I have not time to discuss what is meant by ‘the times of the Gentiles.’ Suffice it to say that I believe it to be this present Gentile dispensation; this time of Gentile power and Gentile opportunity; this time during which God is gathering out His elect people from the Gentile world, and is employing a Gentile Church in the sacred ministry of the Gospel of His grace. It seems to be the time of the ingathering of the Gentile Church, for it is to last, according to St. Paul, ‘until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in’; and it is clearly the time of the exercise of Gentile power, for they are Gentiles by whom Jerusalem is to be trodden under foot.
But I do not wish to occupy time in any discussion of this period, but rather to invite your special attention to those Gentile powers which have trodden Jerusalem under foot. Which are they? and how do they now stand?
What, then, are the Gentile powers which have trodden down Jerusalem? In the course of the eighteen hundred years of her humiliation there have been times during which there have been short interruptions in the sway of the ruling powers. But, looking at the period as one great whole, and fixing our attention on the conspicuous outlines of history, we find that there are two powers which stand out conspicuous above all the rest as the great oppressors of the Holy City. These are Rome and the successive forms of that Mahommedan power of which the present head is Turkey. Rome trod her down at the siege of Jerusalem, and Turkey holds her down now. Rome cast her to the ground, and when she was down Turkey set its foot on her neck. Rome hurled her to the dust, and Turkey now tramples her in the mire. Rome destroyed God’s Temple, and actually ploughed up the sacred ground on which it stood. Turkey maintains on the sacred site the mosque of Omar; and on that holy hill where Abraham offered Isaac, where David offered the oxen of Araunah, where Solomon built his Temple, and where the Lord Jesus, the Son of David, cast out all that was unholy; there, by Turkish authority, now stands a Mahommedan mosque; and there no Jew is permitted to set his foot, the only privilege allowed him being to kneel in the Street of Wailing outside the enclosure, and there weep for the desolation of Jerusalem.