Times of the Gentiles

Over 200 years afterwards the same inquiry was made in the hearing of Daniel, and in effect by Daniel himself. The long night of Israel's darkness foreseen by Isaiah to come upon them after the rejection of Jehovah's [Yahweh's] Messenger, who was to go and say to them, "Ye hear in hearing, but do not understand; and ye see in seeing, but do not perceive" (Mat. 13:13) is characterized in Daniel by the absence of sacrifice, the desolation of the land, and the dispersion and oppression of the nation (8:11-13, 24; 9:26, 27; 12:7). It had been revealed to Daniel, that a powerful and indestructible kingdom should be set up by the God of heaven, which should consume and destroy every thing that stood up against it; that the Son of man and the Saints should possess it, with dominion over the whole earth; and that then power should be restored to the Hebrew nation, which should never again be broken: but before all this could begin to come to pass, he saw a long period of affliction would obtain. It was therefore desired to know when it should terminate; as terminate it must before the glory can be apocalypsed or revealed. "How long," then it was asked, "shall the Little Horn of the Goat practise and prosper against the Holy Land and the Host of Israel?" for this in effect is the question of the thirteenth verse. How long till the arrival of the period when the Holy shall be avenged?

The answer to this question only bringing the inquirer to the period in which the vengeance is to be developed, it was still desired to know further "How long to the end of the wonders" to be developed in "the time of the end"? The answer was by the specification of a period, and an event. "For a time, times, and a half." This is the duration of the period, constituting the latter portion of what Jesus Christ terms "the Times of the Gentiles," during which Jerusalem and the Saints were to be trodden under foot (Luke 21:24) and symbolized in the Apocalypse by "the Court which is without the Temple, given to the Gentiles for forty and two months" (11:2). The event that marks the end of the period is THE RESTORATION OF ISRAEL, which is thus expressed, "When he (Michael the Great Prince that liveth for the Aion) shall have finished the scattering of the power of the Holy People, all these times shall be finished."