And all this land must become a devastated place, an object of astonishment, and these nations will have to serve the king of Babylon seventy years.”’

9. What other time period began with the start of the “seventy years” of complete desolation of Judah, and how was that time period never broken up?

⁹ The Babylonian military steamroller brought about the desolation of the land of the kingdom of Judah for 70 years. (Jer. 25:11, 12; 29:10; Dan. 9:1, 2; 2 Chron. 36:17-21) That complete desolation of the land of Judah and Jerusalem for seven decades began in the autumn month of Tishri of 607 B.C.E. With that tragic event the far more tragic year of 1914 C.E. is connected. How so? Because in the autumn of that year the “seven times” of the Gentile nations that began with Judah’s desolation in 607 B.C.E. terminated their run of 2,520 years. (Luke 21:24; Dan. 4:16, 23, 25, 32) Those “appointed times of the [Gentile] nations,” or Gentile Times, spanned the time period during which the Universal Sovereign Jehovah permitted the Gentile nations to exercise world domination on earth without interference by his Messianic kingdom. After Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem in 607 B.C.E., the typical kingdom of God on earth was never restored to earthly Jerusalem, in the hands of David’s royal family, so as not to break up complete domination of the earth by Gentile world powers.

10. Although Cyrus overthrew the dynasty of Nebuchadnezzar in 539 B.C.E., how did Judah and the other nations serve the king of Babylon 70 years?

¹⁰ The Persian conqueror of Babylon, Cyrus the Great, did not restore the kingdom of the family of David to Jerusalem. It is true that he conquered Gentile Babylon in 539 B.C.E., or about two years before the “seventy years” of desolation of the land of Judah ran out. He proclaimed himself “king of Babylon” and at first did not alter the policy of the Babylonian dynasty of King Nebuchadnezzar. Thus the nations subjugated by Nebuchadnezzar continued to serve “the king of Babylon” 70 years.