The European Union in Prophecy The EU in Prophecy I | Page 20

The European Union in Prophecy
of the mountains replied or brought back the shrieks of the people on the heights; all
along the walls resounded screams and wailings; men who were expiring with famine
rallied their remaining strength to utter a cry of anguish and desolation.
"The slaughter within was even more dreadful than the spectacle from without.
Men and women, old and young, insurgents and priests, those who fought and those
who entreated mercy, were hewn down in indiscriminate carnage. The number of the
slain exceeded that of the slayers. The legionaries had to clamber over heaps of dead
to carry on the work of extermination."--Milman, The History of the Jews, book 16.
After the destruction of the temple, the whole city soon fell into the hands of the
Romans. The leaders of the Jews forsook their impregnable towers, and Titus found
them solitary. He gazed upon them with amazement, and declared that God had given
them into his hands; for no engines, however powerful, could have prevailed against
those stupendous battlements. Both the city and the temple were razed to their
foundations, and the ground upon which the holy house had stood was "plowed like a
field." Jeremiah 26:18. In the siege and the slaughter that followed, more than a
million of the people perished; the survivors were carried away as captives, sold as
slaves, dragged to Rome to grace the conqueror's triumph, thrown to wild beasts in
the amphitheaters, or scattered as homeless wanderers throughout the earth.
The Jews had forged their own fetters; they had filled for themselves the cup of
vengeance. In the utter destruction that befell them as a nation, and in all the woes
that followed them in their dispersion, they were but reaping the harvest which their
own hands had sown. Says the prophet: "O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself;" "for
thou hast fallen by thine iniquity." Hosea 13:9; 14:1. Their sufferings are often
represented as a punishment visited upon them by the direct decree of God. It is thus
that the great deceiver seeks to conceal his own work. By stubborn rejection of divine
love and mercy, the Jews had caused the protection of God to be withdrawn from them,
and Satan was permitted to rule them according to his will. The horrible cruelties
enacted in the destruction of Jerusalem are a demonstration of Satan's vindictive
power over those who yield to his control.
We cannot know how much we owe to Christ for the peace and protection which
we enjoy. It is the restraining power of God that prevents mankind from passing fully
under the control of Satan. The disobedient and unthankful have great reason for
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