Jude
died in Mesopotamia, after writing an epistle to his flock; and his
brother, St. Simon Zelotes, also went by the same path to his rest; but
their deaths only strengthened the Church, and their successors carried
out the same work.
The judgments of God were darkening around Jerusalem. A procurator named
Florus was more cruel and insulting than usual, and a tumult broke out
against him. Agrippa tried to appease it, but the Jews pelted him with
stones, and drove him out of Jerusalem; they afterwards burnt down
his palace, and rose in rebellion all over Judea, imagining that the
prophesied time of deliverance was come, and that the warlike Messiah of
their imagination was at hand. Nero was much enraged at the tidings, and
sent an army, under a plain blunt general, named Vespasian, to punish
the revolt. This army subdued Galilee and Samaria, and was already
surrounding Jerusalem, when Vespasian heard that there had been a great
rebellion at home, and that Nero had been killed. He therefore turned
back from the siege, to wait and see what would happen, having thus
given the token promised by our Lord, of the time when the desolation
of Jerusalem should be at hand, when the faithful were to flee.
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