Daniel 9:24-27
The Seventieth Week
We are still looking at the Tribulation. A time period where God
will accomplish at least five purposes:
1. God will judge the world with a world-side, catastrophic
judgment.
2. God will redeem Israel to Himself.
3. God will give Satan a reeling defeat.
4. God will give to Satan and mankind what they have both desired.
a. Satan has desired to be worshipped as a god.
b. Mankind has desired to worship some other deity than God.
5. God will bring honor and glory to Himself.
While I will mention all five of these before we finish our study, it
is the fourth one that will focus on most. God will give to Satan and
the human race what they have each desired to have by giving Satan a
kingdom. A few weeks ago, I introduced that kingdom to you as “the
Other Kingdom.”
I shared two truths:
I. The Other Kingdom will likely have its headquarters in Europe and
have some kind of direct connection to the Old Roman Empire.
A. In Daniel 2, Daniel saw a vision of four kingdoms.
Dan 2:44 And in the days of these kings shall
the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall
never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be
left to other people, but it shall break in
pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it
shall stand for ever.
B. \\#Daniel 2:44\\ make it clear that the kings belonging to the
fourth kingdom will be reigning in the days when God
establishes His eternal king.
C. The fourth kingdom was the Roman Empire.
D. That means that the anti-Christ, who will be ruling when God
sets up His kingdom, will have a direct connection to that
ancient, Roman empire.
1. We do not know how they will connect or what the
connection may be, just that there is a connection.
2. If the future kingdom is tied to the ancient kingdom, it
makes sense that his headquarters will be in that area.
II. The king of the Other Kingdom is described in Daniel 7.
A. He will rise into a group of 10 leaders or nations to soon
replace three.
B. He will speak against God and God’s people, but He will also
seek to destroy God’s people.
C. He will come in meekly, be treacherous, and even use his
version of peace to cease control of the world.
D. He will use the powers of darkness to magnify himself, even
against God.
III. The Other Kingdom will last seven.
Dan 9:24 Seventy weeks are determined upon thy
people and upon thy holy city, to finish the
transgression, and to make an end of sins, and
to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring
in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the
vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.
A. Notice that in 70 weeks, God was going to finish everything
related to Daniel’s people, Israel.
Dan 9:24 …upon thy people….
1. At the onset of this study, I shared the five major events
with which most of prophecy deals:
a. The rapture
b. The tribulation
c. The revelation
d. The millennial
e. Eternity
2. In that verse, the angel divided the seventy weeks into
two sets.
a. The first was 69 weeks.
b. The other was 1 week.
c. The 69 is now history. The 1 weeks is still prophecy.
3. I also shared some reasons why—even though the Bible does
not specifically state it—I believe the rapture, the
snatching away of the church from off this planet—will
be the next of those major events to happen.
a. Well this is the primary reason I believe the
Tribulation is for the Jews and not the church.
b. The Tribulation is the seventieth week of Daniel’s
Seventy Weeks.
c. It is the last week God has determined "for thy
people."
d. The church was not part of the first 69 weeks, and
there is no Biblical reason to suppose it will be
part of the 70th week.
B. Please notice the angel spelled out to Daniel what would take
place within the Seventy Weeks.
1. The Seventy Weeks will deal with:
a. The holy city (Jerusalem),
b. Israel’s transgressions,
c. Israel’s sin in general,
d. Israel’s reconciliation,
e. to begin Israel’s everlasting righteousness
f. to seal up or finish all the visions and prophecies
relating to Israel,
g. And to anoint the most Holy - That would be Jesus, the
Jewish Messiah.
2. Everything that God is going to do with Israel, Daniel’s
people, will be done in those seventy weeks.
3. But how can that be?
a. It has already been 2,500 years since God told Daniel
this and God still isn’t finished with Israel.
b. Obviously, God did not mean a literal 70 weeks or else
God failed.
(1) My rule is to always accept the Word of God
literally wherever it can be literally accepted.
(2) It matters not how impossible the promise or
prophecy is.
(3) If God’s Word can be literal, I am going to
believe it to be literal.
(4) However, when the Word of God CANNOT be accepted
as literal, I will explore to see if God might
have been speaking in a pictorial sense.
(5) I see God using three types of non-literal
language.
(a) Parables - If God is speaking a parable, God
will identify it as a parable.
(b) Allegory - God will use something earthly to
teach something heavenly.
(c) Symbolism - When there are no words to
describe a thing, God will use a symbol.
c. If I try to accept this literally, that God would
finish everything He had promised within a literal 70
week period, then I have a broken promise and a
worthless Bible.
(1) 70 literal weeks would just be one year and three
months.
(a) A year and three months after Daniel had
this dream, he was still sitting in Babylon
and the Jewish people were still their
captives.
(b) Virtually nothing had changed.
(c) God certainly had not completed His plan for
the Jews.
(2) Some would say, "That means God lied, His Word
failed, and it is all fake!"
(a) I don’t believe that.
(b) I start with the foundation that the Bible
is true with no errors.
(c) If I can take the Bible’s promises literally,
I will.
(d) If I cannot (and there are such times), THEN
I look to see if God was giving a truth
through some picture or image.
(e) HOWEVER EVEN THEN I am not going to create
my own world of prophecy by making things
up.
(3) No, I will look to see if God did or gave
some hint or truth to show me what the image or
picture He gave meant.
(4) And He did that in this very Bible passage.
C. What did God mean by 70 weeks?
1. The word "weeks" is actually the male Hebrew word meaing
"seven."
a. Although we may not automatically think of a week as a
"seven," it is not a hard stretch.
(1) When we speak of a week, we do automatically
think of it as a week of seven days.
(2) We do not call it a week of seven days, but we
think of it that way.
b. And we use other words to describe set numbers:
(1) A couple is two.
(2) A dozen is twelve.
(3) A decade is ten.
(4) A century is one hundred.
(5) A millennium is one thousand.
(6) And the Hebrew word translated "week" is seven.
c. So literally what God told Daniel was that 70 sevens
are determined upon "thy people" to finish everything
in God’s plan.
(1) Now that is not me making up or imagining
anything at all.
(2) That is me doing some additional Bible study.
(a) I believe the King James Bible is the most
accurate translation in the English
language, but I do not believe we can throw
the original languages (Greek, Hebrew,
Aramaic) away.
(b) If there is something we don’t understand,
we need to back to the original languages to
see what God actually gave us over what a
good and godly group translated it to read.
(c) That is not Brother Hall trying to throw off
on the King James Bible.
(d) That is Brother Hall telling you to keep
studying because God’s Word is true.
d So God literally said that in 70 sevens He would finish
His work with Israel.
2. But now we do not know if God mean seventy groups of seven
days, seventy groups of seven weeks, seventy groups of
seven centuries, or so forth.
a. God gave us away to figure it out what the seventy
groups will be of, but it is a bit complicated.
(1) Yet God told us we might have to work to
understand it.
Dan 9:25 Know therefore and understand….
(2) So we are going to have to put our thinking caps
one.
Dan 9:25 Know therefore and understand, that
from the going forth of the commandment to
restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah
the Prince shall be SEVEN weeks, and THREESCORE
and TWO weeks: the street shall be built again,
and the wall, even in troublous times.
b. God told Daniel that the time from the command to
rebuild the walls of Jerusalem until the time the
Messiah would be 69 of the 70 sevens.
(1) First, we need some math.
(a) 3 score is 3 x 20 or 60, plus 7, pulse 2
equals 69 weeks.
(b) So from the going forth to rebuild Jerusalem
to the coming of Jesus, the Messiah, will be
69 groups of seven; but still, 69 groups of
seven WHAT?
(2) Second, let’s get some history.
(a) The command to rebuilt the walls was given in
444 BC by Cyrus.
(b) Jesus died in 29 AD.
(c) The number of years from 444 BC to 29 AD is
473 years.
(3) Then, let’s do some more math.
(a) We must convert the 473 Gentile years to
Jewish years.
(b) Jews only have 360 days in a year.
(c) If we do the math and convert 473 years to
days then divide that number by 360 instead
of 365 we will come to 483 Jewish years.
(d) In fact, the exact date from the day that
Cyrus gave the command would end on the day
that Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on the
back of a donkey at what we call the
Triumphant Entry.
c. So 483 years is 69 groups of 7 year and to the exact
date, God fulfilled it by presenting Jesus to the
Jews on that day.
3. Then what was to happen?
a. We are going to have to pick up speed so just notice
the highlights.
(1) Messiah shall be cut off (killed), not for wrongs
He did but for the people.
Dan 9:26 And after threescore and two weeks
shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself:
and the people of the prince that shall come
shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and
the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto
the end of the war desolations are determined.
(a) And after the Messiah would be cut off,
Israel will go through a very hard time.
i. The people that belong to the "prince"
would come and destroy the city and
the sanctuary. (That happened in
70 AD.)
ii. "the end" of that would be like a
"flood." I suppose like a flood of
destruction on the people and the
city.
iii. And until "the end" (presumably to
the end of the 70 weeks, a "war" of
"desolations are determined" upon the
people and the city.
(b) Someone might say, "But right now, Israel is
living in peace."
i. Don’t be deceived.
ii. Israel’s hardest days are yet ahead.
(2) A "prince of the people" \\#Dan 9:25\\ will
"confirm" or make a "covenant for one week."
Dan 9:27 And he shall confirm the covenant with
many for one week: and in the midst of the week
he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to
cease, and for the overspreading of abominations
he shall make it desolate, even until the
consummation, and that determined shall be poured
upon the desolate.
(1) Then A "prince of the people" will confirm or
make a treaty with Israel.
(2) Not necessarily the same prince that was around
when Messiah was cut off, but—according to
\\#Dan 2:44\\—he will be from the same empire.
(3) That will be the anti-Christ!
b. I have to stop there, but in closing, notice two
things we are seeing:
(1) The entire 70 weeks are Jewish not Gentile so
there is no reason to suppose the church should
be part of any of them.
(2) The last week starts with a treaty and will last
for seven (years).
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