The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

The “Seven Times” of Daniel 259
establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine, drastically
accelerated Jewish immigration to Palestine. Thus, from October,
1922, to the spring of 1929 the Jewish population of Palestine
doubled from 83,794 to about 165,000.
At that time Palestine was still administered by a non-Jewish or
Gentile nation (England) and the Jews still constituted only a
minority (about twenty percent) of the population in Palestine. To
all appearances, Palestine and the city of Jerusalem were still
controlled by the Gentiles. Yet the Watch Tower Society’s
president, J. F. Rutherford, in his book Life, published in 1929,
insisted that the Gentile times spoken of by Jesus at Luke 21:24
had expired in 1914, arguing that the accelerating Jewish
immigration to Palestine was the tangible proof of the conclusion
that this prophecy had been fulfilled.
But shortly after the publication of Life, this whole idea was
abandoned; the return of the Jews to the Promised Land was no
longer seen as a fulfillment of Bible prophecies. Since 1931 such
prophecies have been applied to spiritual Israel. 45 The logical
consequence of this change could only be that the end of the
treading down of Jerusalem was no longer applicable to the literal
city of Jerusalem:
The present-day city of Jerusalem over in Palestine is not the
city of the Great King Jehovah God, even though Christendom
calls certain places over there “holy”. That city is doomed to
destruction at the end of this world. But the true Jerusalem will
live forever as the capital of Jehovah’s universal organization. We
mean the New Jerusalem, of which Jesus Christ gave a symbolic
vision to the apostle John on the isle of Patmos. . . .
Jesus Christ is the “King of kings and Lord of lords” over that
true Jerusalem. At the close of the Gentile times in 1914 he was
enthroned as acting Ruler in the “city of the great King”, Jehovah.
Thus, after an interruption of 2,520 years by Gentile powers,
Theocratic Government over earth rose again to power in the
New Jerusalem, never to be trodden down by the Gentiles. 46
What, exactly, was this “New Jerusalem”? The Watchtower
book Your Will Be Done On Earth (1958) explains on page 94:
Back in 607 B.C. the Jerusalem that was overthrown stood for
the kingdom of God because it had the typical throne of Jehovah
on which the anointed one of Jehovah sat as his king. Likewise,
45 The Watch Tower, 1931, pp. 253–54; J. F. Rutherford, Vindication, Vol. II (Brooklyn,
N.Y.: Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, 1932), pp. 258, 267–69.
46 The Watchtower, November 1, 1949, pp. 330–31.