Daniel’s 70 Weeks Part I: The First 69 Weeks

by Tad Lindley

Daniel was a prophet who lived about 2,600 years ago. He was extremely sensitive to the spirit of God. He was mightily used both in the interpretations of dreams and prophetic knowledge of the future. God enabled Daniel to see not just into the future of his own Jewish people, but all the way into the time in which we now live and beyond.
The revelation of the 70 weeks
In a time of prayer and fasting the angel, Gabriel came to Daniel with a prophetic revelation: Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city…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 troublesome times. (Daniel 9:24-25). If you’ve studied history, you know that it took much longer than 70 weeks to rebuild Jerusalem. Therefore, the 70 weeks must be referring to some other measure of time. In fact if you allow the 70 weeks to represent 70 seven year periods, or a total of 490 years, then some very amazing things are revealed.
7 + 62 ≠ 70
When we read the following, 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 (a score is 20, so threescore and two weeks is 62 week), we understand that Gabriel is telling Daniel that there will be a 7 week (7 x 7 = 49 year) period during which Jerusalem will be rebuilt. Following that there will be 62 more “weeks”, or 434 more years. What about the 70th year? Keep reading, I’ll get to it.
Rebuilding of Jerusalem
If we count the rebuilding of Jerusalem as commencing in Ezra 7, that places the start of the rebuilding at 457 BC. In the fifth month of the seventh year of King Artaxerxes, Ezra headed to Jerusalem to re-establish the faith there and begin the rebuilding of things that lay in ruin. He would be followed in 444 BC by Nehemiah. For more on the rebuilding, read the entire books of Ezra and Nehemiah.
At the end of 69 weeks
After 7 “weeks” of rebuilding and 62 “weeks” (7 + 62 = 69, and 69 x 7 = 483 years) we arrive at the 69th week. 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… (Daniel 9:26 NKJV)
This places the Messiah, Jesus Christ, right at the end of the 69th week. If you do the math, you see that starting with Ezra in 457 BC, 69 seven year periods brings us up to 26 AD, almost the exact starting point of Jesus ministry. And then exactly as it says, after the sixty two weeks Jesus was cut off. In approximately 29 AD our Lord was crucified by Roman soldiers, buried, and resurrected on the third day. Now consider that this prophecy was issued about 600 years before the cross and we have an amazingly tight fit!
Who are the people of the prince who is to come?
You probably notice in the passage above that strange line, And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. What does that mean? Well, we have the advantage of living after it all happened, so the after-the-fact interpretation of that is quite simple. The Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD. Therefore, the “people of the prince who is to come” has to be the Romans, or more accurately people of the Roman Empire which certainly included soldiers from places other than Italy.
And the prince?
The prince is none other than the antichrist himself. This is how we know that the antichrist will be a man descended from peoples who were in lands comprised by the Roman Empire in 70 AD. So if anybody tells you that Kim Jong Un is the antichrist, you probably need to be ready to share this Bible study with them. He can’t be, as Korea was never part of the Roman Empire. To prove to you that the prince is the antichrist I will have to dig a little deeper. Stay tuned for next week when I will prove that the prince is the antichrist and deal with Daniel’s missing years and week number 70.
Tad Lindley is a minister at the United Pentecostal Church in Bethel, AK.

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