12. As a student of the Hebrew Scriptures, Jesus knew that the Gentile Times began when and with what event, and so now what question arises as to those “times”?

¹² As a student of the inspired Hebrew Scriptures, Jesus the Messiah knew that the Gentile Times had begun before the Romans occupied Jerusalem and installed governors there. He knew that they had begun when Jerusalem was razed to the ground for the first time in the year 607 before our Common Era. God used the Gentile King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, whom he called “My servant,” to overthrow Jerusalem and Judah. (Jeremiah 43:10, JP) Gentile domination of the world continued down through the day of Jesus the Messiah and on down to God’s appointed time for the Gentile Times to expire. Till then the Kingdom of the Messiah, the Kingdom that was to be “no part of this world,” had to wait. So, for how many “times,” counted from 607 B.C.E., would Gentile rule run?

13. By what means did God indicate to the king of Babylon the number of those “times,” and with what effect upon the king?

¹³ Jehovah God indicated how many in a dream that he sent to Nebuchadnezzar, whom he had used as His “servant.” Though he had been used to destroy “the city of the great King,” Jerusalem, yet, as a result of the fulfillment of the dream upon him, Nebuchadnezzar was obliged to acknowledge Jehovah as “the Most High” and “the King of the heavens.” (Matthew 5:35; Daniel 4:34, 37) With this “servant” of his, the Most High God and King of heaven started off “the times of the Gentiles” in 607 B.C.E.

15. (a) In Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, what was represented by the wide-spreading tree? (b) During the time of Nebuchadnezzar’s madness, what was the case with world domination by the Babylonian Empire? (c) How was world domination carried on after Babylon was no longer a world empire?

¹⁵ In the dream that Jehovah God sent to his “servant,” King Nebuchadnezzar, there were “seven times” that were decreed from heaven. How do these connect up with “the times of the Gentiles” or coincide and become identical with them? In the following way: In the prophetic dream the towering, wide-spreading tree pictures world domination in the abstract sense. Because at the time of the dream Nebuchadnezzar, the “servant” of Jehovah God, was wielding such world domination, the tree becomes associated with him personally, so that the tree could be said to picture him. But was his world domination chopped down when he went mad and did not sit on the imperial throne? Did world domination by the Babylonian Empire cease? No, but it kept on functioning till his reinstatement and through the reigns of his successors, Evil-Merodach, Nabonidus and Belshazzar. After that, Gentile world domination carried on through the successive world powers, Imperial Persia, Imperial Greece, Imperial Rome, along with its outgrowth, the British-American world power.

16. Whose world domination was it really that was chopped down during all this succession of Gentile world powers, and how many “times” were to pass over the stump of the symbolic tree?

¹⁶ During all this lengthy time period, whose world domination, especially as represented by Jerusalem as “the city of the great King,” was really chopped down and lying prone? It was that of the One whom Nebuchadnezzar called “the Most High” and “the King of the heavens,” Jehovah. The tree stump, with bands of iron and copper, represented His world domination as held in abeyance. “Seven times” were decreed by Jehovah God to pass over that symbolic stump.

17. (a) Instead of “seven times,” how do a number of translators render the Hebrew expression? (b) How could it be that, even after Jerusalem was rebuilt, there kept on a trampling of it by the Gentiles?

¹⁷ Instead of “seven times,” the expression “seven years” is used by The Living Bible, Moffatt, Today’s English Version, and An American Translation. Nebuchadnezzar’s case of madness, probably a condition known as lycanthropy, lasted for seven years. At his recovery he acknowledged the God who healed him, but he did not restore God’s people to their homeland. Jehovah God had decreed that Jerusalem and the land of Judah should lie desolate for 70 years. So the trampling upon Jerusalem by the Gentiles continued on, even after Jerusalem was rebuilt by the repatriated Jews beginning in 537 B.C.E. How so? Because they remained subject to Gentile control, without any descendant of the royal line of David sitting on the throne at Jerusalem as independent king. So it is evident that in the case of Jehovah God, the “seven times” are symbolic, hence, longer than seven years counting from 607 B.C.E.​—Daniel 4:16, 23, 25, 32.

18. To how much did those “seven times” amount, symbolically treated, and so when did they end?

¹⁸ In the Bible’s prophetic count of time, a lunar year is calculated as amounting to 360 days. So a symbolic year, or ‘time,’ would amount to 360 calendar years. Seven symbolic “times,” or “years,” would therefore amount to 7 x 360, or 2,520 years. Counted from the year 607 B.C.E., when Jerusalem, “the city of the great King,” was destroyed by Jehovah’s “servant,” Nebuchadnezzar, and thus the trampling on Jerusalem by the Gentiles began, those 2,520 years would end in the autumn of the year 1914 of our Common Era.