[430]In the year 606 B.C. Zedekiah was overthrown. He was taken a prisoner, carried away to Babylon, and Nebuchadnezzar established in the earth the first universal empire and the gentile times dated from that time forward. The length of the gentile times is definitely fixed in the Scriptures as a period of seven symbolic times of 360 years each, or a total of 2,520 years. This period beginning with the year 606 B.C. necessarily must end in 1914 A.D. God had declared that he would overturn the right of the descendants of Abraham to rule, thereby permitting the gentiles to have an uninterrupted sway until he should come whose right it is. The one whose right it is is the great Messiah, Christ Jesus the Lord. It would be reasonable to expect him to be present some time before he would take unto himself his great power to reign. His presence beginning in 1874, he has carried on his harvest work from 1878 forward, but has not interrupted the gentile dominion until that dominion should end. The end of the gentile rule, therefore, would mark necessarily the end of the present order; therefore, the end of the world. We should expect, then, to find 1914 as the beginning of the end of the old world or order of government. And that this would take place during the presence of the Lord he definitely stated. [431]When the gentile dominion legally ends, the order being a wicked one under the supervision of Satan, the god of the evil world (2 Corinthians 4:3,4), and all these nations lying in the wicked one (1 John 5:19), it would be expected that the gentile kingdoms and nations would strive to hold on to their power. But when the proper time should come it would also be expected that the Lord, whose right it is, would take over the affairs into his own hands. And so he said: "We give thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power, and hast reigned. And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth."--Revelation 11:17,18.