70 AD (About 2,000 years ago)
Near the beginning of Jesus' public ministry, in about AD 26, he converses with a woman in the region of Samaria and prophetically reveals that Jerusalem soon would no longer serve as the center for worshipping the God of Israel (John 4:1-26).
This statement must have been a shock for the Samaritan woman. The Jews had relied upon Jerusalem as the center of worship for nearly 1,000 years by that point in time. Even so, the prophecy revealed itself to be true with the rise of Christianity, of which the Samaritan woman soon became an early convert, and with the destruction of Jerusalem about 40 years later.
With the rise of Christianity, people all over the world today worship the God of Israel without having to rely on Jerusalem, or any other fixed locatiion. And with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, in AD 70, by the Romans, even the Judaists who rejected Jesus as the Messiah would no longer rely on Jerusalem as their center for worship.
Next: The 'trampling' of Jerusalem begins
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