“…they hinder us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. Thus they constantly fill up their measure of sins, but wrath has come upon them completely” (1 Thessalonians 2:16 NET).
In hindsight, the message of 1 Thessalonians 2:16 served as a statement of fact and a prophetic warning for those who were working to prevent access to the Gospel. Much like the gathering clouds that signal the approach of a devastating storm, a greater expression of God’s wrath would take place within twenty years following the completion of this letter to the Thessalonian church. It took the form of a catastrophic event: the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman Empire.
Beginning in AD 69 and continuing into AD 70, the Roman general Titus marched on the city of Jerusalem with an army of 30,000 soldiers. That military campaign was designed to eliminate all remaining pockets of resistance to the Roman Empire. The Romans subsequently began a five month siege of Jerusalem that leveled the city along with the Temple and every other major building within that area. It also resulted in an estimated loss of one million lives.
In today’s age of computer-generated images of graphical destruction that often appear within video games or action movies, it may be easy to overlook the real-life devastation involved with this military action. For instance, the Temple of that day covered an area the size of 25-30 American football fields (about 2300-2700 meters). The retaining walls rose almost 10 stories above street level. The smallest stones used in constructing the Temple weighed approximately 2-5 tons (2000-5100 kg).
The Temple in Jerusalem was an architecturally elaborate structure that also served as the center of Jewish cultural identity during that time. Yet it was destroyed so completely that Jesus’ prophetic statement from Luke 21:6 came to pass exactly as He predicted: “the time is coming when not even one stone will be left upon another. All will be demolished” (CEB). In fact, the Romans were so thorough in their demolition that scholars and archaeologists are uncertain regarding the exact location of certain portions of the Temple today.
This historic event has prompted one author to make the following observation regarding our passage from 1 Thessalonians 2:16: “Jesus prophesied that God’s wrath would fall on this group of people (Mat_23:35-36). God’s wrath did fall on them in many ways, but none so devastating as the destruction of Jerusalem (70 A.D.) which came in less than twenty years time from when Paul wrote this.” (1)
(2) Ice, Rhoderick D. “Commentary on 1 Thessalonians 2:16”. “The Bible Study New Testament”. https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/ice/1-thessalonians-2.html College Press, Joplin, MO. 1974.