Daniel's Prophecy on the Period of Shattering the Holy People's Power
Daniel prophesized a period within which the power of the holy people would be completely removed. The detailed prophecy was stated in Daniel 12:5-7:
This prophecy was perfectly fulfilled in the Jews. Their power (sovereignty) was completely removed in July of 688 AD when the construction of Dome of the Rock began. The total loss of their sovereignty ended on 14 May 1948 when the nation of Israel was re-established. The day of 14 May 1948 was the feast day of Pentecost and was also in the 1260th year from July of 688 AD. The prophecy was fulfilled perfectly.
Detailed explanation
After the second temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 AD, worship overseen by the high priests in Jerusalem ceased. The site was covered in rubble, and a pagan temple dedicated to Jupiter was set up on the Temple Mount when Hadrian became Caesar (117-138 AD). Hadrian installed on the mount two statues: one of Jupiter and the other of himself. Hadrian not only set up a center of worship to Jupiter, but also expelled the Jews from Jerusalem, only allowing them to come into the city on the fast day of Tisha B'av, the ninth day of the fifth lunar month Av. This appears to have caused a second (115-117 AD) and third (132-136 AD) Jewish revolt with the intent of recapturing Jerusalem and reconstructing the holy temple. However, the Romans managed to crush each of these revolts.
History shows that about 1200 years of Islamization had caused Jerusalem to be more desolate physically and/or spiritually prior to 1948. During this period, most of the Jews were forced to leave the Palestinian region and be scattered around the world. By the early 1800's there were only 550 Jews in this region.
Jerusalem was temporarily desolated in 70 AD, again in 135 AD, and conquered again in 639 AD when Khalifah Omar marched into Jerusalem during the Islamic First Jihad. Nevertheless, before the construction of the Islamic Dome of the Rock began in 688 AD, the Jews still had a little power and were able to access Jerusalem and its temple site. In the earlier Umayyad Caliphate period, Muawiyah the first Caliph of the Umayyad Caliphate (661-680 AD) treated Jews, Samaritans, and Manichaeans well and allowed everyone in his regions to live as they wanted (see https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Muawiyah_I).
In July of 688 AD when the construction of the Dome of the Rock began, the Muslims might have used military forces to drive all the Jews out of Jerusalem. The Jews were thus scattered around the world and very few survived in the Palestinian region. They had become powerless and could no longer have accessed Jerusalem and the temple site. They appeared to be completely forsaken by God. Even in the places they were scattered into, they were persecuted and killed by the ungodly and even by many Protestants and Roman Catholics. In the second world war, Nazis killed two thirds of the Jews in Europe (about 6 million) under the name of God. During the period between 688 AD and 1948, the Jews completely lost their power. Therefore, the month of July of 688 AD marks the beginning of shattering the power of the holy people.
On 14 May 1948, the Jews were finally brought back to their homeland and the State of Israel was re-established, marking the end of shattering their power. Indeed, the day of 14 May 1948 was in the 1260th year from July of 688 AD (in the first month of 69 AH). This is the perfect fulfillment of Daniel's prophecy in Daniel 12:7. Here, the phrase "a time, times, and a half" means 1260 prophetic days/years according to Revelation 12:6.
The same prophecy was recorded in Revelation 12:6, "Then the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that they should feed her there one thousand two hundred and sixty days." Here, the woman refers to the nation (children) of Israel. Many years after Yeshua ascended to heaven, the holy people were completely removed from the city of Jerusalem. They fled into the wilderness and were not allowed to approach Jerusalem for 1,260 years.
The starting date for the construction of the Dome of the Rock may be very special to the Jews because it marked total deprivation of their right to access the holiest site (the greatest calamity to the Jews). Because the holy temple was destroyed twice on the 9th/10th day of the fifth Hebrew month and because the first Islamic month of 69 AH happened to be in the fifth month of the Hebrew calendar (see the calendar of 688 AD in Appendix D), it is likely that the construction of the Dome of the Rock might have started on the 9th day of the fifth month of 688 AD, which was on July 12.
The Israelites started to lose their rulership as early as in the spring of 572 BC. The total length of their loss of sovereignty was prophesied to be seven times (2,520 years), as explained in Chapter 20. The half of the seven times in Daniel 12:7 was the last half period of the seven times, during which the Jews completely lost their power and sovereignty. When the shattering of the holy people's power ended on 14 May 1948, God restored their rulership. The true sovereignty (independence) of the nation of Israel was finally re-established on 10 March 1949 when the Israel War of Independence ended.
The numerical prophecies in the book of Daniel can be summarized in Figure 11. The most likely dates of these years are the following: 3 April (10 Nisan) 598 BC, 17 March (10 Adar II) 572 BC, 12 July (9 Av) 688 AD, 8 May (16 Iyar) 692 AD, 14 May (6 Sivan) 1948 AD, and 12 May (6 Sivan) 2027 AD. All the numbers: 1260, 1290, 1335, and 2520 are ordinal. The prophecy on the number 1335 (dashed line in Figure 11) is yet to be fulfilled while the prophecies on all the other numbers were perfectly fulfilled.
Figure 11: Schematic diagram of Daniel's numerical prophecies.