Luke 19:43-44 (KJV): For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round about thee, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.

Which of his visitations did Jesus have in mind when He charged Jerusalem with not knowing the timing of it? Commentators and Bible reference systems seem divided on the matter. And, not surprisingly, for the Bible describes two types of God’s visitation to people – one good and the other bad. It seems the Lord came first to bless but when rejected and murdered then came to punish and take revenge.

But before delving into that dichotomy let’s get to the charge Jesus lays on the city in this verse. It was that dreadful conquest and destruction would befall Jerusalem because they knew not the TIME of their visitation.

Timing, you see, is so important. God forewarns of many events, speaking through his prophets, but to prepare for them one must know when they will occur before they do. And that can only be known by hearing and heeding God when he speaks to us personally. In Jerusalem’s case God for three and a half years had been speaking to them personally through his Son (Heb. 1:2).

The Lord Jesus was still on earth and approaching Jerusalem when He addressed this dire warning of severe judgement to the city. But again, which visitation did He have in mind when He chided them for not knowing the time of it? Was it his own visitation to them as their Messiah and Immanuel (God with us) that Zacharias prophesied in Luke 1:68, 78 and 7:16?

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel for He hath visited and redeemed his people …. through the tender mercy of our God whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace … and they glorified God, saying , That a great prophet is risen up among us and, that God hath visited his people.

Or was it their rejection of his person, as God Almighty come in human flesh to visit them? Or was it that “this same Jesus” would impose his visitation on them as Judge, in fiery anger destroying them and their city?

Certainly, it was the latter He warned of in the Matt. 22:1-14 parable.  In this kingdom story a king makes a marriage feast for his son but the invited guests will not come. This, of course, depicts Israel’s rejection of their Messiah, his kingdom and salvation, ending with them putting Him to death.

Note the king’s response to the spurned invitations and the slaying of his messengers and, finally their murder of his Son:

When the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies and destroyed those murderers and burned up their city.

The Lord Jesus was a prophet and here in parable form He clearly prophesies the destruction of Jerusalem. As He also does in the parable of the vineyard owner (Matt. 21:33-46) whose tenants beat his servants and then kill his son and heir. Even the chief priests and elders had to agree that the Lord of the vineyard should “miserably destroy those wicked men and let out his vineyard to other husbandmen”. You see, both parables were spoken to and aimed squarely at the leaders of Israel, and (in Matt. 21:43) the Lord emphatically drives home their meaning, saying:

Therefore I say unto you, the kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.

Then addressing the city directly in Matt. 23:37 the Lord says:

O, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophet, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chocks under her wings, and ye would not. Behold your house [thus meaning the temple, the city and the nation] is left unto you desolate.

According to the contemporary historian Flavius Josephus, the main source of facts about the war in 70 AD, the city was ravaged by murder, famine, and cannibalism after a siege that began three days before Passover. Battle won, the Roman victors then took revenge. Fellow historian Tacitus writes that about 600,000 to 1,100,000 people were killed in the siege. As punishment, males aged 17 and older were put in hard labour camps or made gladiators. Women and children were sold into slavery.

Now, granted, it’s difficult for us, saved in the present dispensation of grace in which judgement and punishment are suspended and forgiveness and reconciliation prevail, to see our beloved Jesus coming “burn up their city” in revenge.

Yet, since the Bible is true we must believe what it says. That although Jesus came to Israel as the Messiah who saves, heals, resurrects and forgives sin, he also warned the nation of the direst consequences if they failed to receive Him.

Fact is, that even after his death the Lord continued to show the wayward nation mercy giving her a 40-year probation period, from his first preaching to them through to 70 AD, in which to repent and turn to Him. Speaking to Israel, He called it “your day”.  Thus, in Luke 19: 42 He weeps over Jerusalem, saying:

If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong to thy peace, but now they are hid from thine eyes.

Israel’s “day” was similar to the 120 year opportunity to repent the Lord gave mankind before unleashing a global flood in judgement in “the days of Noah”. In fact, the Lord cited the example of Noah and the Flood to describe what would happen when He would be revealed in judgement. And I am convinced he meant his coming back within the lifetime of those that heard Him. Jesus plainly said:

And as it was in the days of Noe so shall it also be in the days (plural) of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day Noe entered into the ark and the flood came and destroyed them all (Luke 17:26-27).

Pointing out that it was “the same day” that Lot left Sodom that fire and brimstone fell “and destroyed them all”, Jesus insisted, “even thus it shall be in the day the Son of man is revealed” Luke 17: 30).

“Revealed” here translates the Greek word apokalupto which elsewhere in Matt. 24 is translated as “coming”. But what Jesus was saying here was that He would be revealed in judgement on unfaithful Israel and that those who believed on Him should quickly flee.

The Apostle Paul warned in 2 Thess. 1:7 of what would happen when the Lord Jesus was revealed (apokalupto) in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who know not God and obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ”. They would burn.

It is my conviction that he was referring to the conflagration and destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD carried out at the command of the glorified King Jesus. As the apostle said, “Our God is a consuming fire” and “it is fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”, who, of course, is Jesus Christ Himself.

Now, certainly, under better circumstances, visitation is a great blessing and an immense privilege. But with it come responsibilities. Job (31:14) asked, “What shall I do when God is risen up and when He visiteth, what shall I answer Him?”

Jerusalem’s answer, through her rulers, to the coming of Messiah among them, was to accuse Jesus of blasphemy, falsely try Him and have Him crucified. The Lord’s response after his resurrection and speaking from his seat at the right hand of God, was to warn Jerusalem through his apostles that He would visit them again – this time in judgement.

Meanwhile we must ask again which “visitation” did Jesus refer to in Luke 19:44. For years I thought the Lord meant here his earthly ministry to Israel and their rejection of Him at the end of such “visitation”. However, the context in verse 44 clearly points to the utter destruction of Jerusalem.

And I was not alone. The Cambridge Bible reference system points to Luke 1:68, to define the Luke 19:44 “visitation” as that which Zacharias saw as the “Lord God of Israel” having “visited and redeemed his people”. And other reference systems and commentaries hold the same view.

Yet the Old Testament prophets very largely spoke of “visitation” not as a time of blessing but of terrible judgement. Thus Isaiah 10:3 asks the wayward children of Israel, “What will ye do in the day of visitation and, and in the desolation that shall come from afar … and where will ye leave your glory?”

Jer. 8:12 warns “…in the time of their visitation they shall be cast down, says the Lord”. Jer. 10:15 declares: “They are vanity and the work of errors: in the time of their visitation they shall perish”, a prophecy repeated in Jer. 51:18. “For I will bring evil upon the, even the year of their visitation, saith the Lord” in Jer. 23:12. What’s more the prophets also warned of the visitation of judgement on all the nations surrounding Israel (Moab, Jer. 48:44 and Egypt, Jer. 46:21, for example).

Therefore, what Jesus was saying in Luke 19:44 was that He would pay a second visit to Jerusalem in severe judgement, His “visitation” would be courtesy of a Roman army but “leave no stone unturned” in its destruction of the  beloved but unfaithful city.

Remember that in his forewarnings the Lord said all these things would happen in the lifetime of those He spoke to. “Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled” (Matt. 24:34).

As to the TIMING of it, Israel’s leaders should have known from the Old Testament prophets that Messiah would come, be rejected, and then visit again, as Paul put it, “in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not the gospel (good news) of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power” (2 Thess. 8-9).

But, hang on, I hear you say. Isn’t Paul talking about the Lord’s second coming in the future when He will certainly punish those who reject Him? Well, no, he is not. He is speaking of the certain destruction that would come upon Jerusalem and all in Israel who failed to put their trust in Jesus as their Messiah and thus “escape the wrath to come” as John the Baptist had warned (Matt. 3:7).

We need to remember that all the books of the New Testament were written and completed before the destruction of Jerusalem by a Roman army under Titus in 70 AD. And it is impossible that God would not in them warn his people of such a devastating and world-shaking event. Thus, in scripture we find Jesus and his apostles warning again and again of this impending judgement. The problem is that we have sat too long under incorrect teaching that has sought to postpone such judgement to a far future time – that of the rapture, the “great tribulation” and the “second coming”, which, by the way, is always denoted by the Greek word parousia. Which means to personally arrive and stay.

Erchomai, in contrast, often also translated as “coming” means to “come and go”, as evidenced in Mark 6:31 where many people were “coming and going”. Accordingly, in Mark 13:26 Jesus says: “And then shall they see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory” and the word translated “coming” is erchomai. Thus it means a visit or visitation.

It is my conviction this visit by the Lord in full glory takes place long after the 70 AD visitation in judgement, as signified by the phrase “and then”. It will be when the Lord appears to bring in his kingdom and judge the quick and the dead. This occurs in the “Day of Christ”, the dispensation which follows the present dispensation of the grace of God.

So, let me stick my neck out and assert that the “great tribulation” was that of 70 AD. It was what Jesus referred to when He said:

For then shall be great tribulation such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days be shortened, there should be no flesh saved, but for the elect’s sake, those days shall be shortened (Matt. 24:21-22).

It was what John the Baptist warned of, saying “flee from the wrath to come”. It was what Jude told the called out of Israel he wrote to them, advising that “… the Lord having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not”. With the clear implication God was about to do so again.

Indeed, the Lord through Jude cites Enoch’s prophecy that “… the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints (lit. angels and in this case the Roman army) to execute judgement upon all and to convince all that are ungodly among them of their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed … for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever (Jude 13).

Jesus Himself in Luke 21: 20-24 spoke plainly of Jerusalem “compassed with armies” warning of the conquest that would be her “desolation”. He said there would be “great distress in the land and wrath (God’s wrath that is) “upon this people, not those of later generations.

For these are the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword and shall be led away captive into all nations, and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.

All this sounds terribly severe but we need to also remember that God knows “how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgement to be punished” (2 Pet. 2:9).

Thus, Paul advises the already persecuted Thessalonian believers …

... it is a righteous thing with God to recompense (repay) tribulation to them that trouble you; and to you who are troubled rest with us when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire taking vengeance on those that believe not God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Thess. 1:6-7-8).

Granted, it is hard to reconcile “gentle Jesus, meek and mild”, who freely forgives, pardons and fully accepts all who turn to Him in this the present “dispensation of the grace of God” (Eph. 3:1-4), with Him coming as the Son of Man to sack and destroy Jerusalem with huge and horrific loss of life. Yet they are one and the same person.

And we too, as grace-saved believers, must not neglect the time of our soon coming visitation, for when the Lord Jesus appears (Titus 2:13) He will fulfil our blessed hope which is the bringing of his kingdom (2 Tim. 4:1) and the judging “of the quick and the dead”.

Now I’m fully aware this understanding of the Lord’s words and the 70 AD destruction of Jerusalem will bring upon me the charge of being a “preterist” - that is one who holds that nearly all the events prophesied in the New Testament have already occurred and are history. But that is not the case.

I do not believe that all of Jesus’s solemn warnings in the Olivet discourse recorded in Matt. 24 have already been fulfilled. Verses 30-31 describe far future events. And, in any case, the Hebrew understanding of “midrash” – which is that a prophecy can be fulfilled both in the time it was spoken and again much later in another time and age - applies to interpretation of the rest of the chapter.

I relate the “sign of the Son of man appearing in heaven” and “his coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory” to the appearing the Apostle Paul spoke of in Titus 2:13 and 2 Tim. 4:1. Certainly, this appearing to bless and do good did not occur in 70 AD. It yet awaits fulfilment and, thankfully, it is the very next thing for God to do in his redemptive programme of the ages.

John Dudley Aldworth

Email: john.aldworth@hotmail.com

More studies can be found at the website Day of Christ Ministries.