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DANIEL
Week 28, Chapter 9 conclusion
Today we finally find a way to conclude what is the molten core of modern day End Times prophecies: Daniel chapter 9 and the prophecy of the 70 weeks. We’ll get a bit technical and historical today so that we can understand why Daniel 9 and the 70 weeks is such a difficult challenge to deal with, and why we need to be careful not to accept the most popular interpretations of it as though the matter is settled and that we know exactly what will happen, in what order, and when.
Let us begin by noting that while this particular prophecy is in the Book of Daniel, it is NOT Daniel himself doing the prophesying. Rather this is a recorded oracle as spoken by the Angel Gabriel who was sent by God to give this divine word to Daniel. In fact calling it a vision would be incorrect; the vision Daniel spoke of in verse 21 was referring back to chapter 8, not this chat with Gabriel. Daniel recorded what Gabriel told him as he was fully conscious.
As I thought about how to present this crucial and hotly controversial last segment of Daniel 9, and how to discuss the so-called 70 th week of Daniel, and how best to deal with the built-in stumbling blocks to getting it as right as we can at this point in mankind’s history, several things crossed my mind that I want to share with you before we undertake this effort. First it is that regardless of whether the discussion is about Daniel 9 or some other book and chapter in the Bible, there is a basic question that we must ask ourselves: do we really want the truth? That sounds so simple and straightforward; almost a cliché. I doubt that any Christian or Messianic or religious Jew that I might ask that question of, would answer it in any other way than to have a half-insulted look on their face and say: “Of course I do”. However my personal observation has been somewhat to the contrary.
Rather, what I have observed is that what the largest segment of folks want is a doctrine that first and foremost validates their preferred already-established lifestyle, and next in importance is that we want pleasant doctrines that point the way towards an easy, safe and happy path along our faith journey. I’m no different; why would I intentionally seek a difficult life accompanied with poverty and danger? Why would I, or anyone, want anything but good news? The reality is that of our natural selves it is impossible to be otherwise; thus the Lord gave us His Holy Spirit in order that we have renewed minds that resets and reboots our underlying thinking and life expectations and opens us to His leading. And yet, how nice it would be if only we each could self-define sin. Or if a Bible passage could mean what ever each of us want it to mean because it makes us feel better. Truth becomes clay in our hands, shaped and customized to each individual. God principles become elastic, moldable and relative according to our particular culture and personal comfort level, to our personal dreams and hopes………. and to our various circumstances. The next thing that came to mind was that human nature desires instructions and moral choices to be simple and uncomplicated; gray areas, especially in the matter of religion, are not usually welcomed. And whether it involves Judaism or Christianity, our religious leaders are well aware of this and so have endeavored to provide definite and simple answers to our theological questions and life choices, so that all coloring takes places within the bold, well- drawn lines produced by denominational leadership. We tend to find that comforting and reassuring for the most part. Not too much thinking is required; no weighing facts; just acquiescence and adherence to a set of basic common understandings that our social group, usually a congregation, accepts. A group member who might challenge those common understandings is labeled a heretic, and is invited to leave and join some other group.
And finally, as I believe history proves has always been the case, we tend to regard whatever we read in the Scriptures through the lens of the world as we perceive it in our day. Paul did. Elijah did. King David, too. So that makes us susceptible to thinking that certain God-ordained Torah commandments are outdated or prophesied activities can’t happen as precisely Biblically prescribed because the conditions are simply not present nor can we imagine a circumstance where they might be. So, to compensate, we’ll stretch and pull and reshape and allegorize Bible passages to meet what we can see before us and allow little if any room for the mystery of unforeseeable changes that God says will come. Which brings us right back to my first question: “Do we really want the truth?” And that’s because the truth isn’t always easy or plain or what we hope it would be. Discovering the truth can involve significant changes in our lives; even admitting that perhaps we’ve been wrong in our thinking. The truth doesn’t always give us our way or our choice. In fact the truth isn’t always immediately apparent. God’s truth can be as restricting as it can in some ways be liberating, because (as Believers) for us to be sanctified, consecrated and set-apart for God means to live within boundaries we didn’t create, and to accept distinctions that can make our lives all the more challenging, even though it pleases our Father in Heaven.
So it is that when we study Daniel chapter 9 especially, we find ourselves wanting more definition and better and more complete answers than what those words give us. Or, maybe we want different answers than what we get. But it’s just not there. And so for many centuries we have had a ready supply of writers of books and authoritative church leaders and learned Rabbis who are happy to fulfill our normal human desires for closure and clarity and especially a happy ending in our search for divine agreement with our hopes and dreams. Unfortunately, this determination to fill in the blanks and to adopt rigid and sometimes fanciful interpretations based on insufficient information has often led us away from the truth and light, instead of into it. And that is a very dangerous place to be. Thus we have spent a couple of weeks, now, discussing not firm conclusions but rather a spectrum of likely possibilities that the holy texts allow that might answer the myriad of questions that naturally come from the prophesy of the 70 weeks, which in many cases just leaves us hanging. And today’s study will be no different, because today is the finale; it is the study of Daniel’s 70 th week.
Let’s re-familiarize ourselves with this short passage to begin.
RE-READ DANIEL 9:24 – end First, we have to define what Daniel’s 70 th week means. Biblically, it is the 3 rd of the 3 segments that make up the 70 weeks. Gabriel tells Daniel that the 70 weeks consist of an initial 7 week segment, followed by a 62 week segment, followed by a 1 week final segment. And each segment is assigned certain God-ordained tasks or events that happens concurrent with it. Verse 27 says that “He will make a strong covenant with leaders for 1 week ”. And if there is such a thing as a consensus among Jews and Christians, ancient and modern, it is that this statement in verse 27 is speaking of the 70 th week, that final 1 week segment that consists of 7 years, and there will be an undefined covenant of some sort established by someone called “he” during that time. And there is no reason for us to interpret it otherwise.
But there are two basic questions that when answered will determine what direction we will go when deciphering the meaning of this passage. The first question is: when are (or was) the beginning and ending dates of the 70 weeks? And the second question is: are the 70 weeks to happen consecutively, one right after the next, without pause, as is the natural reading of the passage? Or can some of the 3 segments that together constitute the 70 years overlap? Or can there be gaps between the end of one segment and the start of the next? Or is the entire meaning of the term 70 weeks AND the number of years given for each of the various segments (which are all based on multiples of the divine number 7) merely symbolic and so time (and thus timing) is neither important nor intended in the meaning and therefore cannot be known? It is because of the many different answers to these two fundamental questions that scholars and church leaders and Rabbis have established such a wide variance in interpretation of the meaning, and thus their doctrines, of the 70 weeks, and especially of the 70 th week.
I’ll cut to the chase, and then back up for some explanation. The most known and popular view today is based on what is called the Gap Theory. And it is that there is a gap between the end of the 69 th week and the beginning of the 70 th week. That is, the 69 weeks, which is equal to 483 years (69 X 7), terminated sometime in the distant past (sometime between Antiochus Epiphanies of 165 B.C. and the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. depending on your doctrines), and we’ve been living in this gap, a sort of holding pattern, ever since as we await the start of the 70 th week, which is a 7 year period of time.
This 70 th week is primarily characterized today by referring to it as the 7 year Tribulation, or as the Great Tribulation, during which the Rapture of the Church occurs, the Anti-Christ appears, the War of Armageddon happens, and Christ returns. Some see it as a time when God begins pouring out His wrath, indiscriminately, on earth. It is a time future to us. So for those who subscribe to this doctrine, the only real issues are when this is all going to happen, and in what order the events will occur. Scholars call this theological viewpoint Pre-millennial. And it is called Pre-Millennial because it occurs just before the Millennium (the 1000 year reign of Christ). And, by the way, do not confuse Pre-millennial with Pre-Tribulation. When you hear about Pre-Trib, Mid-Trib, and Post-Trib, this is only speaking about one specific aspect of the 70 th week of Daniel: it is defining when during that final 7 year period that the Rapture of the Church occurs. Is it at the beginning before the Tribulation, in the middle during the Tribulation, or at the end of it?
I’m asked regularly where all these various ideas and doctrines about the 70 weeks and especially the 70 th week began. Are they strictly modern thoughts, or have they existed for some time? Did Tim LaHaye and Hal Lindsey invent it all? Is what we hear today (and think we know) about the End Times the result of progressive revelation? Let’s journey back in time for a few minutes to see what the earliest recorded thoughts of Christian and Jewish religious leadership were concerning Daniel’s 70 weeks prophecy.
The earliest recorded opinion and teaching found so far is, interestingly enough, that of the Essenes of Qumran. The Essenes are those people who created the Dead Sea Scrolls and hid them well enough that they went unfound for almost 2000 years. Among their many writings is one called The Testament of Levi and another document that scholars call Pseudo-Ezekiel; and there it is revealed that the Essenes expected the 70 weeks of Daniel to expire in AD 2 or 3. Thus they expected the arrival of the Jewish Messiah by that time. And, interestingly, that is about when Jesus Christ was born. What makes this even more interesting is that according to the Dead Sea Scroll scholar Roger Beckwith, due to the dating of these 2 works of the Essenes to 146 B.C. or a bit earlier, that means that the Essenes wrote their thesis on Daniel only 15 – 20 years after the death of Antiochus Epiphanies, which is the time when the modern Liberal Bible scholars claim that the fraudulent Book of Daniel was written (and not when Daniel was in Babylon).
And these same Liberal Bible scholars claim that Daniel was actually a coded document that was all about Antiochus Epiphanies and the 1 st Jewish Rebellion led by Judas Maccabee; and so Daniel’s 70 weeks ended with Antiochus Epiphanies. And yet less than 2 decades later, the highly educated and pious Essenes seemed to believe that Daniel was true, valid, and was not about Antiochus Epiphanies. Also that Daniel was a long accepted part of the Hebrew Bible canon. Wouldn’t common sense tell us that if Daniel was only a recently written fraud that had never before been part of the Hebrew Bible, that the Essenes of all people would have been fully aware of it? Goodness; such a thing would have been common knowledge among almost all Jews. Would the Essenes have taken a book that they knew was pure fiction, less than 20 years old, and then proceed to treat it as though it was inspired of God and even include it as a legitimate part of the Hebrew Bible when it wasn’t? The thought is ludicrous and turns the Essenes into a bunch of fanatical liars and a devilish cult when the evidence proves that they were anything but that.
So the earliest discovered well-ordered Jewish opinion is that the 70 weeks of Daniel is a) entirely about the Jewish people, b) sees the anointed prince of verses 25 and 26 as the Messiah, and c) sees the 70 weeks (which they viewed as meaning 490 years) as ending in 2 or 3 A.D., which just happens to approximately coincide with the birth of Yeshua of Nazareth. However theirs was not the only view in existence among the Jewish people at that time about the Book of Daniel.
The Jewish historian Demetrius (a Hellenist Jew, meaning that he was sold out to Greek culture) wrote about another viewpoint that many Jews held long before the birth of Christ. It was that the 70 weeks of Daniel terminated with the death of the high priest Onias III during the reign of Antiochus Epiphanies. Part of the reason for that viewpoint is that the Bible he and many Jews of the Diaspora used is called the Old Greek, and it translates Daniel 9:26 into: “ And after 7 and 70 and 62, the unction will be taken away and will not be, and the kingdom of the Gentiles will destroy the city and the temple with the anointed one ”. For our purposes, the point is that this is a poor translation that was twisted to make it conform to a belief that Epiphanies was the anointed prince (not Yeshua), and does so partially by taking the numbers 7, 70, and 62 and having them add up to 139 years. Without getting into much too much detail, their math doesn’t work out very well, and they did this because they knew that they couldn’t make the 490 years of Daniel end with Antiochus Epiphanies and the death of Onias, so they just re-wrote the passage, changing the numbers around to their liking and turned the 490 into 139 years.
What is also important for us to know is that the Pharisees seemed to have 3 different viewpoints of the meaning of the 70 weeks, but whatever disagreements they had were mostly to do with the timing of the coming of the Messiah. However, when the Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D., the Pharisees decided that the Messiah had not come (in other words, they hadn’t accepted that Yeshua was the Messiah), so they adapted and decided that the 70 weeks of Daniel was NOT speaking about the coming of a Messiah at all. This view is the most prevalent view today among Judaism. It is that the 70 weeks of Daniel terminated with the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. And in a work called the Seder Olam Rabbah, the claim is made that the 70 weeks of Daniel is referring to the 70 years of exile of the Jews in Babylon, which is then followed by 420 more years in order to make it add up to 490 years that they claim brings us to 70 A.D. and the destruction of the Temple. Rashi ascribes to this as well.
The earliest Christian reference directly to Daniel 9:24 -26 is Irenaeus in his work entitled Against Heresies. In reality, all the earliest Church Fathers who wrote about Daniel mainly used Daniel as a means to denounce the Jewish people. Irenaeus was no different; however he also linked the little horn of Daniel 7 to the future Anti-Christ, who he says would be in power for 3 ½ years. So here we see the implication that the 70 th week of Daniel was disconnected from the 69 th week. Regardless of when the 69 th week might have ended, the 70 th week was in the future (the future to Irenaeus in 180 A.D.) So to be clear, as early as 180 A.D. we have an early Church Father take the view that a) Daniel was real and valid, b) the 70 th week was speaking of the 2 nd coming of Messiah, c) that the 69 th week of Daniel terminated some time when Christ was on earth, d) that there was a gap between the end of the 69 th week and the beginning of the 70 th , and e) that the 70 th week was in the future (to Irenaeus).
However like most of the early Church Fathers, Irenaeous held to the view that the history of mankind was to be limited to a 6,000 year period from Adam to the time of the defeat of the Anti-Christ and the subsequent establishment of the global Kingdom of God (we today called that global Kingdom the Millennium or the 1000 year reign of Christ). But by his calculation the 6,000 years would end about 500 A.D. Therefore most of the early Church Fathers thought that the end of history would happen about that time. So 500 A.D. would be the time of Daniel’s 70 th week.
Clement of Alexandria about 200 A.D. wrote a commentary on Daniel that specifically called for a gap between the 69 th and 70 th weeks of Daniel. Interestingly, he was the first known Christian Church Father to acknowledge that Daniel’s 70 weeks prophecy was about Israel and not about the Church.
Hippolytus Africanus about 220 A.D. wrote a Christian commentary on Daniel and he anticipated a MillennialKingdom to come in at the end of the future 70 th week of Daniel. He too thought this would occur at about 500 A.D. He equated Daniel’s little horn with the Anti-Christ who would rule for 3 ½ years, and he expected the 10 horns of Daniel’s beast to arise from the Roman Empire.
On the other hand Julius Africanus (a native of Jerusalem) wrote about 235 A.D. that the 70 weeks of Daniel had been completely fulfilled with the arrival of Christ. Julius came up with his own calculations about the 490 years because he didn’t use the Gregorian calendar; he used the Roman Olympiad calendar. This meant that according to the Olympiad Calendar (a calendar based on the every 4 th year Olympics) the 70 weeks amounted to 475 solar years.
The Church Father Origen in 220 A.D. wrote that the 70 weeks of Daniel had been fulfilled during Christ’s lifetime. 100 years later the famous Church Father Eusebius wrote that the term Mashiach (Messiah, anointed one), in Daniel 9 didn’t refer to Jesus, and not even to any individual at all. Rather it spoke of the role of the High Priests in general who governed the Jews after they returned to Judah from their exile to Babylon. He regarded the covenant spoken of in Daniel 9:27 as the New Covenant of Jesus Christ, as opposed to a covenant made and enforced by the Anti-Christ.
I think this is enough to make my point that very smart, sincere church authorities and great Jewish Rabbis and leaders had vastly varying viewpoints on Daniel dating back to almost 150 B.C. And that the views held today, even including the view about the 70 th week as being detached from the previous 69 weeks, and there being a long undetermined gap between the 69 th and 70 th week, and that the Anti-Christ would appear during the 70 th week, aren’t new ideas or doctrines at all.
Also understand that all of these early Church Fathers had John’s Book of Revelation available to them. And since that is the final book of the Christian Bible and then the Holy Scriptures is closed up forever, what possible additional progressive revelation could there be for modern Christians that these early Church Fathers didn’t have? I’ve often made the point that fulfillment of Biblical prophecy ended at the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. and absolutely NO additional prophetic fulfillment occurred until 1948, following WWII, when Israel was reborn as a nation. And then again in 1967 when Jerusalem was returned to the possession of the Jews. And while indeed the fulfillment of these 2 prophecies signals our entry into the last moments of the era of mankind’s history, there is NO additional information to be had; only that what was predicted was fulfilled.
So how have we come to these several and varied but rigid doctrines that we have today about the End Times? Most of them aren’t new but rather are warmed-over and quite ancient; and several of them were adopted and a bit reworked by different Christian factions after Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation in the 1500’s A.D. Even the most popular End Times doctrine today as advocated by the bulk of the EvangelicalChurch can be traced back to 200 A.D. What is new in our time is the rampant speculation championed by Lindsey and LaHaye (and others) that has been turned into non-negotiable church doctrines by some major denominations and taught as settled fact.
As we approach the end of our study of Daniel 9, let me answer the obvious question you must have: where do I come down on the 70 th week and what ought we believe about the 70 th week? Should we fundamentally agree or disagree with LaHaye and Lindsey? While I leave plenty of room for the possibility that the 70 th week was fulfilled long ago and there is no future aspect to Daniel’s 70 th week, for me the passage of history coupled with a plain reading of Scripture (including the Book of Revelation) indicates that the most likely possibility of the range of possibilities seems to be that elements of the 70 th week of Daniel belong both in the past and in the future. Therefore the ultimate fulfillment of Daniel’s 70 th week is still ahead of us. And this some-now some-later or it happens once and then happens again nature of prophecy, is on full display with Daniel’s prophecy as with most others.
Let me explain that. I have shown you that the Bible speaks of not one but two latter days ( acharit hayamim ). And depending on when one lived in history, you either looked forward to the 1 st latter days (which was when Christ came the 1 st time), or (as with us) we look forward to the 2 nd latter days when Christ shall come again. The Biblical definition of the latter days seems to be that it is the time immediately leading up to, and during, the arrival of Messiah. And as we now know, there are two arrivals but only one Messiah. The world conditions leading up to each of these two latter days are eerily similar. And we need to grasp that Messiah did NOT fulfill His entire mission at His first appearance, nor were all the 6 goals listed in verse 24 completed; there is more to come. The first part of His mission was to come as a sacrificial Lamb to end the purpose of the sin offering. The second part of His mission (the unfulfilled part) is to come as warrior and king, to defeat the forces of evil and to establish everlasting righteousness and to rule over a tangible earthly Kingdom of God worldwide that replaces all human created government.
In my opinion what has caused so much confusion and disagreement among scholars since the early Church Fathers and even before with the earliest Jewish scholars who tried to understand Daniel is that they could not envision two latter days; all they could envision was one. And we have scholars today who still cannot make a distinction between the latter days and the End Times (meaning the End of the Word) largely because of their ignorance of Hebrew and denial that the Old Testament has any value or relevance to modern Believers; but they are also tied to denominational agendas and doctrines, so they cannot admit or see the existence of two sets of latter days. And yet ironically they have no problem with understanding that the ancient prophecies speak of two appearances of Messiah! Two appearances of Messiah is something that a few of the early Hebrew Sages saw a hint of, but most didn’t, and something that only in hindsight became much more clear after Yeshua died and was resurrected. Why? First because it’s hard to understand and anything but obvious in the prophecies as written, and second because this concept doesn’t fit with the set-in-concrete doctrines and agendas of Synagogue and Church leadership.
So since I’ve presented you with what seems to be a number of possibilities, now let me expound a bit on what I think is the most likely of the bunch, but with the caveat that in no way should you take this to mean that this is how it must be, or that this is an official Seed of Abraham Ministries End Times doctrine.
So let’s defines some terms based on my supposition that the 69 th week ended either with Christ’s death, or perhaps at His triumphal entry, and there has thus far been a nearly 2000 year gap as we await for the 70 th week to begin. First the anointed prince ( Mashiach Nagid) of verse Daniel 9:25 is Yeshua HaMashiach. Second, the anointed one of verse 26 is also Yeshua . Third, the prince yet to come of verse 26 is in relation to the first latter days and this turned out to be Antiochus Epiphanies; but because this element of the prophecy repeats itself it is also in relation to the second latter days and when that happens it will be the Anti-Christ (whomever that turns out to be).
The person of verse 27 who will make a covenant with the many is the Anti-Christ. However this person who puts a stop to the sacrifice and grain offering is BOTH in relation to the first latter days, and so is Antiochus Epiphanies, and also is in relation to the second latter days, and so will be the Anti-Christ. And to end verse 27 the desolator in relation to the first latter days is again Epiphanies and in relation to the second latter days is again the Anti-Christ.
As for the timing of the final happenings of the 70 th week: it MUST come AFTER Yeshua came the 1 st time. That is very clear because we hear this in Matthew 24:
Matthew 24:15-25 CJB
15 “So when you see the abomination that causes devastation spoken about through the prophet Dani’el standing in the Holy Place” (let the reader understand the allusion), 16 “that will be the time for those in Y’hudah to escape to the hills.
17 If someone is on the roof, he must not go down to gather his belongings from his house; 18 if someone is in the field, he must not turn back to get his coat.
19 What a terrible time it will be for pregnant women and nursing mothers!
20 Pray that you will not have to escape in winter or on Shabbat.
21 For there will be trouble then worse than there has ever been from the beginning of the world until now, and there will be nothing like it again! 22 Indeed, if the length of this time had not been limited, no one would survive; but for the sake of those who have been chosen, its length will be limited. 23 “At that time, if someone says to you, ‘Look! Here’s the Messiah!’ or, ‘There he is!’ don’t believe him. 24 For there will appear false Messiahs and false prophets performing great miracles- amazing things!- so as to fool even the chosen, if possible. 25 There! I have told you in advance!
In other words, Daniel’s warning about the abomination of desolation that is to occur during the 70 weeks could NOT have been ENTIRELY fulfilled in Antiochus Epiphanies in 164 B.C., because in about 30 A.D. we have Yeshua warning His followers that this is a FUTURE event for them. He quotes Daniel BY NAME on the subject. And yet, Epiphanies indeed did desolate and desecrate the HolyTemple by setting up an image of Zeus in the Holy of Holies and sacrificing a swine to it, and declaring himself to be god. However, we also know that the first part of Yeshua’s warning did NOT happen with Antiochus Epiphanies. The opening words of Matthew 24 are: CJB Matthew 24:1 As Yeshua left the Temple and was going away, his talmidim came and called his attention to its buildings. 2 But he answered them, “You see all these? Yes! I tell you, they will be totally destroyed- not a single stone will be left standing!”
Epiphanies did NOT destroy the Temple or Jerusalem. However about 40 years after Yeshua’s pronouncement the Romans did. And yet the Romans did NOT set up an abomination (an idol) in the Holy of Holies or ritually desecrate the Temple as described in Daniel; they simply dismantled it and tore it down. So here we have two instances that each partially fulfills Daniel’s prophecy of the 70 weeks, each occurring more than 2 centuries apart. And this event is going to happen again a 3 rd time (and this is not unusual for prophetic fulfillment). We know there will be a 3 rd time because it will be more like the first time with Epiphanies because there is no statement that the Anti-Christ will destroy the Temple, he’ll merely desecrate it by setting up an image of himself in the Holy of Holies and in the doing declare himself to be god. We learn from Revelation 11 and 13 that this Anti-Christ is yet to come; and it cannot happen until well after the Romans destroy the Temple in 70 A.D., because historically speaking John didn’t write Revelation until the years following the destruction of the Temple.
Daniel 9:27 also tells us that for “half the week” the sacrificial offering will be stopped in the Temple. There is good evidence (that I don’t have time to detail) that it was for 3 ½ years that the sacrificing stopped during the time of Epiphanies until Judas the Maccabee restored it. And we have evidence in Revelation 11 and 13 that this same thing is going to happen again with the Anti-Christ (you can go read it for yourself).
But here is where modern speculation begins to run rampant. One of the key premises of the Pre-millennial End Times viewpoint (LaHaye/ Hal Lindsey) is that exactly at the midway point in the 70 th week of Daniel (that is, 3 ½ years into the final 7 year period), the Anti-Christ will cut off the sacrifices and put an image of himself in the Holy of Holies. Yet, here are 7 additional references to that 42 months (3 ½ years) and to the term a time, times, and half a time (that many insist means 3 ½ years or 42 month) that involves Israel and the evil beast of Daniel’s vision, who is the Anti-Christ. CJB Daniel 7:25 He will speak words against the Most High and try to exhaust the holy ones of the Most High. He will attempt to alter the seasons and the law; and [the holy ones] will be handed over to him for a time, times and half a time. CJB Daniel 12:7 The man dressed in linen who was above the water of the river raised his right and left hands toward heaven and swore by him who lives forever that it would be for a time, times and a half, and that it will be when the power of the holy people is no longer being shattered that all these things will end CJB Revelation 11:2 But the court outside the Temple, leave that out; don’t measure it; because it has been given to the Goyim, and they will trample over the holy city for forty- two months.
CJB Revelation 12:6 and she fled into the desert, where she has a place prepared by God so that she can be taken care of for 1,260 days.
CJB Revelation 12:14 But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle, so that she could fly to her place in the desert, where she is taken care of for a season and two seasons and half a season, away from the serpent’s presence.
CJB Revelation 13:5 It was given a mouth speaking arrogant blasphemies; and it was given authority to act for forty-two months.
There is nothing in any of these passages that clearly says that in the final 7 years, the Anti- Christ will appear precisely at the 42 month point and desecrate the Temple. It is also regularly assumed that 42 months = 1260 days = a time, times and half a time. Perhaps; but 1260 days is only 42 months if we go by a 360 day year. And a 360 day year is neither a Lunar year nor a Solar year nor a Hebrew year. And there is nothing that proves that a time, times and half a time means 3 ½ years even though is seems likely. But there are also other reasonable possibilities. There is nothing in these verses that prevents the appearance of the Anti-Christ at the beginning of the 7 years, or at any point during the final 7 years. And the reason that modern prophecy teachers insist on the midpoint of the 7 years for the appearance of the Anti- Christ is really the result of a mirage. The main reason that the Pre-Millennial folks say that the Anti-Christ appears and desecrates the Temple at precisely the midpoint of the final 7 years has to do with Daniel 9:27 that says for “half a week” this person will put a stop to the sacrifices. And these folks say that “half” means “halfway through”. So some English translations will say “in the midst of the week’, to give us the idea that what is occurring is at the halfway point. Not so fast. The Hebrew word used here in Daniel 9 is chetsiy , and it does NOT mean midst it means half. Half a bottle of milk does not mean the midst of the milk. And being in the midst of a crowd doesn’t mean half the crowd. The two terms are not interchangeable. The Hebrews have a word for midst and it is tavek . And indeed it means in the middle of something. So if Daniel had said that in the tavek of the week the sacrifices will be stopped, that indeed would indicate somewhere around the midpoint. But that’s not what the original Hebrew Scriptures say. They say chetsiy of the week: half of the week. So it is saying that for half of the 7 years, or 42 months, the sacrifices will be stopped. Thus the 42 weeks is a duration of time, it doesn’t indicate WHEN during that 7 years it will begin. As of the end of Daniel chapter 9, we are not told.
So, now you have it. You have heard what is actually in Daniel 9 and that is distinct from opinion and speculation (although admittedly the next 3 chapters of Daniel and the Book of Revelation give us some additional data).