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90 The Significance of the Year A.D. 30

One thing must be noticed by us all. Yohanan salem, and Yohanan ben Zakkai (who lived at
ben Zakkai (and all the later rabbis for the next the time of the apostles, and afterward) also
400 years) maintained that these four signs were knew that God was prophesying the destruc-
given by God to denote the coming destruction tion of the Temple by the four major signs
of the Temple, not that the people had gone over that were given at the time. Let us now look
to “Christianity” or some other reason. While the closely at what those signs were.
four signs commenced precisely with A.D. 30
when Jesus was crucified and resurrected from The Babylonian Talmud lists the first sign as
the dead, none of them was associated by being that in which “the lot ‘for the Lord’ did
Yohanan ben Zakkai or the later rabbis with the not come up in the right hand” (Yoma 39b).
arrival of Chris- What was the
tianity. There was meaning of
no “displeasure” this? The Holy
on God’s part Scriptures
with the vast speak about
numbers of Jew- this ceremony
ish people who (Leviticus 6:5-
had gone over to a 34). On the
belief in Christ Je- Day of Atone-
sus in the thirty- ment two iden-
three years fol- tical goats
lowing the cruci- were brought
fixion. James said before the
that “tens of thou- High Priest
sands” of Jews and lots were
then believed the Model of Herod’s Temple cast over them
Gospel (Acts 21: (one source
20 Greek). In- says the lots
deed, it was because the vast majority of those were in the form of a white and black stone --
Jewish Christians turned away from the faith of the white stone was ‘for the Lord’ and the
(and in) Jesus that Peter and Jude wrote their black was ‘for the Scapegoat’). The priest
epistles of warning to the Jews (Second Peter would put his right hand into a receptacle
and Jude) that their erroneous actions would lead containing the two stones and without look-
the nation into becoming as desolate as were ing down, select a stone with his right hand
Sodom and Gomorrah. and place it over the right hand goat. The
Babylonian Talmud says that in the previous
The truth is, Jesus had foretold, just two days be- two hundred years the stone would be some-
fore his crucifixion, that Jerusalem and the Tem- times white and sometimes black as most
ple would be destroyed (Matthew 24:1-3). He people would have expected (that is, a ran-
had also told the authorities that he, himself, was dom selection each year would bring up the
the new Temple and that he (being that new black stone as often as the white). But begin-
Temple) would be raised from the dead after ning in A.D. 30 (the very year in which Jesus
three days (John 2:19-21). All Jewish Christians prophesied the coming destruction of the
who believed Jesus were looking for the destruc- Temple, and the very year of his death and
tion of the physical Temple that existed in Jeru- resurrection), the right hand of the High

The Berean Voice November-December 2002