"When Jesus had left the precincts of the Temple, he was going away; and his disciples came to him to point out to him the buildings of the Temple area. He said to them: Do you not see all these things? This is the truth I tell you—one stone will not be left here upon another that will not be thrown down." (Matthew 24:1,2)
In this text Jesus is announcing a prophetic marker which if it comes true will guarantee that all His other prophecies will likewise come true. Let the skeptics and unbelievers mock but they can't deny that this prophecy was fulfilled some forty years later exactly as Jesus prophesied.
IT may well be that at least some of the disciples had not been very often to Jerusalem. They were Galileans, men of the country, fishermen who knew the lake far better than they knew the city. Some of them would be like people from the country coming to New York for a visit, staggered by what they saw; and well they might be, for there was nothing in the ancient world quite like the Temple.
The summit of Mount Zion had been dug away to leave a plateau of 1,000 feet square. At the far end of it was the Temple itself . It was built of white marble plated with gold, and it shone in the sun so that people could scarcely bear to look at it. Between the lower city and the Temple mount lay the valley of the Tyropoeon, and across this valley stretched a colossal bridge. Its arches had a span of 41.5 feet, and its spring stones were 24 feet long by 6 inches thick.
"The Temple area was surrounded by great porches, Solomon’s Porch and the Royal Porch. These porches were upheld by pillars, cut out of solid blocks of marble in one piece. They were 37.5 feet high, and of such a thickness that three men linked together could scarcely put their arms round them. At the corners of the Temple, angle stones have been found which measure from 20 to 40 feet in length, and which weigh more than 100 tons. How they were ever cut and placed in position is one of the mysteries of ancient engineering. Little wonder that the Galilean fishermen marveled and called Jesus’ attention to them."
Jesus answered that the day would come when not one of these stones would be left standing upon the other—and Jesus was right. In AD 70, the Romans, finally exasperated by the stubborn rebelliousness of the Jews, gave up all attempt at pacification and turned to destruction, and Jerusalem and the Temple were laid waste so that Jesus’ prophecy absolutely came true.
"This prophecy was most literally fulfilled. Recent explorations have shown that not a stone of Herod's temple remains in situ (in its original position). The orders of Titus, given with regret, for the total demolition of the walls of temple and city, were carried out with cruel exactness, so that, as Josephus testifies passersby would not have supposed that the place had ever been inhabited. When the apostate Julian, in the fourth Christian century, endeavored to cast a slur upon prophecy by rebuilding the city and temple, his design proved to be a humiliating failure, and the sacred shrine has continued to this day a monument of Divine vengeance."
"The devastation of the temple by the Romans in AD 70 was so thorough that the precise location of the sanctuary is still unknown today."
"We may also observe how little God values splendid houses of prayer when they are made dens of thieves."
In the "Olivet Discourse" Jesus speaks as the prophet He is. Jesus knew that the way of power politics (Jerusalem vs. Rome) can end only in doom. The individual and the nation which will not follow the way of God are heading for disaster—even in material things (wars, famines, earthquakes, floods, storms, etc). The individual and the nation which refuse the plans of God will find their own plans shattered also.