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It matters much… for if one believes 70AD is what’s being spoke of then one must believe that generation is somehow still present.
I don’t t believe in the rapture, but you made some excellent points!
It was fulfilled here:
www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org
I disagree with covenantee that this was fulfilled in the Bar Kokhba rebellion, since the entire prediction in Luke 19:43-44 would have a trench cast about Jerusalem, with the city's enemies surrounding them on every side. This was fulfilled with the construction of a wall of circumvallation which the Romans built within three days' time to totally encircle the city of Jerusalem on every side in AD 70.
Micah 3
This was fulfilled in Jerusalem's first death under the Babylonian invasion by Nebuchadnezzar, in the year 586 BC. As Micah 4:10 wrote concerning the judgment of exile for Israel's people, "...for now shalt thou go forth out of the city, and thou shalt dwell in the field, and thou shalt go even to Babylon; there shalt thou be delivered; there the Lord shall redeem thee from the hand of thine enemies."
Is there any independent historical corroboration, as there is for Bar-Kokhba?
The entire book of Lamentations is a funeral dirge for the dead city of Jerusalem, its temple, and the nation's people sent into exile. This is good enough corroboration for me. Jeremiah was mourning the first death of Jerusalem in that book. In the AD 70 period, Jerusalem experienced its "second death", with its "Lake of Fire" conditions in the city which were remarkably similar to Jerusalem's first death caused by the Babylonian invasion.
But still no independent historical corroboration, in contrast to the explicit corroboration from the Jewish community of Micah 3:12, at Bar-Kokhba.
If Nehemiah wrote concerning the post-exilic return that Jerusalem's houses were not builded (Neh. 7:4), and that the city "lieth waste" (Neh. 2:17), this is corroboration that Jerusalem was completely destroyed. Lamentations agreed with Nehemiah that the wall was torn down, and its gates and bars were sunk into the ground (Lam. 2:9). God had not withdrawn His hand from destroying the city completely. The stones of the temple were "poured out" at the top of every street (Lam. 4:1). So complete was this destruction that Nehemiah's beast when he was making his examination of the city's conditions could not pass through the rubble.
Not according to history, but obviously several posters here cannot tell the difference between history and their imaginations.
The point is not that everyone would see all the events. The point is that not every one would have died who was a witness to 1948. What age defines the generation that understood 1948? Age 5? Age 15? Age 25? Age 35? Jesus' point is that two or more witnesses will still be alive who understood 1948 when it happened.
This rebuilt gate at present is NOT the one the people were worshipping at in Zerubbabel's post-exilic temple. It was Zerubbabel's specific temple which was going to be part of Christ's return. And THAT temple gate was destroyed in AD 70 to the last stone. It is immaterial if another rebuilt eastern gate is sealed up today; that wasn't the specific eastern gate which Ezekiel's prophecy was made about.
Yes, that old Zerubbabel-built eastern gate was the precise one Christ was going to return to. Once it had served its purpose, it was torn down to the last stone.
There are a lot of straw-men arguments here that you are listing.
No, it is not simply my wishing this prediction to be over in the first century - I am relying on Christ's own clear statements that all of the events listed in the Olivet Discourse would be concluded before that first-century generation had passed away. It was those first-century adults and their own children who experienced the "days of vengeance" for their being the "betrayers and murderers" of Christ. "His blood be on us and on our children" was a self-imposed curse which God grimly fulfilled in retribution for the murder of His Son.
I never made that point. I said that people in history never got the point you keep making about 70AD. Not even the Jews.
There was no portion left of that eastern gate of the temple to be buried after AD 70. The entire temple was burned and torn down to the last stone - eastern gate included. It is immaterial if people over time have failed to "get" this fulfilled prophecy of Christ's second coming back then. The Jews who were eye-witnesses of Christ's return from their position inside the besieged city of Jerusalem either died by the sword, plague, or famine, or were imprisoned and died in Roman arenas or in slavery. Dead people and slaves aren't the best at making documents of what they have witnessed.
I'm talking about every one of the gospel accounts which refer to this same dialogue about persecution of the disciples leading up to the days of vengeance / aka the "Great Tribulation", followed immediately by Christ's second coming return. Matthew Mark and Luke all include the stipulation that all of those predicted events would take place before that first-century generation had passed away. Variations in how the gospels record this same dialogue don't matter. It's the same as if multiple witnesses looking from different perspectives on a crime scene notice different aspects of the same event to report to the police. Their combined witness gives a more complete picture of the event than if they all parroted each other verbatim.
