Clearly the last few lines of this prophecy remain to be fulfilled.

Further in this same chapter we read of how those nations that came against Jerusalem will have to go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, Jesus Christ (Zechariah 14:16).

These chapters of Zechariah are a prophecy about the events that precede and include the second coming of Jesus. A Jewish-controlled Jerusalem is noticeably the central focus.

Shortly before Zechariah, another Jewish prophet named Daniel lived during the time of the captivity of the Jews in Babylon. His book speaks of the Jews' daily sacrifices being cut off in the end time (Daniel 12:11; see Daniel 12:1-13). This event had a forerunner in the temple defilement under Syrian ruler Antiochus Epiphanes in the second century B.C.

However, Jesus Christ confirmed this as a future event to precede His return (compare Daniel 11:31; Matthew 24:15). This means that these sacrifices must first be reinstituted in Jerusalem—requiring Jewish rule over the city.

One hundred years ago such developments were hard to imagine for the simple reason that no independent Jewish political entity existed in the Middle East.

After rebelling against the Romans in A.D. 66 and again in 132, Judea was crushed. Most of the remaining Jews were dispersed throughout the Roman Empire and beyond. No Jewish homeland existed again until 1948, when the modern nation of Israel was established.

An independent Jewish homeland was merely a dream for a small group of zealots a century ago. It moved a step nearer during World War I, when forces of the British Commonwealth took control of Jerusalem from the Turks in December of 1916. A few months later, the British government pledged itself to the establishment of an independent Jewish homeland in the ancient lands the Jews had inhabited for centuries.

It was to be another 30 years before the dream was realized in 1948. Yet since then tiny Israel has had to fight wars for survival in 1948, 1967 and 1973. To this day it has suffered countless terrorist attacks and threats of annihilation from hostile neighbors determined to eliminate the Jewish state.

Once again, here is a prophecy that can now be fulfilled in our time.