The 70th Week and 2021 - Part 2
Continued from The 70th Week and 2021 - Part 1
As Jesus explained the End Times to His disciples in Matthew 24, He referenced chapter 9 of the prophet Daniel. Looking to that book, we find Daniel in a prayer forgiveness for his people, basing his petition upon God’s name and not anything that Israel deserved. Israel had sinned and was deserving of God’s judgement, and the historical tendency of Israel to turn away from God and His ways burdened Daniel just as our own tendency toward selfishness should bother us.
In today’s environment, we would do well to imitate Daniel’s prayer for Israel and apply it to the Church and to our country. Take a look at Daniel 9:3-20 and consider how to imitate Daniel’s example in prayer and supplication.
So Daniel prayed, and as he did, he was visited a second time by the angel Gabriel (v21), who told him:
24 “Seventy sets of seven time periods have been assigned for your people and your holy city. These time periods will serve to bring an end to rebellion, to stop sin, to forgive wrongs, to usher in everlasting righteousness, to put a seal on a prophet’s vision, and to anoint the Most Holy One. 25 Learn, then, and understand that from the time the command is given to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the anointed prince comes, seven sets of seven time periods and sixty-two sets of seven time periods will pass. Jerusalem will be restored and rebuilt with a city square and a moat during the troubles of those times. 26 But after the sixty-two sets of seven time periods, the Anointed One will be cut off and have nothing. The city and the holy place will be destroyed with the prince who is to come. His end will come with a flood until the end of the destructive war that has been determined. 27 He will confirm his promise with many for one set of seven time periods. In the middle of the seven time periods, he will stop the sacrifices and food offerings. This will happen along with disgusting things that cause destruction until those time periods come to an end. It has been determined that this will happen to those who destroy the city.”
Other translations refer to the seven time periods as weeks, and as you can imagine, the time measurements of Daniel’s prophecy have been cause for speculation. Earlier in the chapter (v2), Daniel mentions the prophet Jeremiah’s prediction that the Babylonian exile would last for 70 years, so the seventy sets of seven are both a reference to Jeremiah’s prophecy as well as an extension to it.
The Babylonian exile began in 586 BC / BCE. In 538 BC, Cyrus defeated Babylon, and in 539 BC Cyrus permitted Jews to return to Judah. Finally, in 516 BC Cyrus sent the command to restore Jerusalem (see v25) and the 2nd temple was rebuilt. 586 BC – 516 BC, seventy years exactly as the prophet Jeremiah predicted, seventy years without a temple to worship Yahweh. Seventy years were lost, stolen by the armies that had invaded Israel and Judah.
But as mentioned earlier, the time periods in Daniel’s prophecy are not as clear as Jeremiah’s and they can only be understood through other biblical prophecies. Starting at 516 BC, we can count forward 49 years (seven sets of seven) to 467 BC, possibly the time of Israel’s salvation through Esther. And counting forward another 434 years (sixty-two sets of seven), we arrive at the year 33 BC, slightly more than a century before the temple is destroyed in 70 AD. We also see that the Annoited One (Jesus) wasn’t cut off until his crucifixtion in 33 AD.
Again, we have a clear start and end to the Babylonian Exile, but the math isn’t as simple with the Daniel. Yet even if the timeline is uncertain, the outcome is certainly clear:
- bring an end to rebellion
- to stop sin
- to forgive wrongs
- to usher in everlasting righteousness
- to put a seal on a prophet’s vision
- to anoint the Most Holy One
From the list above, we know the first four and last one will occur when Christ returns. The fifth item above adds to the mystery, and by reading further in Daniel to verses 12:4 and 12:9 we see that God’s message was not for Daniel to understand. In fact, it cannot be understood until the end.
We also can understand that these sets of weeks are not all contiguous since the last week has been delayed by two millennia. Yes, Jesus wasn’t cut off until after at least 483 years had come to pass. (i.e. – 49 + 434 = 483K), but the foretold events occurred over a period of decades... 103 years of apparently unaccounted time! Or was the time really unaccounted for?
Remember, the context of this entire prophecy centers on Jerusalem and the discipline for Israel’s disobedience. At the center of all this is the temple, where Israel worships Yahweh. The temple was destroyed for 70 years before the temple was rebuilt before it was again destroyed in the diaspora, when Y’srael was scattered across all nations. Yet true to God’s word, the nation was reestablished, Jerusalem was reinstated as its capital and the preparations for a new temple await the ashes of an unblemished red heifer.
The prophet Joel also predicted Israel’s destruction by armies sent from God in judgement of Israel. These armies are compared to locusts, yet Joel 2:25 promises to restore the years the locusts / armies have stolen (from worship in the Temple), and if you look at the entire context of that chapter in Joel, you’ll see that it also refers to the End Time outpouring of His Spirit.
So in those first 7 weeks and 62 weeks, 70 years were restored to the timeline so that God’s people could worship Him in the 2nd Temple. In addition, in the middle of that extension, Jesus was born and ultimately rejected by Israel, completing that part of Daniel’s prophecy. The life of Immanuel (“God With Us”) further extended the timeline by 33 years, completing the first two sets of seven leaving only the final set of seven years. The remaining seven years will bring an end to sin and the rebellion against God’s ways that started with Adam and Eve. This final week, the 70th week, will be completed as God foretold through Daniel, through John in Revelation and through the many other prophecies in Scripture.
How will we know for sure that this period of tribulation has started?
More to come…
copyright ©2021 Mitchell Malloy (http://mitchellmalloyblogspot.com/)
