him. His retreat, however, gave them a chance to
prepare themselves very completely for the desperate struggle which,
as they could see, was completely begun, and from which there could
now be no retraction. This interval of repose, after such a terrible
premonition, also gave opportunity to the Christians to withdraw from
the city, on which, as they most plainly saw, the awful ruin foretold
by their Lord, was now about to fall. Cestius ♦Gallus, taking his stand
on the hills around the city, had planted the Roman eagle-standards on
the highths of Zophim, on the north, where he fortified his camp, and
thence pushed the assault against Bezetha, or the upper part of the
city. These were signs which the apostles of Jesus, who had heard his
prophecy of the city’s ruin, could not misunderstand. Here was now “the
abomination of desolation, standing in the holy place where it ought
not;” and as Matthew records the words of Jesus, this was one great
sign of coming ruin. “When they should see Jerusalem encompassed with
armies, they were to know that the desolation thereof was nigh;” for so
Luke records the warning. “Then let them which are in Judea flee to the
mountains; and let them who are in the midst of it depart out; and let
not them that are in other countries enter into it. For these are the
days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled.”
The apostles, therefore, reading in all these signs the literal
fulfilment of the prophetic warning of their Lord, gathered around them
the flock of the faithful; and turning their faces to the mountains of
the northwest, to seek refuge beyond the Jordan,――
――“Their backs they turned
On those proud towers, to swift destruction doomed.”
Nor were they alone; for as the Jewish historian, who was an
eye-witness of the sad events of those times, records, “many of the
respectable persons among the Jews, after the alarming attack of
Cestius, left the city, like passengers from a sinking ship.” And this
fruitless attack of the Romans, he considers to have been so arranged
by a divine decree, to make the final ruin fall with the more certainty
on the truly guilty.
♦ “Gallas” replaced with “Gallus” for consistency