and everything that could be burned was burned. The slaughter of the Jews was appalling; thousands of men, women and children were ruthlessly butchered within the walls, and the temple courts were literally flooded with human blood. This event occurred in the year 70 A. D.; and according to Josephus, in the same month and on the same day of the month as that on which the once glorious Temple of Solomon had fallen a prey to the flames kindled by the king of Babylon.[1] Of the temple furniture the golden candlestick and the table of shewbread from the Holy Place were carried by Titus to Rome as trophies of war; and representations of these sacred pieces are to be seen on the arch erected to the name of the victorious general.
Since the destruction of the splendid Temple of Herod no other structure of the kind, no Temple, no House of the Lord as the terms are used distinctively, has been reared on the eastern hemisphere. Sometime between 361 and 363 A. D. the Roman emperor Julian, surnamed because of his reversion from Christianity to paganism Julian the Apostate, attempted to reconstruct the Temple at Jerusalem. His purpose was not that of devotion to nor love for God; but that of controverting prophecy, and thus proving false the Christian belief.[2] So ends the category of Temples reared to the name of the living God prior to the dispensation of the fulness of times.
- ↑ Josephus, Wars of the Jews, Book VI; 4:5, 8. For a detailed and graphic account of the destruction of the Temple see chapters 4 and 5 in their entirety.
- ↑ "He actually began excavations, but his workmen were driven in great panic from the spot, by terrific explosions and bursts of flame. The Christians regarded the occurrence as miraculous; and Julian himself, it is certain, was so dismayed by it that he desisted from the undertaking."—P. V. N. Meyers, General History, page 334.
