LadyEagle said:
Hi, Jack. On the Internet, I read that "Damascus is considered to be the oldest continually inhabited city in the world." Do you have some links showing where it has been a ruinous heap several times since Ezekiel was written? I have read where armies have invaded Damascus throughout history, but never was it reduced to a "ruinous heap." Thanks.
Ezekiel was an Old Testament prophet. There is no unfulfilled prophecy in the Old Testament, according to Jesus, in Matthew 5:17. There is no end times prophecy in the Old Testament. I don't buy into the "double meaning" of prophecy. The old covenant came to its symbolic end when the power of the Holy Spirit ripped the veil in the temple apart, and literally when the Roman army invaded Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple, as Jesus predicted in the gospels and as John predicted in Revelation.
As to historical references to the many conquests and destructions of Damascus, any one of half a dozen of them after Ezekiel's time could have fulfilled that prophecy, but the Medo-Persian conquest that took place around the same time that the Israelites were allowed to go back to Jerusalem is probably the specific fulfillment of it, since the inhabitants at that time, who were Assyrians and not Arabs, were carried off and never returned. They were replaced by the surrounding "Ishmaelites" and nomadic people who lived in the area, as well as other captive groups under the Medes and Persians who settled the area. The current inhabitants are racially and religiously a mixture of that. The source of this information is a college textbook I have from Biblical backgrounds class, called "Biblical Backgrounds." I doubt if there is internet reference to it, since it is currently out of print, but I will look.