Modern science in Bible lands / by Sir J. William Dawson.

  • John William Dawson
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Modern science in Bible lands / by Sir J. William Dawson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    411/426 (page 389)
    RESOURCES AND PROSPECTS OF BIBLE LANDS. 389 shrouded in a symbolism to which varied interpretations have been given, others are sufficiently plain. I shall refer here only to two, which are however of great significance, especially when taken in connection with each other. In that prophecy of Jesus (Luke xxi.) in which He warns His disciples of the approaching downfall of Jerusalem and the Jewish institutions, He remarks : Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles till the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. Those times of Gentile dominion to which our Lord referred had existed since the rise of the Babylonian empire, were still going on, but were destined to end at a fixed time, when they should be fulfilled. Daniel had indicated long before, this end of the times of the Gentiles at the close of the term allotted to his fourth empire, and the powers that should immediately succeed it, or arise out of its dissolution.1 More than eighteen hundred years have passed away since these words were spoken. Jerusalem is still trodden down of the Gentiles; but is their dominion to last for ever ? Are there not already manifest signs of the destruction of the powers, political and ecclesiasti- cal, which now represent the Gentile domination ? The time may be very near, or it may be further delayed ; but when it comes, if the prophecy is true, Jerusalem, and that which Jerusalem represents, will rise on the ruins of those Gentile powers by which the old city of God is now trodden down. Another topographical intimation, closely connected with that of our Saviour, is contained in the Apocalypse of St. John. It appears as a note in the prediction of the seven angels who were commissioned to pour out the vials of God's wrath on the followers of those powers succeeding that which in John's time reigned on the Palatine, and whom he designates as the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet. These evil rulers are said, under the vision of the sixth vial, 2 to send out three Daniel ii. 40, 2 Rev. xvi. 12-16.