Below you will find a collection of quotes from theologians throughout the ages who believed that Jesus’ prophecies were FULFILLED in Jesus and in the ongoing expansion of his Kingdom through us. These quotes include notable theologians from the second century to today who believe that Jesus came again in 70AD (in the events surrounding the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple) to end the Old Covenant world, to judge the generation who rejected Jesus and to fully manifest his Kingdom among us.

Sometimes people ask, “If Jesus’ prophecies were fulfilled in the first century, how come more people don’t know about it?” Great question. Clearly there have been some BIG OVERSIGHTS in church history. Like claiming the universe was geocentric based on the misinterpretation of a few Bible verses. Maybe that was easier than learning to look through Galileo’s telescope and being willing to admit they were wrong.

Instead, the church chose to shut their eyes to new lenses, like Galileo’s. And the church chose to shut its eyes to the MANY preterist voices throughout history. Even worse, for most of the past 2000 years you risked your life for disagreeing with the church. Just look at the long list of people who were burned alive for believing things as legitimate as that laypeople should be able to read a Bible. in 1500 you were pronounced a heretic and BURNED ALIVE for that opinion. That is enough to keep most people’s mouths shut about anything, including challenging the church’s futurist view of eschatology.

Perhaps that is why a fulfilled view of eschatology is RE-emerging now – finally – ITS SAFE! Preterism may be new to you, but it is not new. It’s just taken a while for people to connect the exegetical dots to the salvific fulfillments they already believed they had – like full atonement and a present spiritual Kingdom on earth. People knew they had this, but they weren’t connecting the exegetical dots that told us how and why and more.

Don’t be fooled. Truth was NOT “decided” a long time ago. The idea that there was once a time of “pure” doctrine is a myth. Seen through the lens of human rights, we are getting MORE loving and just, MORE compassionate and better in our view of God. This has happened because people like you looked into matters, trusted themselves to be able to discern true meaning and believed that their voice mattered. YOUR VOICE MATTERS. Just the like the voices quoted below do.

Some questions say more about the asker than they intended to reveal. So when you feel yourself wondering, “If past fulfillment is true, how come Tradition “missed” it? Think about how slavery and geo-centrism and a host of other errors were also in church history. And also remember the fulfilled voices, only a fraction of which are represented below. MANY MORE PEOPLE than you probably would have guessed saw first century fulfillment.

As laypeople, our ignorance is not really our fault. You tust people to check this stuff out for you. Well, I’m here to tell you that when it comes to eschatology, some folks fell down on the job. In all of doctrinal history, it’s never been thoroughly studied or developed before. It’s a patch job. Even as late as the Reformation, Calvin and Luther wrote a commentary on every book of the Bible but not Revelation. Many theologians, like Luther, didn’t even think Revelation was Scripture. Their futuristic lenses clouded their view. In the 1700’s, the idea that preterism was the key to understanding prophecy was emerging into the open and gaining momentum.

Today, American eschatology is dominated by a form of overly literalistic futurism that was invented in the late 1800’s and popularized in the 1900’s through the Scofield Reference Bible notes. It was disseminated at conferences with famous people, like Billy Graham, who became wildly influential pastors and best selling authors. Remember that the Left Behind books were the best selling adult novels of all time, informing the theology of about 100 million people worldwide. We’ve all been tainted by it, it’s hard to escape.

But once you do, you begin to feel that fulfillment is as plain as the nose on Christianity’s face. The Question I’m Living is, “Are we ready to look in the mirror?”

Here are quotes from famous theologians throughout the ages who confessed that a or The Coming of Jesus happened in Jerusalem’s destruction in 70AD. They range from partial to full preterist. Here’s to being surprised and delighted!

 100: The Odes of Solomon  “Because He is my Sun and His rays have lifted me up and His light hath dispelled all darkness from my face. In Him I HAVE acquired eyes and HAVE SEEN His HOLY DAY:  The way of error I have left, and have walked towards Him and have received salvation from Him, without grudging. I HAVE put on INCORRUPTION through His name: and have put off corruption by His grace. DEATH HAS BEEN DESTROYED before my face: and Sheol bath been abolished by my word”.

150: Melito – Homily of the Pascha “Who will contend against me? Let him stand before me. It is I who delivered the condemned. It is I who gave life to the dead. It is I who RAISED UP THE BURIED. Who will argue with me? It is I, says Christ, who DESTROYED DEATH. It is I who triumphed over the enemy, and having trod down Hades, and bound the Strong Man, and HAVE SNATCHED UP MANKIND TO THE HEIGHTS OF HEAVEN.”

175: Irenaeus – Against Heresies “the temple constructed of stones was indeed then rebuilt (for as yet that law was observed which had been made upon tables of stone), yet no new covenant was given, but they used the Mosaic law until the coming of the Lord; but from the Lord’s advent, the new covenant which brings back peace, and the law which gives life, has gone forth over the whole earth, as the prophets said: “For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem ; and He shall rebuke many people; and they shall break down their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruninghooks, and they shall no longer learn to fight.”

500: Andreas “And I saw, when he had opened the sixth seal, and behold there was a great earthquake, and the sun became as black as sackcloth of hair, and the whole moon became as blood. And the stars from heaven fell upon the earth, as a fig-tree casteth its green figs when it is shaken by the wind.” [Apocalypse 6:12-13] “There are not wanting those who apply this passage to the siege and destruction of Jerusalem by Titus.”

N.T. Wright 1996 “One of the main reasons, I suppose, why THE OBVIOUS WAY of reading the Olivet Discourse [Mt 24, Mk 13] HAS BEEN IGNORED for SO LONG must be the fact that in a good deal of Christian theology the fall of Jerusalem has had no theological significance. This has meant not only that Mark 13 is found puzzling, but
also that all the references to the same event elsewhere in the gospels — even where it stares one in the face, as in Luke 13:1-5 — have been read as general warnings of hellfire in an afterlife, rather than the literal and physical
divine-judgment-through-Roman-judgment that we have seen to be characteristic of Jesus’ story.” (Jesus and Victory of God, pp. 343-344. Fortress Press, 1996).

Jonathan Edwards 1736 “‘Tis evident that when Christ speaks of HIS COMING; his being revealed; his COMING IN HIS KINGDOM; or his KINGDOM’S COMING; He has respect to HIS APPEARING in those great works of his Power, Justice and Grace, which should be in the Destruction of Jerusalem and other extraordinary Providences which should attend it.” (Miscellany #1199)

“Thus there was a FINAL END to the Old Covenant world: ALL was FINISHED with a kind of Day of Judgment, in which the people of God were saved, and His enemies terribly destroyed.” (vol. i. p. 445)

Tertullian ~200 AD “The Founder of Western Theology”
CHAP. VIII.– OF JERUSALEM’S DESTRUCTION: “Accordingly the times must be inquired into of the predicted and future nativity of the Christ, and of His passion, and of the extermination of the city of Jerusalem, that is, its devastation. For Daniel says, that “both the Holy City and the Holy Place are exterminated together with the coming Leader, and that the pinnacle is destroyed unto ruin” And so the times of the coming Christ, the Leader,
must be inquired into, which we shall trace in Daniel; and, after computing them, SHALL PROVE HIM TO HAVE COME, even on the ground of the TIMES PRESCRIBED, and of competent signs and operations of His. Which matters we prove, again, on the ground of the consequences which were ever announced as to follow HIS ADVENT; in order that we may BELIEVE ALL TO HAVE BEEN as well FULFILLED AS FORESEEN.

B.F. Dunelm 1896 “It is no exaggeration to say that the Fall of
Jerusalem is the MOST significant national event in the history of
the world.”  i

Athanasius 345 AD “It is, in fact, a sign and notable PROOF of the COMING OF THE WORD that Jerusalem no longer stands.”

Chrysostom 380 AD “For I will ask them, Did He send the prophets and wise men? Did they slay them in their synagogue? Was their house left desolate? Did ALL the VENGEANCE COME UPON THAT GENERATION? It is QUITE PLAIN THAT IT WAS SO, and NO MAN NO MAN GAINSAYS IT.”  i

“Do you see that His discourse is addressed to the Jews, and that He is speaking of the ills that should overtake them?…And let not any man suppose this to have been spoken hyperbolically; but let him study the writings of
Josephus, and LEARN THE TRUTH of the sayings.” Commentary on Matthew 24:21

“Remembering this saving commandment and all those things which CAME TO PASS for us: the cross, the grave, the resurrection on the third day, the ascension into heaven, the sitting down at the right hand, THE SECOND AND GLORIOUS COMING AGAIN.” – St Chrysostom’s Divine Liturgy

Attend, O Lord Jesus Christ our God, from thy holy dwelling place and from the glorious throne of thy kingdom, and come to sanctify us, O thou that sits with the Father above, and that are invisibly PRESENT HERE WITH US. – St Chrysostom’s Divine Liturgy

You brought us forth from non-existence into being, and RAISED US UP AGAIN when we had fallen, and left nothing undone until you had brought us to heaven and bestowed upon us your future kingdom.” Prayer
of the Anaphora – Eucharistic Prayer

Eusebius 314 AD “The Father of Church History” “And ALL THIS PROPHECY of what would result from their insolence against the Christ has been CLEARLY PROVED TO HAVE TAKEN PLACE … afterwards from
that day to this that God turned their feasts into mourning, despoiled them of their famous Mother-City, and destroyed the holy Temple therein when Titus and Vespasian were Emperors of Rome, so that they could no longer go up to keep their feasts and sacred meetings… in return for their rejection of the Word of God; since with one voice they refused Him, so He refuses them.” – Demonstratio Evangelica, BOOK X

“When we see WHAT WAS of old FORETOLD for the nations FULFILLED in our own day, and when the lamentation and wailing that was predicted for the Jews, and the burning of the Temple and its utter desolation, can also be seen even now to HAVE OCCURRED ACCORDING TO PREDICTION, surely we must also agree that the King who was prophesied, the Christ of God, HAS COME, since THE SIGNS OF HIS COMING have been shown in each instance I have treated to HAVE BEEN CLEARLY FULFILLED.” Demonstratio Evangelica (Proof of the Gospel); BOOK VIII

“If any one compares the words of our Saviour with the other accounts of the historian (Josephus) concerning the whole war, how can one fail to wonder, and to admit that the foreknowledge and the prophecy of our Saviour were truly divine and marvelously strange.” Book III, Ch. VII

“And the people of the governor that cometh will destroy the city and the holy place.” Meaning that the city and the Holy Place arc not only to be ruined by the leader to come, whom I have identified in my interpretation,
but also by his people. And you would not be far wrong in saying, too, that the Roman general and his army arc meant by the words before us, where I think the camps of the Roman rulers are meant, who governed the nation from that time, and who destroyed the city of Jerusalem itself, and its ancient venerable Temple. For they were cut off by them as by a flood, and were at once involved in destruction until the war was concluded, SO THAT THE
PROPHECY WAS FULFILLED … You will find an accurate account of it in the history of Josephus.” – Demonstratio Evangelica “Proof of the Gospel”, BOOK VIII

Hippolytus of Rome ~200 AD
Come, then, O blessed Isaiah; arise, tell us clearly what did you prophesy with respect to the mighty Babylon? For thou didst speak also of Jerusalem, and YOUR WORD IS ACCOMPLISHED. For you spoke boldly and openly: “Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire; your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate as overthrown by many strangers. The daughter ofZion shall be left as a cottage in a vineyard, and as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city.”

What then? HAVE NOT THESE THINGS COME TO PASS? ARE NOT THE THINGS ANNOUNCED BY YOU FULFILLED? Is not their country, Judea, desolate? Is not the holy place burned with fire? Are not
their walls cast down? Are not their cities destroyed? Their land, do not strangers devour it? Do not the Romans rule the country? And …Thou art dead in the world, but YOU LIVE IN CHRIST.” (resurrection!) – Fragments
of Dogmatic and Historical Works

Irenaeus ~174 AD Early Church Father
CHAP. IV.– THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM  WAS PUT IN EXECUTION BY THE MOST WISE COUNSEL OF GOD. 1. Further, also, concerning Jerusalem and the Lord, they venture to assert that, if it had been “the City of the Great King,” it would not have been deserted. This is just as if any one should say, that if straw were a creation of God, it would never part company with the wheat;…so also [was it with] Jerusalem, which had in herself borne the yoke of bondage under which man was reduced, who in former times was not subject to God when death was reigning … 2. Since, then, THE LAW originated with Moses, it TERMINATED WITH JOHN as a necessary consequence. Christ had come to FULFILL it: wherefore “the law and the prophets were” with them “until John. “And therefore Jerusalem, taking its commencement from David, and fulfilling its own times, must have an End of legislation when the New Covenant was revealed.”

(Riley’s note: The New Jerusalem, the New Heavens and Earth ARE the New Covenant that was revealed from Heaven by God, given to US and is where he dwells with US NOW! The “End” that was spoken of in Scripture was Covenantal and fulfilled in the past. What great news for us!)

Origen ~ 100’s “I challenge anyone to prove my statement untrue if I say that the entire Jewish nation was destroyed less than one whole generation later on account of these sufferings which they inflicted on Jesus. For it was, I believe, forty-two years from the time when they crucified Jesus to the destruction of Jerusalem.” Contra Celsum, 198-199

(Riley’s note: This quote below supports the idea of Revelation’s main theme as a story about God giving his Old Covenant wife, Israel, a bill of divorcement, i.e. the scrolls that are read of her misgivings in court, before the Judge. And of his taking his New Covenant Bride, New Jerusalem, New Heavens and Earth, or all who are
in the body of Christ, spiritually ‘married’ to God. For more on this, see The Book of Revelation Made Easy by Dr. Kenneth Gentry, who did his dissertation on this).

“Therefore he, also, having separated from her [Old Covenant Israel], married, so to speak, another [New Covenant Israel], having given into the hands of the former the bill of divorcement; wherefore they can no longer do the things enjoined on them by the law, because of the bill of divorcement. And a sign that she has received the bill of divorcement is this, that Jerusalem was destroyed along with what they called the sanctuary of the things in it which were believed to be holy, and with the altar of burnt offerings, and all the worship associated with it…Jerusalem was compassed with armies, and its desolation was near, and their house was taken away from it… And, about the same time, I think, the husband wrote out a bill of divorcement to his former wife, and gave it into her hands, and sent her away from his own house…COMMENTARY ON THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW, Book 2., sec. 19.

R.C. Sproul 2006 “No matter what view of eschatology we embrace, we must take seriously the redemptive-historical importance of Jerusalem’s destruction in A.D.70.” The Last Days According to Jesus, 26

“THE COMING OF CHRIST in A.D.70 was a COMING IN JUDGMENT on the Jewish nation, indicating THE END of the Jewish AGE and the FULFILLMENT of a Day of the Lord. JESUS REALLY DID COME IN JUDGMENT at this time, FULFILLING his prophecy in the Olivet Discourse.” The Last Days According to Jesus, p. 158

Henry Alford 1868 ‘We may observe that our Lord makes “when the LORD COMES” coincide with the destruction of Jerusalem, which is incontestably the overthrow of the wicked husbandmen. THIS PASSAGE therefore forms an important KEY TO OUR LORD’S PROPHECIES, and a decisive justification for those who, like myself, firmly hold that the ‘COMING OF THE LORD’ IS, in many places, to be IDENTIFIED, primarily, with THAT OVERTHROW.” On Matt. 21:33-46

David Brown 1858 “Those who have not directed their attention to prophetic language will be startled if I answer, ‘The COMING OF THE LORD’ here announced is his COMING IN JUDGMENT AGAINST JERUSALEM – to destroy itself and its temple..”

John Calvin “At the end of the 9th chapter [of Daniel]… For he then said, Christ ‘shall confirm the covenant with many for one week, and shall cause the sacrifices and oblation to cease’. Afterwards, the abomination that stupifies shall be added, and desolation or stupor, and then death will distill, says he, upon the astonished or stupefied one. The angel, therefore, there treats of the perpetual devastation of the Temple. So in this passage, without doubt; he treats of the period after the destruction of the Temple; there could be no hope of restoration, as the law with all its ceremonies would then arrive at its termination. With this view Christ quotes this passage in Matthew 24, while he admonishes his hearers diligently to attend to it. Let him who reads, understand, says he…God then deserted his Temple, because it was only founded for a time, and was but A SHADOW… that profanation of the Temple which happened after THE MANIFESTATION OF CHRIST, when sacrifices ceased, and THE SHADOWS OF THE LAW WERE ABOLISHED. From the time, therefore, at which the sacrifice really ceased to be offered; this refers to the period at which CHRIST BY HIS ADVENT should ABOLISH the shadows of THE LAW, thus making all offering of sacrifices to God totally valueless. From that time, therefore. Next, from the time at which the stupefying abomination shall
have been set up. God’s wrath followed the profanation of the Temple…Hence Jerusalem and their Temple were exposed to the vengeance of the Gentiles. This, therefore, was the setting up of this stupefying abomination; it was a clear testimony to the wrath of God, exhorting the Jews in their confusion to boast no longer in their Temple and its holiness.” (Commentary)

Philip Mauro 1921 “It is greatly to be regretted that those who, in our day, give themselves to the study and exposition of prophecy, SEEM NOT TO BE AWARE  of the IMMENSE SIGNIFICANCE of the Destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70…The failure to recognize the significance of that event, and the vast amount of prophecy which it fulfilled, has been the cause of great confusion, for the necessary consequence of MISSING THE PAST FULFILLMENT OF PREDICTED EVENTS is to leave on our hands a mass of prophecies for which we must needs CONTRIVE FULLFILMENTS IN THE FUTURE. The harmful results are two fold; for first, we are thus deprived of the evidential value, and the support to the faith, of those remarkable fulfillments of prophecy which are so clearly presented to us in authentic contemporary histories; and second, our vision of things to come is greatly obscured and confused by the transference to the future of predicted events which, in fact, have already happened, and whereof complete records have been preserved for our information.”

“Yet, in the face of all this, we have today a widely held scheme of prophetic interpretation, which has for its very cornerstone the idea that, when God’s time to remember His promised mercies to Israel shall at last have come, He will gather them into their ancient land again, only to pour upon them calamities and distresses far exceeding even the horrors which attended the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. This is, we are convinced, an error of such magnitude as to derange the whole program of unfulfilled prophecy.” -Seventy Weeks and the Great Tribulation

Thomas Newton 1754 “As a general in the wars (Josephus) must have
had an exact knowledge of all transactions, and a Jewish priest he would not
relate them with any favour of partiality to the Christian cause. His history
was approved by Vespasian and Titus (who ordered it to be published) and by
King Agrippa and many others, both Jews and Romans, who were present in
those wars..He designed nothing less, and yet as if he had designed nothing
more, his history of the Jewish wars may serve as a larger comment on our
Saviour’s prophecies of the destruction ofJerusalem.” Newton, p. 433

Stafford North (1998) “Just as Daniel predicted, in 70 A.D., forty years after
the anointed one was cut off, the Roman armies marched on Jerusalem. After
a siege of 134 days, designed to weaken resistance, the Roman army broke
through the walls, destroyed the city and burned the temple. Then, they put
their ensigns over the eastern gate of the temple and offered sacrifices to
them. (Josephus: War VI, vi. 1 [316]).

There could not have been a more precise fulfillment of the prophecies
of both Daniel and Christ. The city was destroyed and desecrated. Even
the stones of the temple were cast down and not one remained upon
another.” (Armageddon Again? A Reply to Hal Lindsey,Oklahoma City,OK:
Author, 1991, p. 47-48)

Philip Schaff (1877) “The destruction of Jerusalem would be a worthy theme
for the genius of a Christian Homer. It has been called “the most soul-stirring
of all ancient history.” But there was no Jeremiah to sing the funeral dirge of
the city of David and Solomon. The Apocalypse was already written, and had
predicted that the heathen “shall tread the holy city under foot forty and two
months.” (p. 397-398)

“A few years afterwards followed the destruction ofJerusalem, which must
have made an overpowering impression and broken the last ties which bound
Jewish Christianity to the old theocracy. . . .

“The awfiul catastrophe of the destruction of the Jewish theocracy must have
produced the profoundest sensation among the Christians. . . . It was the
greatest calamity of Judaism and a great benefit to Christianity; a refutation
of the one, a vindication . . . of the other. It separated them forever. . . .
Henceforth the heathen could no longer look upon Christianity as a mere
sect of Judaism, but must regard and treat it as a new, peculiar religion. The
destruction ofJerusalem, therefore, marks that momentous crisis at which the
Christian church as a whole burst forth forever from the chrysalis of Judaism,
awoke to a sense of maturity, and in government and worship at once took its
independent stand before the world.  i

C.H. Spurgeon 1868 “The destruction ofJerusalem was more terrible than
anything that the world has ever witnessed, either before or since. Even Titus
seemed to see in his cruel work the hand of an avenging God. Commentary
on Matthew, p. 412

Truly, the blood of the martyrs slain in Jerusalem was amply avenged when
the whole city became veritable Aceldama, or field of blood.” (Commentary on
Matthew, p. 412,413)

Dom Toutee (1790) “St. Chrysostom shows that the destruction of Jerusalem
is to be ascribed, not to the power of the Romans, for God had often delivered
it from no less dangers; but to a special providence which was pleased to put it
out of the power of human perversity to delay or respite the extinction of those
ceremonial observances.” St. Cyril

John Wesley (1754) “Josephus’ History of the Jewish War is the best
commentary on this chapter (Matt. 24). It is a wonderful instance of God’s
providence, that he, an eyewitness, and one who lived and died a Jew,
should, especially in so extraordinary a manner, be preserved, to transmit
to us a collection of important facts, which so EXACTLY ILLUSTRATE THIS GLORIOUS PROPHECY, in almost every circumstance.” (Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament)

William Whiston (1737) “Josephus speaks so, that it is most evident he was
fully satisfied that God was on the Romans’ side, and made use of them now
for the destruction of the Jews, which was for certain the true state of this
matter, as the prophet Daniel first, and our Saviour himself afterwards had
clearly foretold. (See Lit. Accompl. of Proph. p. 64, etc. (Wars of the Jews,
VI,II,1)

Bishop Jacques Benigne Bossuet (1670) “They have their book which they name Talmud, that is, doctrine, which they regard no less than the Scripture itself. It is a collection of tracts and sentences of their doctors; …And first, it
is certain from the admission of the Jews, that the Divine vengeance did never more terribly nor more manifestly declare itself than in their last desolation [of Jerusalem].”

Adam Clarke (1837) “I conclude, therefore, that this prophecy has not the least relation to Judas Maccabeus. It may be asked, to whom, and to what event does it relate? .. to the destruction ofJerusalem and the Jewish polity;
which IN THE GOSPEL IS CALLED THE COMING OF CHRIST and the days of vengeance, Matthew 16:28; Luke 21:22.” (Isaiah 65, p. 513)

P.S. Desprez (1854) “THE LORD CAME, AS HE SAID, to destroy Jerusalem, and to
close the dispensation.” The Apocalypse Fulfilled Preface, p. vi.

“NO scriptural statement is capable of more decided proof than that the
COMING OF CHRIST IS the destruction of Jerusalem, and the close of the Jewish
dispensation.” The Apocalypse Fulfilled, p.9

Gary DeMar (1999) “ALL THE SIGNS listed in Matthew 24 have reference to
the Destruction of Jerusalem in A.D.70.”(Last Days Madness, GA: American
Vision, p., 124)

F.W. Farrar (1882) “the Fall of Jerusalem and all the events which accompanied and followed it in the Roman world and in the Christian world, had a significance which it is hardly possible to overestimate. They were the
FINAL END of the Old Dispensation. They were the FULL INAUGURATION of the NEW COVENANT. They were God’s own overwhelming judgment on that form of Judaic Christianity which threatened to crush the work of St. Paul, to lay on the Gentiles the yoke of abrogated Mosaism, to establish itself by threats and anathemas as the only orthodoxy… Nothing but God’s own unmistakable interposition -nothing but the MANIFEST COMING OF CHRIST – could have persuaded Jewish Christians that the Law of the Wilderness was annulled.” (The Early Days of Christianity, p. 489, 490)

“It was to this event, the most awful in history – ‘one of the most awful eras in God’s economy of grace, and the most awful revolution in all God’s religious dispensations’ – that we must APPLY THOSE PROPHECIES OF CHRIST’S COMING in which every one of the Apostles and Evangelists fixed these three most definite limitations – the

1. one, that BEFORE THAT GENERATION PASSED AWAY all these things would be fulfilled;(Mt 24:34)

2. another, that SOME STANDING THERE should not taste death till they saw the Son of Man coming in His kingdom;(Mt 16:28)

3. and third, that the Apostles should NOT HAVE GONE OVER THE CITIES OF ISRAEL TILL the Son of Man be COME.(Mt 10:23)

It is strange that these distinct limitations should not be regarded as a decisive proof that the Fall of Jerusalem was, IN THE FULLEST SENSE, THE SECOND ADVENT of the Son of Man which was primarily contemplated by the earliest voices of prophecy” ibid., Vol. 2, p. 489

Kenneth Gentry “The A.D. 70 catastrophe results from Christ’s prophetic word, corroborating His Messianic authority in a dramatic way. AD. 70 proves His prophecy to be not only a true word from God (Deut. 18:22) but
a judgment word against God’s people. The disciples’ request for a “sign” marking out “the end of the age” (Matt. 24:3) sparks the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24 and 25… Too many Christians MISS THE MEANING of Jesus’ cloud-coming in Matthew 24:30 for two reasons. First, they are unfamiliar with Old Testament apocalyptic passages wherein divine judgments appear as cloud-comings (Isa. 19:1). Second, they overlook the interpretive clues in Matthew 24: mention of the temple’s destruction (v. 2), the Judean focus (v. 16), and the temporal proximity of all the events between verses 4 and 34 (v. 34). Indeed, Jesus warns the very men who sit in judgment over Him:

“‘Here after YOU will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the
Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven”‘ (Matt. 26:64b). This is certainly how the ancient church read Matthew 24. Referring to A.D. 70, Eusebius highlights “the infallible forecast of our Saviour in which He prophetically expounded these very things” (Ecclesiastical History, 3:7:1).” Tabletalk Mag., December 2001

“The final collapse of Jerusalemand the Temple… Through these events the Jews were to “see” the Son of Man in His judgment-coming in terrifying cloud-glory: clouds are symbols of divine majesty often entailing stormy destruction. The members of the Sanhedrin and others would experience such in their life times (Matt. 26:64; Mark 9:1; cf. Rev 1:7 with Rev 1:1,3).” (ibid. 348)

“The nature of the event has to do with a ‘Cloud-Coming’ of Christ. It is necessary here to understand the Old Testament backdrop for a proper comprehension of the matter. The Old Testament frequently uses clouds as indicators of divine judgment.” Before Jerusalem Fell; Bethesda, MD: Christian University Press, 1997; p. 121

James Stuart Russell (1887) “There are not a few who seem to think that if our Lord’s prophecy on the Mount of Olives, and the predictions of the apostles of the coming of Christ in glory, meant no more than the destruction of Jerusalem, and WERE FULFILLED IN THAT EVENT…The destruction of Jerusalem was not a mere thrilling incident in the drama of history, like the siege of Troy or the downfall of Carthage, closing a chapter in the annals of a state or a people. It was an event which has no parallel in history. It was the outward and visible sign of a great epoch in the divine government of the world. It was the close of one dispensation and the commencement of another. It marked the INAUGURATION OF A NEW ORDER OF THINGS. The Mosaic economy, which had been ushered in by the miracles of Egypt, the lightenings and thunderings of Sinai, and the glorious manifestations of Jehovah to Israel, after subsisting for more thanfifteen centuries was now abolished.. It was not an isolated fact, a solitary catastrophe, it was the center of a group of related and coincidental events, not only in the material, but IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD; not only on earth, but in heaven and hell; some of them being cognizable by the senses and capable of historical confirmation, and others not.” The Parousia, pp. 546, 547

R.C. Sproul (1998)
“The most significant, redemptive, historical action that takes place outside the New Testament, is the judgment that falls on Jerusalem, and by which judgment the Christian Church now emerges as The Body of Christ.” (R.C.
Sproul, Dust to Glory video series, 1997)

“Russell’s book has forced me to take the events surrounding the destruction of Jerusalemfar more seriously than before, to open my eyes to the radical significance of this event in redemptive history. It vindicates the apostolic
hope and prediction of our Lord’s close-at-hand coming in judgment. My view on these matters remains in transition, as I have spelled out in The Last Days According to Jesus. But for me one thing is certain: I can never read the New Testament again the same way I read it before reading The Parousia. I hope better scholars than I will continue to analyze and evaluate the content of J. Stuart Russell’s important work.” (“Forword,” in The Parousia, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999)

S.G.F. Brandon (1951) “The apparent cruciality of this event for
Christianity has been the subject of our investigation, and the conclusion has
been reached that that cruciality is a fact of profound historical significance
for the understanding of the nature of Christian Origins. It would indeed
not be an exaggeration to say that Christianity was in a certain sense reborn
as a result of the Jewish catastrophe of A.D. 70… in the overthrow of the
Jewish state the old wine-skins of Judaism were burst asunder and perished,
liberating the new wine to flow freely abroad and to reach maturity in places
more congenial to the original genius of its creator. Thus we may conclude
that, after the Resurrection experiences, the next most crucial event in the life
of the Christian Church was the overthrow of the Jewish nation, which was
dramatically epitomized in the destruction of its holy city of Jerusalem in A.D.
70” (The Fall of Jerusalem and the Christian Church, pp. 249, 251)

Tony Campolo 1988 “Jesus told his disciples that THEIR GENERATION would not pass away before everything that needed to be fulfilled for His return would take place. I do not believe the Lord was wrong. I am convinced that by A.D. 70 everything was in place for the return of Christ… I must point out that for centuries Christians did not see any need for the restoration of the state of Israel or the rebuilding of the temple … for the return of Christ” (Tony Campolo, 20 Hot Potatoes Christians are Afraid to Touch, p.233).

James Burton Coffman 1984 “The destruction of Jerusalem in A.D.70, only five years after our epistle, was the greatest single event of a thousand years, and religiously significant beyond anything else that ever occurred in human history.” (Commentary on James, 1 & 2 Peter, p. 231)

William Cox 1966
“We know that the great tribulation of A.D. 70 brought the Jewish state to its complete and FINAL END.” On Matthew 24:21, p. 103

Dr. Burnett Hillman (1925) “It is impossible for us to realise the shock
of A.D.70 to a community in which Jewish and Gentile members alike had
been reared in the profoundest veneration of the immemorial sanctity of
theHolyCity and theTemple.” (The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins, p. 516)

G.W.H. Lampe (1984) “From the letter to the Galatians Christians had learned that they were children of the Jerusalem which is ‘above’, the community which, because it enjoys the freedom of the Spirit, stands over against its antithesis, the earthly Jerusalem which is in servitude to the Law (Gal. 4:25–6, cp. Phil. 3:20). The foundations, once again, had been laid for the later development of the theme of the ‘heavenly Jerusalem’ in Hebrews (12:22), the ‘new’ or ‘holy’ Jerusalem which, according to the Revelation of John (3:12; 20:9; 21:2), is to descend from heaven and in which the presence of God will not be focused or localized in any temple, and for the reinterpretation by the Fourth Evangelist of the idea of a holy place, established by God for worship, in terms of community which worships in the Spirit and truth (John 4:21–3). Paul had already taught that the holy
temple of God, indwelt by the Spirit, is the congregation of Christian people, the temple of the living God in which his presence assures the fulfilment of the covenant promise, ‘I will be their God and they shall be my people’ (I Cor. 3:16–17; 2 Cor. 6:16); and Paul had also shown that in a secondary sense each individual believer is the temple of the indwelling Holy Spirit (I Cor. 6:19). In this ark of Christian theology, too, the foundations of later developments, such as the teaching of Eph. 2:21 and I Pet. 2:5, and, through a combination of the themes of the ‘temple of the Spirit’ and the ‘body of Christ’, of John 2:21, had been firmly laid in the years before the Jewish war.” (“A.D. 70 in Christian Reflection,” Jesus and the Politics of His Day, eds. Ernst Bammel and C. F. D
Moule (London: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 156-158.)

Jim McGuigan (1991) “I can’t remember when I didn’t think Matt 24 ALL
referred to JERUSALEM’S FALL” (A.D.70 Revisited; Northern Ireland: By the
author, 1991, 75.)

Robert Roberts (1855) “The PAROUSIA, or proximity, of the Son of Man TO JERUSALEM in the crisis of its overthrow WAS TO BE IN THE LIFETIME OF THAT GENERATION, according to the words of Jesus, who said, “This generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled.” (The Signs of the Son of Man’s Presence at the Destruction of Jerusalem)