Posted this in another forum, but probably needs to be here.
See if you can see the thread of prophecy and fulfillment that runs through these passages.
So I will choose their punishments
And will bring on them what they dread. Because I called, but no one answered; I spoke, but they did not listen. And they did evil in My sight And chose that in which I did not delight."
Isaiah 66:4 (NASB)
Therefore the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council, and were saying, "What are we doing? For this man is performing many signs.
"If we let Him go on like this, all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation." John 11:47-48 (NASB)
When He approached Jerusalem, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, "If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes."
For the days will come upon you when your enemies will throw up a barricade against you, and surround you and hem you in on every side, and they will level you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation."
Luke 19:41-44 (NASB)
Isaiah, writing through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, writes that God will bring upon Israel the punishments they dread the most. Isn't it ironic that in John 11, we see the Sanhedrin gathered to discuss how to preserve their “nation and place” by killing Jesus? Look at the solution upon which they arrived:
But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, "You know nothing at all, nor do you take into account that
it is expedient for you that one man die for the people, and that the whole nation not perish." John 11:49-50 (NASB)
The thing these men feared the most was losing the power and influence they had as rulers of the people. The bitter irony for them was that God met their injustice against Christ with the very thing they feared the most: they lost their city, their religion, their nation, and their position as the “people of God” when Rome's legions breached Jerusalem's walls in 70 AD and left not one stone upon another, just as Christ predicted.
When the New Testament is carefully read, without the presuppositions of futurism overlayed on it, you will see that the “end times” mentioned throughout it point to this world-shattering event for first century Israel and its temple-centric religion. This is the Jewish mindset through which the New Testament must be read: it really was almost all about them.
With that in mind, crack Revelation open with the new set of eyes you've just been given, and see if it all doesn't begin to make a great deal more sense now.