Josephus, who witnessed first hand these final days outside the city's walls, and was considered to be a traitor by those within, gives his assessment of this seditious phenomenon: "for I venture to affirm, that the sedition destroyed the city, and the Romans destroyed the sedition, which it was a much harder thing to do than to destroy the walls; so that we may justly ascribe our misfortunes to our own people, and the just vengeance taken on them by the Romans. . . ." (Wars 2.6.1 - p. 557).

This was not one of the brightest pages in Jewish history. The city of Jerusalem, where king David once danced in the streets at the entry of the ark of their covenant, where children once played and old men went and came in peace, was in the end reduced to the unraveling ravages of the darker side of humanity now running unrestrained. In any society when the law is disregarded, as it was here, the baser element of its fabric will manifest itself and metastasize the very liberty it once provided. With liberty, then, departs peace. Reason and logic will follow pursuit and order will give way to disorder, with anarchy eventually becoming the new order of the day. The vacuum thus created will be filled with its opposites. Evil will replace goodness, arrogance -- humility, until life that once was highly esteemed, becomes ultimately cheapened in great disdain. The result is the survival of the strongest, and in this devolution of society, the most wicked will always prevail. And so, Jerusalem finally succumbed on 15 Nisan A.D. 70.

Before the end, refugees scattered for their own safety across the borders of other countries. And bands of Zealots and Sicarii would flee, with one in particular making their last stand and final Jewish holdout at the mountainous fortress of Masada, under Elazar ben Yair, descendant of Judas the Galilean who had led the original revolt against taxation in A.D. 6. On 15 Nisan A.D. 73 (Passover), within its besieged walls, a suicide pact would be executed by its 960 remaining holdouts (ten would murder the mass, then one the remaining nine, and finally himself), with only two women and five children hiding to survive to tell the story of its final days. (Notice: Christ's crucifixion, Jerusalem's fall, and Masada's final day were on Passover.)

Our 20th century minds, living amidst western secured freedom, cannot begin to conceive the horrors of those apocalyptic years and final days within Judea to the near east. No land has ever existed whose soil has been more soaked with its citizens' blood than this. Judgment or injustice? -- has since been the question hotly debated by Jewish and Christian theologian alike. And what of the Christian Church in Jerusalem in this time? Small rays of insight can be seen within our New Testament. Look for them as you read.

Such was the end of the Jewish state under the provocation of the Zealots. Is it any wonder, then, what scenes of past and future horror filled the mind of Christ as He stood overlooking Jerusalem, the city of David, the city chosen by God Himself, where His glory once was seen to descend, but now had departed, and with a broken heart cried, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! How oft would I have gathered you under my wings as a hen her chicks, but you would not.

Although the Zealots may not have been directly responsible for Christ's crucifixion, the climate they created in their insurrections and villainous ways certainly set the stage for it. To the Pharisee and Sadducee, they could not see this Man who carried no sword stand with his little band of disciples against such an enormous Roman empire, even if He had won to Himself the masses willing to crown Him king. Instead, they preferred that convicted thief, murderer, and insurrectionist, Barabbas, go free than this latest "messiah." To them, Barabbas would likely be a lesser threat to their power than Jesus. And so, in A.D. 30, to the 5th Roman procurator Pilate, they cowardly cried, "We have no king, but Caesar."