The Mystery of Ephraim

I create darkness; I create evil; I, the Lord, do all these things (Isaiah 45:7).

An AUTOPSY Of JERUSALEM in the AD 70 INFERNO

A POST MORTEM OF JERUSALEM IN AD 70

An autopsy (also known as a post-mortem examination or necropsy) is the examination of the body of a dead person and is performed primarily to determine the cause of death, to identify or characterize the extent of disease states that the person may have had, or to determine whether a particular medical or surgical treatment has been effective. 

A post-mortem is an examination of a dead body to determine the cause of death.

Spiritually and physically Jerusalem faced its death in AD 70 but nobody has asked and wondered why? Have the warnings from the Prophets were of no effect? Why such a silence?

Rabbi Jonathan ben Zakkai, who witnessed the Roman conquest of Jerusalem in AD 66–70, wrote that the Shekinah (the glory of God) did indeed leave the Temple in AD 66 and moved to the Mount of Olives.

He said that the Lord’s presence “abode on the Mount of Olives hoping that Israel would repent, but they did not; while a Bet Kol [a supernatural voice] issued forth announcing, ‘Return, O backsliding children [Jeremiah 3:14]. Return unto Me, and I will return unto you [Malachi 3:7].’ When they did not repent, it said, ‘I will return to My place [Hosea 5:15].’” (Midrash Rabbah, Lamentations 2:11)

For the Lord promised:

 Ye shall therefore keep My statutes and My judgments, which if a man do, he shall live in them: I am the Lord. Leviticus 18:5

And this promise was reinstated later by Moses before Israel entered the Promised Land:

That thou mayest love the Lord thy God, and that thou mayest obey His voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto Him; for He is thy life and the length of thy days, that thou mayest dwell in the land which the Lord swore unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them. Deuteronomy 30:20

And elsewhere:

Whosoever shall be wanting, he shall not live. II King 10:19

But Thou, O God, shalt bring them down into the pit of destruction; bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days. Psalms 55:23

But it shall not be well with the wicked; neither shall he prolong his days, which are as a shadow, because he feareth not before God. Ecclesiastes 8:13

For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law: that “the man who doeth those things shall live by them. Roman 10:5

And in a form of a question:

Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die, saith the Lord God, and not that he should return from his ways and live? Ezekiel 18:23

Certainly the answer is that the righteous will live and the wicked shall die by fire. And this principle is reaffirmed in the New Testament, which is built on the foundation of the Old Testament:

“I indeed baptize you with water; but One mightier than I cometh, the straps of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose. He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with FIRE (pyr g4442). 17 His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor and will gather the wheat into His garner; but the chaff He will burn with FIRE (pyr g4442) unquenchable.” Luke 3:16-17

Christ came as lamb, but He could come with wrath too:

Psalm 2:¹² Kiss the Son, lest He be angry and ye perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. — Yes, the Son could have wrath, too.

And the Son of God proclaimed about Himself: “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth. I came not to send peace, but a sword” Matthew 10:34.

Isaiah 5:⁴ What could have been done more to My vineyard than I have not done in it? Why, when I looked for it to bring forth good grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?

John Gill: “what is further or hereafter to be done to my vineyard”, and “I have not done in it?” that is, by way of punishment; I have reproved and chastised them, but all in vain; what remains further for me (to do), because of their ingratitude and unfruitfulness? I will utterly destroy them as a nation and church; —  more like sects than “a nation and church.”

⁵ “And now, I will tell you what I will do to My vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down.

Gill: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; that is, the vineyard shall be eaten by the wild beasts that will enter into it, when the hedge is taken away; or “it shall be burnt”; that is, the hedge, being a hedge of thorns.

⁶ And I will lay it waste; it shall not be pruned nor dug, but there shall come up briers and thorns. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.”

Calvin: I will lay it waste. God will not take pains to dig and prune it, and consequently it will become barren for want of dressing; briars and thorns will spring up to choke its branches; and, what is more, by withholding rain, God will dry up its roots. — “I will deprive you of all my blessings.”

The above Scriptures are all setting the stage for the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. 

And here it is expressed in a question:

Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it? Amos 3:6 

Forty Years earlier, John the Baptist warned that  the Son of God was prophesied to Baptize His subject with Fire:

Matthew 3:11 I indeed baptized you with water unto repentance, but He that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear. He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with FIRE.

Luke 3:16 John answered, saying unto them all, “I indeed baptize you with water; but One mightier than I cometh, the straps of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose. He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with FIRE.”

Luke 9:⁵⁴ And when His disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, wilt Thou that we command FIRE to come down from heaven and consume them, even as Elijah did?” ⁵⁵ But He turned and rebuked them and said, “Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. ⁵⁶ For the Son of Man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” And they went to another village.

Note: As Elijah did (II Kings 1:10, 12).

Like Chaff with Unquenchable Fire

Matthew 3:12 His fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His threshing floor and gather His wheat into the garner; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

Luke 3:17 His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor and will gather the wheat into His garner; but the chaff He will burn with fire unquenchable.”

Luke 23:²⁷ And there followed Him a great company of people, and of women who also bewailed and lamented Him.

²⁸ But Jesus, turning unto them, said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.

²⁹ For behold, the days are coming in which they shall say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore and the breasts which never gave suck.’

³⁰ Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us!’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us!’

³¹ For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?” — This idiom was spoken as the multitudes were following Jesus to the place of His execution. If men do these things torturing and executing the Lamb (i.e. the Son of God; the green tree), what will happen when they decide to execute “the dry tree” — the less than righteous, the innocents and the defenseless? 

These warnings were for the Events leading to the Atrocities of Jerusalem in AD 70

What Happened in AD 70, Forty Years after Christ’s Death?

Titus’ Siege of Jerusalem began in April 14, AD 70

On 14 April 70, during Passover, General Titus laid siege to Jerusalem. To the northeast of the old city, on Mount Scopus, the legions XII Fulminata and XV Apollinaris shared a large camp; V Macedonica was camped at a short distance. When X Fretensis arrived from Syria, it occupied the Mount of Olives, in front of the Temple. The soldiers of these legions, each of around five thousand soldiers during the first century, had a special incentive to fight: they had been defeated by the Zealots in 66 AD, and had Jerusalem controlled by Judean rebel factions and they wanted revenge.

During this same Passover, One Zealot leader, Eleaser, allowed all inhabitants to perform their religious duties in the Temple. The festival, however, was spoiled by other militias who took swords with them and forced some Romans into surrender. Despite early successes in repelling the Roman sieges, the Zealots, who were also known as the Assassins, fought amongst themselves, and they lacked proper leadership, resulting in poor discipline.

The Roman attack served to unite the militias, who started to make sorties, but failed to destroy the new weapon that the Romans had prepared: siege towers. These were taller than the walls and enabled the legionaries to throw missiles on the defenders of the walls; when the latter tried to evade the missiles, the battering-rams could do their work. After fifteen days, the wall collapsed, and the Jews withdrew from Bezetha to their second wall. Titus ordered an all-out attack on this wall. The militias were able to ward off for four days, but on the fifth day the second wall yielded to the violence of the battering-rams. 

Fighting continued in the streets of Jerusalem, where the defenders inflicted heavy losses upon the Romans, who were forced to retire through the breach to Bezeth, a suburb north and north-west of the Temple, built opposite the tower Antonia. After four days of heavy fighting, the latter again managed to drive away the Jews from the second wall, which was immediately destroyed. 

Titus now decided upon a show of strength, staged an army parade. Meanwhile, his adviser Flavius Josephus was to talk to the men on the walls, trying to induce them to surrender. The Jewish leaders were not impressed by the arguments of the turncoat, and on the fifth day, the Roman soldiers renewed the struggle: they started to build four large siege dams, aimed at the Antonia fortress. (It was to be taken by force, because it had large stores and two great cisterns.) 

The Romans knew that the Zealots would fight for every inch of their city, and understood that the siege of Jerusalem would take a long time. Therefore, Titus changed his plans. There were signs that the supplies of Jerusalem were giving out: some Jews had left the city, hoping to find food in the valleys in front of the walls. Many of them had been caught and crucified – some five hundred every day. The soldiers took pleasures by nailing their victims in different postures, while for others they decided to starve them into surrender. In three days, Jerusalem was surrounded with an eight kilometer long palisade. All trees within fifteen kilometres of the city were cut down. 

The death rate among the besieged increased. Soon, the Kidron valley and the Valley of Hinnom were filled with corpses. One defector told Titus that their number was estimated at 115,880. Desperate people tried to leave Jerusalem. When they had succeeded in passing their own lines and had not been killed by Roman patrols, they reached the palisade. One of the defectors was the famous teacher Yohanan ben Zakkai, who escaped in a coffin and saved his life by predicting Titus that he, too, would be an emperor. 

Since there was no wood, the construction of new siege dams to attack the Antonia took three weeks. A sortie of weakened Jewish warriors had no success. Soon, the sound of the battering-rams was to be heard, and one night, a wall of the Antonia collapsed; but the legionaries discovered that a new wall had been built behind the breach. The Antonia had to be taken by other means.

During a dark night at the beginning of July, twenty-four Roman soldiers climbed the walls of the castle, killed the guard, and sounded a trumpet. The garrison of Antonia overestimated the number of enemies; many fled to the Temple. At the same time, Titus ordered his men to enter the mine that the militias had made. At three o’ clock in the morning, these men entered the fortress; after ten hours of fighting, they had driven all the militias away.

On 14 July, prisoners told the Zealots that the priests in the Temple had been forced to interrupt the daily sacrifices, which had greatly demoralized these defenders of Jerusalem. The Antonia fortress was demolished. The stones were used to build a new dam, this time towards the Temple terrace. The Romans used the dam to set fire to the porticoes on the northern and western side of the terrace, but it was impossible to bash through the walls. On the tenth of August, the Temple itself was set on fire. Six thousand women and children were taken prisoner at the Court of the Gentiles, while the legionaries sacrificed to their standards in the Holy of Holies.

The Temple was set on fire. During the next few days, the Romans destroyed the archives, the quarter immediately south of the Temple, and the building where the Sanhedrin convened. Then, they descended into the Old City. Meanwhile, dams had been prepared to attack the palace; when Titus’ men had taken it, the last defenders managed to hide themselves in the sewer system but to no avail. By 8 September, Titus was master of what was left of the City.

On his return to Rome, Vespasian, Titus and their soldiers celebrated a triumph. They paraded through the streets of their capital in a beautiful procession, which culminated in the punishment of the Jewish militias leaders: Simon son of Giora was executed and John of Gischala was sentenced to life imprisonment. The sacred vessels, the table on which the Bread of God’s Presence had been put, the Menorah, the curtain and all the other objects that nobody except the high priest was allowed to see, were carried through the Roman streets.

Jerusalem was set on Fire. Any Jews that remained were forced to pay an additional tax (fiscus Judaicus). The boundless riches from the Temple treasury were used to strike coins with the legend JUDAEA CAPTA (“Judaea defeated”). Any Roman would be reminded of their victory to this day. 

During the four years of war, the Romans had taken 97,000 prisoners. Thousands of them were forced to become gladiators and were killed in the arena, fighting wild beasts or fellow gladiators. Some, who were known as criminals, were burned alive. Others were employed at Seleucia, where they had to dig a tunnel. But most of these prisoners were brought to Rome, where they were forced to build the Forum of Peace (a park in the heart of Rome) and the Colosseum. The Menorah and the Table were exhibited in the Temple of Peace.

But which sects had escaped death? History recorded only two sects that escaped the inferno of AD 70:

(1) The Christians, known as Nazarenes in Acts 24:5.  Many died as martyrs but according to Eusebius, some received divine warning and escaped to a northern town called Pella, west of the Jordan River.

(2) Pharisees of the House of Hillel escaped to Yavne. These were headed by a rabbi, Johanan ben Zakkai, the head of the Sanhedrin; he was smuggled out of besieged Jerusalem in a coffin. Later, his followers re-emerged as Rabbinic Jews who established the Hillel Calendar, which was revealed by Hillel II in about AD 359 concerning the rules of the Calendar.

This might explain the sacrifices as wave offerings of the two lambs during Shavuot to be acceptable by the Lord in Leviticus 23. 

Why two lambs and not one? And why on Shavuot?

Leviticus 23:¹⁹ Then ye shall sacrifice one kid of the goats for a sin offering, and two lambs of the first year for a sacrifice of peace offerings. ²⁰ And the priest shall wave them with the bread of the firstfruits for a wave offering before the Lord with the two lambs; they shall be holy to the Lord for the priest.

Shavuot is also known as the Feast of Firstfruits. So some of the Firstfruits were accepted before the Lord. During the AD 70 inferno, all the sects in Judea were thrown into the fire, but the Pharisee (Hillel) and the Nazarenes survived. Were they the two lambs wave offering acceptable before the Lord?

All other sects of the Jews were consumed:  the Sadducees, Herodians, Boethusians, Essenes, together with the House of Shammai Pharisees and those of its military arm, the Zealots. They all met their dead ends and disappeared from history. Were they receiving their “FIRE”? Were these sects facing their Sodom and Gomorrah? If not why not?

Were these “baptised in FIRE” as warned by John the Baptist? Only the Hillel branch of Pharisees and the new sect of Nazarene fled into safety. We need to note a very important point in this judgment. God included His holy city of Jerusalem in this judgment. He did not exclude these sects of Sadducees and Essenes from His judgment during the inferno of AD 70. 

Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it? Amos 3:6 

“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth. I came not to send peace, but a sword” Matthew 10:34.

A sword is a bladed melee weapon intended for cutting or thrusting that is intended to kill. The blade can be straight or curved. Thrusting swords have a pointed tip on the blade, and tend to be straighter; slashing swords have a sharpened cutting edge on one or both sides of the blade, and are more likely to be curved, all are designed for both thrusting and slashing.

The Gospels recorded the Logos coming to the earth as a Lamb in the land of Galilee and Judea but forty years later Josephus and other writings recorded He came as the fiery Son of God, with a Sword. That’s what Matthew 10:34 says, isn’t it?

If the Son of God had indeed came with a sword in AD 70, then it’s just logical that we take a deeper look to examine in critical details why these other sects were consumed by either the FIRE or SWORD in the inferno:

An Obituary of the PHARISEES (Shammites) — Dead in the Jerusalem Inferno.

An Eulogy Message of its Death — Bind the Common People with Rivid Rules and Penalties; Many Pharisees exalted the Sabbath and its numerous rules over healing. Hypocrites, Liars and Snakes; Lack of Justice, Mercy and Faith.

A Post-Mortem Analysis about the Pharisees HERE

An Obituary of the SADDUCEES — Dead in the Jerusalem Inferno.

An Eulogy of its Death — Hellenized Themselves with the Governing Authorities (the Greek and then Roman). Following the Samaritans, they Interpreted Passover on the Misguided Early Fourteenth of Nisan and Pentecost Counted from the Weekly Sabbath. Rejection of the Oral Law and Ridiculed the Idea of Resurrection or Life after Death.

A Post-Mortem Analysis about the Sadducees HERE

An Obituary of the BOETHUSIANS — Dead in the Jerusalem Inferno.

An Eulogy of its Death — Following the Sadducees and Samaritans, a Passover on the Misguided Early Fourteenth; Pentecost counted from the Weekly Sabbath so that Shavuot was always on a Sunday. Allied themselves with King Herod, the Herodians and the Hellenised Sadducees.

A Post-Mortem Analysis about the Boethusiasms HERE

An Obituary of the ESSENES — Dead in the Jerusalem Inferno.

An Eulogy of its Death — Lived in Isolated Communities and Rejected the Calendar established by the Sandhdrin by having one of its own of having 364 days in a year. Every New Year starts strictly on a Spring Equinox with a New Month (of 30 or 31 days) and a New Week always on a Wednesday, disrupting the Orthodox weekly cycle.

A Post-Mortem Analysis about the Essenes HERE

An Obituary of the ZEALOTS — Dead During the Jerusalem and AD 34 Inferno.

An Eulogy of its Death — known also as the Sicarii, or the Assassins. With a dagger hidden in their cloak, they inspired terror and extremism in the city or even the countryside. Zealous and militants for the Law, they were a Comrade of or considered the Military Arm of the Shammai Pharisees. Lived to kill or be killed. 

A Post-Mortem Analysis about the Zealots HERE

A Warning Before Their Judgement:

Luke 3:16 John answered, saying unto them all, “I indeed baptize you with water; but One mightier than I cometh, the straps of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose. He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with FIRE. 

The word “FIRE” is highlighted above, with a hope that the Blind could finally see. Dark days lie ahead of those who observe Passover at the beginning of the fourteenth, Pentecost on a Sunday and those formulating their own calendar. 

On Passover: The Sadducees and Boethusians were indeed following the Samaritans, a Babylonians brought over by the Assyrians to live in Israel in place of the Lost Ten Tribes.

On Pentecost: These Samaritans brought along their Sun worshipping rituals; hence they reinterpreted the Scriptures to incorporate their yearly Shavuot on Sundays into their beliefs.

On the Calendar: If the Oracles mentioned in Roman 3:1-4 include the Calendar, any advocate having a counterfeit calendar would have their hopes and dreams better off flushing down the toilet. And indeed they were — watch the Essenes; they shared the same fate.

When we look back, one cannot avoid concluding that God had deemed that the Sadducees, the Boethusians and the Essenes were worthy of extinction during the AD 70 INFIRNO. Everything about them were destroyed. The portion of the Shammai Pharisees also followed suit; only the Christians survived by fleeing to Pella and the Hillel branch of Pharisees limped off to Yavne. Are they the two lambs offered as wave offerings acceptable to the Lord?

Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it? Amos 3:6 

Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die, saith the Lord God, and not that he should return from his ways and live? Ezekiel 18:23

The answer is obvious. God executed judgement during the Jerusalem AD 70 Inferno. And the following verses in Ezekiel repeated and expanded below for reflection. The message of Ezekiel was and is to the House of Israel where most of the CoG Communities are located. Ezekiel was already a captive when he gave the warning, “I was among the captives by the River of Chebar” Eze 1:1 so his warning was not for those already in Babylon but for those far beyond his time.

Ezekiel 3:¹⁷ “Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel; therefore hear the word out of My mouth, and give them warning from Me.

¹⁸ When I say unto the wicked, ‘Thou shalt surely die,’ and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way to save his life, the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand.

¹⁹ Yet if thou warn the wicked, and he turn not from his wickedness nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul.

²⁰ Again, when a righteous man doth turn from his righteousness and commit iniquity, and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die. Because thou hast not given him warning, he shall die in his sin, and his righteousness which he hath done shall not be remembered; but his blood will I require at thine hand.

²¹ Nevertheless if thou warn the righteous man that the righteous sin not, and he doth not sin, he shall surely live because he is warned; also thou hast delivered thy soul.” Ezekiel 3:17-21

Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die, saith the Lord God, and not that he should return from his ways and live? Ezekiel 18:23

And I gave them My statutes and showed them My judgments, which if a man obey, he shall even live in them. Ezekiel 20:11

But the house of Israel rebelled against Me in the wilderness. They walked not in My statutes and they despised My judgments, which if a man does them, he shall even live; and My Sabbaths they greatly polluted. “Then I said I would pour out My fury upon them in the wilderness to consume them.” Ezekiel 20:13

Zechariah 12:⁹ And it shall come to pass in that day that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.¹⁰ And I will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplication; and they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him as one who is in bitterness for his firstborn.

Although in mourning and in grief, the Jewish Orthodoxy survives, but would those from the Church of God Communities survive? By adhering to the same belief of Passover and methodology of counting Pentecost of the Sadducees and Boethusians, would they repeat history by following their fate?

If not, why not? What other features and characteristics are there for the end-time Church other than wretched, blind and naked? Is God going to spew them out of His mouth? What does that mean — to spew them out of His mouth? Onto a whirlpool and not into a FIRE?

“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth. I came not to send peace, but a sword” Matthew 10:34.

~ by Joel Huan on December 9, 2020.

Posted in Pharisees, Sadducees, Sects