<p>19:44 <i>And shall dash you to the ground, and your children within you; and they shall not leave in you one stone upon another- </i>The judgment of the leprous house was to be thrown down, stone by stone (Lev. 14:41). At the time of the final assault on Jerusalem in AD69, Titus commanded that the temple was to be spared. But the Lord's words came true, just as all prophetic words will, despite every human effort to deny their power. Josephus claims that the gold of the temple melted and therefore each stone was prized apart to remove the gold.</p><p>There was a strong belief in Judaism that the temple would last eternally. Hence the disciples&rsquo; question about &ldquo;the end of the age&rdquo; was because for them, any talk about the end of the temple meant the end of the world. This prophecy of the destruction of the temple implied an ending of the Mosaic law.&nbsp;</p><p><i>All this will happen because you did not perceive the time of your visitation</i>- Because Jerusalem knew not &quot;the time of your visitation&quot;, she didn't perceive the things of &quot;her peace&quot; &quot;in this day&quot; (:42), <i>therefore</i> days of destruction would come upon her in AD70. The implication surely is that had Jerusalem accepted Jesus as Messiah, the events of AD70 need never have happened, and His first coming could have been the day of &quot;visitation&quot; to establish God's Kingdom. Of course God's program functioned differently because this never happened; but that doesn't take away from the fact that it was truly possible.</p><p>All major events in God's purpose have occurred within the approximate period when true students of the word expected them to - the Flood, the desolation of Jerusalem and its rebuilding, the Lord's first coming, the events of A.D. 70 etc. are all good examples.&nbsp;&nbsp; How much more then with the time of the second coming and the consummation of God's purpose?&nbsp;&quot;The Lord God will do nothing, but he reveals his secret unto His... prophets&quot; (Amos 3:7), and the purpose of their writing was so that we might understand. The Lord rebuked the Jews because they couldn't discern the signs that Messiah's first advent was with them (Mt. 16:3; Lk. 19:44); and his first advent was a type of his second. The coming of judgment through the Babylonians was another type of the last days; and Israel were criticized for not perceiving the approach of that day, whereas &quot;the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed time; and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming&quot; (Jer. 8:7). This means that as the natural creation have an inherent knowledge of the seasons, so God's people should have a sense of the time of the Lord's coming. The Lord said the same when he spoke of how our internal awareness of the approach of Summer should correspond to our certain knowledge of the Kingdom's approach.</p><p>The grace of Jesus and His Father, so great, <i>so</i> free, was a challenge for even the Lord to express in any verbal medium. The way He spoke was grace itself. He wept over the men of Jerusalem, sorrowing that their destruction must come because &quot;you knew not the time of your visitation&quot;. He could have quite well said: &quot;because you have rejected me...&quot;. But His grace was greater than to say that. The utter inappropriacy of our salvation is brought out time and again in His teaching. The oil lamp with the bruised reed and smoking flax which annoyingly filled the house with smoke was nurtured and tolerated in hope by this Lord of ours.</p>