The Destruction of Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem by the Forces of Rome
The twenty-one days between the dates of the 17th of Tammuz until the 9th of AV, are especially noted with sorrow and anguish by the Jewish people. Here were the days most representative of “destruction” within their lives. The Rabbis note that the “demon” that is present during these days is called the “ketev” which comes from the Hebrew, meaning “destruction and bitterness”. This is represented not only by plagues but arriving with the demonic authority to bring death and destruction; thus the 9th of AV the most infamous day in Jewish history.
It was on the 9th day of Tammuz in the year of 70 CE, that the Roman legions breeched the walls of Jerusalem. Over the next three weeks they systematically destroyed the city, ransacking every dwelling there. By the 9th of AV they effectively subdued the final Jewish Zealot resistance and burned the Temple. Afterwards they systematically razed the temple, stone by stone until they hit bedrock. Strange as it may seem, this was the same date that the Babylonian forces of King Nebuchadnezzar stormed the ancient citadel of the Southern Kingdom of Judah and the famed Solomon’s Temple was destroyed in a fiery inferno.
If the physical temple of the L-rd was desecrated and destroyed on this same day, the 9th of Av on 586 BCE and 70 CE, something even more devastating occurred in our modern era. The Holocaust of the “Spiritual Temples of the L-rd” almost destroyed the last remaining visible vestige of the ancient Israelites, the Jewish people. During the Holocaust, Hitler’s Nazis methodically and systematically implemented, on this day, the 9th of AV, their demonic genocide against the community of the Jews. The chosen and covenanted ones, who were the sacred vessels of the L-rd, were methodically placed in the fiery ovens of Europe. As the two physical temples were destroyed in a fiery inferno, so also on the 9th of Av, the systematic destruction of the Jewish people began by Gestapo of Nazi Germany in Warsaw Poland.
These days of infamy have remained in the psyche of the Jews for thousands of years. As these solemn days of fasting arrive, they beseech the G-d of Israel in intercession for the whole earth.
Historical Events in Jewish Life that occurred on the 9th of AV
1200 BCE – The Children of Israel were told on the 9th of AV by God in the wilderness that their generation would not enter the land of promise by their refusal to join Caleb and Joshua and enter the Promised Land in faith of their G-d whom they met at Sinai.
586 BCE - The Babylonian army destroyed the Temple of Solomon on the 9th of AV.
70 CE - Titus and the Roman army destroyed the Temple of Herod on the 9th of AV.
135 CE - "Bethar" the stronghold of Bar Kochba, fell ending the last trial for Jewish Independence on the 9th of AV.
136 CE - Rome began to erect the pagan city on site of the Temple dedication on the 9th of AV.
1096 CE - The First Roman Christian Crusade began on the 9th of AV.
1290 CE - The Jews were expelled from England on the 9th of AV.
1306 CE - The Jews were expelled from France on the 9th of AV.
1492 CE – The Jews were expelled from Spain by the signed order of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. On July, on the 9th of AV, all Jews had to be out of Spain. Columbus, according to renewed historical data, a Genoese Jewish marine captain, sailed from Spain after worshipping the Shabbat on his last day in Spain before heading to America on the 9th of AV.
1648 CE - Chmelnicky massacred tens of thousands of Polish Jews on the 9th of AV.
1914 CE – The Declaration for World World I began.
1942 CE - Plans for the annihilation of Jews began with the deportation of the Jews from the Ghetto of Warsaw on the 9th of AV.
1994 CE, July 16 - The twenty-one pieces of Shoemaker-Levi comet began its bombardment on the planet Jupiter on the 9th of AV.
2006 CE – The Vatican sponsored Rome Peace Conference put the finishing touches on the Peace Accord that successfully implanted the international forces of NATO into Lebanon and the northern borders of Israel on the 9th of AV.
It was fasting day in the fourth month, the 17th day of Tammuz, that the twenty one days of mourning began leading up to that day of infamy on the 9th of AV. The fasting day of the fifth month, on the 9th of AV were reminded of the memories of all these historical tragedies that have occurred to the Jewish people. These days were to remain days of fasting until a great moment of history would come, the evidence of the promise of the complete restoration of “All Israel” heralding the arrival of the Messianic Kingdom of our L-rd. As the prophets have spoke, the righteous will be kept hidden in the secret place of the Most High during this time of great tribulation and trouble, the righteous are commanded by the L-rd to hide from the wrath and indignation until it has run its course.
Isaiah 26:19-21 – “Your dead shall live; together with my dead body they shall arise. Awake and sing, you who dwell in dust; for your dew is like the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead. Come, my people, enter your chambers, and shut your doors behind you; hide yourself, as it were, for a little moment, until the indignation is past. For behold, the L-rd comes out of His place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity; the earth will also disclose her blood, and will no more cover her slain.”
We then read the Prophet Zephaniah who also with prophesies that in their future will be a time in which the saints are to seek the L-rd, seek His righteousness, and seek humility, so they also will be hidden in that day when the roar of G-d’s anger is cast over the earth. This will be an era of planetary destruction with earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, flooding, extremes in heat and worldwide famine. Even in spite of intercessory prayer, the evil prince of darkness will stomp over this earth like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, yet the chosen ones will be brought forth out of darkness into the light lest we perish because we lack the understanding of the knowledge of His Spirit.
It was on the 9th of AV, July 16, 1994, that the world watched in amazement as twenty-one fragments of the Shoemaker-Levi Comet began bombarding the Planet Jupiter. Here was the Hebrew symbol of idolatry and paganism. This imagery of the Planet Jupiter reminded the ancient historians that in the history of the Jewish people, one of their most devastating moments in history was when “Abomination of Desolation” occurred when the “Image of Jupiter” was placed in the Temple of G-d in Jerusalem by the Syrian King Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Out of the Syrian destruction by the forces of the Maccabees, the removing of the pagan god from the temple, and the re-instituting of the temple worship, gave us the beatify of the Feast of Hanukkah when the temple menorah lit on the 1st with one day of oil, remained lit for the entire seven days.
So we today, can behold as the heaven declare the glory of G-d. The Comet called Shoemaker Levi, as we now know fragmented into twenty-one cometary fragments representing the twenty-one days of mourning between the 17th of Tammuz and the 9th of AV. Yet, Jupiter, known as a symbol of pagan idolatry in the Hebrew language, is a word that represents righteousness. In Hebrew, the name Jupiter is Tzedeq means “righteous” or the “righteous one”. We read in the TaNaKh (Old Testament) that the name Melchizedek means the “King of Righteousness”. From the Satanic perversion of Jupiter as a symbol of idolatry, in the Hebrew, we perceive its real name as the “Righteous One”.
Tisha B’AV – The Day of Fasting and Mourning
As BibleSearchers Reflections reflected on the two Jerusalem days of Tisha B’Av, we read in “The Dual Prophesies of Jeremiah’s Seventy Years”, the following:
BibleSearchers Reflections – “After the first temple of Solomon was destroyed on the 9th of Av in the year of 586 BCE, a new temple was built and ready for dedication 70 years later on the 9th of Av in the year of 516 BCE. The Temple of Zerubabbel was finally dedicated the following spring on March 15, 515 BCE to the God of Israel by Yehoshua I (High Priest Jesus I), the high priest of Israel. The second temple of Zerubabbel that was enlarged and restored by King Herod the Great was destroyed on the 9th of Av in the year of 70 CE. This temple has never been rebuilt or restored.
Yet with these two exiles, we find that there were also two attempts to exterminate the Jewish people. The first attempt to exterminate the House of Judah was not by the Babylonians, where the Jewish people prospered, but in the Persian Empire under the rule of King Ahasueras and his Prime Minister Haman, a descendant of Agog, the king of the ancient Amalekites. They were the tribe that genetically hated the Jewish people the worst of all the nations and empires in earth’s history. The Jewish people in exile in Persia were under the threat of complete extermination. Except for the divine intervention through the prayers and efforts of Esther, the Jewish Queen of King Ahasuerus and her uncle Mordecai, the Jewish people would have been virtually wiped off the face of the earth.
Yet the second temple of Herod that was destroyed in 70 CE by the Roman forces of Hadrian, the “Messiah the Prince”, who was the son of the Roman Emperor Vespasian, was never restored. Over two million Jewish died in the consuming flames that destroyed not only Jerusalem but also the temple of the Lord. It is also fascinating that now Emperor Hadrian, as the “Messiah the Prince”, also erected an “abomination of desolation” and placed it upon the site of the Holy Temple. According to a commentary on Isaiah by Jerome, an equestrian statue of Emperor Hadrian was placed directly over the site of the Holy of Holiest.
Yet this was not the greatest attempt to exterminate the Jewish people. Out of the longest exile of almost two thousand years, the second and greatest attempt to exterminate the Jewish people occurred during the Great German Nazi Holocaust that began in 1942 and ended in 1948 CE. The question we ask, if there were two exiles that began on the 9th of Av, that included the destruction of the Jewish holy city, Jerusalem plus their holy temple, why was there only one restoration seventy years later?
What we now have noticed, these two prophecies are not the same. The first prophecy in Jeremiah 25:11 was specific to the king and the nation in the land of the Chaldeans. The second prophecy in Jeremiah 29:10 was directed to the Diaspora where the Jews had been driven by the God of Israel for the last two thousand years.
The permanent exile of the Jewish people from Jerusalem in 70 CE has been used by many “Spiritual Israelite” prophetic scholars as the purpose for the “conditional prophecies” that state that the Jews, as a national people, are no longer a participant in the coming redemption at the time of the end because they killed the first messiah in 30 CE.
Yet it was BibleSearchers Reflections, in the article titled, “Jesus the Nazarene and the Pharisees of Beit Shammai” that documented that it was not the Jewish people, but the corrupt hierarchy of the temple of Herod controlled by the House of Ananus (Hanan) in alliance with the Pharisees of Beit Shammai that were responsible for the death of Yehoshua by hanging on a tree. Using the typology of “shadow pictures” that give us a visual prophetic image like a mini-drama or rehearsal performance before the actual performance of a great play, could we suggest that seventy years after the beginning of the Holocaust (1942) during the Third Reich of Germany, the temple of the Jews will again be restored (2012)?
Today the Jewish people stand on the cusp of a new history. When they, as a collective and national people make that decision, the days of the Guela will move to the next dimension – a new temple. It is rather astounding that new national poll taken on Monday, July 19, 2010, by the Knesset TV Channel noted that the Israelis were one vote shy of a plural majority of wanting to begin construction of a Third Temple. 49 percent plurality of the Jews stated that they wanted a new Temple while 23 percent were against. That left 28 percent undecided, a figure that could change in moment of time in Jewish history.
Yet, the citizens of Israel still fear international and Islamic hostile and violent reactions, so 48 percent of the Israelis stated that the State of Israel should not be involved in taking possession of the Temple Mount and in the construction of a Third Temple while 27 percent stated with emuna, faith in the Sovereignty of G-d, that it should be rebuilt. Will the Third Temple of the Jews be rebuilt? Forty two said yes, while only 39 said no.
This same manifestation in the expectation of building a new Third Temple for the Jews came with the recent dedication of the Hurva Synagogue held on Rosh Chodesh, the 1st day of Passover 2010 when the prophesy of the Vilna Gaon was remembered that stated, “The Hurva Synagogue in Jerusalem, which was built during his day, would be destroyed and rebuilt twice. When the Hurva Synagogue was completed for the third time, construction on the Third Temple would begin.”
The Jewish people are quite sensitive to the international climate and the construction of the Beit HaMakdash will no doubt cause a violent reaction in the Islamic world for the Mufti of Jerusalem still has total control over the Temple Mount. They vividly remember that day on the eve Rosh Hashanah 2000, according to the rising of the true moon, the then-Opposition Leader Ariel Sharon ascended the Temple Mount and there read in the bible the chapters on Gog-Magog in Ezekiel 38-39. That momentary action is blamed by the Arabs of sparking the Oslo War, as a new intifada effectively destroyed the Oslo Accord Agreement and over the next four years, 1,000 Israelis were killed, in spite of facts revealing the leaders of the Palestinian Authority were planning such a genocidal crusade for several months.
The times are ripe, as new negotiations are sitting at an impasse between Netanyahu’s Israeli government and Abba’s Palestinian Authority to begin negotiations for direct negotiations for a new Palestinian State. Will a third party, the Rothschilds, the Scottish Masons, or the “Messiah the Prince”, come to the table and brings a proposal for the creation of a Palestinian State with capital buildings in Eastern Jerusalem that will be accepted by the international community, the Jewish people and the Palestinian leadership? Will the Vatican step forward, as an impartial third party, and be given control of the Temple Mount, so a Jewish Temple, a Christian Basilica can be erected alongside the Islamic mosque there on the Mount, now called the “Mount of Peace”?