Page 116 - Satan in the Sanctuary

118 Satan in the Sanctuary

Titus had purposely sealed off the city at Passover,
which accounted for the swollen population. Pilgrims who
had come great distances to celebrate the feast were
trapped in that ghastly scene of streets clogged with corp-
ses, the wounded starving among the dead, and the in-
creasing lack of space to suffer in as the defenders re-
treated.
Finally the Jews had to fall back to the Temple site and
the adjacent Hill of Zion. There, walled in, perhaps a mil-
lion people, sick and dying, awaited the Roman legions.
There was simply inadequate ground for each person to
stand on, if they could stand. The Temple buildings must
have been packed full. They must have had to pile them-
selves up. There was no hope of food, no hope of removing
the dead, no room for the defenders to fight.
The Jews trusted the Temple to divine intervention.
When asked to surrender, they refused, saying:
That yet this Temple would be preserved by Him that
inhabited therein, whom they still had for their assistant
in this war, and did therefore laugh at all his [Titus'l
threatenings, which would come to nothing; because the
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conclusion of the whole depended upon God only.
Titus was not much concerned about the Almighty but
did, according to Josephus, want to preserve the magnifi-
cent Temple.
The Romans continued to advance and, inevitably, were
able to enter the Temple grounds. We can imagine that
scene of carnage as the exhausted defenders took on the
invaders in hand-to-hand combat. Casualties must have
run very high on both sides, and the combatants must
have been knee deep in corpses, freshly dead and other-
wise.