The Hebrew religion was legal under roman rule.Christianity was illegal and subject to persecution.The Hebrews were warned not to "go back" to the safety of the OT religion which was to go into apostasy from the Living God.
Outstanding point which the types given in Rev 11:8 reinforce:
Sodom:
17 And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said,
Escape for thy life;
look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the Plain;
escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.
26 But
his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. Gen 19
Egypt:
38 This is he that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel that spake to him in the Mount Sinai, and with our fathers: who received living oracles to give unto us:
39 to whom
our fathers would not be obedient, but thrust him from them, and
turned back in their hearts unto Egypt,
40 saying unto Aaron, Make us gods that shall go before us: for as for this Moses, who led us forth out of the land of Egypt, we know not what is become of him. Acts 7
Jerusalem:
25 But first must he suffer many things and be rejected of
this generation.
28 Likewise even
as it came to pass in the days of Lot; they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded;
29 but in the day that Lot went out from Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all:
30
after the same manner shall it be in the day that the Son of man is revealed.
31 In that day, he that shall be on the housetop, and his goods in the house,
let him not go down to take them away: and let him that is in the field
likewise not return back.
32
Remember Lot`s wife. Lu 17
But when ye see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that her desolation is at hand. Then let them that are in Judaea
flee unto the mountains; and let them that are in the midst of her
depart out; and
let not them that are in the country enter therein. For
these are days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. Woe unto them that are with child and to them that give suck in those days! for there shall be
great distress upon the land, and wrath unto this people....
This generation shall not pass away, till all things be accomplished. Lu 21:20-23,32
But Jesus said unto him,
No man, having put his hand to the plow, and
looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God. Lu 9:62
Babylon:
After having been given the command to get out, very few Jews actually returned home! On the whole their hearts were totally immersed in Babylon! Edersheim comments:
“…it is of the greatest importance to remember in regard to this Eastern dispersion, that
only a minority of the Jews, consisting in all of about 50,000, originally returned from Babylon, first under Zerubbabel and afterwards under Ezra. Nor was their inferiority confined to numbers.
The wealthiest and most influential of the Jews remained behind. According to Josephus, with whom Philo substantially agrees,
vast numbers, estimated at millions, inhabited the Trans-Euphratic provinces….A later tradition had it, that so dense was the Jewish population in the Persian Empire, that Cyrus forbade the further return of the exiles, lest the country should be depopulated. So large and compact a body soon became a political power. Kindly treated under the Persian monarchy, they were, after the fall of that empire, favoured by the successors of Alexander. When in turn the Macedono-Syrian rule gave place to the Parthian Empire, the Jews formed, from their national opposition to Rome, an important element in the East.
Such was their influence that, as late as the year 40 a.d., the Roman legate shrank from provoking their hostility…..”
