3. Why must the time for God to make changes be near?

³ We today, who can look back over more than 2,580 years of time from Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, have far more reason to believe, than Nebuchadnezzar ever had, that the dream is reliable in meaning and that its interpretation by Daniel is trustworthy. Hence we are led to believing the word of “the grand God.” And so, from where does destruction of the symbolic “image” come? From “the God of heaven,” the One who changes the times and seasons and who puts down kings and sets up other kings according to his own will. The fixed time for him to do so must be very near. Why so? Because back in early autumn of the year 1914 C.E., the last year of the Gentile Times, “the appointed times of the nations” ended. According to Christ’s words in Luke 21:20-24, this meant that the time had arrived for God to stop the further trampling by the nations on what Jerusalem symbolized. How?

4. How did God react to clergy prayers regarding World War I?

⁴ In the summer of 1914 world war broke out between the Seventh World Power and the principal leftover parts of the previous Sixth World Power, for some time known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. The main issue in dispute was world domination here on earth, a quarter of which the British Empire then controlled. God’s Messianic kingdom was of no interest or concern to the warring disputants. And yet they were fighting over that to which God’s Messianic kingdom (as pictured by Jerusalem of Bible times) held the title, namely, world rulership. The clergy of Christendom prayed in favor of both sides engaged in the global conflict. But did Jehovah God pay attention to the clergy’s patriotic, nationalistic prayers? Not for a moment! According to the prophetic picture given in Revelation 12:1-10, at the close of the Gentile Times in 1914 Jehovah God brought to birth up in the heavens his promised Messianic kingdom in the hands of his enthroned Son, Jesus Christ.

The royal “stone” was cut out by divine power from the universal “mountain” at the close of the Gentile Times in 1914 C.E. Since then God’s Messianic kingdom has a right to interfere in the affairs of the nations and to have “this good news of the kingdom” preached in all the inhabited earth “for a witness to all the nations” before their end comes. (Matthew 24:3-14) The Kingdom is now in action!