[Today, I thought I’d share my notes from last Wednesday’s message. -j]

First, when we get into the breakdown of the years, you might want to check out Larken’s Chart on Daniel’s 70 Weeks. It’s totally epic.

Daniel 9:20-27

Dan 9:20 And whiles I was speaking, and praying, and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before the LORD my God for the holy mountain of my God; Dan 9:21 Yea, whiles I was speaking in prayer, even the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, being caused to fly swiftly, touched me about the time of the evening oblation. Dan 9:22 And he informed me, and talked with me, and said, O Daniel, I am now come forth to give thee skill and understanding. Dan 9:23 At the beginning of thy supplications the commandment came forth, and I am come to shew thee; for thou art greatly beloved: therefore understand the matter, and consider the vision. 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. 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. 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. 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.

I could write a few thousand words about how fascinating this entire chapter is. But long story short. We’ve now reached the 70^th year of the prophesied 70 years of desolation. It’s time to be released and go home. So Daniel prays. His prayer is exhilarating. Daniel is, on the one hand eager to go home and yet, on the other hand, he’s so humble and respectful of the Lord and His will in his prayer.

Then Gabriel shows up in person. And what does Gabriel reveal? He only unveils one of the most crucial prophesies in the entire Bible, the prophesies about the 70 weeks, which is nothing less than the timetable to the entire prophetic program.

Weeks = Years

Gabriel says in Dan. 9:24, “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city…”

First, let’s talk about weeks being used to describe seven years in the OT. Of all that I read and heard on this subject, no one does a better job than Pastor Jordan of explaining how a week in the OT can mean seven units of something. Here is a link to a message he gave that really gets into the weeds if you’re interested. Jordan goes through Lev. 23, 25, Deut. 16 about Pentecost and the seven sevens of weeks, which is 49 days, and 50^th day is called Pentecost and that is called the feast of weeks. But it’s a week, not of days, but a week of weeks.

Are you confused yet? Good.

Larken also has a chart called The Weeks of Scripture. Check it out. It’s totally epic.

My favorite OT example of a week being a unit of seven, specifically seven years, is the story of Jacob and Rachel. Jacob stole Esau’s birthright. He takes off and visits Laban, and he wants to marry his daughter Rachel. He works for Laban for seven years in order to have her as a wife. We find in Gen 29:20 And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her. 29:21 And Jacob said unto Laban, Give me my wife, for my days are fulfilled… 

But when the wedding came, Laban fooled him and gave him the older sister Leah. Jacob throws a fit. Laban says in 29:26 It must not be so done in our country, to give the younger before the firstborn. 29:27 Fulfil her week… In other words, you need to work another seven years to marry Rachel. When Laban says, “Fulfil her week”, he’s using the word “week” as a “heptade,” a word to describe a unit of seven. And, in fact, Jacob worked another seven years in order to marry Rachel. So it is in this sense in Daniel 9 that weeks are used as heptades, units of seven years.

70 Weeks

Let’s reread vs. 24 again. Gabriel says in 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.“

This verse, to me, is a big picture overview of the entire prophetic program all of which will be fulfilled in seventy weeks, which is seventy sevens of years, or 490 years, until the Lord’s kingdom is established here on this Earth.

First, Gabriel says, “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city”. The entire prophetic program is filled with determinations made by God that are all about Israel and Jerusalem all of which takes place in a framework of 490 years.

Then Gabriel says, “to finish the transgression,” that is, to conclude the chastening of Israel for all of their transgressions, and that chastening of Israel was God putting them under the dominion of all the Gentile world empires until the Lord comes. Their chastening encompasses the entire period in which the Gentiles will have dominion over Israel.

Bullinger pointed out a cross-reference, which made a lot of sense to me. Dan. 8:23, “And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up.”

Here, it would seem, that after interpreting the vision of the ram and the he-goat, which was about Media-Persia being overtaken by Greece, Gabriel jumps ahead into the future to talk about the antichrist. And he’s saying that after the conclusion of all the prophesied Gentile world empires of Babylon, Media-Persia, Greece, and the Roman Empire, THEN the antichrist will rise up. And that entire period of Gentile world empires is described as when the transgressors are come to the full. The kingdoms themselves are certainly transgressions against God because they’re all wicked, but they are also being used by God to chasten Israel for their transgressions. They were the arbiters of the chastening of Israel for all of their transgressions, which is why Israel would be under the dominion of those Gentile world empires until the Lord comes. And he’s saying that when the transgressors are come to the full, when the four Gentile world empires have come and gone, THEN the antichrist will rise.

Then, in Dan. 9:24, we’re given the following expressions: “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.” This, to me, reads as summary statements of what prophecy is all about, where everything is headed, what the endgame is all about, that is, to make an end of sin, to bring about reconciliation to the Gentiles through God’s kingdom of priests, to establish God’s righteousness here on the Earth with His kingdom, and to anoint the most Holy, to consecrate Christ as the rightful head, authority, and king of this world.

49 Years

Look at 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.“

He’s saying here that he wants Daniel to understand when all of this will begin. This prophetic timetable will begin with the commandment to restore Jerusalem, which included the wall and the temple. This started in Neh. 2:1-8 in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes the king, when he granted Nehemiah the timber for the wall and the gates and the reconstruction of the temple.

We also learn in this verse that from the commandment of Artaxerxes unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven + threescore (which is 60) + two = 69 weeks. 69 units of seven years, which is 483 years. So he’s saying that from the time Artaxerxes the king gives the commandment to restore Jerusalem unto the Messiah shall be a total of 483 years. But this timeframe of 69 weeks or 483 years is broken up into two parts. 7 weeks or 49 years until the restoration of Jerusalem and another 62 weeks or 434 years after that unto the Messiah the Prince. From the time Artaxerxes the king gives the commandment to restore Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be a total of 483 years, broken up into two parts: 7 weeks or 49 years until the restoration of Jerusalem and after that, another 62 weeks or 434 years unto the Messiah the Prince.

In the next verse, he says, “And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off”. He’s referencing what he had broken down for us in the previous verse. 7 weeks to restore Jerusalem plus another 62 weeks unto the Messiah the Prince. The restoration of Jerusalem will take 7 weeks or 49 years. And after that, the time unto the Messiah the Prince is another 62 weeks or 434 years. 434 + 49 = 483. The tribulation will take up the final week, 7 years. Then the Lord will come, all of which brings us to the total of seventy weeks or 490 years.

Notice also in vs. 25 that Gabriel says, “And after threescore and two weeks (62 weeks following the restoration of Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince) shall Messiah be cut off”. So he’s saying after the 62 weeks have ended, the Messiah shall be cut off. Well, how can you not agree with everyone when they say that Messiah being cut off has to be the crucifixion? Not only that, the Messiah shall be cut off, but not for himself. I suspect a good cross-reference for that might be Isa. 53:8, “for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.” He was cut off, but not for himself, because He was taking on the transgression of His people and of the whole world.

Here’s a big question I have:

When Did the 69^th Week End?

Sir Robert Anderson had a lot to say about all of this in his book, “The Coming Prince.”

Ricky Kurth summed up the point of the Coming Prince rather nicely in an article called “It Didn’t Add Up!” To quote Ricky, “In Daniel 9:25, the prophet Daniel was told that from the going forth of the commandment to restore Jerusalem ‘unto the Messiah’ would be 69 weeks of years (cf. Gen. 29:27; Lev. 25:8). Frankly, this very specific prophecy baffled Bible students for many years, for the predicted time of 483 years (69×7) ‘unto the Messiah’ did not match up with the time of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then, in his book The Coming Prince, a Bible teacher named Sir Robert Anderson realized the problem lay in the different ways Jews and Gentiles mark time. We number our years using a solar calendar wherein each year has 365¼ days, but the Jews used a 360-day lunar calendar, with each year consisting of 12 months of 30 days each… Once Sir Robert recalculated the prophecy using lunar years, he found that the 69 weeks ‘unto the Messiah’ worked out to the very day the Lord Jesus rode the colt into Jerusalem and made an official presentation of Himself to Israel…”

Now I poured over “The Coming Prince”, especially chapter 10 called the “Fulfillment of the Prophecy.” I’ll just say it. I think Anderson’s calculations were wrong.

In fact, I think that whole endeavor was impossible because the calendar we use, which Anderson used, is wrong and nobody knows just how wrong it is.

The whole BC/AD redesign of the calendar was pushed onto the world in 525 AD by a monk named Dionysius who never said how he figured out the date of Jesus’ birth. Some authors theorized he tried to calculate the date by using contemporary beliefs at the time about cosmology, planetary conjunctions, and the precession of equinoxes. Those are just theories. We don’t know. Dionysius attempted to set A.D. 1 as the year of Jesus Christ’s birth, but most believe he was off by a few years, and most estimates today place Jesus’s birth at 3 or 4 B.C.

Yet, in Anderson’s book, he cites this “English chronologer” whom Anderson praised as “none more eminent or trustworthy [who] can be appealed to… a sufficient guarantee that this conclusion is consistent with everything that erudition can bring to bear upon the point”. (With praise like that, I guarantee you the guy’s totally wrong.) So this guy said, “’The earliest possible date then for the nativity is the autumn of B.C. 6…” and “The latest will be the of B.C. 4…’”

We already have a big problem. This English chronologer has a discrepancy of up to 6 years compared to our calendar. We think the discrepancy is 3 or 4 years. He thinks it’s up to 6 years! And then he gives himself a window of around 2 years. He says Jesus could’ve been born sometime between 4 and 6 BC. That’s a big deal if you’re trying to date specific events because the Lord’s earthly ministry only lasted 3 ½ years.

This is especially important because Luke told us His ministry began when He was 30 years old (Luke 3:23), which was in the 15^th year of the reign of Tiberius (Luke 3:1).

How can you date anything that took place during His earthly ministry if you don’t even know when He was born?

Plus, the years Caesars reigned during the Julio-Claudian Dynasty are not set in stone. For example, our little internet would place the 15^th year of Tiberius’ reign at 29 AD. According to the history books Anderson was using, the 15^th year was 28 AD. Who’s right? Either our internet or his history books are wrong.

Do you know how the calendar worked in the Roman Empire? The years were numbered with the name of the consul that was elected every year. In the Roman Empire, that’s Caesar. So when Luke writes, “in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar”, that’s how their calendar worked. That’s how they dated the years. We would say “back in 2022,” but someone from the Roman Empire would say, “in the second year of the reign of Caesar Biden”. LOL That’s how they knew what year it was. Their whole calendar system was all about promoting the empire. What a total nightmare! In fact, there are lists of consuls going all the way back to 300 BC, but everything before that is unreliable.

In theory, creating the BC/AD calendar should have been easy: 15^th year of Tiberius’ reign = 30 AD. Everything else would’ve fallen into place. But it doesn’t work out that way. His 15^th year is either 28 AD or 29 AD depending upon which history book you’re reading. This means that there is room for error of a few years when it comes to dating the years of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty.

Plus, if Jesus was 30 during the 15^th year of Tiberius’ reign, and that was either 28 AD or 29 AD, then He had to have been born 1 BC or 2 BC, not 3 BC or 4 BC, much less 6 BC.

Then we get to the big reveal at the end of chapter 10 in which Anderson writes, “What then was the length of the period intervening between the issuing of the decree to rebuild Jerusalem and the public advent of ‘Messiah the Prince,’ — between the 14th March, B.C. 445, and the 6th April, A.D. 32? THE INTERVAL CONTAINED EXACTLY AND TO THE VERY DAY 173,880 DAYS, OR SEVEN TIMES SIXTY-NINE PROPHETIC YEARS OF 360 DAYS…”

He’s saying that from the commandment of Artaxerxes, which he dated as being 1^st of Nisan in 445 BC all the way up to the Lord riding into Jerusalem at the beginning of Passion Week 32 AD was precisely 173,880 days, which is 483 years at 360 days a year according to the Jewish calendar, which only has 30 days a month.

Except for the fact that we don’t even know when the Lord was born. Except for the fact that we don’t know the exact years Tiberius actually reigned.

Oh, and also… by the way, Anderson forgot about Leap Year. Our calendar has 365 days. The Jewish calendar has 360 days. That’s a difference of 5 days every year. It doesn’t take long before you’ll have a discrepancy of about 30 days. How did they fix this? The Jews added a 13^th month to their calendar approximately 7 times every 19 years, which is about every 3 years. This was an extra month added before the last month. The new month is called “Adar I”. The month that is usually called “Adar” is then called “Adar II” that year. You cannot calculate 483 years at 360 days a year without also factoring a 13^th month every Leap Year. If the Jewish calendar is off 5 days, and they never corrected it, then after 100 years, they’d be having winter in the summertime!

I love Sir Robert Anderson, but he totally got it wrong.

Plus, I kept thinking, “what about the wise men?”

Let’s assume I’m wrong. Let’s assume Anderson’s right. The 69^th week ended when Christ rode into Jerusalem on Passion Week. What about the wise men? Were not the wise men called “wise” because they knew prophesy so well, they knew their Bibles so well, and they knew Daniel 9 so well, that they figured out the very year Jesus would be born of a virgin? If Anderson was right and the 69^th week ended with Christ entering Jerusalem on Passion Week, then how did the wise men figure out the year He was born? Are you telling me that somehow the wise men figured out from Daniel 9 that the 69^th week ended with the Messiah entering Jerusalem at the age of 33 and they’d have to deduct 33 years from that date in order to figure out the year He was born? There’s no way! There’s no verse in prophesy to support that!

I gotta say, too, humans only read the stars until Israel was given the oracles of God. Even though a star guided the wise men to baby Jesus, that does not mean the stars informed them as to when Jesus would be born. Those men were “wise” solely because of how well they knew God’s Scriptures. His Word is the only source of all wisdom, not reading the stars. His Word is the only way men become wise.

It’s also been suggested that the 69^th week ended with Christ’s baptism, which was the beginning of His ministry, and somehow, the wise men knew that the Messiah would begin His ministry at 30 because you had to be 30 years old to be a priest. That’s a myth. Num. 8:24-25 tells us that a male had to be 25 years old to become a priest and he’d retire at 50. Num 8:24 This is it that belongeth unto the Levites: from twenty and five years old and upward they shall go in to wait upon the service of the tabernacle of the congregation: Num 8:25 And from the age of fifty years they shall cease waiting upon the service thereof, and shall serve no more: Not to mention the fact that years later in 1 Chron. 23:27, David would lower the age to 20 to become a Levitical priest. How do you explain that?

On top of all this, we need to point out that the Lord was never a Levite. He was of the tribe of Judah. The rules for the Levites had nothing to do with Christ because His priesthood was after the order of Melchizedek, which meant that the Lord was going to begin His ministry when His Father told Him to begin His ministry, which just so happened to be at the age of 30. Period.

I submit to you that 69^th week ended with the birth of Jesus.

Daniel 9:25 told us that 483 years was unto the Messiah the Prince, unto the arrival of the Messiah through the miraculous, prophesied virgin birth. That’s the only way the wise men knew with certainty the exact year the Messiah would be born.

The argument against this going like this: “The 69^th week could not have ended at His birth because so much prophesy was fulfilled during His lifetime. You can’t have the fulfillment of so much prophesy in a gap in prophesy itself…” Except for the fact that Dan. 9:26 tells us that the Lord’s crucifixion would take place after the 69^th week ended and before the 70^th week, and the Lord’s crucifixion is only the most important prophesied event in the entire Bible! The Lord’s prophesied death took place in that gap between the 69^th and 70^th weeks! Pentecost, which was also prophesied took place in that gap in prophesy.

So if the Lord’s crucifixion can take place in that gap in prophesy, then why couldn’t the rest of His life?

One more reason: the fig tree in Luke 13. In that story of the fig tree, the Lord didn’t add another year to the prophetic timetable. He added a year to the gap in the prophetic timetable, which is another reason why the 69^th week had to have ended at His birth. Otherwise, you’re saying God didn’t mean what He said when He told Daniel that the entire of the prophetic timetable was going to be 70 weeks. In that gap, you can add years or take away years. It doesn’t matter. It’s a gap in prophecy.

Prince with a Lowercase P

There’s more to cover in vs. 26. There’s a prince with a lowercase P. 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.“

Who is this prince with a lowercase P? We’ll have to read the next verse for more clues.

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.“

The point that really sticks out to me is that this prince shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease. That has to be a reference to the antichrist. There are a number of other passages in Daniel stating that it’s the antichrist who will cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease. For example, Dan 8:11, “Yea, he magnified himself even to the prince of the host, and by him the daily sacrifice was taken away, and the place of his sanctuary was cast down.” For me, there is no question that this prince is the antichrist, that at the midway point of the Tribulation, he will enter the temple, which is called the Abomination of Desolations, and the antichrist himself will cause the sacrifices and oblations to cease. He will do that by destroying the temple. Dan. 8:11 told us that by him the daily sacrifice was taken away, and the place of his sanctuary was cast down.

If vs. 27 is talking about the antichrist, then the prince with the lowercase P in vs. 26 must also be the antichrist.

Let’s read vs. 26 and 27 again.

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. 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.

Let’s briefly cover all these wicked deeds of the antichrist.

Notice first, he says, “and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary…” Now everybody and their brother thinks that this is talking about 70 AD when Titus destroyed Jerusalem, but there’s no way prophesy would’ve been fulfilled so late into the age of grace. To me, after the Messiah is cutoff, the narrative jumps ahead in time, and I suspect that what is being described here is the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by the antichrist and all his people, which will take place at the midway point of the Tribulation. He’ll cause the sacrifice and oblation with the destruction of the temple.

We mentioned Dan. 8:11 told us that by him the daily sacrifice was taken away, and the place of his sanctuary was cast down. In Luke 19:43-44, when Jesus arrived at Jerusalem and wept, He prophesied of a time when her enemies would surround the city and destroy it. He said, “and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.” He’s saying that because of their unbelief about Him, the antichrist will gain an advantage over them, and he’ll destroy Jerusalem to such a degree not one stone will be upon another stone. Also, in Luke 21:24, during the Olivet Discourse, the Lord describes the Abomination of Desolations and how all of “Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.”

The Abomination of Desolations doesn’t simply mean that the buildings in Jerusalem will be desolate of the believing remnant. It means that all of Jerusalem will be desolate because it’s been destroyed by the people of the antichrist. And the people of the antichrist are all armies of Gentiles.

Why? How is that possible?

The whole thing is a trap.

Just imagine. If you’re the antichrist and you’re IN the prophetic program and you have ambitions about having a one world system in which the whole world worships you, before you can have any hope of success, you gotta slaughter the Jews because they’re God’s chosen people. They are the only living obstacle to you achieving your one world system. So the antichrist draws in all the people of Israel into Jerusalem pretending he’s the Messiah, and when he has them all where he wants them, armies of Gentiles will surround the city, and they’ll slaughter every man, woman, and child.

Only those who obey the words of the Lord Jesus Christ MAY be able to escape in time by taking off into the wilderness as Christ told them to.

This is an example of the great threshing floor, one of the means by which God will separate the wheat from the chaff because only the believers who follow the warnings of Christ will be able to escape death.

THEN after Israel’s slaughtered and Jerusalem’s destroyed, the antichrist will go on to establish his one world system and the mark of the beast while still pursuing the remaining remnant hiding in the wilderness.

Which brings us to the next phrase, that “the end thereof shall be with a flood”. I think it was Bullinger who connected this to Rev. 12:15-16, which takes place at the midway point in the Tribulation. Satan has been cast down to the Earth by Michael and his angels. Satan throws a fit and wants to slaughter the woman who brought forth the man child, that is to say, the entire nation of Israel. Rev 12:15, “And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood.”

I suspect that what is going on there is that Satan, with his mouth, will convince a flood of armies to go after God’s people. The Holy Spirit may have chosen to use that description of a flood as a contrast to Genesis. There, God judged the world by flooding it and saving the remnant. In Revelation, Satan is judging the remnant with a flood of armies.

I would also point out that if this expression, “the end thereof shall be with a flood” is, in fact, connected to Rev. 12, which is at the midway point, then the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple must also be at the midway point, because all the events in this verse are presented in chronological order albeit at different points in time.

And all of this is the beginning of the end, the start to the Great Tribulation.

Then we read in vs. 26, “and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.” In other words, God is in control of this entire the Great Tribulation. The saints need not stay to defend their city. They need to run. God has permitted the Abomination of Desolation to take place. He is allowing Jerusalem to become destroyed and desolate. He’s allowing that to happen as judgment upon unbelieving Jews as He separates the wheat from the chaff. So when Gabriel says, “and unto the end of the war desolations are determined,” he means God Himself has allowed Jerusalem to become desolate and destroyed.

But there’s more.

Dan. 9:27, “And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week…”

Now the narrative loops back to the beginning of the tribulation. There is a looping parallelism in the way the narratives are laid out in the passages, which we’ll go through in a minute. One narrative has a starting point and jumps ahead in time. Then the narrative loops back to a later starting point than the previous narrative and jumps ahead in time. Then the narrative loops back again to a later starting point than the previous narrative and jumps ahead in time.

But at the beginning of vs. 27, the narrative loops back to the beginning of the tribulation. Gabriel says, “And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week.” I suspect that from the beginning of the tribulation, the antichrist is claiming to be the Messiah, and he is confirming with all the unbelieving Jews the old covenant. He is pretending to be God and he is pretending to confirm the old covenant that Israel had with the real God.

Some writers try to say that the antichrist is making a covenant of peace with other nations, but that’s not what the verse says. The verse says And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week. He is pretending to be God and he is pretending to confirm the old covenant the people of Israel had with the real God. He confirms this covenant with many people in Israel, not all of them, because the believing remnant will already know that this is the antichrist. The antichrist here is literally saying to the people, “I’m the Messiah, and we still have that covenant relationship established in the OT.”

Then we read that in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease (which we already covered), and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate (for the purpose of advancing his cause to spread his abominations through his one world system, the antichrist will first destroy Jerusalem and kill her people), even until the consummation (even until Armageddon), and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate (this is judgment that God predetermined to be poured out upon all the unbelievers in Jerusalem).

Looping Parallelism

Briefly, looping parallelism. When the Strelecki’s visited us, Michele pointed this out to me for which I’m very grateful. (She isn’t just making Josh a better preacher, but she helped me, too.)

We have in vs. 24, a big picture overview. Then it jumps to the end of it all to the establishment of the kingdom when God will “make an end of sins, make reconciliation for iniquity, bring in everlasting righteousness, seal up the vision and prophecy, and anoint the most Holy.“

Then in vs. 25, the narrative loops back to the commandment from Artaxerxes to restore Jerusalem and jumps ahead unto the Messiah the prince, which will be 483 years.

Then in vs. 26, the narrative loops back to a later starting point, the 62 weeks, the period of time after Jerusalem is restored. The narrative jumps ahead to the crucifixion of Christ. It jumps ahead again to the midway point in the tribulation when “the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood.”

Then the narrative loops back to another later starting point, the beginning of the tribulation, when the antichrist will confirm the covenant with many for one week. Then the narrative jumps ahead again to the midway point when he’ll cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease. And then it jumps ahead to the consummation, Armageddon, which is the Second Coming of Christ, and then Gabriel makes the point that God is in control of this entire war. He has determined that Jerusalem shall become desolate during the war, as well as the judgment upon the antichrist and his followers.

So if you were to take these verses presented in a looping narrative and you were to put everything into chronological order it might sound like this:

From the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem shall be 49 years. The streets shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. From the going forth of the commandment unto the Messiah the Prince shall be 483 years. After that, the Messiah shall be cut off, but not for himself. At the start of the final week, the antichrist shall confirm the covenant with many for seven years. After 3 ½ years he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease when his people come to destroy Jerusalem as well as the temple. The end of Jerusalem thereof shall be with a flood, that is, the antichrist possessed by Satan will persecute the believing remnant through a flood of armies by his words. And for the purpose of advancing his cause to spread his abominations through his one world system, the antichrist shall make Jerusalem destroyed and desolate, even until Armageddon. But God has determined the judgment that shall be poured upon the desolate. Even unto the end of the war desolations are determined.