The question remains regarding the time of fulfilment of this prophecy. Does the day
refer to the final day of judgment when Christ returns? Or are there initial fulfillments prior to the climactic fulfilment of the final judgment?
Jesus spoke about a judgment that was to fall upon Jerusalem as a foreshadowing of the final judgment (Luke 21:20–28). In Luke 21:21, Jesus warned the faithful to flee from Jerusalem. According to ancient Jewish historian Eusebius, “The people of the Church in Jerusalem were commanded by an oracle given by revelation before the war to those in the city who were worthy of it to depart and dwell in one of the cities of Perea which they called Pella. To it those who believed on Christ travelled from Jerusalem, so that when holy men had altogether deserted the royal capital of the Jews and the whole land of Judaea."1.
Though this tradition has been disputed, it has also been ably defended. P.H.R. van Houwelingen, wrote, Our mother-church, the Christian congregation of Jerusalem, was, under instruction from heaven, itself preserved from the violence of war and destruction. Although the city of Jerusalem was besieged and captured, and her proud temple laid waste, the Jewish Christians were able to find safety in time for themselves by leaving for Pella in the Decapolis. Thereby the congregation of Jerusalem survived the catastrophe which hit the Jewish people around the year A.D. 70.
2
While the certainty of this tradition may be disputed, the promise of God to spare those who serve him faithfully will be gloriously fulfilled when Christ Jesus returns.
17 “They shall be mine, says the LORD of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him.