THE TIMES OF THE GENTILES
The various branches of the Church of God have for many years been putting out articles, booklets, magazines and TV programs warning us of a final uprising of the power described in Revelation 13:1 as a "Beast".
Scripture, however, says that the final, Laodicea Church era is "blind" (Rev 3:17).
Does this apply to the explanation of the Beast as well?
Two basic questions must be asked right from the beginning regarding this subject:
1) What is the Beast?
2) Does the Bible give us a length of time that pertains to the Beast?
The usual explanation as to what constitutes the Beast is that it is a succession of "earth ruling empires". This is deduced from Daniel 2:39 which says that these powers "rule over the whole earth". However, what does "earth" mean in this context? Is the Bible a book about the whole Earth as we think of it? Did any of the powers generally identified as Beast powers rule over the entire globe or anything remotely close to it? No, they didn't.
The "earth" that they did all rule over was the earth that the Scriptures are about, namely the earth of Israel. Please read the article "THE SEVEN DAY BLUEPRINT" to see how God separated the earth from the sea on the third day of Creation, picturing the creation of the people of Israel in the third millennium, as well as the separation of the land of Israel from the Gentile lands in that same time period.
The Bible is an Israel focused book. As soon as we take our eyes off Israel, we lose focus in interpreting prophecy. Even more specifically, the Bible is a Jerusalem focused book. Jerusalem is central to a correct understanding of prophecy.
In Daniel 2, Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, is told that he is the head of gold in a statue that represents the Beast powers. In Daniel 7 these same powers are depicted as four separate beasts. Why is Babylon the head of the statue and the first individual beast? Why not the great Assyrian Empire that had previously captured the Kingdom of Israel? For one simple reason: the Assyrian Empire didn't capture Jerusalem.
For the same reason, Egyptian Pharaoh Necho isn't the head of the statue either. He took King Jehoahaz of Judah captive by drawing him out of Jerusalem (II Kings 23; Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 10.5.2). He then appointed a new king and placed Judah under tribute, but there is no record of him capturing Jerusalem.
Nebuchadnezzar, on the other hand, is shown in Scripture to have successfully besieged Jerusalem on two occasions. The forces of Babylon captured and destroyed Jerusalem during the reigns of kings Jehoiachin and Zedekiah. From the Scriptures therefore we can conclude that to "rule over the whole earth" means to conquer the land of Israel including Jerusalem.
The Beast can be simply defined as the succession of Gentile powers that conquer Jerusalem and the Jews, as prophesied by God.
How long was this Gentile rule to last?
Leviticus 26:18, 21, 24 and 28 detail that God's people would be punished for "seven times", i.e. 2520 years, if they continually disobeyed Him (for an explanation please see the page "DAYS, WEEKS, MONTHS, YEARS AND TIMES").
This same period of time is echoed in Daniel 4, where Nebuchadnezzar, the head of the statue, is transformed and "given the heart of a beast" (Dan 4:16) and made to act like a beast in representation of his kingdom and those Beast powers that would follow after him. The previous verse says he will "graze .... on the grass of the earth". People are depicted as grass in Scripture, e.g. in Isaiah 40:6-7, and the obvious meaning is that Beast powers trample down or persecute the people of God.
Daniel 4:17 gives us the timing clue. It says that Nebuchadnezzar's plight will last for "seven times", which for him personally was 2520 days (a "time" being 360 days).
However, using the "day for a year" principle as found in Numbers 14:34 and Ezekiel 4:5-6, and with the benefit of knowing how history has unfolded, we can see that Nebuchadnezzar's literal "seven times" in Daniel 4 are a type of the "seven times" described in Leviticus 26:24, i.e. 2520 years of Jerusalem and the Jews being trodden down by Gentile powers.
Clearly, Nebuchadnezzar was used as a symbol of the totality of the times of the Gentiles.
Jesus Christ was fully aware of these prophecies of the Old Testament and their ongoing fulfilment when, in His Olivet Prophecy, He gave us one of the most important chronological clues we have:
"Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled" (Luke 21:24).
When Christ spoke these words, the times of the Gentiles had already been underway for hundreds of years!
This remarkable sentence gives us four crucial elements:
1) Jerusalem is trodden down/occupied.
2) Jerusalem's occupation is by Gentile powers.
3) The occupation lasts for a specific length of time.
4) The occupation will come to an end when the "times .... are fulfilled".
To make very plain what Christ knew and meant, He might just as well have said:
Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the seven times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
Counting 2520 years from the first capture of Jerusalem by the forces of Nebuchadnezzar in 575BC (see the page "BIBLE CHRONOLOGY" for a full explanation of this date), brings us to the last year of World War II, 1945. That was also the last year of the statue of Daniel 2, i.e. the year that the Beast lost its power over the Jews.
The combined prophecies of Daniel 2, Daniel 7, Revelation 13 and Revelation 17 show that the Beast powers would consist of seven “heads”, or independent powers ruling Jerusalem. Revelation 12:3,9 and 13:4 explain that these powers would be Satanic in nature. These powers were Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, the Ptolemaic Kingdom, the Seleucid Empire, Rome and Islam. Out of the seventh head, Islam, there would emerge 10 successive “horns”, or dynasties, that would also control the Holy City. These were the Umayyads, the Abbasids, the Tulunids, the Ikhshidids, the Fatimids, the Seljuqs, the Ayyubids, the Mamluks, the Ottomans and the Alawiyya. Three of these ten horns would be overthrown in Jerusalem by a “little horn” or “eighth” head, i.e. false Christianity. These overthrows occurred in 1099, led by French forces; in 1229, led by German forces; and in 1917, led by British forces. See the page “THE TWO WITNESSES” and the chart on the "HOME" page for more information about these powers.
The year 1945 is when the “times of the Gentiles" came to an end. The page “FULFILLED PROPHECIES” lists six prophetic timelines that concluded in 1945 and confirm this.
The times of the Gentiles came to an end at this point because of the demise of the power of the false “Christian” Beast. This ended the state sponsored persecution of the Jews, and led to their liberation from the concentration camps at the end of the Holocaust.
As explained on the page "THE TWO WITNESSES", from this point on it took three and a half years for the Jews to stand up on their feet, and to regain control of their country and capital city (Rev 11:11).
Of course, some people will say this can't be possible, because they believe the Kingdom of God will immediately follow on from the demise of the Gentile powers. This is similar to what many said in Christ's time, when they rejected Him as the Messiah of Daniel 9:25 because he wasn't immediately setting up His Kingdom.
If the demise of the Gentile Beast powers was going to be immediately followed by the Kingdom of God, the prophecy in Daniel 2 would say that the feet of the statue were struck by the "great mountain". Rather, it says that the feet were struck by a "stone that became a great mountain".
Today we are in that "became" phase. The current State of Israel is the intermediate stage between the times of the Gentiles coming to an end and the setting up of the Kingdom of God upon Christ's return.
People might object to this explanation by pointing to Revelation 19:19-20 which speaks of the time of Christ's second coming: "And I saw the beast, the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against Him who sat on the horse and against His army. Then the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet who worked signs in his presence, by which he deceived those who received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image. These two were cast alive into the lake of fire burning with brimstone".
This indeed shows that Islam and the Papacy will be with us up until the return of Christ. The fact that they are is a fulfilment of prophecy in itself. However, these powers no longer control Jerusalem or the Jews, as they did for 2520 years. Those days are over.
Daniel 7:12 confirms this by stating that when Beast powers lose their "dominion" (over Jerusalem and the Jews), "their lives were prolonged for a season and a time".
In the meantime, the Churches of God (COG) continue to proclaim that a coming "European Superpower" will arise as the final manifestation of the Beast, and will conquer the nations of the world, including Israel. This shows total ignorance of the fact that the Beast has been defeated (by the stone, i.e. Christ). Its eighth and final head, Catholicism/Christianity, called "Babylon the Great", has "fallen" (Rev 18).
Since the end of the Second World War, the formerly Christian nations have largely departed from what Christianity they had. In addition, they have been overrun by non-Christians and their false religions. There are, for instance, over 45 million Muslims living in European countries, as well as many people of a variety of other false persuasions. This is all in fulfilment of the prophecy that says, "Babylon is fallen and has become the dwelling place of demons and every unclean bird". Please read the page "BABYLON IS FALLEN".
Here are the fulfilments of prophecy the Churches ought to be proclaiming:
1) The restoration of the nation of Israel at the time and in the manner specifically prophesied by God.
2) The ongoing demise of Babylon/Christianity and the other Beast powers that for so long trampled down Jerusalem and persecuted the Jews.
Instead, they keep "flogging a dead horse", desperately wanting Germany or Europe to reawaken and become a power again and fulfil their prophecies. If a single right-wing politician causes a stir in Europe, the COG's are quick to jump up and proclaim that the Beast is rising. Sure, there are still people with nationalistic tendencies and aspirations, but they are unable to make a fist. The "Christian" nations have departed from the Christian religion that gave them their strength. They have lost their power; their churches are virtually empty.
Mindless entertainment, drugs, partying and depravity consume the formerly Christian nations. They are so weakened by sin, that there is no power left to harness.
Remarkably, when the Second World War was still raging, Herbert Armstrong (HWA) proclaimed it was the final stand of the Beast. He was right! However, because he, much like the people in Christ's day, "thought the Kingdom of God should immediately appear" (Lk 19:11) at the conclusion of the war, and it didn't, he changed his tune and instead began preaching about another final rise of the Beast powers, including another Gentile conquest of Jerusalem. In doing this he made two significant errors:
1) HWA failed to see that the time of the rule of the Beast powers and "the times of the Gentiles" were synonymous, and constituted a 2520 year period that lasted from 575BC until 1945, at which point they had been "fulfilled".
2) HWA failed to understand that the restoration of the nation of Israel was the result of the Beast powers/times of the Gentiles coming to an end. Instead, he believed they would end with the setting up of God's Kingdom.
Since that time, the errors have kept on being repeated and compounded by the Churches of God.
The general misinterpretation of the Olivet Prophecy, and the belief in a worldwide, Beast-led, "great tribulation" just prior to Christ's return, have greatly contributed to the spiritual blindness in evidence today.
The "great tribulation" was a major, terrifying event, which befell Jerusalem and the Jews in the first century AD, but was confined to such a location that fleeing from Judea to the surrounding mountains was enough to escape it.
Please see the pages "THE OLIVET PROPHECY" and "THE REAL SEVEN SEALS" for a detailed account of the Olivet Prophecy.
I do hope the above explanation makes it clear where we are in prophecy today, with the "times of the Gentiles" well and truly behind us.
Please see the page "REVELATION 13 - THE BEAST" for a full explanation of the Beast powers.