For many readers of Scripture, AD 70 is treated as a historical footnote. Jerusalem fell. The temple was destroyed. Rome asserted its dominance. History moved on. Yet Scripture does not treat this event as incidental. Jesus wept over it. He prophesied it in detail. The apostles framed their warnings around it. Hebrews trembles with urgency because of it.
AD 70 was not merely the destruction of a city. It was the public, irreversible confirmation that the Old Covenant had reached its appointed end. What the cross accomplished legally, AD 70 declared historically. It was the death certificate of a covenant already made obsolete by Christ.
The Old Covenant did not die because Rome was powerful. It died because Christ had fulfilled it.
The Covenant That Could Not Continue
The Mosaic Covenant was never designed to be permanent. Scripture is explicit that it was conditional, mediated, and temporary. It depended on priests who died, sacrifices that repeated, and a temple made with hands. It could expose sin, restrain transgression, and preserve Israel as a vessel of promise, but it could not perfect the conscience or bring life.
Hebrews states this without hesitation. “In that He saith, A new covenant, He hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away” (Hebrews 8:13).
Notice the tense. Ready to vanish away. When Hebrews was written, the Old Covenant was already obsolete in God’s economy, yet still standing in visible form. The temple still functioned. Sacrifices were still offered. Priests still officiated. But they did so as shadows without substance, rituals without covenantal authority.
This created a tension unique in redemptive history. A covenant fulfilled in Christ yet still practiced in Jerusalem. A temple rendered theologically void yet physically intact. AD 70 resolved that tension permanently.
Jesus Pronounced the End Before Rome Arrived
Jesus did not wait for Roman legions to interpret the moment. He announced the end of the covenantal system during His earthly ministry.
He declared the temple “your house” rather than His Father’s and pronounced it desolate (Matthew 23:38). He foretold its complete destruction with astonishing clarity. “There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down” (Matthew 24:2).
This was not mere prediction. It was covenantal judgment. The temple was the heart of the Old Covenant. To remove it was to remove the covenant’s operating center. Without altar, priesthood, sacrifice, or sanctuary, the law could no longer function as given.
Jesus did not come to reform the temple. He came to replace it. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). John clarifies that He spoke of the temple of His body. Christ Himself became the dwelling place of God, the meeting point between heaven and earth, the final altar, the eternal priest.
Once the true temple stood, the shadow could not remain indefinitely.
The Cross Ended the Covenant. AD 70 Sealed It.
The decisive end of the Old Covenant occurred at the cross. When Jesus cried, “It is finished,” the veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom. God Himself removed the barrier that defined the covenantal system. Access was no longer mediated through priests but through the Son.
Hebrews declares that Christ “taketh away the first, that He may establish the second” (Hebrews 10:9). The Old Covenant was not amended. It was taken away.
Yet God, in patience and mercy, allowed a transitional period. The apostles preached to Israel first. The gospel was proclaimed in Jerusalem. The offer of repentance was extended to the very generation that crucified the Lord. But the covenant itself could not be revived.
AD 70 was not the cause of the covenant’s death. It was the evidence. The public, historical demonstration that the Old Covenant had no future because Christ had already fulfilled its purpose.
Why the Judgment Was Necessary
Some recoil at the severity of AD 70. Yet Scripture frames it as both just and necessary. Jesus spoke of it as “the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled” (Luke 21:22).
The leadership of Israel had rejected the Son, clung to the shadow, and persecuted those who preached fulfillment. The covenant they defended testified against them. Moses himself accused them, as Jesus declared (John 5:45).
The destruction of the temple was not God abandoning His promises. It was God keeping them. The law, the prophets, the sacrifices, and the priesthood all pointed to Christ. To preserve them after their fulfillment would be to deny their meaning.
God does not preserve shadows once the substance has arrived.
The End of Sacrifice Forever
Since AD 70, there has been no temple, no altar, and no sacrificial system in Judaism. This is not accidental. It is theological. The law requires blood. Without sacrifice, the covenant cannot function as given.
Hebrews confronts this reality directly. “Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin” (Hebrews 10:18). If Christ’s sacrifice is sufficient, no further offering is possible. To reinstate sacrifices would not honor Moses. It would deny Christ.
AD 70 ensures that the world cannot return to the shadows. History itself enforces the gospel.
Christ Alone Remains
What, then, stands after AD 70. Not Rome. Not Christianity as a religion. Not a new legal system. What stands is a Person.
Christ remains as the true temple, the true sacrifice, the true Israel, and the mediator of the New Covenant. The promises did not fail. They converged. Everything God spoke found its Yes and Amen in Him.
AD 70 does not point forward to fear or speculation. It points backward to fulfillment. It declares that the age of shadows has ended and that the age of substance has arrived.
The Old Covenant did not fade away quietly. God closed it decisively so that no rival system could compete with the finished work of His Son.
The death certificate was issued in Jerusalem.
The life was revealed in Christ.
And the covenant that remains is unshakeable.
