So always in the Bible, God gives a hint, or an indication, of what will come; and then He tells us how to prepare. Next week, I will talk about preparing for the second coming of the Lord, because you need to know how to prepare; but if you don't believe that He's coming soon, then of course you won't want to prepare. You'll just do your own thing.
Luke 21:21 - “Let those who are in Judea flea to the mountains. Let those who are in the midst of her, depart”.
He tells them: get out of the city when you see the sign; and it says:
Luke 21:22 - “Let not those in the country enter her, for these are the days of vengeance, that all the things which are written, may be fulfilled”.
Luke 21:23-24 – “And woe to those who are pregnant, those with babies in those days, for there'll be great distress in the land, great wrath upon the people. They will fall by the edge of the sword, be lead away captive into all nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled by the gentiles, until the time of the gentiles are fulfilled”.
Here's the sign: “when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies”. Now when I was in Rome, we did a visit to Rome one time, and we went around the Colossium... I loved it - the history is just stunning! We went through what's called the Arch of Titus, it’s a phenomenal structure. It's a memorial arch, that was built in honour of Titus.
Titus was a Roman general, and when you look on the inside of the arch, you see something interesting. You see inscriptions on the sides of the arc. On one side, it has a Roman general in a chariot, and then behind it's got people in chains, who are captive; and then behind that, it's got loads of treasure, and in particular, one item of treasure is the candlestick (or the menorah) from the temple in Jerusalem.
Now Jesus said: when you see this sign, that's what's going to happen. When you go to Rome now, you can see the picture - that it did happen!
There was a rebellion in Judea, around about the period of about 66AD. They began to revolt against the Romans, and so the Romans sent an emperor - a military commander called Vespasian, who surrounded Jerusalem, set up a siege around Jerusalem… the sign! “When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies” - There it is, right there!
What do you think the believers, who remembered Jesus' words, all thought, when they saw the armies encamped around them? Jesus told us this would happen! We need to get out! Of course, they can't get out, because they're surrounded. Then suddenly, there's a death of a Roman emperor; and Vespasian is going to replace him. He's going to become the new emperor - so they call him to come back to Rome, to take over his new role as the emperor. He withdraws all his armies from Jerusalem, and goes back for a short period to Rome, in order to receive his positioning as emperor, to take over the running of the empire. Of course, now that he's running the empire, he's not going back to Jerusalem… so he sends Titus. There is a gap! The armies surround the city; then the armies withdraw from the city; then the armies return, and surround the city - so there was a window of time, and in that window of time, everyone who remembered Jesus' words…
“when you see Jerusalem surrounded, flee. Don't come into the city.”
History records that every Christian in that city left the city, and they went to a town, I think it's called Bella, somewhere in East Judea (or West Judea? Somewhere in another place) - so all the Christians left. They just left! It must have been amazing to watch them all leaving the city. Thousands upon thousands of Christians left the city. They're leaving - just leaving everything; giving up their jobs, everything they have built. They leave with whatever they can carry, and just go - because they've heard Jesus' words: when you see this, it's all about to be destroyed.
You can imagine the difficulty that people would have, and the act of faith it requires to let everything go, because you've heard the word of Jesus, and yet everything looks so comfortable. The enemies have all retired... We're doing okay now, we're all right... But very soon, Titus came; he encamped around it, he besieged it, he cut off all supplies to the city. He starved the occupants, and then breached the city; there were 3 million people, and I think he put two million to death.