Page:Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah (Baron, David).djvu/82

 that though there was doubtless a message in this vision to the generation to which the prophet was first commissioned to relate it, and there was a very partial and shadowy fulfilment of the promise of the rebuilding of the house and the city in the work accomplished by Zerubbabel and Joshua the son of Jehozadak, and by Ezra and Nehemiah, yet to limit this glorious prophecy to any period of Jerusalem's history while it is still being " trodden down of the Gentiles," which has never ceased to be the case from the time of the Babylonian Captivity to this day, is to misapprehend and misinterpret the scope of this as well as of all prophecy.

But, in truth, these beautiful words, " For I, saith Jehovah, will be unto her a wall of fire round about, and the glory in the midst of her," are really an announce ment of the return of the Glory of the Personal Presence of Jehovah to Jerusalem, and an amplification of the words in the first vision, " I am returned to Jerusalem with mercies." I have elsewhere tried to show the full signifi cance of Ezekiel's vision of the departure of the Glory of Jehovah from Jerusalem, which synchronised with the removal of governmental power from Judah, and the special characteristics of the present " Ichabod " period of Israel's history.

It was the withdrawal of Himself from their midst which has been the cause of all the helplessness and the sorrow and the darkness of the Jewish nation since the commencement of " the times of the Gentiles "; and that this period did not terminate with the first advent of our Lord is clear from Christ's own prophetic forecast of future events, in which He says: " And Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." It is true that if Israel's eyes had been opened to see the true character and divine majesty of that royal Babe born in Bethlehem and of the " mysterious man of Nazareth " (as a Jewish Rabb has recently styled Him),