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From Here to Forever
at him, their last human mediator. In vain were the efforts of Titus
to save the temple. One greater than he had declared that not one
stone was to be left upon another.
Titus at last decided to take the temple by storm, determined that
if possible it should be saved from destruction. But his commands
were disregarded. A firebrand was flung by a soldier through an
opening in the porch, and immediately the cedarlined chambers
about the holy house were in a blaze. Titus rushed to the place
and commanded the soldiers to quench the flames. His words were
unheeded. In their fury the soldiers hurled blazing brands into the
chambers adjoining the temple and then slaughtered those who had
found shelter there. Blood flowed down the temple steps like water.
After the destruction of the temple, the whole city fell to the
Romans. The leaders of the Jews forsook their impregnable tow-
ers. Titus declared that God had given them into his hands: for
no engines, however powerful, could have prevailed against those
stupendous battlements. Both the city and the temple were razed to
their foundations, and the ground upon which the holy house had
stood was “plowed like a field.” See
Jeremiah 26:18
. More than a
million perished: the survivors were carried away as captives, sold as
slaves, dragged to Rome, thrown to wild beasts in the amphitheaters,
or scattered as homeless wanderers throughout the earth.
The Jews had filled for themselves the cup of vengeance. In
all the woes that followed in their dispersion, they were reaping
the harvest which their own hands had sown. “O Israel, thou has
destroyed thyself”; “for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity.”
Hosea
13:9
;
14:1
. Their sufferings are often represented as a punishment by
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the direct decree of God. Thus the great deceiver seeks to conceal
his own work. By stubborn rejection of divine love and mercy, the
Jews had caused the protection of God to be withdrawn from them.
We cannot know how much we owe to Christ for the peace and
protection which we enjoy. The restraining power of God prevents
mankind from passing fully under the control of Satan. The dis-
obedient and unthankful have great reason for gratitude for God’s
mercy. But when men pass the limits of divine forbearance, restraint
is removed. God does not stand as an executioner of the sentence
against transgression. He leaves the rejectors of His mercy to reap
that which they have sown. Every ray of light rejected is a seed sown