The 7 Signs of Josephus

I must admit to a need for a pinch of salt when it comes to the writings of Josephus. He was definitely on the side of the Romans after he got captured. The tone of his work, post-capture was that the Roman sacking of Jerusalem and the destruction of the 2nd Temple (in 70 AD) were ordained by God.

It’s the literal return of a “Jesus” which makes the whole thing suspicious.

7) THE LAST PROPHET: JESUS/JOSHUA
“But a further portent was even more alarming. Four years before the war [in Tabernacles time in 62 C.E.] when the city was enjoying profound peace and prosperity, there came to the feast at which it was the custom of all Jews to erect tabernacles to God, one Joshua, [Another way of saying “Jesus” or “Y’Shua”] son of Ananias, a rude peasant, who, standing in the Temple, suddenly began to cry out, ‘A voice from the east, a voice from the west,  a voice from the four winds;  a voice against Jerusalem and the sanctuary,  a voice against the bridegroom and the bride,  a voice against all the people.’

“Day and night he went about all the alleys with this cry on his lips. Some of the leading citizens, incensed at these ill-omened words, arrested the fellow and severely chastised him. But he without a word on his own behalf or for the private ear of those who smote him only continued his cries as before.

“Thereupon, the magistrates, supposing, as was indeed the case that the man was under some supernatural impulse, brought him before the Roman governor; there, although flayed to the bone with scourges, he neither sued for mercy nor shed a tear, but, merely introducing the most mournful of variations into his ejaculation [words from his mouth], responded to each stroke with ‘Woe to Jerusalem!’

“When Albinus, the [Roman] governor asked him who [he was] and whence he was [where he came from] and why he uttered these cries, he answered him never a word, but unceasingly reiterated his dirge over the city, until Albinus pronounced him a maniac and let him go.

“During the whole period up to the outbreak of the war he neither approached nor was seen talking to any of the citizens, but daily, like a prayer…repeated his lament, ‘Woe to Jerusalem!’ He neither cursed any of those who beat him from day to day, nor blessed those who offered him food: to all men that melancholy presage was his one reply. His cries were loudest at the festivals.

“So for seven years and five months he continued his wail, his voice never flagging nor his strength exhausted, until the siege, having seen his presage verified, he found his rest. For, while going his round and shouting in piercing tones from the wall, ‘Woe once more to the city and to the people and to the Temple,’ as he added a last word, ‘and woe to me also,’ a stone hurled from the ballista struck and killed him on the spot. So with those ominous words still on his lips he passed away.”

patheos.com

In a clever bit of foreshadowing, the writer of the Gospel of Luke wrote this::

⁴¹ And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, ⁴² saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. ⁴³ For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side ⁴⁴ and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”

Luke 19:41-44 (ESV)

Many people have suggested that the man we know as Jesus never existed, that he was a made up character who supposedly died 40 years before the capture of Jerusalem by Titus.

If an image, like the following one, appeared in the skies above Jerusalem, people would be amazed:

But what if the Second Coming has, in fact, already happened in 70 AD? What if the whole focus should now be on the coming Kingdom of Heaven in 2070? The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.

Amen.