The word “gate” here is singular in the King James Version, which might lead some to suggest that only one limited gate or conquest is in view.

As you might have already suspected, spring and fall, flowers and fruit, were a metonymy or metaphor, a stand-in for the Holy Days that were honored and celebrated at those times of the year.

The occasion was the birth of John the Baptist to his parents Zacharias and Elizabeth. The babe was of the priestly line of Levi and prepared the way for Christ.

In my now nearly half-century of ministry and close reading of the Scriptures, I have seen far too many prophecies of the end of the age and our Lord’s return that have proven untrue.

Testament. There were 12 Apostles, 12 foundations in New Jerusalem with 12 gates, 12 pearls, and 12 angels.

Ezekiel 46:17 continues, “But if he give a gift of his inheritance to one of his servants, then it shall be his to the year of liberty; after it shall return to the prince: but his inheritance shall be his sons’ for them.” In the Millennium there will be no “Year of Liberty” every 50 years, because the entire thousand years is a Jubilee period of rest from labor and lost inheritances.

To put this into further perspective, if the prophecy referred to the current full number of world Jews, and if you were an Israeli today with a home with 4 individuals living there, in the Dispensationalist conception you might have 120 people crammed living in your house! (30 times more people x4). Or there would need to be a huge amount of New York City style high-rises. That number doesn’t include all of the animals, the lions and snakes and so forth,

Was the return to Zion fulfilled in 539 B.C.? The Pulpit Commentary on Jeremiah 50:4 asserts, “We are by no means to regard it as an idealized picture of the return of the Jews under Zerubbabel, any more than we can suppose the glowing promises in the second part of Isaiah to have their sole fulfilment in that disappointing event.

In Ezekiel’s vision, very close to the middle of the land between the 7 northern and 5 southern tribes, about 30 kilometers north of Jerusalem, is a large complex of sacred buildings called “the Sacred Grant” (Ferrar Fenton), called “the Oblation”

The modernist approach to Abraham and the covenants is to assume that the Jewish people alone inherited them, and whatever prophecies do not fit the Jews are then spiritualized and given to the church.