In Daniel ii. and vii. it is shown first to Nebuchadnezzar in a “dream,” and afterwards to God's servant the prophet in a “vision,” that Israel was to be put on one side and become “Lo-Ammi” (not My people), while government was to be put into the hands of the Gentiles. Jerusalem was the central point of both these great and solemn facts. That is to say, during 2,520 years, while Jerusalem should remain in the power of the Gentiles, Israel could be “no more a nation” in possession of their land and city.
We know, as a matter of fact, that to-day Jerusalem is in the hands of the Turks, and that it is still “trodden down of the Gentiles.”
If we ask how long it shall continue to be “trodden down”? how long it will be before Israel shall again possess their city and their land?—the answer brings us at once to the heart of our subject.
In seeking to determine both duration and chronology, it is necessary to plant our feet on sure ground. To do this, let us take a point on which all are agreed.
There is one date which is universally accepted; and concerning which the evidence is unquestioned.
Abu Obeida, the Mahommedan General, laid siege to Jerusalem towards the close of 636 a.d. The city was then occupied by the Romans, who held out for four months. When they capitulated, the Patriarch Sophronius obtained a clause in the treaty giving security to the inhabitants, and requiring the ratification of Omar himself. Omar, who had therefore to be sent for, arrived some six months afterwards, and the delay caused the actual delivering up of the city to take place early in the autumn of a.d. 637.[80]
The year a.d. 636-7 is therefore the accepted date of the passing over of Jerusalem from the Romans to the Turks.
Omar seems to have stayed in the city only about ten days, during which he must have given his instructions for the erection of the Mosque on the site of the Temple. This Mosque, therefore, stands as the sign and the symbol of the treading down of Jerusalem, and while it remains, those times of treading down cannot be considered as fulfilled.
How steady was Israel's decadence from Nebuchadnezzar to Omar! Nothing would exceed that darkest moment in Israel's history, when Israel was [pg 186] well nigh obliterated in the mighty struggles of her enemies who fought over her inheritance. Thus Omar becomes the great central point of the 2,520 years, whether reckoned as Lunar, Zodiacal, or Solar, dividing them equally into two portions of 1,260 years.[81]
Having thus fixed the central date, which already points forward to the end, let us go back and find the starting point, that we may the better understand the end.