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The 70 Weeks of Daniel (Part 1)

What Are We to Make of Israel
What Are We to Make of IsraelSteve Gregg

Join Steve Gregg as he delves into the fascinating topic of the 70 Weeks of Daniel, exploring Daniel 9:24-27 in detail. This passage, universally recognized by scholars, discusses a period of 70 weeks, or 490 years, where significant events will unfold. Gregg examines the various interpretations of the timeline and its connection to the coming of the Messiah, shedding light on the complex topics of the seven-year tribulation and the church age. Through his thorough analysis of biblical texts and historical context, Gregg presents thought-provoking insights on the fulfillment of prophecies and the significance of key events in Christian history.

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Transcript

Tonight, as announced, we're going to be talking about the 70 Weeks of Daniel. And, you know, I always assume that people who have been a Christian for a long time know what I mean by that. But that's not always the case.
I was a Christian for a long time before I knew what that meant.
But once I got into a church that talked about Bible prophecy, which was when I was about 16, I certainly found out what the 70 Weeks of Daniel were. And they're kind of a real important subject because the prophecy of the 70 Weeks is unique.
I want to say it's unique and important, but it's not the easiest to understand. It would be easier to understand if we hadn't been taught a lot of wrong things about it that we read into it. But even so, even if we hadn't presuppositions about what we're going to find it saying, some of the wording is just not that clear, and even different translations render it differently, which complicates things a bit, too.
But the passage is entirely confined to four verses in the book of Daniel. Daniel 9, verses 24-27, which I'd like to read first of all. It's only four verses, so that shouldn't take long.
And then we'll talk about every aspect of it, because every aspect of it is controversial, strangely enough. You wouldn't think everything about a passage would be. But in Daniel 9, we're not going to read the whole chapter, but at the beginning of the chapter, Daniel was reading the book of Jeremiah.
And in Jeremiah 25, verses 10 and 11 and so, Jeremiah was saying that the nation of Judah, Jeremiah's own nation, was going to be taken into captivity into Babylon, and that they would be there for 70 years. And at the end of the 70 years, according to Jeremiah, God would judge Babylon, and the people of Israel would be vindicated, and their captivity would end. Now, Daniel lived considerably later than Jeremiah, two generations later.
And he had been, as a young man, maybe as a child even, he had been carried away into Babylon as the first part of this deportation of this exile. The exile took place in three stages. In 605 B.C., Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem, overpowered it, but didn't destroy it.
He simply took captives back to Babylon, but not very many. He took the most intelligent, the most attractive people from the noble classes that he wanted to have in his household as servants and advisors and things like that. And Daniel was one of those, as a young man or an older child.
He was carried away along with some others, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, as we call them. They had other names, too. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were Babylonian names given to them.
They actually had Hebrew names, too. Daniel himself is a Hebrew name, but he was given a Babylonian name, Belteshazzar, which is not to be confused with Belshazzar. It sounds similar.
But these four young men were carried away in 605 B.C., along with some others, into Babylon. That was the beginning of the fulfillment of Jeremiah's prediction that the Jews would go into Babylon for 70 years. Now, near the end of his life, when he was an old man, Daniel saw the end of those 70 years.
He spent the full 70 years in Babylon. At the end of that time, Babylon was conquered by the Persians. The Medes and the Persians had served Babylon in an earlier decade, but they had risen up and become very powerful.
They came and they conquered Babylon at a time when Babylon had become very careless. Belshazzar was overconfident. He was the king of Babylon at the time that it fell.
And Cyrus, the king of the Persians, the leader of the Persians, conquered Babylon in 538 B.C. And right around that time, Daniel was reading in the... Just prior to that, Daniel was reading in the book of Jeremiah about this 70-year exile. And Daniel realized, since he had lived through the whole thing, that that 70 years was pretty much at an end, that it was time for that to end. At the time that he was reading this, there had not yet been an end to the exile, but it was coming, obviously, very soon, because the number had been laid out by Jeremiah the prophet two generations earlier.
So Daniel set out to pray and ask God to fulfill this promise of the end of the exile, so that the Jews could go back to Jerusalem. Now, 70 years earlier, when Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed Jerusalem and taken the largest number of Jews into captivity, because there's not only 605 B.C. when Daniel was taken, but in 597, another group of exiles were taken, including Ezekiel. And then in 586 B.C., Nebuchadnezzar came back and burned down the whole city, burned down the temple.
The temple was destroyed, the city was destroyed, and all the rest of the Jews, except for the very poorest peasants who farmed the dirt, all the rest of the citizens were taken away into Babylon into captivity. So this captivity took place in three phases, in 605, 597, and in 586. Now, because the temple had been destroyed in 586, and the city destroyed, the Jews in Babylon longed for their return to their promised land, to the Holy Land, and to the holy city of Jerusalem.
And they wanted to see the temple rebuilt and the worship of God reestablished that had been destroyed when the temple was burned. And so Daniel began to pray and ask God to bring about the fulfillment of this, because he had been inspired by reading Jeremiah's prophecies, knowing that this was supposed to happen, it was predicted. And so he prayed.
And as he prayed, an angel came to him and brought him information. That information is found in verses 24 through 27, the last four verses of this chapter. And it has to do with the future of Israel.
And Daniel, of course, had just read about the 70 years of captivity. And the angel said there's going to be 70 times 7 years remaining in God's dealings with Israel. So on the occasion of his contemplating the 70 years of captivity, he was told there's going to be seven times that, 70 times 7 years remaining in God's dealings with Israel.
And here's how it was written, or how he said it. Verse 24, 70 weeks. Now, before I say anything more, weeks here we need to translate properly.
The word in the Hebrew means sevens. It doesn't specify seven days, like a week to us. If we say a week, we mean seven days.
But in Hebrew, the word doesn't necessarily mean seven days. It just means sevens. It doesn't say seven what's.
Almost all Bible scholars, certainly all evangelical Bible scholars, believe that these weeks represent periods of seven years. So Bible teachers often refer to them as weeks of years, rather than weeks of days. In any case, when you read the word weeks here, or maybe you have a Bible translation that uses the word sevens, realize that these sevens, each seven is seven years, each week is seven years.
So he says 70 sevens, that would be 490 years. That's just about universally recognized by evangelical scholars, dispensational or non-dispensational, doesn't matter. Everyone pretty much takes it that way.
And I think rightly so, as the event should prove. Seventy sevens, or 70 weeks, are determined for your people and for your holy city. Well, Daniel's people are Israel, and the holy city is Jerusalem.
To finish the transgression, to make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy. Know therefore, and understand that from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem, until Messiah, the Prince, there shall be seven sevens, and 62 sevens. So keep track of this.
We've got seven sevens and 62, that would make 69.
We're told right at the beginning there's going to be 70 of them all together, and immediately we read about the first 69. Seven and 62 weeks makes 69 weeks.
That'd be 483 years, for those of you who don't do the math readily in your head. 483 years would be 69 of these weeks. Okay, so from the going forth of the command to restore Jerusalem, until Messiah, the Prince, there shall be seven weeks and 62 weeks.
The streets shall be built again, and the wall even in trouble sometimes. And after the 62 weeks, now don't be confused here, this really means after 69 weeks, because the seven weeks preceded the 62 weeks. So after the 62 weeks, there's been the seven and the 62.
So this would mean after 69 weeks total. Alright, and by the way, this is not controversial, I think everyone understands that. You just have to kind of look at it carefully and see that.
After the 62 weeks, the Messiah shall be cut off, which is a term that means to be killed. But not for himself. And the people of the Prince who is to come, shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.
The city is Jerusalem, the sanctuary is the temple. So here we have, back when Nebuchadnezzar came, he destroyed the city and the sanctuary. And it lay desolate for 70 years, and Daniel's praying, and God says, well you know, it's going to happen again.
The city and the sanctuary will be destroyed again. But, not 70 years, but 70 times 7. Or in this case, 70 times 69 years. We've taken so far, but there's another 7 at the end of this, the 70th week.
And it says, and the people of the Prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end of it shall be with a flood, which usually is a term in the prophets to refer to an invasion. An invading force that's overwhelming, flooding the city.
We find this, for example, in Isaiah chapter 10, which talks about the Assyrians coming against the northern kingdom of Israel. It says, it's like a river overflowing its banks and flooding the armies. Like flood waters all over the ground, they're just overwhelming.
And so here also, the invasion. The Romans did invade the city of Jerusalem in large numbers. Until the end of the war, desolations are determined.
Now this gets trickier in the last verse. This is the more difficult verse of them. Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week.
But in the middle of the week, he shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate. That is to say, there will be an abomination that makes desolate.
In the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, it says an abomination of desolation. And Jesus quoted the Septuagint on this when he mentioned the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel. Jesus said, we'll see that later in Matthew 24, 15.
Okay, so on the wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate. Even until the consummation which is determined is poured out on the desolate. Some translations say on the desolator.
It's a different thought. And apparently the Hebrew is ambiguous enough that it can go either way. That's why I said even if you don't have presupposed ideas about the meaning of this, some of it's confusing because different translators render some of the words a little differently.
But not significantly so. Not enough so that you'd have to wonder, you know, what in the world is this about? We can never figure it out because the translations are so different. They're not that different.
For the most part, the Hebrew is straightforward. He said there's going to be 77. That's 490.
They will, that 77 will divide into three parts. Seven, that's 49 years. Then add to that 62 more sevens, a total of 69 sevens.
That's 483 years. And then there's one more week, one more seven, the 70th week. Now, I have always found this hard to talk about because the numbers, people's eyes glaze over.
You know, you give all these numbers, you just go, I can't keep track of all that. That's why I've given you notes, and you'll see that the harder things to remember are all in your notes. But what is to be accomplished in these 70 heptads? A heptad is seven years.
What's going to happen in this time? Well, there's six things. Verse 24 lists six things that have to happen. Seventy weeks are determined for your people and for your holy city.
Two, one, finish the transgression. Two, to make an end of sins. Three, to make reconciliation for iniquity.
Four, to bring in everlasting righteousness. Five, to seal up vision and prophecy. And six, to anoint the most holy.
Some translators will say to anoint the most holy place. But the word place is not in the Hebrew. It may be implied, but many translators think it means the most holy one, meaning Christ.
So if it's the most holy place, that's the phrase that usually means the holy of holies in the temple. And so right there, there is a division in interpreters. Some believe that that sixth item is the anointing of a new holy of holies in a rebuilt temple, the most holy place.
However, that's not required by the Hebrew. It could be understood to mean to anoint the most holy one, Jesus. So we'll deal with that as we go along because we're going to consider at least two major different views about this prophecy.
One's the dispensational view, and the other is one that's not the dispensational view. Okay. Dispensationalists believe that the 70 weeks of Daniel should be divided up this way, that you take the first 69 weeks, the 7 and the 62.
That's the first 483 years. And from a decree that was made by a Persian king allowing the Jews to go back to Jerusalem to build their city and restore it. Remember, that's the starting point of the 70 years, from the decree, from the command to restore and build Jerusalem.
From that starting point, you measure this period of time. That from the beginning of that time, 483 years, 69 weeks, will transpire or were to transpire before the Messiah. Dispensationalists believe that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey at the end of his life, at the end of the 69th week.
Now, the dispensational view, which is what almost everyone has heard, unless they have been like living in a cave somewhere. Dispensationalism is the main view of this you'll hear anywhere. Holds that when the 69th week ended and Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, and within a week, he was crucified.
In fact, within a week, he was raised from the dead, but he was killed within four or five days of that time. When that happened, the prophetic clock stopped ticking. In other words, the 70 weeks were halted.
They didn't continue.
You didn't have the 70th seven immediately transpire after the 69th. There would have been, but because they rejected Christ, it came to a screeching halt at the end of the 69th week.
And the 70th week, the last seven years, has not happened even yet. So that there's a gap of something like 2,000 years between the end of the 69th week and the beginning of the 70th week. If I lost you.
Okay, there's the 70th week, they think is a seven year period, which is saved for the end of the world. And it is, of course, as you might guess, identified with the tribulation period. Now, there is no place in the Bible that speaks of a seven year tribulation period.
It took me years to discover this, because I was always taught that the Bible talks about a seven year tribulation at the end of the world. And I and another very biblically literate friend who is a Bible teacher were at the beach in Santa Cruz once back in the 70s. Because we taught this and we're just talking about the scriptures together.
We were not doubting the dispensational teaching we'd heard, but he just asked me, he said, Steve, what? What exactly is the biblical basis for there being a seven year tribulation? And I had somewhat asked myself that question without really searching it out too much. But in my mind, I ran the Rolodex and I and I thought, well, you know, I can think of maybe two things. One is the 70th week of Daniel.
Obviously, the 70th week of Daniel, seven years.
It's a week. It's a heptad, seven years, which we always assumed was the great tribulation.
And then the fact that Revelation on a number of occasions mentions three and a half years. Five times you read either 42 months, which is three and a half years or of twelve hundred and sixty days, which is, again, three and a half years. Or of time, times and half a time, which is a mysterious way of saying three and a half years.
Five times you read of this three and a half years in Revelation chapters 11, 12 and 13. And as dispensationalists, we were taught that there's going to be two periods of three and a half years joined together, making a seven year tribulation. Now, I didn't question that because my teachers were a lot smarter than me for many years.
But I had to say that when I read the book of Revelation without without their help, I realized that there's not anything in Revelation that says there's going to be two periods of three and a half years. At least for all for all we're told, the three and a half years can always be the same three and a half years. We're not told that it is, but we're not told that it isn't.
To me, I now believe that the three and a half years in Revelation, every time it occurs, is the same three and a half years.
But that's not for us to worry about too much. Now, the point is, as we were contemplating what is the basis for a seven year tribulation.
We realized that only this somewhat tenuous joining of two, three and a half year periods in Revelation, which are not clearly said to be two of them would make a seven year total. And the 70th week of Daniel. 70th week of Daniel is clearly seven years, but is it clearly the tribulation.
I would say today, no, there's nothing in Daniel chapter nine that would tell us that we should think that there's been a postponement of the 70th week. All Christians agree that the first 69 weeks ran their course sometime in the early part of the first century AD. So there's nobody who's arguing that any of the 69 first 69 weeks are still to come.
Everyone agrees that they were fulfilled in the 30s AD. But the question is, what about this last seven years? What about the 70th week? And the dispensation said, well, that's been postponed. And there's the parenthesis between the 69th week ending on Palm Sunday.
And the rapture of the church, which is still future between those two things, there's a parenthesis called the church age. And after the church is raptured, they say, then the 70th week will begin. Because after all, notice what did the angel say? He said, 70 weeks are determined for your people and your holy city.
So this is for Israel. God's dealing with Israel. The dispensation says, well, God can't deal with Israel and the church at the same time.
So the church, God stopped dealing with Israel when Jesus was crucified. And he's been dealing with the church ever since. And when the rapture of the church takes place, and the church is gone, then he'll deal with Israel again for the final seven years.
And that's the rationale for a seven year tribulation. Now, by the way, Jesus talks about a great tribulation in Matthew 24, 21, but he doesn't mention anywhere how long it would be. It could be six months or could be 2000 years for all we know.
He doesn't say how long the tribulation, he just says, then there will be great tribulation. And he talks about how intense it is, but he doesn't talk about how long it is. The only tribulation in the Bible that actually has a time set on it is actually in Revelation 2.10, but it's not referring to what most people mean by the tribulation.
In Revelation 2.10, Jesus is talking to the church of Smyrna, and he says, you know, Satan is going to throw some of you in jail. He says, and you will have tribulation 10 days, but be faithful unto death, and I'll give you the crown of life. That's the only time in the Bible that tribulation is attached to any time of period.
You'll have tribulation 10 days, he said. Now, no one thinks that's talking about a future great tribulation, 10 days. And so we really don't have anything about a seven year tribulation.
But somebody who does want to believe there is one is going to have to take it from Daniel chapter 9, if it can be found there. That's the question. Can it be? I'm open to it.
Hey, I taught it myself for many years.
You know, when a person teaches something publicly, they have a vested interest in continuing to believe it. You know that? When someone is a public teacher of the Bible, they don't have anything to gain by changing their opinion once they've gone on record.
And saying, I believe this, and this is what it means, and my teacher said this, and I agree with them, and so forth. And changing from what I once believed was not something I wanted to do. And I didn't do it quickly or lightly.
But I did it as the more I read what the Bible actually says on all the subjects that I was teaching about, the more I realized I had to alter some of the ways I looked at things. I was so happy once I altered it to find out what I did not know and what my teachers never told me. And that is that what I had come to on my own was really what the church taught for the first 1800 years for the most part.
And that it was only the last couple centuries that everyone taught something, you know, radically different. So this is what we're looking at. The dispensational teaching of the 70 weeks, 69 weeks, 483 years, have passed and ended at essentially the time of the crucifixion of Christ.
The 70th week was postponed. It's still postponed. It hasn't happened yet, but the rapture of the church will remove the church and bring Israel back into the focus of God's main concern, and that will begin the 70th week, the last seven years, which become the tribulation, and Jesus will return at the end of that.
Now, we listed six things because the verse 24 lists them, that must be accomplished in the 70-week period. It is my contention that all six of those things were fulfilled by Christ at His first coming, in His crucifixion and resurrection. All six of these things happened.
Now, dispensationalists say no, they didn't. And so they believe there still has to be the 70th week yet in the future so that some of these things can be fulfilled. Now, this is simply a matter of interpretation, and, you know, if someone's going to insist on it, you can't prove them wrong.
But to say that Jesus died to finish the transgression, to bring an end to sins, well, the Bible does talk as if that's what Jesus did. Now, if by putting an end to sins means bringing about a circumstance where nobody ever sins again, well, that hasn't happened. If, you know, finishing the transgression, if that means bringing about a world where no one is transgressing any of God's commandments anymore, clearly that has not happened.
But why should we insist that these phrases mean that? The very same words are used in the New Testament to speak of things that have been accomplished. For example, in Matthew 23, when Jesus is chiding the scribes and the Pharisees, and he's warning them that a judgment is going to come upon them in that generation, which it did. In verses 29 through 32, Jesus said, Now, what's he saying? He said that scribes and Pharisees, their ancestors killed the prophets.
Almost all the prophets were killed by the Jews. Some of them escaped, but they were persecuted anyway. And he says, you, the modern generation of Jews, scribes and Pharisees, you revere the prophets that your fathers killed.
You decorate their tombs. You make them, you know, sentimental monuments. So this is where, you know, Isaiah is buried.
Now, this is where this is where Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada is buried and so forth.
He says, your father's killed those guys. And he says, even when you say, as you decorate their tombs, you say, if we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have done what they did.
He says, therefore, you name those people as your fathers. You testify that you are the children of them. And you are just like them.
So he says, therefore, fill up the measure of your fathers. What's he mean by fill up the measure of your fathers? What he's saying is your fathers have been filling up this cup of iniquity. It's almost full for for fourteen hundred years.
Your fathers have been killing prophets, killing the people God sends to them. And the guilt is is building up and the cup is almost full. And you're going to fill that cup by killing me.
You're going to you're going to finish the transgression of your fathers. Now, you don't have to understand the Daniel statement that way, but there's no reason that it would be difficult to do. But it says to make an end of sins.
Well, in Hebrews chapter nine, I mean, the whole book of Hebrews are major parts of it. Discuss this very aspect of Jesus death and what he accomplished in Hebrews nine, twenty six. It says then verse 20.
See here, got to start verse twenty four through twenty six. For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself now to appear in the presence of God for us. Not that he should offer himself often as the high priest enters the holy place.
Every year with the blood of another, he would then have to suffer often since the foundation of the world. But now once at the end of the ages, he has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. Interesting, the writer of Hebrews says that Jesus appeared at the end of the ages.
Now, wait a minute. He appeared two thousand years ago. Why are we calling that the end of the ages? I believe the writer of Hebrews, like all the early Christians, saw themselves living at the end of one age and the beginning of another.
The Old Testament age was ending and it came to its most obvious ending when the temple was destroyed and there were no more priests or sacrifices. That whole age came to an end, although it technically in God's sight came to an end when Jesus died. It visibly and historically came to a total end in AD 70 with the destruction of Jerusalem.
But that was the end of one age. But it's the beginning of another age, the age of the Messiah, the age of the new covenant. They were at the ends of the ages, the final end of the one age and the beginning end of the other.
They lived at the ends of the ages. And at that one time, at the ends of the ages, Jesus came and he put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. Making an end of sins, putting away sins, these are not phrases that are significantly different from each other.
And I believe that the New Testament writers would see that as essentially the same thing. Now, the third thing is to make reconciliation for iniquity. Well, what's reconciliation? Well, the word reconciliation is sometimes translated atonement.
The word atonement means reconciliation and the Greek word that's sometimes translated atonement is also sometimes translated reconciliation. But what atonement means is that you are removing an obstacle in a relationship. There is an offense between two parties and there's an obstacle there that has to be atoned for.
Reconciliation requires making peace again between parties who are alienated. That's what reconciliation means. Did Jesus do anything like that? Did the first coming of Jesus accomplish anything remotely like that, like making reconciliation for iniquity? I think so.
I think so. In 2 Corinthians 5, verse 19, it says, that is, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. To make reconciliation for iniquities, God was not imputing the world's trespasses against them.
He was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. Sounds like Paul would think that Jesus did make reconciliation for iniquity. How about bring in everlasting righteousness? Would you say Jesus... See, the dispensationalists will say, well, you know, the world isn't completely righteous yet, so obviously Jesus hasn't brought in everlasting righteousness.
That's got to happen in a future 70th week of Daniel, because this is all going to happen within 70 weeks, plus give or take a few thousand years with the gap in there, you know. But the point is, you know, it hasn't happened yet, so the 70th week must be future. Well, I'm not sure why anyone who reads the New Testament would suggest that this hasn't happened.
Did Jesus bring in everlasting righteousness? It says in Romans 3, verse 21, but now the righteousness of God... By the way, is the righteousness of God everlasting or temporary? I think that'd be everlasting. But now the righteousness of God, apart from the law, is revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe, for there's no difference. And then verse 25 and 26, same chapter.
Christ, whom God set forth as a propitiation by his blood through faith to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed to demonstrate at the present time his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Christ, Jesus. So, Jesus' coming was to reveal God's righteousness, to bring about righteousness to those who have faith in Jesus. Is this an everlasting righteousness? I don't read of any shelf life on it here, you know.
It looks like it's... seems like it's kind of for good, forever. So, so far, four out of the six things that Daniel says are supposed to happen are not hard to establish from the New Testament that they did happen when Jesus came the first time, not the second time. The fifth thing is to seal up vision and prophecy.
Now, the difficulty with this is scholars can't agree what it means to seal up vision and prophecy. It could... some translators think it means to fulfill prophecy. To put... others believe it means to put God's seal, that is his stamp of authenticity on prophecy.
But in either case, Jesus did that. If you look at Luke chapter 24, this is not in your notes, I put Luke 21 there, that's a good verse too, but a different one. In Luke 24, on this, Jesus said after he rose from the dead to his disciples in verse 44, Luke 24, 44, Then he said to them, These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms concerning me.
Now, in Acts, when Peter is preaching in Acts chapter 3, he made a remarkable statement, because he said in verse 24, Acts 3, 24, Yes, and all the prophets, all the prophets, from Samuel, whom the Jews always regarded as the first of the prophets, Moses was a prophet before Samuel, but Moses was more than a prophet, he was like the founder of the nation, much more than an ordinary prophet. Samuel was considered by the Jews to be the beginner of the whole order of prophets that continued through the Old Testament time. Peter says, Yes, and all the prophets from Samuel and those who follow, as many as have spoken, have also foretold these days.
What days? Peter is talking 2000 years ago. He said all the prophets were talking about the times they were living in. So it seems like the prophecy was fulfilled and sealed as fulfilled there.
Now look at Romans chapter 15. I have to say, I have to find this verse here. Verse 8, Romans 15, 8. Now I say that Jesus Christ has become a servant of the circumcision for the truth of God to confirm the promises made to the fathers.
Where were those made? They were made in Old Testament prophecy. Those were promises that got made. And what did Jesus do to confirm those? To put the seal of God upon those? I believe Jesus did seal up the vision and prophecy.
And then what about the last thing? The sixth thing that has to be accomplished in the 70 weeks of Daniel. To anoint the most holy. Now again, I've said that most holy is an ambiguous phrase in Hebrew.
It can mean the most holy one or the most holy place. It's a term that in the context of the tabernacle and the temple, that same term is used for the holy of holies in the temple. However, Jesus certainly is worthy of being called the most holy one.
In any case, Jesus was anointed at his baptism when the Holy Spirit came upon him in the form of a dove. He was anointed by the Holy Spirit. And Jesus began to preach in his hometown of Nazareth in Luke chapter 4 with a quotation of Isaiah 61.
Which begins, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me. Jesus said this prophecy has been fulfilled in your hearing. Well if this is about the anointing of the most holy one, Jesus declared it's been fulfilled.
The spirit of the Lord has come upon me, he has anointed me. Certainly the most holy one had been anointed. Now what if it was really the holy place? Well, we just read a moment ago in Hebrews 9 that Jesus entered into, not the holy of holies on earth, he entered into heaven itself, the holy of holies there.
Instead of going behind a veil into a little room and sprinkling blood on the mercy seat, he went into heaven to the real holy of holies and he sprinkled his own blood there and he made a sinner's sanction for us there just like the high priest did on the day of atonement. Jesus did anoint the most holy place in heaven with his own blood. So really there's nothing among these six things that have to happen in the 70 weeks.
There's nothing that has been postponed. Everything was fulfilled by Jesus. He's the fulfillment of prophecy.
Now, okay, so we've got verse 24 down. We've got 490 years total to be the period of time that these things have to occur. And it turns out they all occurred near the end of it when Jesus came.
But what do we do with the, how do we work the numbers? The statement of chapter 25, I mean verse 25, Daniel 9, 25, says from the going forth of the decree to build and restore Jerusalem shall be, and then it begins to number the weeks. The starting point is the command to restore and build Jerusalem. Now remember when Daniel was receiving this, Jerusalem was in ashes and in ruins.
It needed to be restored. The temple needed to be rebuilt. And this was not just going to happen on its own because the Jews were slaves in Babylon.
They could not go back and build their city. It would be an act of rebellion. They'd be wiped out by the Babylonian armies and that would be the end of it.
But God said there would be a decree, apparently an official royal decree, that would permit them to go and to build Jerusalem again. And there was. In fact, unfortunately, there were three.
I say unfortunately because that makes it ambiguous when the 70 weeks began. However, roughly, we know approximately when it began because it was at the end of the Babylonian exile and these decrees were made by Persian rulers. The first of these decrees was made by Cyrus.
And that was in 536 B.C. Many people think the 70 weeks begin with Cyrus's decree. Why? Well, because Cyrus's decree is the significant one. The ones that came after were relatively insignificant, but Cyrus's decree was so significant that 150 years before it happened, Isaiah predicted it and even mentioned Cyrus by name as the one who would do it.
If you look at Isaiah 44, Isaiah 44, near the end of the chapter there, verse 27, who says, that is God says to the deep, be dry, and I will dry up your rivers. Who says, that is God says to Cyrus, of Cyrus, he is my shepherd, he shall perform all my pleasure, saying to Jerusalem, you shall be built. Whoa, wait a minute.
The command to restore and build Jerusalem. Who gives that command? God says, Cyrus will say to Jerusalem, you will be built. And to the temple, your foundation shall be laid.
Okay, so according to Isaiah 44, 28, the decree to build Jerusalem and the temple will come from somebody named Cyrus, who incidentally was not even born yet at the time Isaiah wrote this. He was born 150 years after Isaiah prophesied this, and it wasn't until he was 50 years old. So 200 years after Isaiah prophesied this, Cyrus made that exact decree.
There is a record of that decree at the end of Second Chronicles. And it's important enough that it was repeated at the beginning of the book of Ezra, almost word for word. But in Second Chronicles, the last verse in Second Chronicles, chapter 36, verse 23.
Here's, well, let's look at verse 22 and 23. Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, and he's the one who conquered Babylon and took it over. So he was now in the position, if he wished, to release Babylon's captives, including the Jews, and he did.
In the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and also put it in writing, saying, Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the earth, Yahweh, God of heaven, has given me, and he has commanded me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is at Judea, who is among you of all his people. May the Lord his God be with him and let him go up. So Cyrus made a decree that any Jew in the captivity of Babylon who wanted to could go back home to Jerusalem, build the city and the temple again, just like Isaiah said Cyrus would do.
Now, naturally, that would be the most likely starting point, therefore, for the 70 weeks. So that should be a no-brainer, a slam dunk. There shouldn't be any other theories, right? Well, there shouldn't be, but there's a problem with it.
Because this decree was made in 536 BC. The whole prophecy of the 70 weeks covers 490 years. So 490 years forward from this decree in 536 BC brings us to 53 BC.
That doesn't work very well. Jesus wasn't even born yet for another generation or so after that. So for this reason, the decree of Cyrus is usually rejected, though there are scholars, important scholars, who actually hold to it.
In fact, Scofield, the dispensationalist, eventually came to hold to it, although he held to a different decree when he wrote the Scofield Notes, but later on he wrote it in another book that he had changed his mind. He thinks it was Cyrus' decree. We'll talk about the problem of that a little more later on, but let me tell you the other two theories.
There was a later king of Persia, after Cyrus was dead, and after many Jews had gone back to Babylon, 50,000, but most didn't go back. Still, most of the Jews were still in the exile in the formerly Babylonian dominions that were now under Persian. And a later Persian king, Artaxerxes, pretty much inspired by Ezra's request, made a decree, again, allowing the Jews to go back and to work on the city, which still had some work to be done on it.
This decree is usually said to have taken place in 458 or 457 BC. All these decrees could be, there's kind of wiggle room for about a year, partly because we don't know exactly what time of the year it happened, and the biblical years overlap parts of our years. So some people say it was 458, some say it was 457.
In any case, there are people who believe that this is the right date to begin with. Sir Isaac Newton, Haley and Haley's Bible Handbook, the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, and so forth, have believed that this first decree of Artaxerxes, and there's another one later, that he made in the time of Ezra, that this is where we should start. Now, it works mathematically pretty well, because if you start at 457 BC and go forward 69 weeks, which throughout church history was usually thought to bring us to the beginning of Jesus' ministry, it's from the decree to the Messiah.
It doesn't specifically say which decree, and it doesn't specifically say what event in the Messiah's life, but historically the church usually believed that this ending of the 69th week brings us to the beginning of Jesus' ministry. We'll say more about the 70th week later, but the 69 week ends at the baptism of Jesus, which is how most people in church history believe. Now, I mentioned the dispensationalists believe otherwise, and that's because they take another decree as the starting point, but they believe the 69th week ends at the death of Jesus.
So, just so you'll know, we'll talk about these options. But some people, the dispensationalists, believe the 69th week ended at the death of Jesus, and the 70th week was postponed. Historically, Christians usually believed that the 69th week ended at the baptism of Jesus, and the 70th week began then.
And in the middle of that week, three and a half years later, Jesus died and brought an end to the sacrificial system, which was predicted to happen in the midst of the 70th week. Now, more on that later. The point here is that Jesus' ministry probably began in 26 or 27 AD, because Luke says it was the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar.
And so that's 26 or 27 AD is when Jesus' ministry began. If you start with Artaxerxes' first decree in 457 BC, measure forward the 69 weeks, which is 483 years, it brings you to 26 AD, which is the beginning of Jesus' ministry. And therefore, it seems to work out well.
The biggest problem with that is that that decree of Artaxerxes really didn't have anything to do with building Jerusalem. It was allowing Ezra and whoever wanted to go with him to go back to restore the religious order, because the Jews had kind of gotten compromised with paganism and stuff, and Ezra was a priest and a scribe, and he wanted to go back and whip them into shape religiously, but he didn't go to build anything. So this, although mathematically, this date works as a starting point pretty good, but it really isn't a decree to build and restore Jerusalem.
Maybe restore spiritually, but not to build the walls or anything like that. But this is one view that's held by some good scholars, and it could be because it does end up at just the right time. 26 AD is the end of the 69th week.
That begins the ministry of Jesus.
That's when most scholars believe Jesus' ministry began. All right.
There's another option, and this is the one that the dispensationalists usually take.
And that is a second decree of Artaxerxes, which is known to have been given around 44, that is, 444 or 445 BC. This is the one where Nehemiah was given permission by Artaxerxes to go back with whoever wanted to go with him to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.
Now, the walls had been essentially rebuilt in Zerubbabel's time, a lot earlier than this, 100 years earlier, but they had been burned down and attacked by the Samaritan peoples around them, so that Nehemiah, who was still in Persia, serving the king of Persia as a cupbearer, he got news from one of his relatives who came back from Jerusalem that the walls were burned down and in ruins, which is not – I mean, they had been built previously, but they were down again. And so Nehemiah got permission from Artaxerxes to go back and help the captives who had returned to rebuild those walls, and that was essentially what Nehemiah went to do. He ended up doing some religious reforms, too, like Ezra had, but his main reason for going back was to help build the walls of Jerusalem.
Now, that could be seen as building Jerusalem, and so dispensationalists usually say, this is the date we want to start with, and that was in 445 or 444 BC. Now, I give you sort of a list of people who think – there was one of the church fathers who lived from 200 to 245 AD, Julius Africanus. He also felt this was the date that it should start at, but for the most part, most Christians in history did not start at that date.
But dispensationalists do, and a man named Sir Robert Anderson wrote a book called The Coming Prince and did the calculations, because it's not simple math because there's some other alterations to make. If you start at 445 BC, measure forward 69 weeks or 483 years, it brings you to the year 39 AD. Well, this is, of course, much too late to be Messiah.
He was gone before then.
He had come and gone and had been gone for years by 39 AD. So, that doesn't seem to bring us to the right place.
However, Sir Robert Anderson and many dispensationalists following his calculations said, well, our problem is we're dating this with solar years of 365 and a quarter days. We call a year 365 and a quarter days, but the Jewish year was a lunar year of only 360 days. And so, if you take 483 years, the length of our years, and take off five and a quarter days for each year, which makes the same number of years at 360 days each, that brings it back to an earlier date.
That makes the decree that was made March 14th, 445 BC, he said, to Palm Sunday, which is where dispensationalists believe the 69th week ended, which he gives as April 6, 32 AD. That's 173,880 days. And so, they say that's exactly the 69 weeks, if you recalculate the number of years by 360 day years.
Does that sound confusing to you? Well, it is a little bit. But the most difficult part about this is that it places Palm Sunday on April 6, 32 AD. Now, where did anybody get the idea that Palm Sunday was on April 6, 32 AD? They got it by the necessity of doing these calculations.
And so, these calculations require that we have Palm Sunday. If Palm Sunday was the end of the 69th week, and you do the calculations, it brings you up to April 6, 32 AD, you're going to say, well, that's when Palm Sunday was. Well, most scholars don't believe that Jesus died in 32 AD.
They don't all agree exactly what year it was. Many believe he died in the year 30 AD, and some say 33 AD. But 32 AD is not very widely held by anyone except dispensationalists who are trying to make it be the end of the 69th week.
There are some scholars place Palm Sunday on March 30th of 33 AD. Another theory is that it was in 30 AD. I think 30 AD is the most likely since Jesus' ministry began in 26 or 27.
And most scholars pretty much agree with that. Well, Jesus' ministry, if it was three and a half years, from 26 AD is going to bring you to 30 AD. And so, 30 AD is more likely.
And so, dispensationalists are very intrigued and impressed by these exact calculations to the day. They often say that it's to the very day from the decree of the second decree of Artaxerxes that allowed Nehemiah to go back to the day of Palm Sunday. Exactly the 69 weeks, exactly 483 years.
Isn't that amazing? Well, it's amazing if you can pretty much place Palm Sunday wherever you want to based on your calculations. But when you realize that it's an artificial thing to place Palm Sunday on that day, then it's not quite as impressive. So, which view is correct? Well, I will say this.
The decrees of Artaxerxes, the one in 457 and the one in 444, are important events. But they aren't exactly the event that Daniel is looking forward to. Daniel is looking forward to the decree of Cyrus that was going to release the Jews from their captivity to go back and build the city and build the temple.
It was Cyrus' decree that did that. The fact that Isaiah actually mentioned Cyrus by name and said he would do this makes it particularly likely that this is the decree that Daniel and the angel were thinking of. But we have the problem.
The big problem with Cyrus is he's too early. 536 BC, you measure forward the whole 70 weeks and you're still in 52 BC. So it doesn't work.
Now, some have resolved this a particular way. It's on the back on page 2 of your notes. It says revisiting the Cyrus starting point.
Now, I'm not going to tell you that Cyrus is the right starting point, but I will say all things considered, it seems biblically that the Bible would point to Cyrus as the guy who did this. And the problem here is I'm not going to read everything on these notes because it would take too long. But the length of time that the Persian Empire ruled is disputed.
Now, it gets so confusing because our minds have to work backwards when we think of BC dates. But if there is some uncertainty, and there is, as to the exact length of the Persian Empire, then that would make some uncertainty as to the beginning of the Persian Empire going backwards from the days of Christ. We typically say it was 536 years before Christ.
So the distance between the beginning of the Persian Empire, when Cyrus let the Jews go back to Jerusalem, until the time of Christ, we take to be 536 years. And then you bring Jesus' life into it and you can bring it up to 536. I'm not going to worry about that now because that's not the point I need to make here.
The point I want to make is that if the Persian Empire was not as long as it is generally thought to have been, that would bring the beginning of the Persian Empire closer to the time of Christ than it is. Now, why should we do that? Why should we think it's too long? Well, because different historians have different opinions about how long the Persian Empire was. The date 536 BC for the decree of Cyrus is based on the generally accepted Ptolemaic dating.
Ptolemy was a pagan astronomer in the 2nd century AD who didn't have any exact information about the Persian Empire. He had floating rumors. And he listed ten kings of the Persian Empire.
I've given you their names here in the notes somewhere down near the bottom of the page. Actually, Ptolemy, who lived from AD 90 to AD 168, he listed ten Persian kings after Cyrus the Great with combined reigns lasting 206 years. Now, Clement of Alexandria, he lists eight kings after Cyrus.
And he gives the length of each of their reigns. It comes out also to 205 years, essentially the same, but only eight kings. But Daniel, chapter 11, verse 2, said there would only be three kings after Cyrus in the Persian Empire.
If you look at Daniel 11.2, an angel said this to Daniel. He says, and now I will tell you the truth. Okay, so he's saying this is true.
Whether Ptolemy or Clement of Alexandria had the truth or not, who lived centuries later, is questionable. But the angel said this was the truth. The angel said to Daniel, now I will tell you the truth.
Behold, three more kings will arise in Persia. This is in the first year of Cyrus. So it would be three kings more after Cyrus in Persia.
And fourth, since Cyrus is the first, three more makes four altogether. The last of them will be richer than them all, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Now, Daniel seems to say there's only a total of four kings of Persia before it falls to Greece.
Clement of Alexandria said there were eight kings, but the basis of his information was we don't know. And Ptolemy, whom almost everyone follows, the pagan astronomer, he said there were ten kings. But Ptolemy didn't really know.
No one really knew. I have a quote here from a book called Great Prophecies of the Bible. It says, Usher, Lloyd, and others have all based their chronological conclusions on the canon of Ptolemy, a list of Persian kings at the length of time they reign.
But as Morrow says, quote, Ptolemy does not even pretend to have any facts as to the length of the Persian period. That is to say from Darius and Cyrus down to Alexander the Great. His dates are based on calculations or guesses made by Erasthasthenes and on certain vague floating traditions, unquote.
Now, because there are different stories about how many kings there were, but Daniel is the closest to it. Remember, Daniel has often been thought to be wrong by critics because he didn't agree with secular historians, and he turned out to be right. Like in Daniel 5, Daniel said that the king at the time that Babylon fell to the Persians was Belshazzar.
But ancient historians, Herodotus, writing 400 years before Christ, said the last king of Babylon was Nabonidus, not Herodotus. Critics said the Bible is wrong. Herodotus and other historians say it was Nabonidus, the last king.
Daniel said it was Belshazzar. Who the heck is he? No other historical record even mentioned Belshazzar until 1853, that is, when an inscription was found in Ur of the Chaldees in Babylon on a temple. And the writer of the inscription was Nabonidus, the alleged last king of Babylon.
And in the inscription, Nabonidus wrote to a god, a pagan god. He says, may reverence for you dwell in my firstborn favorite son, Belshazzar. In 1853, archaeologists discovered there was a Belshazzar who was the firstborn favorite son of Nabonidus.
Not recorded in any history books of the ancient people, not recorded in any monuments until that was found in 1853, but remembered only by Daniel. Daniel was the lone voice against all historians. Saying that the last king of Babylon was Belshazzar.
It turned out he was right. It turns out Nabonidus was in retirement in Arabia when Babylon fell to the Persians. And Belshazzar, his firstborn favorite son, was reigning in Babylon, as Daniel said.
So, when Daniel disagrees with the other historians, my money is pretty much on Daniel. Because, after all, he lived during the Persian period, he ought to know. And besides, an angel is telling him.
Okay? So, a pagan astronomer writing seven centuries later, or a church father in Alexandria writing seven centuries later, and they say it's a longer period, well, you know, who are you going to believe? Some people believe that if there were only four kings of Persia altogether, rather than 11 or 9, that the Persian period was shorter than we previously thought. Now, no one knows how much shorter, because all that is vague. But it could have been 80 years shorter.
Take, you know, you take seven kings out of the equation, their reigns combined could be 80 years. And if it was, then we have to jog all those ancient dates B.C. forward. Everything that was before the Persian period has to be moved forward.
The length of the Persian period before Alexander the Great is shorter. I realize this is confusing. But we really don't know the number of years the Persian empire continued, although its traditional date is given as 205 years.
But if it was really only 125 years, then it would be 80 years less. And that's not an impossibility. So what we're up against here is an inability to confirm from external historical sources the exact length of the Persian period.
But a suggestion in Daniel that it was much shorter, only four kings, not ten, that it was much shorter than the traditional date. It could have been as much as 80 years shorter. We don't know that.
But if it was, it would bring the 70 weeks right up to the right time for Jesus. Now, I realize that a skeptic who doesn't believe the Bible and, you know, is skeptical about Christian apologetics would say, well, you're just artificially changing the dates to what you want them to be. Well, kind of I am.
But not on my own authority. It's what Daniel said. I mean, honestly, we can't prove that this works out perfectly right.
One thing interesting, though, is even if you accept the traditional dates of the reign of the Persian empire, the 70 weeks still comes right up almost to the time of Jesus. The Messiah would still have to come somewhere within that general century. And who did besides Jesus? Obviously, you know, Jesus is the only candidate for the fulfillment of this.
And if he is the one, then there's a good reason to believe that the years did match up, but that our historians have lost track of exactly how long the Persian period was. So we got the wrong dates. I'm not going to I'm not going to go to the mat about that.
That's not a hill to die on for me because there's another possibility. And that is that and dispensationists won't like this and maybe some others won't. But the 490 years could be symbolic.
Didn't Jesus, when he was asked, shall I forgive my brother seven times? They say not seven times, 70 times, seven, 490 times. Is that literal or is that just a nice big round number? If Jesus used the term 70 times seven and we know no one believes that was an exact number, but he's just making a point. Then if the angel says to Daniel, you guys have been in captivity for seven years, but there's another 70 times seven before God's done with you people.
It wouldn't even have to be exact. It could be as inexact as Jesus is. 70 times seven forgiveness.
Same number, even. But I'm not going to go there. There's lots of ways you can go on this.
The dispensationists love to be able to prove that down to the exact day the triumphal entry happened at the end of the 69th week. But that's not necessarily uncontrived. There's no view about the starting and the ending of this that doesn't have some difficulties.
There's dispute about the beginning of the 70 weeks because there's three different decrees that different people argue from. And there's dispute about the end because some believe that the 69th week ends at the baptism of Jesus and some think it ends at the crucifixion of Jesus or Palm Sunday. So, shall we just throw up our hands and despair and say we don't know what's going on here? Some may, but what I'm going to say is this.
I don't really care how it's calculated. By even the most unideal calculations, it comes striking distance to Jesus. It comes mighty darn close.
And it doesn't come close to anyone else. To me, whether we take the numbers as symbolic, whether we take them as you've got to recalculate how long the Persian period is entirely by speculation, whether you need to shorten the years from 365 and a quarter days to 360 days, all these things are done by different people. But one thing they all do, they all bring the 70 weeks pretty much up to Jesus.
But instead of doing it by the numbers, maybe we should do it by the words. Because the words tell us after 69 weeks, after the first 69 weeks, certain things will happen. And certain things will happen in the 70th week.
And that's what we need to be focusing on. Because what happened is told to us. And we know what happened.
How the numbers work out, well, that differs from theory to theory. But that's not the most important thing. The question is was this fulfilled? Did the things predicted actually happen as said? My answer is yes.
But I'm going to have to give you a stretch break here before I go into the rest of that. We've looked at the first two of these four verses.

Series by Steve Gregg

Daniel
Daniel
Steve Gregg discusses various parts of the book of Daniel, exploring themes of prophecy, historical accuracy, and the significance of certain events.
Revelation
Revelation
In this 19-part series, Steve Gregg offers a verse-by-verse analysis of the book of Revelation, discussing topics such as heavenly worship, the renewa
Lamentations
Lamentations
Unveiling the profound grief and consequences of Jerusalem's destruction, Steve Gregg examines the book of Lamentations in a two-part series, delving
The Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit
Steve Gregg's series "The Holy Spirit" explores the concept of the Holy Spirit and its implications for the Christian life, emphasizing genuine spirit
Proverbs
Proverbs
In this 34-part series, Steve Gregg offers in-depth analysis and insightful discussion of biblical book Proverbs, covering topics such as wisdom, spee
Numbers
Numbers
Steve Gregg's series on the book of Numbers delves into its themes of leadership, rituals, faith, and guidance, aiming to uncover timeless lessons and
Isaiah: A Topical Look At Isaiah
Isaiah: A Topical Look At Isaiah
In this 15-part series, Steve Gregg examines the key themes and ideas that recur throughout the book of Isaiah, discussing topics such as the remnant,
1 Corinthians
1 Corinthians
Steve Gregg provides a verse-by-verse exposition of 1 Corinthians, delving into themes such as love, spiritual gifts, holiness, and discipline within
Beyond End Times
Beyond End Times
In "Beyond End Times", Steve Gregg discusses the return of Christ, judgement and rewards, and the eternal state of the saved and the lost.
2 John
2 John
This is a single-part Bible study on the book of 2 John by Steve Gregg. In it, he examines the authorship and themes of the letter, emphasizing the im
More Series by Steve Gregg

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