It was foretold, for example, that the city of Jerusalem would be surrounded​—first by encamped armies and then by a fortification of pointed stakes—​and that the city would fall to its enemies after a bitter struggle, marked by famine, pestilence, and great cruelty. It was predicted that the much-admired temple at Jerusalem, recently enlarged and beautified, would be utterly demolished.

Why Should We Be Interested?

The precise fulfillment of these prophecies 37 years after they were given makes them of keen interest to observers of the world political scene today. This is especially true because Bible students see that there will be a like but major fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecies that is to affect the inhabitants of all the earth today.​—Luke 19:43, 44; 21:5-35.

But all of this happened over 1,900 years ago. How do we know that Jesus’ prophecies regarding Jerusalem were fulfilled in minute detail? Our knowledge of events surrounding the destruction of Jerusalem by Roman armies in the year 70 C.E. is dependent to a considerable extent on the writings of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. In his book The Wars of the Jews he reports on events foretold by Jesus, although there is no evidence that Josephus was himself a Christian, or even that he was familiar with Jesus’ prophecies.

Josephus tells us, for example, that the Roman general Titus built a fortification of pointed stakes to hasten the arrival of famine conditions in besieged Jerusalem, just as Jesus had predicted. (Jesus said: “Your enemies will build around you a fortification with pointed stakes and will encircle you and distress you from every side.”) Josephus speaks at length of the terrible straits to which the inhabitants of the city were reduced by the famine, pestilence, and the bloodshed they endured, all of which Jesus had spoken of. (“There will be . . . pestilences and food shortages.” “They will fall by the edge of the sword.”) He tells us of the razing of the temple to its foundations, without a stone left upon a stone, precisely as Jesus predicted. (“Not a stone upon a stone will be left here and not thrown down.”)

Eyewitness

It was during this period that Josephus was able to see with his own eyes the events that proved the truth of Jesus’ notable prophecy against Jerusalem. Jesus had foretold “great necessity upon the land and wrath on this people,” and Josephus made note of the wrath of the Romans, who had originally been inclined to be lenient with the Jews, but had been infuriated by the unwillingness of the Jews to yield.​—Luke 21:23.

When the city fell after a relatively short siege of four and a half months, the Roman soldiers killed until they were too tired to kill any more. “They slew those whom they overtook without mercy, and set fire to the houses whither the Jews had fled, and burnt every soul in them, and laid waste a great many of the rest; and when they were come to the houses to plunder them, they found in them entire families of dead men, and the upper rooms full of dead corpses, that is, of such as died by the famine . . . they ran everyone through whom they met with, and obstructed the very lanes with their dead bodies, and made the whole city run down with blood.”

It is of interest to note that not only the ferocity, but the very brevity of the siege of Jerusalem had been predicted by Jesus when he said: “In fact, unless those days were cut short, no flesh would be saved.” (Matt. 24:22) During the siege, Josephus watched in numbing horror as the Jews pitched 600,000 bodies over the walls of the city, victims of the famine, disease and factional warfare in the city. At that rate, everyone in Jerusalem would have died in another five months!