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December 9, 2012 |
| 70 Weeks | ||
The book of Daniel is commonly known for its stories like "Daniel and the Lion's Den". But most of the book is prophetic. Just as the other Old Testament prophets had different styles to their prophecies so Daniel also had a style. His prophecies tend to jump through a sequence of points in history. For example a prophecy would describe a time in Daniel's near future and then jump forward to describe a time further in Daniel's future and then jump forward again and so on, generally ending at the second coming. As a result Daniel's prophecies are partly but not completely fulfilled in our time.
Prophecies that jump around in time like this are not only seen in Daniel. The book of Isaiah is particularly known for it. In one sentence Isaiah will talk about the first coming and in the next sentence the second coming and shortly after that he will come back to the first coming. Daniel tends to move through time in only one direction. But all of this tells us that God does not think about time the same way that we do.
The best known of Daniel's prophecies is commonly called the 70 weeks prophecy. In this case almost all of this prophecy has been fulfilled and only one small part remains. What makes this prophecy special is that it specifies exact times for its parts.
In this lesson we will take a look at the prophecy, how it has been fulfilled so far, and how that is valuable to Christians of our time.
Daniel has been remembering and praying about the prophecy of Jeremiah that Israel would return from captivity in Babylon after 70 years. Daniel would have been in his early teens when he and the remnant of Israel were taken to Babylon. Now he is an old man and he knows the time is not far off when his people will return to the land that God had given them. This prophecy is given to Daniel by an angel.
24 "Seventy 'sevens' are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the Most Holy Place.
The angel is saying that this prophecy will cover the period from Daniel's time through to the Second Coming when all of these are done:
Plainly these are not done now, so we know the prophecy is not complete. From other parts of the Bible we recognize that the angel is talking about the end times and the second coming. Therefore this prophecy concludes with the second coming. Next the angel will give the starting point of the prophecy.
25 "Know and understand this: From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven 'sevens,' and sixty-two 'sevens.' It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. 26 After the sixty-two 'sevens,' the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing.
In this translation (NIV) the angel measures time in numbers of 'sevens'. Other translations call them weeks. The difference in translations comes from English not having a word to express the idea of a sabbatical week of years. For Jews like Daniel this seven year cycle was a part of their lives as given by God in the book of Exodus - the Shemitah.
So the 'sevens' talked about here are periods of seven years but they were not likely just any seven years. They likely began with the start of the seven year cycle, the Shemitah, and so ended with it.
So the angel describes two periods of time here and in the next verse he will describe a third.
| 7 | of the | 7 year periods | 49 | years | } | 483 years | |
| 62 | of the | 7 year periods | 434 | years | |||
| 1 | of the | 7 year periods | 7 | years | |||
| 70 | in total | ||||||
Therefore the angel has laid out a period of 483 years that begins with a particular event and gives the number of years from that event to 2 other events.
| Begins with | Ends with |
| the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem | The city and temple are rebuilt |
| the Anointed One will be put to death (cut-off) |
All of these events are recorded in history, though some are known more accurately than others. The date that the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem happens March 14, 445 B.C when Artaxerxes Longimanus1 gives the command. This is recorded in the Bible as well, in the book of Nehemiah and also in the book of Ezra. These books also record the completion of the city and temple, and the 'troubled' times in which the construction was done.
The date when the anointed one, Jesus the Messiah, was put to death is not known as exactly as the other dates. There is no dated historical record of the event. It also isn't possible to count forward 483 years from the March 14 date to get the exact date because the Jewish calendar year is not always the same length. But one possible calculation gives a date of April 6, 32 A.D.2. This date fits very well with what we know of Jesus life. He was born around 4 B.C., and he began his ministry at about age 303 and was crucified 2.5 to 3.5 years after.
The value of this prophecy to Christians of today is that it reveals that there is a God; no man could have known future events with that precision. And we know that God knows the future. And it shows that God doesn't predict the future like a weatherman predicts tomorrow's weather - maybe. But God knows the future 483 years in advance.
Also, because this prophecy has been fulfilled, we have the confidence that the remainder of this prophecy will be fulfilled and that all the other prophecies will be fulfilled
Now note that the treatment of those first two periods in the verse makes it very clear that one follows the other. It says "there will be seven 'sevens,' and sixty-two 'sevens.'". And we know one followed the other from history. The verses present a gap between the first two periods and the last period as it makes one of those jumps through history.
The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed.
The sanctuary was not destroyed until about 40 years after Jesus death and the city was not completely destroyed for another 20 or 30 years after that. So we know right away that the verses are starting to skip through time. Then the verse starts to talk about the end, a time in our future. From all of this we know that there is a gap in the timeline that has been given to Daniel. But we are not given the duration of this gap like we were for the other periods. So far that gap has been about 1980 years long.
One very important statement comes out of these verses. The city and the sanctuary will be destroyed by "the people of the ruler who will come." Until recently most people understood that the city and sanctuary were destroyed by the Roman army, and most still do. So they believe this ruler who will come will be Roman. But recently there has been a greater awareness that the Roman army units that did the destruction were made from Syrian peoples. Josephus describes this quite graphically. Not only that but Josephus describes the destruction of the temple being done against the will of the Roman officers. Therefore the ruler who will come could be Syrian.
The verses now continue by referring to the actions of a person who was called the 'ruler who will come'. Some translations call him the 'Prince who is to come'. We know him better as the anti-Christ, or the first beast of Revelation.
27 He will confirm a covenant with many for one 'seven.' In the middle of the 'seven' he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And at the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him."
This ruler who will come will make an agreement that is supposed to last for 7 years. By the time the agreement is halfway through, the Jews will have a temple and will be making sacrifices and offerings there just as they did in the other temples. At that halfway mark the ruler will force the sacrifices and offerings to stop. And he will do something that will cause the temple to become desolate and remain desolate until he is destroyed. Revelation describes his destruction4.
This prophecy by Daniel was well known to the Jews of Jesus time. Daniel was accepted as a prophet; Jesus even refers to him as a prophet (Matthew 24:15).
They also had sufficiently accurate records to know when to expect the Messiah and many of them were expecting him at about the right time. But they had not correctly understood the prophecies of Isaiah and were expecting someone to free them from the Roman occupation.
This caused a lot of trouble. There were so many people who had different theories about exactly when the Messiah was coming that it started to bother the priests. Eventually they ordered everyone to stop talking about it in the temple area. There were also lots of theories about who the Messiah would be and many people claiming to be the Messiah.
The belief that the Messiah would overthrow the Romans was also a problem. The people would form into groups around these false Messiahs5 and, coupled with a belief that being God's people made them special, they would fight against the Romans. These insurrections would eventually lead to the destruction of Jerusalem.
Knowing this Old Testament scripture of Daniel, a Christian might think that he could show a Jew of our time that the Messiah has already come. How else could you interpret the 70 weeks?
It turns out the Jews did something not long after Jesus' crucifixion. In Jesus time the books of the Old Testament were not available as a single printed work. Instead they were individual scrolls. Thus there was not necessarily an agreed upon order to the books like we have now. But the Jews did organize the scrolls into 3 groups: the law, the prophets, and the writings. In Jesus' time Daniel was considered to be in the prophets, but now he finds himself in the writings - with Psalms and Proverbs.
The effect of this change was that Daniel's prophecies could be 'spiritualized', that is, not interpreted literally. Therefore their value to the reader is only in spiritual insights that can be derived from the book.
Spiritualizing prophecy should not come as a surprise. This also happens with Christians and with New Testament books. There are a few people who want to understand the book of Revelation only in a spiritual way6, and not as a symbolic description of the end times. In fact as recently as 1850 much of the second half of the book of Ezekiel was understood only in a spiritual way. This was because no one could imagine that the country of Israel would ever exist again. But now that Israel exists, most people interpret Ezekiel literally.
We've seen how God provides proof of his existence through the fulfillment of prophecy. No other religion has fulfilled prophecy. In Isaiah 46 God says this
9 Remember the former things, those of long ago; I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me. 10 I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say, 'My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.' 11 From the east I summon a bird of prey; from a far-off land, a man to fulfill my purpose. What I have said, that I will bring about; what I have planned, that I will do.
With part of this prophecy fulfilled we have the assurance that all of it will be fulfilled. If God can know the future 483 years in advance why would we doubt that he can know the future thousands of years in advance? Likewise with all the prophecies that have been fulfilled we have the assurance that all the others will be fulfilled.
We've also seen that man, when he can see no way for God's words to be fulfilled, will begin to doubt them and find ways to reinterpret them.
1 First identified in Sir Robert Anderson's classic work, The Coming Prince, published originally in 1894.
2 http://www.khouse.org/articles/2004/552/
3 Luke 3:23
4 Revelation 19:20
5 Mark 15:7 (Barabbas), Acts 5:36
6 Preterist, Preterism