By Allan Cornford
Copyright © 2023 Allan Cornford. (Standard Copyright License.) All rights reserved. Independently Published through KDP
There were endless trials and tribulations, and thousands upon thousands of deaths for the Israelites prior to Jesus returning in the clouds.
Which he had foretold of course, most likely around forty years earlier.
There’s no doubt whatsoever, that the people living in Israel at the time, endured and suffered the time of great tribulation, as warned of by Jesus in Matthew 24:21.
Yet it needs to be understood, that Scripture does not describe a 7-year Tribulation; it describes a period of 7 Seals where 4 Horsemen ride and a period of 7 Trumpets (begins at Revelation 8) called the Great Tribulation, lasting 1260 days or 42 months.
The last day is the 7 vials/bowls of God’s wrath which was the Second Coming of Jesus, and most likely shortly before, the dawn of the Millennium.
Futurists would disagree here, as I once did, by saying,
”of course there will be 7 years of Tribulation.”
It says so in the Bible.
But they can’t tell you where it says so.
For it is an understanding that comes from interpreting the 70 weeks recorded by Daniel as being 70 weeks of years.
Simply put, 69 weeks of years ended with the death of Jesus, followed by an open-ended age of Grace, with the final 70th week being the 7-year tribulation, which they claim has not yet happened, but will do shortly.
But if the 70th week is still in the future, as claimed, then why did Jesus say “the time is fulfilled” in Mark 1:15?
If there is a 2000+ year gap between the 69th and 70th week of Daniel, why doesn’t Daniel, or any other scripture mention it?
Because the presumed massive space of time between the 69th and the 70th week comes from Bible study notes, which are the word of man, and not the word of God.
Study Bible Notes began in earnest with con-man Cyrus A Scofield, the Zionist Congress and the Bible Revision Committee in the 1880s.
Cyrus Ingerson Scofield (August 19, 1843 – July 24, 1921) was an American theologian, minister, and writer whose best-selling annotated Bible popularized futurism and dispensationalism among fundamentalist Christians.
They all have the same theme, Dispensationalism, i.e.
The 7-year Tribulation, the Rapture and a new Covenant with Israel.
All are untrue, because the rapture and the first resurrection occurred more than 2,000 years ago, and the new Covenant, which is available to all, is for those whose faith is in the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is why, more than 2,000 years later, the majority of Christians still await the Second Coming.
To justify this 2,000 year, wait, they will say:
”well, it’s only been like a couple of days in God’s sight.”
Disregarding the fact, that the context of this passage, was for the people at the time, who Peter encouraged by reminding them that God is not slack in fulfilling his promises. 2 Peter 3:9
For sixty-nine weeks out of Daniel’s seventy weeks of years, namely, 69×7=483 years, was perfectly fulfilled, when Jesus started his public ministry.
If the seventieth week is still in the future, then why, during the time of the Apostles, did the religious Jews believe the seventieth week was on their own doorstep, so to speak?
Or put another way; if the seventieth week is still in the future, why does scripture say Jesus confirmed the covenant in Galatians 3:17, which refers to Daniel 9:27?
One of the admins of a group I belong to says:
”I think Daniel’s seventieth week is 66-73 AD, as mid week the city is destroyed.”
Which I believe is likely correct, for this would be a period of approximately 40 years, or a generation since the crucifixion of Christ.
Daniel’s seventieth week was fulfilled with the desolation of Jerusalem and the second Temple.
There is nowhere in the Scriptures to indicate the seventieth week was postponed for yet another 2,000 plus years.
It may well be comfortable to think so, but the teaching is just not there.
The law and the prophets were until John. Luke 16:16
Jesus told the generation he spoke to, that the blood of the prophets slain since the foundation of the world would be required of THEM.
Not some random generation in the far distant future.
Just as foretold by Jesus in the Gospels, and John in Revelations, Jerusalem aka spiritually Sodom and Egypt aka Babylon would fall, and in her was found the blood of the saints etc. Revelation 17:6
We are told this took place in 70 AD.
The great tribulation for Israel was the desolation of Jerusalem, and things were so horrific during the time of Jacob’s trouble, many parents even ate their own children, as foretold by the prophets.
Bear in mind that Jesus warned how all the Old Testament prophecies would be fulfilled during the lifetime of ”this generation.”
And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the LORD thy God hath given thee, in the siege, and in the straitness, wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee: Deuteronomy 28:53
Many pilgrims from the Jewish diaspora who, undeterred by the war, had trekked all the way to Jerusalem to be present at the Temple during Passover, became trapped in Jerusalem during the siege and perished.
All three walls of Jerusalem were eventually destroyed as well as the Temple and the citadels.
The city was then put to the torch, with most survivors taken into slavery; some of those overturned stones and their place of impact can still be seen at the site where the Temple once stood.
Josephus describes some of the horrors of the Roman-Jewish war in Of the War Book VI; Thus did the miseries of Jerusalem grow worse and worse every day; and the seditious were still more irritated by the calamities they were under, even while the famine preyed upon themselves; after it had preyed upon the people.
Flavius Josephus (/dʒoʊˈsiːfəs/; Ancient Greek: Ἰώσηπος, Iṓsēpos; c. AD 37 – c. 100), born Yosef ben Mattityahu[a] (Hebrew: יוֹסֵף בֵּן מַתִּתְיָהוּ), was a Roman–Jewish historian and military leader. Best known for writing The Jewish War, he was born in Jerusalem—then part of the Roman province of Judea—to a father of priestly descent and a mother who claimed Hasmonean royal ancestry.
And indeed, the multitude of carcasses that lay in heaps one upon another was an horrible sight; and produced a pestilential stench; which was an hindrance to those that would make sallies out of the city, and fight the enemy.
But as those were to go in battle array, who had been already used to ten thousand murders, and must tread upon those dead bodies as they marched along, so were not they terrified, nor did they pity men as they marched over them.
Nor did they deem this affront offered to the deceased to be any ill omen to themselves.
The Man of Sin
Jesus came unto his own, and his own received him not. John 1:11
Jesus warned them that because he’d come in his Father’s name and had been rejected, another would come in his own name, who they would receive. John 5:43
Apparently, any name would be received, as long as it was not the name of Jesus.
But they cried out, Away with him, away with him, crucify him.
Pilate saith unto them, Shall I crucify your King?
The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar. John 19:15
Jesus foretold how many false Christ’s and false prophets would arise, with the ability to perform signs and wonders, on a scale, which if it were possible, would deceive the very elect. Matthew 24:24
The most influential false Christ that Jesus had previously warned of, was undoubtedly Simon bar Kokhba, whose followers revolted against Roman authority, which directly led to the death of 580,000 Jews.
The resulting disease and famine in desolated Judea killed far more, and thousands were sold into slavery.
As a false Christ, Simon bar Kokhba, was a ”type” of beast, but not the man of sin who Jesus warned, would come in his own name, and be received.
Although many Preterists believe that the Roman general Titus, fulfilled the role, there is plenty of evidence to indicate that Nero was in fact, the man of sin, the Beast of Revelations.
As Caesar, Nero desired to be worshipped as a god, and the title ‘Nero Caesar’ fits the gematria code number “666.”
John used gematria in which numbers are used to represent certain letters, to reveal Nero without actually writing down his name.
Because most contemporary sources describe him as harboring such a tyrannical and deep-rooted hatred toward Christians, there’s no reason to doubt that the early believers in Christ, would have considered Nero to fit the Biblical character known as the beast down to a T.
Nero’s evil was legendary and there was no end to his vices.
Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (Latin: [ˈɡaːiʊs sweːˈtoːniʊs traŋˈkᶣɪlːʊs]), commonly referred to as Suetonius (/swɪˈtoʊniəs/ swih-TOH-nee-əs; c. AD 69 – after AD 122), was a Roman historian who wrote during the early Imperial era of the Roman Empire. His most important surviving work is De vita Caesarum, commonly known in English as The Twelve Caesars, a set of biographies of 12 successive Roman rulers from Julius Caesar to Domitian. Other works by Suetonius concerned the daily life of Rome, politics, oratory, and the lives of famous writers, including poets, historians, and grammarians. A few of these books have partially survived, but many have been lost.
According to the Roman historian Suetonius, Nero murdered his:
- parents
- wife
- brother
- aunt
and many others close to him and of high station in Rome.
Miles Williams Mathis: ROME – Library of Rickandria
He was:
- a torturer
- a homosexual rapist
- a sodomite
He even married two young boys and paraded them around as his wives.
The Sibylline Oracles label Nero a ”great beast.” and the early Christian author, Lactantius, calls him a ”noxious wild beast.”
Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius (c. 250 – c. 325) was an early Christian author who became an advisor to Roman emperor Constantine I, guiding his Christian religious policy in its initial stages of emergence, and a tutor to his son Crispus. His most important work is the Institutiones Divinae (“The Divine Institutes”), an apologetic treatise intended to establish the reasonableness and truth of Christianity to pagan critics.
It’s a historical fact that Nero began to persecute the Christians throughout the Roman Empire in mid-November 64 AD.
This intense persecution only ended when Nero committed suicide in June 68 AD.
Thus, he made war on the saints for a period of exactly 42 months.
And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months. Revelation 13:5
Mostly all the apostles and their followers were brutally killed by the Antichrist forces of the Beast, like in one of those first false flag operations of Nero.
Nero was responsible for the great fire of Rome, but he blamed it on the Christians, whom he ended up torturing and slaughtering.
One historian writes that the Great Fire ended up damaging Nero’s
”moral reputation and financial viability,”
largely because Nero used that excuse to burn alive ”a despised minority”; namely the Christians.
Tertullian [145-220 AD] credited “Nero’s cruel sword” as providing the martyr’s blood as seed for the church.
Tertullian (/tərˈtʌliən/; Latin: Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus; c. 155 – c. 220 AD) was a prolific early Christian author from Carthage in the Roman province of Africa. He was the first Christian author to produce an extensive corpus of Latin Christian literature and was an early Christian apologist and a polemicist against heresy, including contemporary Christian Gnosticism.
At one point he urged his readers to:
“consult your histories; you will find there that Nero was the first who assailed with the imperial sword the Christian sect.”
In June 68 AD Nero ended his life by thrusting his sword through his own throat, with the help of his personal secretary, Epaphroditus, in part because he realized that his popularity had waned and also because of an attempted coup.
Epaphroditus (Greek: Ἐπαφρόδιτος) is a New Testament figure appearing as an envoy of the Philippian church to assist the Apostle Paul (Philippians 2:25-30). He is regarded as a saint of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, first Bishop of Philippi, and of Andriaca (there are at least two ancient towns called Andriaca, one in Thrace and one in Asia Minor), and first Bishop of Terracina, Italy. There is little evidence that these were all the same man.
Nero lived by the sword and died by the sword.
The saints were called to endure and remain faithful in light of the fact that the beast who so often wielded the sword would himself be killed by the sword. Revelation. 13:10, 14
The Two Witnesses
And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.
These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth. Revelation 11:3-4
Although I disagree with full, or extreme Preterism, one website, Revelation/Revolution, provides some interesting Biblical and historical evidence suggesting that the two witnesses recorded by John, are in fact one person, namely, the post-resurrected Jesus Christ.
What?
I hear you say?
No way could this be true, surely?
Yet Jesus is commonly believed to have made several appearances throughout the Old Testament.
In theological terms, these various comings or appearances of Christ are called ”theophanies.”
In view of this, the post-resurrected Christ may well have returned in the flesh to prophesy for three and a half years from the start of the Jewish War until the start of the siege of Jerusalem.
The fact that the two witnesses are called:
“the two olive trees and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth”
suggests that the two witnesses are indeed one man.
In Zechariah 4:11-14, the two olive trees symbolize the king and the high priest.
According to Hebrews 5:10, Jesus
“was called of God an high priest after the order of Melchisedec.”
Hebrews 7:1 states:
“For this Melchisedec, king of Salem, priest of the most high God.”
By saying that Jesus is a high priest in the order of Melchisedec means that Jesus is both king and high priest.
Given the fact that Revelation 11:4 suggests the two witnesses are both king and high priest, does this mean that the two witnesses must be one man, Jesus Christ?
The fact that Jesus Christ is called the two witnesses is also a suitable title in light of the fact that he seems to have divided his earthly ministry in 2 times three and a half year intervals.
The 3.5 years of his public ministry leading up to the crucifixion, plus the post-death 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.
The two witnesses:
”have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy.” Revelation 11:6
Is it a mere coincidence that Josephus tells of a prolonged drought that nearly dried up the pool of Siloam as well as all the other springs around Jerusalem before the arrival of the Roman army?
Then when Titus arrived with the Roman army in 70 AD, Josephus says that the ”water overflowed.’‘
In other words, there appears to have been a severe drought, followed by a great rainstorm upon the arrival of the Roman army to besiege Jerusalem in 70 AD.
For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. Matthew 24:27
Lightning very often accompanies heavy rain storms.
Perhaps the rainstorm that marked the arrival of the Romans at Jerusalem in 70 AD, was accompanied by lightning, as a sign that Christ, the Son of man, was coming on the clouds in judgment at that time?
In fact, Josephus records in The Wars of the Jews (4.4.5) that in 68 AD:
There broke out a prodigious storm in the night, with the utmost violence, and very strong winds, with the largest showers of rain, with continued lightnings, terrible thunderings, and amazing concussions and bellowings of the earth, that was in an earthquake.
These things were a manifest indication that some destruction was coming upon men, when the system of the world was put into this disorder; and any one would guess that these wonders foreshowed some grand calamities that were coming.
Could it possibly be, that Jesus Christ himself, fulfilled his own prophecy of the two witnesses?
Or is the very notion too outrageous?
And how about Jesus ben [son of] Ananias?
For according to Josephus, his determination, his consistent warning cries against Jerusalem, and his characteristics, mirrored those of Jesus Christ in the most extraordinary and remarkable way.
Writes Josephus in The Wars of the Jews (6.5.3); But, what is still more terrible, there was one Jesus, the son of Ananus, a plebeian and a husbandman, who, four years before the war began, and at a time when the city was in very great peace and prosperity, came to that feast whereon it is our custom for every one to make tabernacles to God in the temple, began on a sudden to cry aloud,
“A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the holy house, a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides, and a voice against this whole people!”
This was his cry, as he went about by day and by night, in all the lanes of the city.
However, certain of the most eminent among the populace had great indignation at this dire cry of his, and took up the man, and gave him a great number of severe stripes; yet did not he either say any thing for himself, or any thing peculiar to those that chastised him, but still went on with the same words which he cried before.
Hereupon our rulers, supposing, as the case proved to be, that this was a sort of divine fury in the man, brought him to the Roman procurator, where he was whipped till his bones were laid bare; yet he did not make any supplication for himself, nor shed any tears, but turning his voice to the most lamentable tone possible, at every stroke of the whip his answer was,
“Woe, woe to Jerusalem!”
And when Albinus (for he was then our procurator) asked him, Who he was? and whence he came? and why he uttered such words? he made no manner of reply to what he said, but still did not leave off his melancholy ditty, till Albinus took him to be a madman, and dismissed him.
Now, during all the time that passed before the war began, this man did not go near any of the citizens, nor was seen by them while he said so; but he every day uttered these lamentable words, as if it were his premeditated vow,
“Woe, woe to Jerusalem!”
Nor did he give ill words to any of those that beat him every day, nor good words to those that gave him food; but this was his reply to all men, and indeed no other than a melancholy presage of what was to come.
This cry of his was the loudest at the festivals; and he continued this ditty for seven years and five months, without growing hoarse, or being tired therewith, until the very time that he saw his presage in earnest fulfilled in our siege, when it ceased; for as he was going round upon the wall, he cried out with his utmost force,
“Woe, woe to the city again, and to the people, and to the holy house!”
And just as he added at the last,
“Woe, woe to myself also!”
there came a stone out of one of the engines, and smote him, and killed him immediately; and as he was uttering the very same presages he gave up the ghost.
Make of this historical account whatever you will, but it has been suggested by some, that this extraordinary individual was actually one and the same as the two witnesses, both the king and the high priest, the embodiment of the post-resurrected Jesus Christ.
Impossible; I hear you say?
I would tend to agree, except for one simple fact.
All things are possible with God. Luke 18:27
Which is not to suggest that any one of us should formulate a doctrine based upon the secular historical record.
From Scripture alone, all we know for certain is, that Christ appeared the one time, to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. Hebrews 9:26
Yet we also know that after his resurrection, and over a period of 40 days, Jesus made at least ten bodily appearances and was seen alive by more than 500 people in total.
Although at times he wasn’t immediately recognized visually, which suggests he could change his appearance at will.
Nevertheless, and regardless of who Jesus, son of Ananus, actually was, I think it safe to say that the selfless and consistent message of warning he conveyed to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, came from the very heart of God.
For He is:
”not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9
And yes, I realize that this is all rather speculative and partly based on extra-biblical sources.
Nevertheless, whilst secular historians like Josephus and Tacticus were not actual eyewitnesses of the events of Jesus’ life, both men are considered unbiased and trustworthy, and both made reference to Jesus in their writings.
CONTINUE
BOOK: EXCERPT: Lucifer’s Flood & the Little Season – The Second Coming – Library of Rickandria
BOOK: Lucifer’s Flood & the Little Season – Library of Rickandria
BOOK: EXCERPT: Lucifer’s Flood & the Little Season – Tribulation Years