In Matthew 24, Jesus prophecies, "Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken." In case you hadn't caught on yet, I interpret Matthew 24 as a prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. So, how was all this stellar activity fulfilled? Glad you asked.

Look at Isaiah 13:9-10:

Behold, the day of the Lord comes,
cruel, with wrath and fierce anger,
to make the land a desolation
and to destroy its sinners from it.
For the stars of the heavens and their constellations
will not give their light;
the sun will be dark at its rising,
and the moon will not shed its light.

Is this some "end times" prophecy? Look at 13:1 - "The oracle concerning Babylon which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw." Isaiah is using cosmic language to describe the fall of Babylon to the Medes in 539 B.C.! This is not an isolated incident. Yesterday, I read in Amos 8:9:

"And on that day, declares the Lord God,
"I will make the sun go down at noon
and darken the earth in broad daylight."

That described the fall of Samaria in 722 B.C. Later, in Ezekiel 32, He says,

"When I blot you out, I will cover the heavens
and make their stars dark;
I will cover the sun with a cloud,
and the moon shall not give its light.
All the bright lights of heaven
will I make dark over you,
and put darkness on your land,
declares the Lord God."

Here he is referring to the death of Pharoah (Ezekiel 32:2). None of these stellar predictions literally took place. The prophets use the imagery of sun, moon, and stars to represent earthly authorities and governors. Poetically, however, the lights did "go out" for these nations. If we lived two thousand years ago in Palestine, we immediately would have understood that.
So, speaking prophetically, Jesus is telling his disciples that the lights are going out in Israel. At the end of the Tribulation, the Israel of the Old Covenant will be gone.

Jesus also says that "all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory." Did anyone see Jesus coming on the clouds in the destruction of Jerusalem? Back to Isaiah we go:

Behold, the Lord is riding on a swift cloud
and comes to Egypt;
and the idols of Egypt will tremble at his presence,
and the heart of the Egyptians will melt within them.

Isaiah 19:1

And what is this? According to the beginning of verse 1, "An oracle concerning Egypt."
Psalm 104:3 says that God "makes the clouds his chariot; he rides on the wings of the wind..."
Nahum 1:3 says that "the Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty. His way is in whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet."
"Coming on the clouds" refers to His presence, His salvation and His judgment.
In Mark 14, when Caiaphas asks Jesus if He is the Christ, He answers, "“I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.” Did you catch that? Caiaphas will see it.
When did Jesus come with the clouds of heaven? Paul speaks of God' great might "that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all." (Ephesians 1:20-23)
Just as Daniel prophecied in 7:13-14:

“I saw in the night visions,
and behold, with the clouds of heaven
there came one like a son of man,
and he came to the Ancient of Days
and was presented before him.
And to him was given dominion
and glory and a kingdom,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him;
his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
which shall not pass away,
and his kingdom one
that shall not be destroyed.

Jesus literally came on the clouds at His Ascension and Israel witnessed His figurative coming on the clouds when He destroyed their nation in judgment.

One more note. Many people still see a special distinction for the nation of Israel. But they miss the clear message of Scripture. God clearly judged Israel in A.D. 70.

When Jesus was teaching in the temple in Matthew 21, he asked, "Have you never read in the Scriptures:
Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits." (v. 42, 43)

And Peter, addressing the believers said, "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy." (1 Peter 2:9, 10)

Paul says that "a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved" (Romans 11:25-26). They will be grafted in, just as the Gentiles, through evangelism. As Charles Spurgeon said:

“I myself believe that King Jesus will reign, and the idols be utterly abolished; but I expect the same power which turned the world upside down once will still continue to do it. The Holy Ghost would never suffer the imputation to rest upon His holy name that He was not able to convert the world.”

But Israel will never again be a seperate, holy Kingdom. And here is Isaiah 19:19-25:

In that day there will be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar to the Lord at its border. It will be a sign and a witness to the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt. When they cry to the Lord because of oppressors, he will send them a savior and defender, and deliver them. And the Lord will make himself known to the Egyptians, and the Egyptians will know the Lord in that day and worship with sacrifice and offering, and they will make vows to the Lord and perform them. And the Lord will strike Egypt, striking and healing, and they will return to the Lord, and he will listen to their pleas for mercy and heal them.

In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and Assyria will come into Egypt, and Egypt into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians.

In that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the Lord of hosts has blessed, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance.”

As Paul says in Ephesians 2:14-16:

For [Christ Jesus] himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.

And Galatians 3:26-29:

for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise.

The New Jerusalem, the faithful Bride of Christ, has replaced the Old Jerusalem, the unfaithful adulteress. There is only the Church.