It is especially noteworthy given two Bible prophecies — one in Isaiah 17 and the other in Jeremiah 49 — that suggest the city of Damascus will be obliterated in what the Bible calls “the last days.”
When did people start thinking Isaiah's oracle of Damascus was not about an an ancient Assyrian siege?
When Scofield published his notes:
burden of DamascusThe futurists started propagating the idea of “dual fulfillment” to invigorate their views and make (futurist) sense of all those OT prophecies that plainly pointed to events leading up to the first coming of Christ. In reality, they must spiritualize phrases like “the palaces of Ben-hadad” (Jer. 49:27; Amos 1:4) to give it a futurist look.As in the burden of Moab, there was doubtless a near fulfilment in Sennacherib's approaching invasion, but 17:12-14 as evidently look forward to the final invasion and battle. ("Armageddon," Revelation 16:14 (See Scofield "Revelation 19:17") ) Cf. Isaiah 10:26-34.
Ah, Tiglath-Pileser. one of my favorite characters from history, along with Sargon of Akkad, Hammurabi, Cyrus the Great and Darius the Mede