After Jesus was crucified, religious Israel wrestled for the next 40 years with the internal tension created by Jesus’ New Covenant. The Judaizers tried hard to stamp it out, but it kept growing. Due to the tireless efforts of Apostle Peter and Apostle Paul…and James (Jesus’ own brother) and others, Jews throughout the Roman Empire began abandoning their strict adherence to the old covenant and started truly following the resurrected Jesus.
Then the transition came to a quick end, on August 6th in AD 70. The four-year war between Rome and the Jewish rebels came to a violent conclusion. The Jewish Temple…the very heart of ancient Judaism…was looted and burned and razed to the ground. Its destruction signaled the end of ancient Judaism. The words of the old covenant were preserved, but Israel’s ability to live in accordance with those words disappeared in a single day.
Ancient Judaism...as prescribed by Moses at Mount Sinai...ceased to exist. To use Jesus’ term, it “disappeared.”
And again, the conditional and temporary old covenant that God made with the Ancient Israelites…and ‘only’ with the Ancient Israelites…is NOT the unconditional and everlasting covenant that God made with Abraham.
