Christianity and the End Times

Here's Daniel 9:24-27, the passage you are discussing: ("Weeks" means sevens of years, so a week is seven years.)General interpretation of this is that the seventy weeks are the time allotted to the coming of the Messiah who will
"finish the transgression" and
"make an end of sins" and
"make reconciliation for iniquity" and
"bring in everlasting righteousness" and
"seal up the vision and prophecy"
and "to anoint the most holy."The entire seventy weeks is allotted to the fulfillment of all these things, all of them related to the coming of the Messiah and His work. Here the seventy weeks span is broken up into seven and sixty two weeks or sixty-nine weeks total, leaving out one week, the famous "seventieth week of Daniel." Some have speculated about the meaning of the splitting off of the seven weeks in historical terms, I think having to do with the timing from the decree to rebuild Jerusalem to the end of the Old Testament accounts, or the prophet Malachi, but I'm not sure I'm remembering rightly, but whatever it refers to, the following sixty-two weeks then goes on from there to Messiah the Prince. Clearly the sixty-nine weeks is meant to span the "commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince," who is of course Jesus. There are a number of decrees concerning the rebuilding of Jerusalem that could be meant, but as I understand it there was one in particular that fits the prophecy best and not just because it gives the best timing to events in Jesus' life.; But I haven't studied all this carefully enough and it's been many years wince I heard preaching on it.In any case there is no doubt that this verse is a prophecy of the appearance of the Messiah after sixty nine weeks (or 69x7 years) from a particular command to rebuild Jerusalem. Not the crucifixion but the announcement of His Messiahship when He rode the donkey into Jerusalem on what we remember as "Palm Sunday" is one favored interpretation, but it could be the crucifixion. Extremely clear here that this has to be referring to the crucifixion after the sixty-two weeks (which may have started at the ending of the Old Testament writings, the end of Malachi). This would mean the overall timing is to the crucifixion rather than the Palm Sunday announcement but I'm not sure how to sort it all out. In any case it is certainly a prophecy of the coming of Jesus Christ after a certain number of years from a particular commandment to rebuild Jerusalem after the destruction by Nebuchadnezzar, and not about the events in Maccabees as you suggest. The prince that shall come cannot be Jesus because His people did not destroy the city and the sanctuary. so the best reading seems to be that it refers to the destruction by the armies under Titus in 70AD, forty years after the crucifixion. The people of that prince may be the army or may refer to the Romans as a people, and I don't know what the flood means.The ambiguity of this verse suggests that the prophecy now extends beyond the time of Jesus to some future time as a double prophecy covering two historically separated events that share some features in common. So the "prince" in Jesus' time could have been Titus, but a prince at the time of the seventieth week the final Antichrist, who will be a Roman. And this is where that separated seventieth week comes in. There is certainly plenty of textual support for isolating it as a separate period of time beyond the time of Jesus' coming, and putting it off until the distant future makes sense because it doesn't refer to anything that has already happened."The covenant with many" could refer to Jesus of course, but confirming it "for one week" is not what Jesus did; He confirmed it for eternity. So the "he" here has to be the other "prince" who is usually interpreted to be The Antichrist. And the rest about the ceasing of the sacrifice and what sounds like the Great Tribulation are clearly yet future. The Seventieth Week is considered to lead up to the Second Coming of Jesus after a (probably three-year) period of horrific tribulation that affects the whole planet.The Seventieth Week is often understood to refer to a time after the "Church Period" or the "times of the Gentiles" ends with the Rapture, after which God resumes His dealings with the nation of Israel -- during the last week, or some part of it, which is not clear. This role of Israel is taken partly from Daniel but mostly from Revelation, which makes sense considering that Revelation sounds more like the Old Testament than the new.So the entire seventy weeks referred to in Daniel prophesies the coming of the Messiah who died to put an end to sins after the sixty nine weeks of years, but also prophesies His Second Coming at the very end of time. Leading up to that will be the time of the Antichrist which will mercifully be only a few years.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

That is correct, Rome is not part of this particular vision, it deals only with Persia and Greece under Alexander. After Alexander's death his kingdom split into four regions under four of his generals. Egypt was one of the four, ruled by Ptolemy. The little horn in this vision is not connected to the Roman Empire but is Antiochus Epiphanes of the Seleucids,who ruled Syria and Israel, one of the four regions; he is the antagonist of the Jews you allude to as reported in Maccabees. He is a type of the Antichrist, a foreshadowing of the ultimate Anticrhrist who will arise out of the Roman Empire. The portrait of Antiochus given in this chapter is considered to have a double reference, pointing to the end times Antichrist as well as to Antiochus.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

But the timing doesn't lead to a messiah, it leads perhaps to the finishing of the Old Testament writings if anything.Jewish commentaries do sometimes entertain the idea of two messiahs, or even three, because of the different characteristics describing Him in different passages. In one reference, Isaiah 53, He is the "Suffering Servant," in another He is the conquering King etc. These are reconciled in the doctrine of the Two Comings of Christ, first as savior and comforter, but then at the end of time as conquerer taking vengeance on the enemies of God. When He reads the passage in Isaiah 61 describing the Messiah He reads only the part about setting the captives free, comforting the brokenhearted and so on, and stops just before the line that pictures the Messiah as the executor of the "Day of Vengeance of our God." That part is understood to be reserved for His second coming. Cyrus the Persian was certainly a prince and is referred to as chosen by God, "messiah" meaning "anointed," which would refer to his being called to help the Jews in rebuilding Jerusalem. But it is probably his decree to rebuild Jerusalem that is the starting point of Daniel's prophecy in chapter 9, so he can't be a messiah who comes after the 49 weeks. The only thing that does seem to fall into that time frame is the finale of the Old Testament. It isn't a long enough period to reach up to the time of the Maccabees. I'm not arguing it and I think the crucifixion is the likely end point, but it came to mind as one interpretation I've heard, having to do with how the years are counted. There is no contradiction at all, Daniel 9 simply extends the revelation beyond the Maccabean period into the indefinite future. There is nothing whatever about a period of seven years in connection with the Maccabean revolt. The seventieth week remains hanging after the sixty-nine weeks that end with the crucifixion. It is not mentioned at all, the narrative ends with the sixty-nine weeks. The dangling week is picked up again as the story continues with the prince who will come who makes a covenant for seven years. But this prince cannot be Jesus since His covenant is everlasting. And again, there is no relation whatever to the period of the Maccabees. The Maccabean revolt occurred against Antiochus a couple hundred years before Jesus came, and is the culmination of Daniel's vision in chapter eight, which makes a fitting end to Old Testament Israel. From The Encyclopedia Britannica:
There is no particular time assigned to the fall of Jerusalem in the prophecy. The prince who shall come is to make a covenant with "many" for seven years, and that didn't happen during that whole period so it has to refer to the future. The seven-year covenant is the seventieth week, not any other historical event after the crucifixion.You make a bunch of confused statements after this and in fact your whole confused way of dealing with these things, plus your usual accusations of Christians for getting things wrong based on your own errors, makes this discussion with you the usual nightmare. It takes so much energy to answer you I may just have to give up and leave you to whatever mess you want to make of it.The textual support for the separation of the seventieth week of Daniel is its being isolated in the text as a separate period of time, and its being left dangling after the sixty-nine years conclude with the crucifixion. The covenant for one week is not related to those events or to anything identifiable in that whole era.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

OK I'll try to answer this. No events are ignored and the timing is perfect from one starting point although I forget which. It should be Cyrus' decree and maybe it is but I don't remember. Then too, you have to use the ancient Jewish way of counting years, which gives a year 360 days rather than 365, making up for the difference in some way I forget, and I think may also not count year 0, that is it goes from 99 to 101 skipping 100, or from 1999 to 2001, skipping 2000. Yes it is, it concludes with the Second Coming, and that follows the Seventieth YearWeek of Daniel which was not fulfilled any time after the crucifixion as reported in the New Testament. It must therefore be future. That's because there is still an unfulfilled week of the Seventy Weeks or 490 years, that is yet future and it will precede The End.ABE: we understand that last week as being separated out at the end of the seventy weeks prophecy for this reason: that it wasn't fulfilled in the coming of Messiah the Prince. We look for a covenant of seven years in that period and don't find it. All the calculations account for the time up to the Messiah but none accounts for that separated week.But the whole prophecy of seventy weeks DOES look to the very end of time, while Messiah the Prince came after the sixty-nine weeks. the very end of time with the covenant of seven years did not immediately follow as we would expect. This is all implicit in the very way the seventy weeks are divided, into the initial seven or 49 years, followed by the sixty-two which amounts to sixty-nine and not seventy. If you look for anything in history after the crucifixion that could fulfill the last week of seven years, you find nothing. That leaves it to the future, and it is still future.We can't say it failed because all the rest was fulfilled. therefore we just have to keep looking and waiting until its fulfillment appears in history. /ABE
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The timeline puts the seventieth week after the crucifixion. Antiochus preceded Jesus by over two hundred years.(Some people do think the prince who makes the covenant for seven years is Jesus. I think they are wrong).Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You seem to be determined to interpret things as much against the standard Christian view as possible."Messiah the Prince" cannot be some obscure High Priest, we are talking about THE Messiah promised from all the way back in Eden, who is carried through the Old Testament from prophecy to prophecy, and Jesus Himself says the OT testifies of Him.And Messiah the Prince is not mentioned in Daniel 8 anyway. You've utterly misread Daniel 8. It refers only to events leading up to the Maccabean revolt. It's not about all four empires as the other visions are, but only the Persian and Alexander's Greece. It's about a precursor Antichrist figure who is defeated by the Maccabees. It has nothing to do with the Messiah.The sixty-nine weeks of Daniel 9 doesn't count anywhere near the time of Antiochus but does count to Jesus' time. And "cut off" refers to the crucifixion, it can't refer to anything else.

The "end times" in Daniel 8 points to the end of the Old Testament dispensation, not to the Second Coming, but because Antiochus is a precursor of the final Antichrist it does point beyond the Maccabees and beyond the New Testament as well to the last of the Last Days.I was responding to your identification of the High Priest Onias III as the messiah, but Cyrus is also not the messiah because the seventy weeks start with a decree to build Jerusalem, and he issued one of those decrees so he can't be Messiah the Prince.Nobody is inventing the timing of the seventy weeks to Jesus, it way overreaches the time of the Maccabees no matter which decree to rebuild Jerusalem starts the count. You can't just invent some imaginary prophecy that is not recorded in the Bible as your starting point.And there is no isolated seven years of a covenant made by "the prince of the people who is to come" related either to the Maccabean period or to the New Testament period or to any time in history since then. Therefore it has to be yet future.The Messiah is said to be "cut off but not for himself." Jesus was sinless so He can't have died for His own sins, which clearly then refers to the crucifixion for the sake of salvation of believers. "Cut off" means killed.

Onias is a pretty paltry Messiah the Prince. For one thing he was cut off for himself though the Messiah was not. Did Onias' death save anyone? No. But Jesus' death has saved millions and more to come.Any old covenant won't fulfill the prophecy. It has to be specifically for seven years and in the middle of it the sacrifice has to be stopped. Antiochus stopped the sacrifice but not in relation to a seven-year covenant. The final Antichrist will do that.We interpret the OT in the light of the New. Even the OT prophets didn't understand many things we understand now because Jesus has come. So we can see the second coming in OT prophecy though they couldn't.the Masoretic text is simply the OT, so it can't say there were two messiahs, it only gives the portraits all the Bibles give and the rabbis interpret them to mean two messiahs.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Neither Onias nor Cyrus fits any of the criteria for Messiah the Prince, THE Messiah prophesied throughout the OT, which is what Daniel 9 is about.Cyrus, being a Persian, is certainly not of the seed of David, as the Messiah must be. As I said he was cut off for himself which Daniel 9 says the Messiah will not. Neither he nor Onias fit the description fo the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, neither was called "God our righteousness" or "Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace" and neither died as a sacrifice fulfilling all the animal sacrifices of Israel and so on and so forth. That's just a few of the criteria the Messiah must meet and neither of them meets any of them.

You seem to think the great history of Christianity only includes intellectual midgets rather than real scholars who would know the truth about how the Jews reckoned the counting of years. Not to mention how to read Hebrew and Greek and know what the text says.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The requirements come from reading the WHOLE Bible, which is full of references to the nature of the Messiah who is to come, and that is THE Messiah in Daniel 9, It is truly absurd to think a couple of unknowns, one of them a Persian prince, could be the fulfillment of Daniel's amazing prophetic visions. Really, PK, get some perspective here. No scribe would waste ink on such a prophecy.

Oh I see, you are following some idiot modern "scholars" then. The ones who don't believe in prophecy so pretend Daniel was written after the events prophesied. Oh wow. No wonder this conversation is such a bust. So THEY say Messiah the Prince is Onias the High Priest? What a blasphemous joke.THOSE are the people w3ho are making up what they want to believe since they don't believe in anything supernatural and must fit the Bible tot their own ignorance.The fact is that the prophecies in Daniel are beautifully fulfilled in history, since all four empires prophesied have risen, and in Jesus Christ who is Messiah the Prince, so well fulfilled that we can see that there is one small part that hasn't yet been fulfilled, that Seventieth Week.

Cyrus was a big frog in the Persian pond of his time but he is not known outside the pages of scripture whereas Jesus is known throughout the world, and the Messiah has to be a JEW, and a descendant of King David. Sheesh. Again, get some perspective here. Cyrus wasn't the only King who authorized the Jews to return and rebuild Jerusalem. Whoever the king was who sent Nehemiah was another, but I'd have to look him up.

there are lots of little messiahs, men chosen by God for limited purposes. There is not going to be a major prophecy attached to them.ABE: I'd forgotten that Cyrus's decree to rebuild Jerusalem was prophesied by Isaiah in 44:28 and that is a major prophecy but it's about the rebuilding of Jerusalem not about Cyrus as a messiah.THE Messiah is to "save His people from their sins," not just rebuild the city. /abeThe seventy weeks STARTS with the decree to rebuild Jerusalem, it specifically prophesies the coming of MESSIAH THE PRINCE, THE Mesiah prophesied throughout the OT as far back as Eden, it can't be Cyrus and it can't be Onias. That is so absurd it is hard to believe this conversation is happening.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Oh now I get it. You're a comedy act. Have you applied to "Britain's Got Talent" yet?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.