Luke 21:20-24 “And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. (21) Then let them which are in Judaea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto. (22) For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. (23) But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck, in those days! for there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people. (24) And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.”
The descriptions of the coming crisis throughout the epistle [of Hebrews] point immediately to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple as predicted by Jesus (Mt. 23:37–24:28; Mk. 13:1–32; Lk. 21:5–36). By rejecting their Messiah, the Jewish leaders of that generation had become the ‘adversaries’ of God and were therefore under his wrath. The author warns his readers not to shrink back into the destruction coming upon their ‘adversaries’ (i.e. those Jewish leaders who persecuted them) but to preserve their lives by persevering in their faith (10:39). They could avoid God’s wrath coming upon ‘his people’ by holding firm to their confession, bearing the reproach of Christ outside the camp (13:13), and looking to the heavenly city instead of the earthly one (i.e. Jerusalem) now under the sentence of
destruction (13:14).
This interpretation of the warnings corresponds to Eusebius’ remarkable account of how the Christian community in Jerusalem was warned to leave the city before its destruction: ‘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 migrated from Jerusalem, that when holy men had altogether deserted the royal capital of the Jews and the whole land of Judaea, the judgement of God might at last overtake them’ (Hist. Eccl., 3.5.2–3). For a defense of the historicity of this account, see E. Yamauchi, ‘Christians and the Jewish Revolts against Rome’, Fides et Historia 23 (1991) 18–22.