Let’s continue on with our series on Daniel. First let’s recall some key notes so far.
We have learned the meaning of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the statue as revealed to Daniel. The ancient civilisations of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome impress man with their value and strength just like the gold, silver, bronze and iron of the statue. However we learned in Chapter 7 through the dream Daniel had, that Heaven has an opposite perspective on these same 4 empires as seen in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the impressive statue. Instead the 4 empires are inhumane Beasts. They get more grotesque and fearsome as history progresses.
We discovered that the ancient Babylonian harlot religion described in Revelation 17 has never gone away. Incredibly, the ancient throne of Satan mentioned in the letter to the Pergamon church was moved to a museum in Berlin in 1930 and is still open today. This throne was an inspiration for Adolf Hitler and even though Hitler was defeated, a one world religion of tolerance is emerging in our lifetimes and this should be another warning to us to get ready for the soon return of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Last week we heard Daniel’s prayer of confession of sin which happened in the first year of Darius’s reign in 539 BC. Daniel included himself as sinner. We are no different to anyone else. We’re not good and there’s no work we can do that can persuade God to answer our prayers. But the Lord is good and kind and merciful, Praise God!
We have a hard time confessing sin. We also have a hard time accepting our punishment which can last a long time. A quick apology does not always fix things, especially if our heart isn’t right. For Israel it was 70 years of captivity which was applied based on the law of Moses.
But the good news of the Gospel is that we can be forgiven if we confess our sins because He is faithful and just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9)
At the end of last week we read
Daniel 9:20-24
Now while I was speaking, 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, yes, while I was speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, being caused to fly swiftly, reached me about the time of the evening offering. And he informed me, and talked with me, and said, “O Daniel, I have now come forth to give you skill to understand. At the beginning of your supplications the command went out, and I have come to tell you, for you are greatly beloved;
It says as soon as Daniel started praying, the Angel was sent to help him. God is ready to show mercy if we will only humble ourselves and pray (2 Chronicles 7:14). Then the answers to our questions are told.
therefore consider the matter, and understand the vision: “Seventy weeks are determined For your people and for your holy city, 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.
That left us with a question though. Daniel was expecting that they would soon be free after 70 years of captivity. What are these 70 weeks until the Everlasting Righteousness that the Angel talked about. Are they the same thing?
Based on everything we’ve learned so far and the fact that Jesus has now been revealed as the Messiah, we can understand that the prophecy of the 70 weeks summarizes what happens before Jesus sets up His millennium kingdom.
Daniel 9:24
“Seventy weeks are determined For your people and for your holy city,
- 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.
There are some very significant things to note;
1. The prophecy concerns a period of time
The Hebrew word for week is a period of 7. Almost all commentators agree that the seventy “sevens” should be understood as seventy “weeks” of years, in other words, a period of 490 years.
2. The 70 years of captivity are nearly finished at this point and nowhere near have accomplished the things that will be accomplished in the so called 70 weeks.
3. The prophecy concerns the Jewish people and Jerusalem for these were Daniel’s people and the holy city was his true home
The prophecy contains a statement concerning God’s six-fold purpose in bringing these events to pass. Verse 24 says this purpose is 1) “to finish the transgression,” 2) “to put an end of sins,” 3) “to make reconciliation for iniquity,”
Of special note is the third in the list of results: “to make reconciliation for iniquity.” Jesus accomplished the atonement for sin by His death on the cross. We know that Jesus fulfilled these first 3 purposes however they are not been completely achieved.
4) “to bring in everlasting righteousness,” 5) “to seal up vision and prophecy,” and 6) “to anoint the most holy” clearly have not happened yet.
Notice that these 6 purposes concern the total eradication of sin and the establishing of everlasting righteousness.
The beginning of everlasting righteousness only comes when Christs returns and sets up his Kingdom on Earth. So it is future. This should be really obvious by reading the daily news as sin is running rampant in our world today. However, even in Paul’s day, the early Christian’s needed to be told that the Day of the Lord was future because some of them were worried they’d been left behind.
2 Thessalonians 2:3-4
Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.
Remember, the Little Horn, the Antichrist that Daniel spoke of is revealed before the return of the Son of Man on the clouds. If someone appears claiming to be God even Jesus, even if he does great miracles, signs and wonders, that person is Antichrist because the Antichrist must come first before Jesus returns on the clouds.
As soon as the Antichrist is revealed, the prophetic clock will start ticking again after it stopped at 483 years when Jesus died on the Cross.
Then, after the 490 years are completed, the return of Jesus will fulfil the final 3 purposes of the 6. Notice that when the 490 years is over all vision and prophecy is sealed which means it is finished. At the point that Jesus is anointed King, there is nothing left to fulfil.
When did the 490 years start? Incredibly, we are about to be told, so listen carefully. For Daniel, it wouldn’t happen in his lifetime. It was going to happen in just under 100 years from the time Daniel had his vision around 539 BC.
Daniel 9:25-27
“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 weeks and sixty-two weeks; The street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublesome times.
The 490 year period begins with the command to rebuild Jerusalem. Messiah the Prince (capital P) comes at 62 + 7 = 69 weeks or 483 years but is cut off, leaving 7 more years until the fulfilment of the 490 years. As we shall see, we can prove to the very day that Jesus is the Messiah the Prince killed at 69 weeks.
“And after the sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself; 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, And till the end of the war desolations are determined.
After he is killed, the people of the prince (little p), who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. The people of the prince to come we now know are the Romans. The Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 AD. Remember Rome is the 4th Beast and the Antichrist eventually emerges as the little horn of the 4th beast right at the end of history before Jesus comes again.
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, Even until the consummation, which is determined, Is poured out on the desolate.”
The prince who will come, the Antichrist will confirm a covenant with many for one week, that is 7 years. So again, the prophecy confirms that the coming prince is the Antichrist, not Jesus, and is from the same people who destroyed Jerusalem and the temple in 70 AD.
A few years ago I read “The Coming Prince” by Sir Robert Anderson which is the book to read concerning the Daniel 9 prophecy of the Messiah being cut off at 69 weeks. Sir Robert was also the author of more than 20 other books but even more interestingly, he was the Assistant Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard) from 1888-1901 at the time of the Ripper murders which occurred from August 31st - November 9th 1888.
Sir Robert became Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard on 28th August just 3 days before the first murder on 31st August 1888.
But on doctors orders, Sir Robert had to immediately go on holiday in Switzerland between 7th September and 6th October just before the 2nd Ripper Murder occurred on September 8th.
During that time, there were 3 other victims. This prompted Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren to appoint Chief Inspector Donald Swanson to coordinate the enquiry from Scotland Yard.
The Coming Prince was published in 1894 which means that the work on the book was hampered by the high profile nature of the investigation into the Ripper murders. Much of The Coming Prince was written late at night after "overtime" official work.
To those who doubt whether Sir Robert was able to do both jobs of writing a great book and being the Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard, the records show that crime decreased in London during that period. Daniel’s enemies criticised him too but the fact was that the Lord was with Sir Robert just like he was with Daniel and he was knighted upon retiring in 1901.
The amount of work that Sir Robert put in to writing such a detailed book as The Coming Prince without the aid of internet and fast travel was utterly phenomenal. Being such a highly ranked Police Officer, he brought the highest level of investigative detailed research and quality that few either then or now could match. Sir Robert was an expert on prophecy because he did the research and put it all together piece by piece.
So there was to be 483 years between the time the edict is given to rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One comes and is killed. We can prove that Jesus is the Anointed One killed, fulfilling part 1 of the prophecy.
The edict to rebuild Jerusalem was 14th March 445 BC
Nehemiah’s version
And it came to pass in the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, that I took the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had never been sad in his presence before. Therefore the king said to me, “Why is your face sad, since you are not sick? This is nothing but sorrow of heart.” So I became dreadfully afraid, and said to the king, “May the king live forever! Why should my face not be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers’ tombs, lies waste, and its gates are burned with fire?” Then the king said to me, “What do you request?” So I prayed to the God of heaven. And I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, I ask that you send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers’ tombs, that I may rebuild it.” Then the king said to me (the queen also sitting beside him), “How long will your journey be? And when will you return?” So it pleased the king to send me; and I set him a time.
Nehemiah 2:1-6
So the edict was issued in the month of Nisan in the 20th year of the reign of King Artaxerxes. It is commonly accepted that the 1st of Nisan is the day the King’s edict was made. This ties in with the new moon when the Jews celebrate the New Year and is logical that the King would make an edict for the Jews on that day. The 1st of Nisan in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes was March 14th, 445 B.C. This new moon date was confirmed to Sir Robert by the British Royal Astronomer in 1877 which means that research for his book was in progress for many years before he was appointed Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard. When you consider the timing of the start of the Jack the Ripper murders, no doubt Satan wanted to stop that book ever being published!
When was Palm Sunday, the date that Jesus rode the donkey into Jerusalem as King? First of all Jesus ministry begun between 28 AD and 29 AD just before Passover. We can determine that from
Luke 3:1-3
Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar* Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, while Annas and Caiaphas were high priests, the word of God came to John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness. And he went into all the region around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins,
*Tiberius reign began 14 AD
Now Jesus Himself began His ministry at about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, the son of Heli,
Luke 3:23
Sir Robert assumed a ministry of 3 years plus however many months between 19th August 28 AD (Tiberius start of reign) and the 1st Passover in 29 AD until his last when he was crucified.
Using proofs from John it is commonly accepted that Jesus’s ministry lasted about 3 years. In John's Gospel, Jesus attended three annual Passover feasts (John 2:13; 6:4; 11:55-57). At the shortest, His ministry could have been 2½ years.
However it is almost certain there was a 4th Passover during Jesus’s ministry. By the time of the first Passover mentioned in John 2:13, Jesus had already been baptised, spent 40 days being tempted in the wilderness, had started preaching in various towns and villages (Matthew 4:17), selected His first followers (John 1:35-51), performed His first miracle at Cana in Galilee (John 2:1-11), and traveled to Capernaum north of the Sea of Galilee (John 2:12). These efforts would have covered the course of several months, adding enough time to easily fit the 3½ years mentioned above.
Checking the Passover of 32 AD therefore and asking the Royal Astronomer again, Sir Robert found that the Last Supper night of the Passover in 32 AD was a full moon on the night of 14th Nisan (Thursday 10th April). Because of the full moon, Judas and those who came to arrest Jesus were able to find him quietly without torch light so that the people were not alarmed to what was happening.
All of this means that Palm Sunday was 6th April 32 AD fulfilling the Daniel prophecy of the 483 years to the very day.
The calculation of 483 years based on the Jewish Calendar of 360 days per year = 173,880 days.
Anderson wrote: "The Julian date of that 10th Nisan was Sunday the 6th April, A.D. 32. 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, the first sixty-nine weeks of Gabriel's prophecy."
This meant Jesus was crucified on Friday 11th April in 32 AD.
Now there’s going to be the odd sceptic who will say you can’t be 100% sure of the exact start date of the 490 years, therefore it’s wrong. Well the start date is definitely within 30 days and the end date coincides exactly so I would argue that is far beyond reasonable doubt that Jesus is the Messiah who was killed based on the extremely low probability of it not being correct. I’ll leave that up to you to decide for yourself.
But that accounts for only 483 of the 490 years, there remains another 7 years of further punishment to complete the 490 years of punishment as per the Daniel 9 prophecy. Some may argue that the 7 years of WWII have already fulfilled this prediction since it was halfway through the war that the Nazis began deporting the Jews to Concentration Camps and the holocaust really started. And after the Holocaust and WWII came the establishment of Israel in 1948. The Coming Prince indeed contains some remarkable prophetic statements about the establishment of Israel at a time when the Jews were still scattered everywhere around the world.
However, the fact is that Jesus has not returned yet so we are still waiting for the final fulfilment of Daniel 9. And that’s the thing. When you read the Daniel 9 passage which is prophesying Palm Sunday, you inevitably end up talking about the end times because Jesus made the connection when his disciples asked him when the end times will come in Matthew 24.
Matthew 24:15-16
“Therefore when you see the ‘abomination of desolation,’* spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place” (whoever reads, let him understand), “then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.
*Daniel 9:27
Sometimes in scripture there is a near fulfilment of prophecy and another far fulfilment. It’s true that The Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 AD which Jesus himself prophesied;
Luke 21:20-24
“But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation is near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those who are in the midst of her depart, and let not those who are in the country enter her. For these are the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days! For there will be great distress in the land and wrath upon this people. And they will fall by the edge of the sword, and be led away captive into all nations.
This is what the Romans did in 70 AD and the Jews became exiles and captives all over the World. Jerusalem will be trampled until the time of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
And Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
We can see the Western World is crumbling and the times of the Gentiles is coming to an end. Soon the door will be closed to the Gentiles so we must be earnest to enter through the narrow gate, to accept the invitation to the wedding feast, before it is too late.The prophecy then switches to supernatural type events just before Jesus comes on the clouds.
Luke 21:25-28
“And there will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near.”
It was perhaps the greatest tragedy the world has ever known that on that exact date when Jesus fulfilled the 69 weeks, that Jerusalem rejected him.
Jesus knew that he would be rejected and killed because of the Daniel 9 prophecy. Therefore his ministry wasn’t one of someone about to take power. Rather he prepared the people for life in the kingdom before he would finally reign. We would have to learn to turn the other cheek. We would have to forgive so that we can be forgiven. We would have to learn what it takes to take up our cross and follow him. The years to come would be tough so he taught with illustrations, like a sower sows his seed rather than a king laying down the law. The final results would not be seen until he comes in power a second time. But his return was to be delayed as he emphasised in his parables.
Jesus came riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, in peace. He could have come in power but he chose to come humbly. In these times of the Gentiles, God does not act in power as he did in the days of Moses for example but that is because we are in the age of Grace. But Revelation speaks of a coming time when the Lord will move in power and judgment and that will be a time of terror! So we should have a healthy fear of the Lord!
You don’t know the circumstances and arrangements that the Father has made to bring you here today to hear this message. And if Jesus is calling you today to come follow him and you reject him like Jerusalem, you may never get another chance just like they never got another chance.
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