Page 99 - Satan in the Sanctuary

Moses to Moshe—A Bloody Site 101

Zedekiah's fate was to see his sons killed before his eyes
and then to be blinded and dragged to Babylon in brass
fetters.
It was then that the thorough captain of Nebuchadnez-
zar's guard came on the scene, obviously with orders to ut-
terly obliterate Jerusalem.
Field executions of the highest ranking government and
military officials were rampant. And the crudest blow of
all, the destruction of the Temple, was completed to the
extent that the thirty-four-acre stone quadrangle vanished
without a trace. Virtually nothing was left standing.
According to the Bible the Jews deserved God's judg-
ment. With each successive king there reappears the omin-
ous Scripture, "And he did that which was evil in the
sight of the Lord" (2 Ch 36:5, 9, 12).
The destiny of the Jews has always been special. They
"have and have not" in great measure according to their
behavior toward the Lord. Their very survival through the
ages attests to God's special dealings with them. Where are
those other great nations today? Where are the mighty
hosts of Babylon, or the blood-thirsty Chaldees? The
Philistines, the Hittites, the Moabites, and a hundred
worthy powers have vanished, while the Jews—persecuted
and dispersed without end—have survived to retake their
capital and their holy Temple site.
The Jews who lost their mighty first Temple could not
have said they weren't warned. Isaiah agonized over the
future 150 years before the Babylonian siege: "Thy holy
cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a
desolation. Our holy and our beautiful house, where our
fathers praised thee, is burned up with fire: and all our
pleasant things are laid waste" (Is 64:10-11).
But Isaiah was regarded as an ill-tempered old man.