I just picked up a documentary (on the End Times) which is very well done with some amazing special effects and I enjoyed it very much. However, when I checked the scriptures that are being used to introduce one of the segments concerning the end of days gathering of Israel’s enemies at tribulation, they use Luke 21:20 to describe the events leading up to tribulation.
When I read that verse in context it sounds more like the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD by the Romans. Especially since what happens after is that Jersualem will fall by the sword and taken prisoners to all nations (Luke 21:24) and that Jerusalem would be trampled under foot until the times of the Gentiles has ended. That sounds like the two thousand year Diaspora prior to the rebirth of Israel in 1948. So, using Luke 21:20 to describe a tribulation event sounds incorrect to me.
Have I missed something? Is there anyway that Titus may have stood in the Temple and declared himself God fulfilling this prophecy?
The producers of this documentary are wrong to apply Luke 21:20 to the End of the Age when it was clearly fulfilled in 70 AD. As for Titus, he refused to bring a golden statue of the Emperor Caligula into the Jerusalem Temple (which would have fulfilled the Lord’s prophecy of the Abomination of Desolation) resulting in Caligula’s order that Titus be executed. But Caligula himself died before the order arrived in Jerusalem, making it null and void. A few years later the destruction of the Temple made any fulfillment of the prophecy impossible.
The Lord’s order for believers to flee the destruction of Jerusalem mentioned in Luke 21 was not the same as the End Times prophecy He spoke in Matt 24. We know this because the signal to flee was different. In Luke 21:20 it was the siege being laid around Jerusalem, whereas in Matt. 24:15. it was the Abomination of Desolation standing in the Temple.