Matthew 24:9 is not about Titus in A.D. 70
Matthew 24:9
9: After that [after the labor pains begin] they shall betray you into affliction and shall kill you and you shall be hated by all nations for my name's sake
Comments: Matthew 24:9 Jesus spoke of a national betrayal that would take place far into the future, after the birth pangs begin. This was not a reveal but rather an exposition on what had already been written in Daniel 11:21-33. The betrayal is revealed in Daniel 11:30 where details of the Man of Sin are intermingled with a description of Antiochus. This is a common occurrence in scripture, e.g., Isaiah 14:9-17 where descriptions of Lucifer and the Man of Sin are amalgamated into a prophecy about the King of Babylon.
It is the glory of ELOHIYM to conceal a thing but the honor of kings is to search out a matter….
Jesus foretold the devastation of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, when Titus sacked Jerusalem, and Luke included this in his account of the same discourse recorded in Matthew. But the attack of Titus and his army did not signal the beginning of sorrows (birth pangs) we read of in Matthew’s account. The birth pangs Jesus predicted will result in the spiritual rebirth of the resurrected Nation of Israel.
Isaiah, Zechariah, and Ezekiel prophetically saw and foretold the physical birth of the modern nation of Israel and the spiritual rebirth of the ancient theocracy of Israel Ezekiel 37:1-14. These two things would not happen simultaneously.
Matthew, in his account, did not include the details on A.D. 70. His focus was on the time of the birth pangs. Jesus was specific in that he was predicting a time when labor pains would begin. One set of birth pangs for one birth; and this will only happen once.
In Christianity, there is no such thing as civic or national salvation, and wars, persecution of Jews, and later, persecution of Christians are things common to all of earth history. Peter wrote that our adversary, the devil, goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. God’s people have been afflicted and killed in one place or another in every era, beginning with the first murder when rebellious and envious Cain killed his righteous brother, Abel.
None of these things, up to this point, have signaled the beginning of the birth pangs—the Beginning of Sorrows—that will result in a nationwide and spiritual rebirth of God’s people Israel—which is the only country ever created by God and dealt with on a national level. But we will see both these things happen at the visible and physical return of Jesus Christ to this earth at the Battle of Armageddon; and by the end of the Judgment of the Nations, there will not be a single unbeliever in Jesus as the only Christ or a nation that has not sworn allegiance to Israel as head nation.
The time of Jacob’s trouble and the time of The Great Tribulation is what Jesus is referring to in Matthew 24:9, when he tells his disciples that they would be betrayed, persecuted, killed, and hated by all nations for HIS name’s sake.
Jocelyn Andersen is the author of several non-fiction books, including, Redemption: Bible Prophecy Simplified, a Study of HOPE.
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