Were any them
there before or during 70AD as Josephus was?
Josephus and Luke 21:11 "fearful signs in heaven/sky" 1st century pre 70AD
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Here is an early century historian........
Early writing by Eusebius..........
Eusebius of Caesarea
Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine
(263 - 339)
"One of the best known and most accessible of the ancient preterists"
"The members of the Jerusalem church by means of an oracle, given by revelation to acceptable persons there, were ordered to leave the city before the war began and settle in a town in Peraea called Pella." (
III, 5:4)
(On Acts 1:11)
"But if, on the other hand, we can see the people of Egypt far more patently in actual fact than in mere description, some of them acknowledging the God of the prophets, and for His sake renouncing their ancestral gods, some of them raising political dissension against the converts, some of them even now calling upon their gods and images and them that speak from the ground, who no longer can effect aught, and some throughout all Egypt raising an altar to the Lord of the prophets for each local Church, calling no (d) longer in their troubles and persecutions on beasts or reptiles as their gods, nor on wild animals and unreasoning brutes as their fathers did, but on the Supreme God, retaining Him only and the fear of Him in their minds, praying to Him, and not to the daemons, and promising what men should promise God—how can we deny that the prophecies of long ago have at last been fulfilled? And these foretold that the Lord would come to Egypt not in an unembodied state, but in a light cloud, or better "in light thickness," for such is the meaning of the Hebrew, shewing figuratively His Incarnate state. Therefore the prophecy goes on to call Him a man that is a Saviour, saying, "And (415) the Lord shall send to them a man that is a Saviour." Here again the Hebrew is, "And He shall send to them a Saviour, who shall save them." As the proof is now so clear from this, I consider that there is no question of the time at which the prophecies foretold the Lord's Coming."
(On
Fulfillment of Prophecies)
"For as it establishes Christianity on the basis of antecedent prophecies, so it establishes Judaism from the complete fulfillment of its prophecies." (
Proof of the Gospel, Twin Brooks Series,
I, p.5)
(On
the Seventy Weeks)
"And all these things were fulfilled when the seventy weeks were completed at the date of our Saviour's Coming
..============================
The Destruction of Jerusalem - George Peter Holford, 1805AD
Proof that Matthew 24 was fully fulfilled in 70 AD!
Also see: Rapture refuted
In executing the command of Titus, relative to the demolition of Jerusalem, the Roman soldiers not only threw down the buildings, but even dug up their foundations, and so completely levelled the whole circuit of the city, that a stranger would scarcely have known that it had ever been inhabited by human beings. Thus was this great City, which only five
months before, had been crowded with nearly two
millions of people, who gloried in its impregnable strength, entirely depopulated, and levelled with the ground. And thus, also was our LORD'S prediction, that her enemies should "lay her
even with the ground," and "should not leave in her
one stone upon another, " (Luke xix. 44.) most strikingly and fully accomplished ! --
This fact is confirmed by Eusebius, who asserts that he himself saw the city lying in ruins ; and Josephus introduces Eleazer as exclaiming "Where is our great city, which, it was believed, GOD inhabited ? It is altogether rooted and torn up from its foundations ; and the only monument of it that remains, is the camp of its destroyers pitched amidst its reliques !"
======================
Revelation 18:
4 And I heard another Voice out of the heaven, saying, "Come forth out of
Her My people! that ye should not be joint partakers<4790>
Her sins, and out of the blows/stripes<4127> of
Her that no ye may be receiving.
16 and saying,
Woe! woe! the great
City, that was having been arrayed<4016>
with
fine linen,<1039> and purple,<4210> [
Luke 16:19/Revelation 18:12]
and scarlet,<2847> and have been gilded<5558> in gold <5553> and precious<2093> stone and pearls<3135>
That to one hour was desolated<2049> the so much riches.
18 And they cried<2896>, observing the smoke of
Her firing<4451>, saying,
"What like to the great City?"
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Early Church Fathers on the Apocalypse
Irenaeus. Adv. Haer. 5.30-35
Justin Martyr Dial. 80-81
Eusebius Hist. Eccl. 3.13.1-3.18.4 (The Emperor Domitian and John of Patmos, called here "the Evangelist")
Eusebius Hist. Eccl. 3.24.17-3.25.7 (Revelation and the NT Canon)
Eusebius Hist. Eccl. 3.39.1-12 (Papias)
Eusebius Hist. Eccl. 7.24-25 (Dionysius of Alexandria on Nepos's interpretation of the Apocalypse and on the authorship of the Apocalypse)
Tertullian Adv. Marc. 3.25 (vision of the New Jerusalem)
Lactantius Div. Inst. 7.24-26
Commodianus Inst. 41 (the time of the Antichrist)
Clement Paed. 2.13 (on jewelry and the Heavenly Jerusalem)
Origen De Princ. 2.11.2-3 (spiritual vs. physical pleasures in the New Jerusalem)
Augustine Civ. Dei 20.7-17
