Alastair's Adversaria - Q&A—What Does AD70 Change?

Episode Date: May 9, 2026

I am answering questions that my supporters have left for me on my Discord group. This one is on the question of what is changed by AD70 and the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple. Follow my Substack, the Anchored Argosy at https://argosy.substack.com/. See my latest podcasts at https://adversariapodcast.com/. If you have enjoyed my videos and podcasts, please tell your friends. If you are interested in supporting my videos and podcasts and my research more generally, please consider supporting my work on Patreon (www.patreon.com/zugzwanged), using my PayPal account (https://www.paypal.com/donate/?business=4WX77P4F8S7WL), or by buying books for my research on Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/3…3O?ref_=wl_share). You can also listen to the audio of these episodes on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/alastairs-adversaria/id1416351035.

Hello and welcome. In the past, I've answered questions from various people online, and I'm going to start doing that again for supporters on my Discord group. I have already received several good questions, and today I'm going to answer the first. The first question concerns the changes that came as a result of AD 70, the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple. The question reads, I really want to understand more about what 70 AD changes and how. This is a very important question, one that gets at an issue that's often ignored by readers of the New Testament, for whom AD 70 may be at most a fulfillment of some Jesus' prophecies in the Olivet discourse. Beyond that, however, there's little understanding of how it fits into the bigger picture. Yet Jesus' prophecies in places like Matthew 24 and 5 don't merely look to AD 70 as some disaster on the horizon with little significance, beyond its immediate significance for those who are living through it. It is a covenantal event, and as a result have ramifications that we should be thinking about as well. The sense of an event on the horizon that would change the world order

is something that pervades the New Testament. It's not merely found in the Gospels, in the Olivet discourse and elsewhere. It's also found in books like Hebrews. It's found in James. It's found in several of the Pauline texts. These various parts of the New Testament anticipate an event within the lifetime of many of the hearers or readers of the text in which there would be a radical, covenantal reordering of the world,

a reordering of the world that demonstrated and established the victory won by Christ. No book of the New Testament is more concerned with this than the Book of Revelation, while many contemporary readers of the Book of Revelation see it to be referring to some event perhaps in our near future, but in the distant future of the writer, this is not the case. When we read the book, there is a sense of the imminence of Christ's return. These things are at hand. Behold, he is coming quickly.

And yet we think, what else could this book be about other than the end of the world? That the New Testament might end with some prophecies concerning the destruction of a city in a Roman province in the first century AD, seems a bit anticlimactic. after all that we read about the cosmic scale of the work of Christ, this is what the New Testament ends with? Now clearly the Book of Revelation refers to things beyond AD 70 as well, but the focus is upon those events.

Why would they merit such attention? In answering this question, I'm not going to give a full account of the Book of Revelation. There does need to be an explanation for why the book refers to AD 70, and I've given that within my commentary upon the book, which is available online for free. My purpose here is to consider what the events of AD 70 might mean. What's their import? The sense that the reader of the scriptures might have

that the end of the New Testament should fittingly refer to the end of the world is not an unreasonable one. Christ's work is indeed cosmic, and it's important to understand the full character of that picture and how it is fulfilled. I would argue that while referring primarily to the destruction of Jerusalem, Jerusalem in 8070, the book of Revelation concerns a new world order, a new world order that will exist until its full consummation in the new heavens and the new earth. So what does the book of

Revelation and what do other books of the New Testament tell us about AD 70 and its significance? First of all, it teaches us about the public vindication of the church. This public vindication is something that changes the standing of the various parties. The opponents of the church, its accusers have been humbled. They've been silenced. The church has been publicly demonstrated to be in the right and Christ's prophecies have been vindicated. Christ's word has been made more sure.

There is also a demonstration of Christ's presence in heaven. The Book of Revelation speaks of Christ's ascension and his place upon the throne, and that place upon the throne is demonstrated in part by the events that play out on earth. As the religious authorities and religious system that oppose Christ is removed, Christ's presence in heaven is demonstrated and his word is vindicated. As Jesus said to the high priest in his trial, from now on you will see the son of man seated at the right hand of power

and coming on the clouds of heaven. Christ is established in the heavens, and as a result, his judge, take place on earth, even though people might not be given a vision of Christ in heaven, they can see the effects of His presence in heaven upon the events of the earth. The destruction of the temple in AD 70 marks the closing of the Old Covenant Order more generally. While a book such as Hebrews can look towards the destruction of the temple, it is dealing with an order of overlap, where the temple order and the order of the Church exist alongside each other, and many of the accusers and opponents of the church would have been

Jews participating within the sacrificial system. For the readers or hearers of the book of Hebrews, the temptation would be to go back to that old order if they had come from it and maybe moved to it if they were Gentiles. However, after the destruction of the temple, sacrifices over. In Hebrews 12, the author speaks about things being shaken so that those things that cannot be shaken would remain. The sacrifice that now continued would be sacrificed based upon Christ once for all sacrifice, a sacrificial system that occurs within the church in sacrifices of praise, as we offer our bodies to God in Christ and as we celebrate communion with Him. The destruction of the temple then represented the collapse of an old religious system, leaving the church and its worship established by Christ

as that which remained. The closing of the Old Covenant Order led more generally to a changing of the coordinates of the world. This is a reorganisation of the world order. All of the coordinates are changed in various ways. Seed, people, promise, land, temple,

sacrifice, divine word, salvation and flesh. After the advent of Christ, after his death and resurrection, after his ascension into heaven, after the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost, A revolution has taken place, and that revolution is established and sealed by the events of AD 70. As the old order is torn down, the new order is seen more clearly as what God has established in its place, and the possibility that the old order might rival it is removed.

Hereafter, the presence of God is more clearly seen to be that which exists within the church. The people of God are more clearly seen to be the people of God who are established within the church. the church, Jew and Gentile. The church is the place where communion with God is taking place through continued sacrifice of worship. It's the body to which the divine word has been entrusted, and within which it is opened up. It's the place where salvation is known. Now differences between Jew and Gentile can persist. Revelation does not, in my understanding, speak of a removal of any difference between Jew and Gentile. However, the old form of that difference has gone. The differences between Jew and Gentile and Christ are perhaps more akin to the differences between two tribes

in the land of Israel, defined groups with their own contexts and forms of life, but with a common inheritance. The difference between Jew and Gentile no longer marks the difference between inside and outside the covenant. Besides this, the Book of Revelation speaks of a revolution that has occurred in heaven. After Christ ascends into heaven, the accuser of the brethren is cast down. loses his former standing. Revelation chapter 12 versus 7 and following read. Now war arose in heaven Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon and the dragon and his angels fought back but was defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven and the great dragon was thrown down that ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan the deceiver of the whole world. He was

thrown down to the earth and his angels were thrown down with him and I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God, and they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony, for they love not their lives even unto death. Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them, but woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short. Christ, as he ascends into heaven, casts down Satan and his angels.

And as a result, there is a transformation of the power structures of the universe. There's a new world order. The sort of power that Satan describes himself having in the temptations of Christ no longer is his. Through his victory and his enthronement, Christ has removed him. In Revelation chapter 12 and 13, the description of the dragon is mirrored in the description of the sea beast and then the land beast. The sea beast is like a mini-mee of the dragon, and the land-beast a mini-mee of the sea-beast.

Behind them all, Satan is the one who holds the nations in his thrall. Our minds might also be drawn back to Daniel, his description of the great series of nations, in chapter 2 in the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, and then in chapter 7 in the vision of the beasts. In these visions, human empires are described as if they were part of this great idolatrous image, and then also as if there are some monstrous chaos beasts

that needed to be brought under control. This description is filled out in the chapters that follow in chapter 8 to 12. However, the rule of the idolatrous empires and the rule of the chaos beasts is about to come to an end. The son of man and the people of God will be established, an authority and power will be given to them. The stone cut without hands will break, down the false image and will rise to fill the earth. The angels behind the pagan empires will be

defeated and Michael will be victorious. In chapter 12 of Revelation, Satan is cast down and his time is short so he seeks to persecute the woman, the woman who gave birth to the ascended royal son. Later, Satan's rule is even further curtailed. He had been the great puppet master, the one behind all the kingdoms, manipulating and directing them. And now when Christ, has ascended and he has been cast down, he no longer enjoys that same power, or his power to accuse the brethren. Now, he is on the run, as it were. He's the mob boss whose house has been raided, and he is now trying to escape the authorities, recognising that his time is running out. In Revelation 20, there are further developments. Reading from verse 1,

Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain and he seized the dragon that ancient serpent who is the devil and Satan and bound him for a thousand years and threw him into the pit and shut it and sealed it over him so that he might not deceive the nations any longer until the thousand years were ended after that he must be released for a little while. The casting down of Satan removes much of his power. is the great puppet master. His binding and imprisonment is a further limitation still, and it's connected with his power to deceive the nations. Within its context in Revelation,

this short period of time is the period of time that leads up to the events of AD 70, and the binding and confining of Satan is that which follows the events of AD 70. Satan is no longer just like the mob boss whose base of operations has been raided by the authorities, nor even like the mob boss who is on the run, he's now more like the mob boss who is imprisoned. Does it mean he's completely inactive or without any sort of influence or power whatsoever? Demonic and satanic activity still continues in our world today,

but no longer has the character that it once did. Satan no longer enjoys his power as puppet master. In the place of his kingdom, the kingdom of Christ is being established. The Church Father Athanasius describes this as a public event that people knew from history. A few centuries back, something had radically changed, and old satanic and demonic powers that had formerly held nations in their thrall

were no longer active or effective. Writing in the middle of the fourth century, Athanasius wrote, When did men begin to desert the worshipping of idols, save since God, the true word of God, has come among men? Or when have the oracles among the Greeks and everywhere ceased and become empty, save when the Savior has manifested himself upon earth, or when did those who are called gods and heroes in the poets

begin to be convicted of being merely mortal men, save since the Lord erected his conquest of death and preserved incorruptible the body he had taken, raising it from the dead? Or when did the deceitfulness and madness of demons fall into contempt, save when the power of God, the word, the master of all these as well, condescending because of man's weakness, appeared on earth. When did the art and the schools of magic begin to be trodden down, save when the

divine manifestation of the word took place among men? And in the word, at what time has the wisdom of the Greeks become foolish, save when the true wisdom of God manifested itself on earth? For formerly the whole world in every place was led astray by the worshipping of idols, and men regarded nothing else but the idols as gods. But now, all the world over, men are deserting the superstition of the idols, and taking refuge with Christ, and worshipping Him as God, are by his means coming to know the Father also whom they knew not. And marvellous fact, whereas the objects of worship were various and a vast number, and each place

had its own idol, and he who was accounted a God among them had no power to pass over to the neighbouring place, so as to persuade those of neighbouring people. to worship him, but was barely served even among his own people, for no one else worshipped his neighbour's god. On the contrary, each man kept his own idol, thinking it to be Lord of all. Christ alone is worshipped as one and the same among all peoples, and what the weakness of idols could not do, to persuade, namely, even those dwelling close at hand. This Christ has done, persuading not only those close at hand, but simply the entire world, to worship one and the same Lord. To worship one and the same Lord, and through him God, even his father.

St. Athanasius is describing as history what Revelation 20 speaks forth as prophecy. Satan was bound and could no longer deceive the nations. Revelation 20 also speaks of the first resurrection. Earlier in Revelation, it's spoken of the voice of the martyrs beneath the altar, calling for vindication, and the event of AD 70 was a vindication of the martyrs. At the end of his public ministry, Jesus declared, He declared woes upon Jerusalem and its leaders. He spoke of the blood of everyone from Abel to Zachariah,

all the prophets coming upon that generation, as it had been filled up and had reached its completion. And as the time of judgment comes, so does the time of the vindication of the righteous. And with their vindication, they are raised up to be seated in heavenly places. The heavenly standing formerly enjoyed by Satan and his angels has been stripped from them.

And in their place, the saints of God, are established. After AD 70, the Church triumphant is enthroned in a new way. When we understand the Book of Revelation, we begin to see it as a book about a revolution in the world order. The old spiritual powers that formerly held the nations in their thrall have been brought low and have been confined. And in their place, Christ sits upon the throne of heaven, and the righteous are vindicated and share in his rule. All of this was written in a period when the church was a very fledgling, small movement, outnumbered greatly by the number of people

who still worshipped in the temple system and followed the religious authorities in Jerusalem. Likewise, the church seemed like nothing compared to the power of Rome that held sway over Jerusalem and its leaders and over much of the known world, and behind that the power of Satan himself loomed, the great dragon, in heaven accusing the brethren. However, within the next few decades,

Jerusalem would be destroyed and its religious leaders removed of all authority. By the end of 136 AD and the failure of the Barcockbao revolt, the Jews would be further disenfranchised and scattered from the land, which was laid waste. By 300 years later, the gospel had spread throughout the known world, the emperor had converted to the faith, and the Christian faith was recognised as the official religion of the empire. The revolution had occurred in the first century, but the results were being seen in the centuries that followed.

We are still living in that revolution. The Book of Revelation describes the founding events. It also looks forward to the final events, the events of the great resurrection, and the consummation of the kingdom of God and the new heavens and the new earth. While these events are still awaited, we currently live in the New World Order established by Christ in the first century. Reflecting upon what AD 70 changes then is not to be.

just a matter of historical interest. It can give us clarity concerning and confidence in the rule that Christ has established here and now. Thank you very much for listening. If you would like to have some of your questions answered and also to support my work here and in other places, please consider supporting me on my Patreon or PayPal accounts. The links to those are below. God bless and thank you for listening.