Daniel's 70 weeks

 

God revealed many detailed facts about the end times to His beloved prophet Daniel. Among them was the unfolding of events leading up to the first coming of Israel’s Messiah, and then further into the future, to events in the time of the Antichrist. These are to be found in Daniel 9:24-27 and are well-known as Daniel’s 70 weeks. Let us take a closer look at those four verses.

Daniel 9:24-27

“A period of seventy sets of seven has been decreed for your people and your holy city to finish their rebellion, to put an end to their sin, to atone for their guilt, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to confirm the prophetic vision, and to anoint the Most Holy Place.”

What I wish to highlight here, is the fact that the seventy units of 7 years each (hereafter called Daniel’s weeks) all have to do with Israel and the Jewish people, as the angel Gabriel says to Daniel, “your people and your holy city”. This includes the last 70^th week, (the last unit of 7 years), a most important fact to remember, as this last week is the 7-year Tribulation period just before the second visible appearance of Jesus.

Verse 25 “Now listen and understand! Seven sets of seven plus sixty-two sets of seven will pass from the time the command is given to rebuild Jerusalem until a ruler—the Anointed One—comes. Jerusalem will be rebuilt with streets and strong defences, despite the perilous times.

Sixty-nine of these special seventy weeks are broken down into two parts: the first part would last 7 weeks and would start when the command is given to rebuild Jerusalem. This was fulfilled when Artaxerxes instructed Nehemia to go and rebuild the city on 14 March 445 B.C. (Neh 2). The second part would last 62 weeks and would be the time that Israel waits for her Messiah to come. They were told how to recognize Him by Zechariah in Zech 9:9 “Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” This was fulfilled on 6 April A.D.32, when Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey colt to shouts of Hosanna! and palm branches, hailing Him as King of Israel, their long-awaited Messiah. Anderson, in his book “The coming Prince”, calculated that the difference between these two dates is exactly 69 units of 7 years each, or 69 Daniel weeks!

Verse 26:  After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed.”

‘After the 62 weeks’ actually means after 69 weeks, as we have to remember to add the 7 weeks preceding them.  Jesus was put to death, He certainly did not leave any earthly treasures behind, and here at this point the prophecy starts to extend beyond its fulfilled history and into the end times. There came a Roman ruler called Vespasian who destroyed Jerusalem and the temple in 70 A.D. But there will also be another ruler in the future who will destroy Jerusalem and the third temple, yet to be built, and war after war will follow him – the Antichrist.

Verse 27 “He will confirm a covenant with many for one ‘seven.’ In the middle of the ‘seven’ he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And at the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him.”

After an interval of several years, called the Church Age which started when Jesus died and rose again, this last 70^th week will start. It will start with the Antichrist making a peace treaty with among others, Israel, which he will break off in the middle by positioning himself in their temple and declaring himself god.  Great Tribulation for Israel and the whole earth will follow, until God’s decreed wrath brings a complete end to Antichrist’s rulership on earth.

Points to ponder:   The exact details of fulfilled biblical prophecy, as proven in history, is the guarantee that future unfulfilled prophecies in the Bible will also come to pass in exact detail.  Let us look them up, take them to heart and warn others to do the same!

Jesus is coming

Our scapegoat

 

Jesus fulfilled the first four Feasts of the Lord, which means that he embodied all the elements surrounding them in stunning detail.

Let us look at a few events of the Passover Feast to illustrate this. When God gave the instructions for this Feast in Egypt, He instructed the Jews to set aside their lambs on the tenth day of Nisan. Jesus entered Jerusalem on this day, to be set aside as the human Passover Lamb. These lambs then had to be kept for four days and thoroughly examined for any defect, as the lamb offered had to be perfect in every way. Just so Jesus was examined in the following four days by all the religious leaders, and even by the Roman authorities, who through Pilate officially declared Him to be without any fault (John 19:4 “I find no fault in Him”). The Passover lambs were prepared for sacrifice at nine o’clock in the morning of the fourteenth of Nisan and killed at three o’clock in the afternoon. Likewise, Jesus was nailed to the cross at nine o’clock in the morning of the fourteenth and died at three o’clock in the afternoon. His bones were not broken, as also the Passover lamb’s bones were not to be broken. God’s instruction in Egypt regarding the eating of the lamb for the Feast was that the meat be eaten in haste, and none left over for the next day. Jesus had to be taken down hastily from the cross so that He could be buried before six o’clock that evening, as this was the start of the next day which was a Sabbath, and no bodies could be left on the cross on that day.

But there is a lesser-known fact which has a bearing on this sacrifice of the body of Jesus on the cross as well. It concerns the scapegoat that in Old Testament times had to carry away the sins of the Israelites on the Day of Atonement:

Lev 16:21

Then Aaron shall lay both of his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the wickedness of the sons of Israel and all their transgressions in regard to all their sins; and he shall lay them on the head of the goat [the scapegoat, the sin-bearer], and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is prepared [for the task].

As mirrored in the Passover Feast, Jesus took all our wickedness and transgressions and sins on Himself and died in our place – He became our scapegoat, taking away our sins! And even in this, He underwent the same treatment as the original scapegoats in the Old Testament had to undergo, as written above. We read about it in John 18:

John 18:22

Then one of the Temple guards standing nearby slapped Jesus across the face. “Is that the way to answer the high priest?” he demanded.

This Temple guard was a Jewish official, whose hand therefore also was ‘layed’ on the head of our heavenly Scapegoat or Sin-bearer, under authority of the High Priest standing by.

Points to ponder: If the relevant events in the life of Jesus followed the exact details as celebrated in the first four feasts, then surely, He will do the same in the next three!

Rise Up

A peculiar people

 

Titus 2:14

Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.

What an interesting word:  peculiar. Somewhat old-fashioned, which is why it is used abundantly in the King James version, and almost never in more modern translations. 

The meaning according to the Oxford Dictionary is “different to what is normal or expected; strange; unusual; odd; curious; weird.”   

These interpretations of course have everything to do with perspective:  on which side are you standing and calling someone or something peculiar, odd, weird? For many of us, for example, the lifestyle of the ultra-orthodox Jewish community would seem peculiar. Mainly because it is so different to our own way of living. For them, we would seem peculiar – why are we claiming to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob when we are plainly not of Jewish descent?

Jesus is calling His bride to be different from what people in the world expect; to a lifestyle that would be strange in their eyes; to follow unusual ways of responding to worldly pressures; to hold fast to commands from Him that would look odd, curious, even weird to their way of operating in life.

But the word peculiar also means “particular; special; individual.”

1 Peter 2:9 “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light:”

We are special in God’s eyes, each one individually and particularly called to praise Him and live a life displaying and representing Him!

Choosing a way of life that is seen as odd or weird by people in the world should not bother the bride in the least. Because we have our eternal destiny in focus, and we are  preparing ourselves for that glorious day when our Bridegroom is coming to fetch us for the Marriage Feast of the Lamb written about in Revelation 19:7.  Our life on earth is but a miniscule part of the eternal life that we enter into once our bodies have passed away – why waste that short time on worrying about what others may think about our choices to live a holy life, acceptable to our Beloved Jesus?

Points to ponder:  Are the words of the chorus of Lize Hadassah Wiid’s song Adonai, given here, also your heart’s cry? Do not rest until your heart longs for Him in this way:

“Oh Adonai, my Adonai - will we hear the trumpet sound - will we hear You call our name -  oh Adonai, our Adonai - when You come to fetch Your bride - will we be standing in the line, our Adonai.”

Adonai

Walk the Damascus Road

 Imagine what it was like to be Jewish in the time of Jesus. There were hundreds of laws and regulations which governed every aspect of your life, and which only the very learned rabbis could remember in their entirety – and to do this, they had to devote most of their time throughout their lives to study them. There was the whole temple system of priests and temple helpers who had to guide you through the rules and regulations of animal sacrifices. There was wide-spread demon possession and debilitating diseases and suffering because people were not guided into how to develop an intimate relationship with their God – everything spiritual rested on rules and regulations handed down through the preceding centuries, most of which were restrictions based on human interpretations of God’s laws.

The man called Saul was eminently qualified to play an important part in maintaining this religious status quo. He was born a Jew, studied the strict Pharisee laws under Gamaliel, who was one of the most revered teaching rabbis of his time and a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish governing body, therefore Saul was connected with some seriously important Jewish leaders of that time. This shows in the fact that they readily supplied him with letters of introduction to all the synagogues in Damascus, granting him permission to imprison and kill the followers of Jesus, which he zealously did.

Why then did Saul suffer such cruel and wicked and constant persecution from his fellow Jews? Read how he describes his sufferings in his own words:

2 Cor 11:24-27

Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked.

 The reason for the above persecution was because Saul played a pivotal role in confronting and overturning all the aspects of Jewish religious systems and thinking which was prevalent at the time. God warned him what it would entail, as we read in Acts 9:16 “I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.”, and yet he was still willing to obey.

What on earth persuaded Saul to make a 180 degree turn in his thinking?  Saul became Paul on the Damascus Road! This monumental overthrow of beliefs, that had been engrained on his soul through culture and years of specialised study, could only happen through a supernatural event – he encountered Jesus personally!

Points to ponder: Choose to walk the Damascus Road – where you can encounter Jesus. Make time every day to wait on God and to focus on Him, worshipping Him and loving Him without any prayer agenda. This will develop into times where you encounter Jesus personally, and He can then remove the scales from your eyes and set you free indeed!

 On the road to Damascus