It hasn’t been until recently that I started seeing all these end-times scenarios that are based on the idea that Daniel’s final week is already half completed. A simple reading of the text should dispel this incorrect (and unnecessary) notion.
The scripture text is Daniel 9:24-27 and the passage is clearly chronological. Daniel breaks the 70 weeks into three pieces: seven weeks, sixty-two weeks, and one week. It is not seven weeks, sixty-two 1/2 weeks and then a half-week. Messiah was cut off after the sixty-two week piece was completed. Since the text states this was “after” the sixty-two weeks, and subsequently states the final week does not begin until after the city and sanctuary are destroyed, a period of time must exist between the end of the 69th week and the beginning of the 70th.
In verse 27 Daniel has no trouble identifying the “end to sacrifice and offering” as being “in the middle of the week” and had he intended to communicate that Jesus was cut off in the middle of the week, he could have said so. However, we read “after the sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off.” It does NOT say “after sixty-two and a half weeks”.
Further, we read in Daniel that after the Messiah is cut off, the city and sanctuary are destroyed. After the city and sanctuary are destroyed, the covenant is confirmed and the final week begins. There is no way around it. Jesus, our one-year-old Passover Lamb was cut off in about 30 AD (after a public ministry that lasted about a year) and Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 AD. The confirmation of the covenant has to take place after 70 AD and there is neither reason nor scriptural evidence that there is a time delay or gap within the final week.
This is NOT to say that if the covenant is confirmed on this coming Pentecost, that Jesus won’t return until 2021. There is nothing in the prophecy that says Jesus will not return until the final seven years are completed. Rather, there are solid Scriptural reasons for believing Jesus will return during the 70th week and will be here on the planet supervising the restoration of all things. In other words, the period of strife, testing and judgment we anticipate will not last seven years. It might be only half of that. Review the “agenda items” in Daniel 9:24 and you will see what needs to be completed in the final seven years. Obviously, these things have not been accomplished, and I think it’s equally obvious that if the final week is simply one of disasters, judgment and wrath, by the time the dust settled on the final day of the 70th week, those things would still be unfinished.
For us, it’s academic. As I’ve said, “we’ve got dinner plans.”
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