What AD 70 Did Not End

Most of us picture the early believers leaving the temple behind almost at once. After the resurrection, we imagine, they began meeting in homes, and the temple quietly dropped out of their lives.

The New Testament does not tell it that way. The believers kept gathering at the temple for decades, until the war that ended in its destruction in AD 70. Four things in the text explain why.

First, the Command Was Still Standing

The temple, the offerings, and the pilgrimage feasts were things the Torah commanded to be done at the place where the LORD had put His name, and no one had revoked that command. The letter to the Hebrews speaks of the priests in the present tense:

Hebrews 8:4 Now if He were on earth, He would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer doron δῶρον do'-ron(offerings, gifts) according to the nomos νόμος nom'-os(law).

The writer says “there are priests who offer,” not “there were.” As far as he was concerned, the service of the temple was a present reality.

Second, the Apostles Kept the Feasts

We have already noticed Paul planning his travels around Pentecost. Acts records another such moment:

Acts 20:16 For Paul had krino κρίνω kree'-no(decided) to sail past Ephesus so that he would not have to spend chronos χρόνος khron'-os(chronological-time) in Asia; for he was hurrying to be in Jerusalem, if possible, on the day of Pentecost.

He was hurrying to reach Jerusalem for the feast. The feasts were not kept by Jewish believers alone. Paul wrote these words to the church in Corinth, a church full of believers from the nations, in a Greek city on another continent:

1 Corinthians 5:7-8 Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are unleavened; for Messiah our Passover has been sacrificed for us. Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven nor with leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and aletheia ἀλήθεια al-ay'-thi-a(truth).

“Therefore let us celebrate the feast.” Paul did not tell the Corinthians that Passover was over because Messiah is our Passover. He told them to keep the feast because Messiah is our Passover, and to keep it with a clean heart.

Third, the Body as Temple Widened the Standard

We saw this in Chapter 5. Calling the community a temple did not replace the temple in Jerusalem. It carried the temple’s holiness into the daily life of every believer, and the two stood side by side. The same Paul who told the Corinthians that they were the naos ναός nah-os' of God went up to Jerusalem and purified himself in the temple.

Fourth, AD 70 Was Judgment, Not Repeal

Then came AD 70. Roman legions surrounded Jerusalem, broke through the walls, and burned the temple. Yeshua had foretold it:

Matthew 24:2 And Yeshua said to them: "Do you not see all these things? Truly I say to you, not one stone here will be left upon another which will not be torn down."

The words “torn down” translate katalyo καταλύω kat-al-oo'-o, the word we met in Chapter 2. The stones of the temple would be torn down. But Yeshua had already said what He did not come to tear down: the Torah and the prophets (Matthew 5:17).

Did the destruction mean that the Torah had been canceled? It did not. It was a judgment announced in advance, just as the burning of Solomon’s temple by the Babylonians centuries earlier had been a judgment. When Babylon burned the first temple, Daniel did not conclude that the Torah had been repealed. In his prayer in Daniel 9 he confessed instead that “all Israel have transgressed your Torah.”

What changed after AD 70 was that the commands tied to the place, the offerings and the pilgrimages, could no longer be carried out. If the Torah says to sacrifice only at the place God will choose, and that place is a smoking ruin occupied by a foreign army, no one may simply build an altar somewhere more convenient. To do that would break the very law one was trying to keep.

What Daniel Did

The Scriptures give us a picture of how a faithful person lives in such a time. When the first temple lay in ruins, Daniel was hundreds of miles away in Babylon. He did not say, “The temple is gone, so the law is dead.” Instead, he did this:

Daniel 6:11 And Daniel, when he knew that the writing was signed, went into his house; now his windows were open in his upper chamber toward Jerusalem; and three times in the day he knelt upon his knees, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, just as he had done before this.

(Daniel 6:11 in the Hebrew verse numbering; 6:10 in most English Bibles)

The building lay in rubble, yet Daniel kept facing Jerusalem. He stayed loyal to the place God had chosen, even when no one could stand in it.

Pause, Not Delete

AD 70 pressed the pause button on the commands that depend on the place. It did not press delete on the Torah.

A paused song is still the same song, waiting to be played. And the prophets say plainly that one day the song will play again.

Before we come to that day, though, there is a practical question to settle. If the commands bound to the place are paused, what does that mean for a believer today? What can we keep, and what must wait?