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The True Fulfillment of Prophecy, part 18

To understand prophecy, one must understand the calling of both Israel and Judah in terms of the birthright. This is something that historians know nothing about, and even theologians seldom understand it. But it is at the center of God’s plan in the earth. Hence, no one can truly know Bible prophecy without some understanding of the history of the birthright.

The birthright consisted primarily of the dominion mandate (Genesis 1:26) and the fruitfulness mandate (Genesis 1:28). The dominion mandate included both civil and religious authority, so priestly authority was part of it. These main features were divided among Jacob’s three sons in his blessing in Genesis 49.

Joseph’s sons were given the birthright (1 Chronicles 5:1, 2), and with it came the name Israel (Genesis 48:15, 16). Judah was given the civil authority of the dominion mandate, while Levi was given the priestly authority.

When God ultimately divorced the House of Israel (Jeremiah 3:8) and sent her out of the house, God used the Assyrians to remove the Israelites from God’s house. It then appeared that the birthright itself was lost forever. A century later, when Judah too became “treacherous” (Jeremiah 3:10), God suspended the marriage and filed for a separation but not a divorce. He then raised up the Babylonians to remove Judah from His house for a period of 70-years.

In both cases, however, Israel and Judah were sentenced to a period of “seven times” (2,520 years). How do we know? Because this is what history tells us.

The Captivity of Israel

Let us look at Israel first. Israel’s time of tribulation had three beginning points and therefore had three endpoints as well. First, we read in 1 Chronicles 5:26,

²⁶ So the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul, king of Assyria, even the spirit of Tiglath-Pileser king of Assyria, and he carried them away into exile, namely the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, and brought them to Halah, Habor, Hara and to the river of Gozan, to this day.

“Pul” was the nickname for Tiglath-Pileser III. History tells us that the first year of his reign was in 745 B.C. The Assyrian records themselves tell us that his military campaigns into “the land of Bit-Humri” (House of Omri, the official Assyrian name for Israel) began in 734 B.C. He conquered the land of Gilead on the eastern side of the Jordan River from 733-732 B.C., deporting Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh that had settled there in the time of Moses.

He also took captive the tribe of Naphtali in the north (2 Kings 15:29), though we do not know the precise year that this occurred.

King Pul died in 727 B.C., and he was succeeded by his son, Shalmanezer V, who reigned five years from 727-722 B.C. He continued his father’s military campaigns and laid siege to Samaria, the capital of Israel (2 Kings 18:9-11). It was a three-year siege, and Shalmanezer did not live long enough to finish the campaign. He died in 722 B.C., and Sargon II came to power.

The Assyrian records do not claim that Sargon was the son of Shalmanezer. He was probably a usurper, perhaps Shalmanezer’s general in the siege of Samaria. His name “Sargon” (Sharru-kin) means “the king is legitimate”, which may reflect an attempt to justify his rule. At any rate, Sargon was the one who actually captured Samaria in 721 B.C. He is mentioned by name just once in Isaiah 20:1 in conjunction with his conquest of Ashdod, a Philistine city. Yet he is no doubt “the king of Assyria” mentioned in 2 Kings 18:11,

¹¹ Then the king of Assyria carried Israel away into exile to Assyria, and put them in Halah and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.

From this history, we see three main dates in regard to the captivity and exile of Israel:

745 B.C.—the start of Tiglath-Pileser’s reign.

733-732 B.C.—the deportation of the first tribes of Israel

721 B.C.—the fall of Samaria, Israel’s capital city

The Endpoints of Israel’s Captivity

Using these dates as our starting points, we may then calculate Israel’s “seven times” tribulation period, ending in these three years:

1776 A.D.—America’s Declaration of Independence

1788-1789 A.D.—America’s Constitution ratified and implemented

1800 A.D.—America’s capital city built (Washington D.C.)

It is clear from this that America constitutes the regathering of the House of Israel at the end of a long captivity and exile. God gave us three witnesses of timing to establish the sure word of prophecy. The culmination occurred when America’s capital was built precisely “seven times” after Israel’s capital was destroyed.

The Captivity of Judah

Scripture tells us that Assyria captured and deported most of the people of Judah as well as Israel. 2 Kings 18:13 says,

¹³ Now in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah [king of Judah], Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and seized them.

But Jerusalem itself, crammed with refugees from neighboring communities, was spared after Hezekiah’s repentance. The Assyrian army was destroyed (2 Kings 19:35), and Judah, though greatly reduced in population, remained in the land for another century.

Babylon had been a province of the Assyrian empire until it revolted and conquered Nineveh in 612 B.C. Babylon then displaced and replaced Assyria and became the first of the four beast empires in Daniel’s prophecy. Essentially, Daniel had no revelation about the Assyrian empire which had already ceased to exist.

The Babylonian revolt was led by Nabopolassar, who died in 605 B.C., leaving it to his son, Nebuchadnezzar, to finish consolidating the kingdom. After Nebuchadnezzar came to the throne, God gave him the dominion mandate (Jeremiah 27:6), stripping it from Zedekiah, the last king of Judah. Babylon then captured Jerusalem in 604 B.C. and Judah’s captivity lasted 70 years, ending in 534 B.C. with the Edict of Cyrus (Ezra 1:2-4).

The Endpoint of Judah’s Captivity

Judah’s captivity properly began in 604 B.C., followed by a 70-year captivity. The dominion mandate, however, was not returned to Judah after Babylon fell. It was, instead, passed down to Persia, the second beast empire in Daniel’s list.

Although this was a literal 70-year captivity, Jerusalem’s captivity was actually much longer than 70 years. It was, in fact, “seven times,” or 2,520 years. Furthermore, this was not merely the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem; it was the captivity of the dominion mandate itself. As long as the dominion mandate was held by nations that did not actually have the calling to rule the Kingdom of God on earth, the Kingdom itself could not be established in the earth.

H. Grattan Guinness understood the significance of the 2,520 year cycle and wrote in 1886,

“Those who live to see the year 1917 will have reached one of the most important… terminal years of crisis.” (Light for the Last Days, The Approaching End of the Age, London Edition, pp. 342-346)

In December 1917, British General Allenby captured Jerusalem from the Ottoman Empire. Hence, it was 2,520 years from the time Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem (605 B.C.) until Allenby did so in 1917. The Ottoman Empire essentially had re-unified much of the same Near Eastern territory that had once been under Babylonian control. In fact, it controlled an even larger region, extending far beyond Babylon’s reach.

This shift in the control of Jerusalem, however, did not address the underlying issue of the dominion mandate (as God views it). The page turned in 1917, but there was much more prophecy that had to be fulfilled before the dominion mandate would be given to the overcomers. In 1922 the League of Nations gave Britain the “Mandate for Palestine,” which it held until 1948, but the issue of the dominion mandate had not yet been resolved.

First, God had to give Esau-Edom the justice that he was due, on account of Jacob’s deception in Genesis 27. The Edomite branch of world Jewry then manifested itself through the Zionist movement and the terrorists who forced Britain into giving up the Mandate for Palestine.

Note also that the beast empires had been given “seven times” (2,520 years) in which to rule by the authority of the dominion mandate. This mandate was passed down to four beast empires, who held control of Jerusalem, except for the century from 163-63 B.C. Being deprived of a century of control, it was necessary to add this century to the year 1917, so that the beasts could continue to hold the dominion mandate for its full allotted time.

This ended in 2017, after which time, going beyond the limits of their mandate without declaring a Jubilee, they came under divine judgment for non-compliance with the divine court verdict. Hence, that is when the page began to turn again. God began to move to destroy Jerusalem and the Edomite Zionists who had vowed to “return and build up the ruins” (Malachi 1:4). At the same time, God ruled in favor of the overcomers and set the course toward preparing the overcomers to receive the dominion mandate and to rule the Kingdom in the Age to come.