Flee, Tribulation, days cut short, vultures etc

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I. Flee The City To The Mountains!

1. Most premillennialists have the rapture at this time!
2. Why would Jesus command the Christians to flee if they are going to be raptured without harm?
3. But it makes perfect sense since Jesus was warning the Christians living in Jerusalem in 69AD to be ready to flee when the Roman armies surrounded the city just prior to its besieging!

1. small children (slow down make escape difficult)
2. winter (Danger of freezing, exposure, hypothermia, snow slow down)
3. Sabbath day (gates closed every sabbath in Jerusalem until 70AD: Neh 13:19-21, see sabbath keepers refuted)

• Josephus says the Roman general Vespasian, began the siege of Jerusalem and set up pagan symbols in the Temple. But hearing of the political tumult in Rome, returned to Rome to become the new emperor. He then sent his son Titus back to Jerusalem to finish the siege, and during the lull in the siege, Christians alert to the warnings of Christ, fled the city.

1. Jesus is clearly talking in context about the tribulation in 70 AD

• He says 70 AD will be the greatest earthly tribulation period of all human history
• how can there be any room for a double fulfillment? There can be only one greatest!

1. Argument: Surely this couldn't be as bad as WW1, WW2, holocaust or the Gulf war!

• Answer: How can they know this? They weren't living to see how terrible 70 AD was
• Josephus, who was living said: "It appears to me that the misfortunes of all men from the beginning of the world, if they were compared to those of the Jews, are not so considerable as they were" Wars 4:5:6.
• The magnitude may be measured by suffering, terror and cruelty rather than mere numbers of deaths. Slow torture is much worse than a quick death.

• Josephus: "all the calamities which had befallen any nation from the beginning of the world were but small in comparison with those of the Jews" Wars 6:8:5; 9:2:3; 5:11:1.
• Further, Josephus tells us that during the sieges grip, when there was no grain left, there was wholesale ransacking within the walls of Jerusalem; food was so short that any locked door meant someone was eating a meal inside; marauders would break down the doors, rush in, and grab the throats of those inside, hoping to squeeze a morsel of food from their throats. whole families perished during the siege. Tomb-robbing was rampant. Josephus mentions that he saw 600,000 bodies thrown out the gates of the city. One deserter was caught with gold he swallowed to smuggle out of the city. Suspecting that many Jews were attempting such, in one night the Romans killed 2000 Jews and ripped their stomachs open. Josephus tells of one mother who was so hungry that she roasted, her infant son and ate half of him, offering the other half to her neighbor. In short, there has been nothing in history to match the violence, savageness; famine, pestilence, despair present in the siege of Jerusalem. It was indeed the blackest and cruelest war in the annals of mankind, yet for those who were watchful, there was a way of escape.
• "Now as soon as the army had no more people to slay to to plunder, because there remained none to be the objects of their fury...Caesar gave orders that they should now demolish the entire city and temple" Josephus Wars 7:1:1.

1. If God had not shortened the days, God tells us that the Roman armies would have exterminated the entire Jewish race.
2. This has nothing to do with the second coming!

1. Not so much speed, or without warning, but rather in obvious view of everyone: see context
2. When men try to draw you away to say they found the Christ, that is not how it will be
3. rather it will be something extremely obvious to all, like armies surrounding the city
4. Jesus came in 70AD just like lightning!

1. Two bazaar examples of speculation gone to seed: What does eagles (KJV) refer to?

• USA F-15 Eagle fighter planes in the gulf war
• A species of Eagles has recently begun to inhabit the territory around modern Israel
• TV evangelists are notorious for inventing the most bazaar speculations!

1. More likely interpretation if taken symbolically:

• Corpse: a reference of some kind to the Jews, who were spiritually dead
• Vultures: Roman armies that surrounded

1. Possible interpretation if taken literally:

• vulture would encircle the Roman army as it moved, looking for the dead victims

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