The only way to escape that judgment was to flee to Christ in faith!

Beware therefore, lest what has been spoken in the prophets come upon you: 'Behold, you despisers, marvel and perish! For I work a work in your days, a work which you will by no means believe, though one were to declare it to you.' "
Acts 13:40-41

Last time we gave the back story of God’s word to Habakkuk, whom Paul quoted in Acts13:40-41. The first lesson we received was that God uses even the wicked to judge, and He may well be using the wicked to judge the United States on our day. Read Romans 1:18-32 to learn of how God judges sinners by “giving them up to” their sins.

The second lesson we can learn from Paul’s words in Acts 13 is that Israel was ripe for God’s judgment for having rejected their Messiah, God’s Son, Jesus. And though Israel was already a conquered and occupied land, living under the iron fist of Rome, it was only going to be a few more years before God would use Rome again, and more severely, when in 70 AD Rome would obliterate Jerusalem and the Jewish religion for rejecting Jesus.

Destroy the Jewish religion? Yes. Though there are Jewish people today, and although some (but very few) are religious, the religion practiced by the Jews today has no semblance of the Jewish religion commanded by God in the Bible. There is no temple, nor are there any priests, nor sacrifices—which are the heart and soul of Old Testament Biblical Judaism.

Why did God destroy the Jewish religion? Actually He didn’t destroy it. He completed it! Everything the Romans destroyed was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. He is the Great High Priest who offered the one and only sacrifice that could actually take away sins—His blood!

As Jerusalem fell in 70 AD, you can be sure that the Jewish population couldn’t believe what God was doing. The only way to escape that judgment was to flee to Christ in faith! Praise the Lord, though most did not—many did!