Christians were destroyed, not for the public good, but as a sacrifice to the cruelty of a single individual.” [167:2] Some writers have maintained that the persecution under Nero was confined to Rome; but various testimonies concur to prove that it extended to the provinces.  Paul seems to contemplate its spread throughout the Empire when he tells the Hebrews that they had “not yet resisted unto blood striving against sin,” [167:3] and when he exhorts them not to forsake the assembling of themselves together as they “see the day approaching.” [167:4] Peter also, as has been stated in a preceding chapter, apparently refers to the same circumstance in his letter to the brethren “scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia,” when he announces “the fiery trial” which was “to try” them, [168:1] and when he tells them of “judgment” beginning “at the house of God.” [168:2] If Nero enacted that the profession of Christianity was a capital offence, his law must have been in force throughout the Roman world; and an early ecclesiastical writer positively affirms that he was the author of such sanguinary legislation. [168:3] The horror with which his name was so long regarded by members of the Church in all parts of the Empire [168:4] strongly corroborates the statement that the attack on the disciples in the capital was only the signal for the commencement of a general persecution.

Nero died A.D. 68, and the war which involved the destruction of Jerusalem and of upwards of a million of the Jews, was already in progress.  The holy city fell A.D. 70; and the Mosaic economy, which had been virtually abolished by the death of Christ, now reached its practical termination.  At the same period the prophecy of Daniel was literally fulfilled; for “the sacrifice and the oblation” were made to cease, [168:5] as the demolition of the temple and the dispersion of the priests put an end to the celebration of the Levitical worship.  The overthrow of the metropolis of Palestine contributed in various ways to the advancement of the Christian cause.  Judaism, no longer able to provide for the maintenance of its ritual, was exhibited to the world as a defunct system; its institutions, now more narrowly examined by the spiritual eye, were discovered to be but types of the blessings of a more glorious dispensation; and many believers, who had hitherto adhered to the ceremonial law, discontinued its observances.  Christ, forty years before, had predicted the siege and desolation of Jerusalem; [169:1] and the remarkable verification of a prophecy, delivered at a time when the catastrophe was exceedingly improbable, appears to have induced not a few to think more favourably of the credentials of the gospel.  In another point of view the ruin of the ancient capital of Judea proved advantageous to the Church.  In the subversion of their chief city the power of the Jews sustained a shock from which it has never since recovered; and the disciples were partially delivered from the attacks of their most restless and implacable persecutors.