The numerous prophecies recorded in the Scriptures of the ultimate restoration of the house of Israel have until recently aroused but little general interest, for the simple reason that Israel as a nation, or as a distinct race, has for twenty centuries or more completely lost sight of itself. After the Assyrian captivity of the northern kingdom of Israel had spent itself, the Israelites, unlike the people of the southern kingdom of Judah, did not return to their own land, but scattered themselves among other countries and drifted out of historical knowledge or record. Yet according to the promise made to Jacob, Israel was to become "a nation and a company of nations;" and after the days of Gentile dominion should be accomplished, the house of Israel was to be reunited in one kingdom with the house of Judah.
The completeness of Israel's disappearance from human knowledge may be gathered from the following excerpt from the "Expositor's Bible," written in comment on Jeremiah's prophecy of the restoration of Israel and Judah in one kingdom: "The reunion of long divided Israel is for the most part a misnomer . . . Even now, when the leaven of the kingdom has been working in the lump of humanity for nearly two thousand years, any suggestion that these chapters are realized in modern Christianity would seem cruel irony . . . There was no return of the ten tribes that in any way corresponded to the terms of this prophecy. Our growing acquaintance with the races of the world seems likely to exclude even the possibility of any such restoration of Ephraim."
Within the last half century, however, a marked and increasing interest in this subject has arisen among Anglo-Saxon peoples, owing apparently to our close approximation in point of time to the period of prophetic fulfillment. Writers on the prophecies are agreed that the "seven times" which were to pass over Nebuchadnezzar are intended to indicate the duration of Gentile dominion, and seven times in prophetic chronology equal 2520 years. There is no definite date assigned from which to reckon this time, beyond the fact that Nebuchadnezzar was the head of the image which symbolized the period of Gentile power; but one authority states that its latest possible end will be between the years 1919 and 1924. "Jerusalem," said Jesus, "shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled," and in the light of recent events in Palestine, his words have a special significance.
