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484 VISIONS AND PROPHECIES OF ZECHARIAH

cast been verified! During the futile, but heroic, struggle with the great Roman power, which commenced so soon after the crucifixion of the Messiah, and lasted seven years, about one million and a half Jews perished in the land by the sword and by famine and pestilence. Great numbers of Jews were crucified by the Romans outside the walls of Jerusalem, while many thousands were taken in ships to Egypt and sold as slaves. Then, not to speak of the great numbers of Jews who were during the same time done to death in different parts of the Roman Empire, only some sixty years after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, a calamity of almost equal magnitude overtook the Jewish people " throughout all the land," consequent on their renewed rising under the false Messiah, Bar Cochba. 1

Then, after the " two-thirds" in the land were " cut off," the remainder of " the sheep of the flock " were " scattered " ; for a new stage the universal phase in the dispersion of the Jewish nation took place consequent on the culmination of Israel s apostasy in the rejection of their Messiah.

Throughout all these centuries the Jews have suffered as no other nation on earth. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, according to reliable computations, there were only about one million Jews left in the whole world after the centuries of oppression and unparalleled sufferings which they had had to endure, especially throughout the dark Middle Ages.

And there is yet a climax to all their sufferings to be reached in the "Day" of Jacob s final great "trouble," 2 when they are once again " in the land " and God s " fire " is kindled in Zion, and His " furnace " set up in Jerusalem 3

1 Five hundred and eighty thousand Jews are said, by Jewish historians, to have perished by the sword in the siege at the fall of Bithar, besides those who perished by famine and sickness. "Judea was almost wholly a wilderness." Fifty castles and two hundred and eighty-five villages were entirely destroyed. At the yearly market, by Abraham s Oak, at Hebron, Jewish slaves were sold at a nominal price ; a Jew was worth no more than a horse. See the summary of Jewish History since the Dispersion, in The Shepherd of Israel and His Scattered Flock.

2 Jer. xxx. 7. 3 Isa. xxxi. 9.