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.
Here it is telling us that there are a total of 70 weeks of years (490 years). Remember, I wrote about the Jewish lunar-solar calendar of 360 days. This is the calendar we are going by. The word "weeks" referred to a 7 year period. This method of counting time was as common with the Jews as decades are with us because God commanded Israel to keep the sabbath of the land every seven years. This prophecy begins with the command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem (verse 25).
Verse 25 says: 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 sixy-two weeks; The street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublesome times.
It takes a period of 7 weeks of years to finish this project, and it was indeed, troublesome times. This was finished on March 14, 445 BC. This represents a time frame of 49 years. (7 weeks X 7 years = 49 years) Then until the end of that seven weeks of years until Messiah there will be sixty two weeks.
Verse 26 says: 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 (Satan) 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.
This is at the end of the 62 weeks of years (62 X 7 =434 years), or a total of 63 weeks of years, counting the first week of the rebuilding and restoration of Jerusalem.
434 years + 49 years = 483 years or 173,880 days. On the 10th day of Nisan, April 6, AD 32 (Palm Sunday), Jesus entered Jerusalem on the back of a colt. This was the exact day of the end of the 63 weeks of years.
When Israel rejected their Messiah on Palm Sunday, April 6, AD 32, "the time of your visitation" on the last day of Daniel's 69th week of prophecy, God's prophetic clock stopped ticking. The Lord postponed their prophesied kingdom for a period of 2000 years and set up the church age. This is a prophetic "gap" that early christians were aware of and wrote about, and an example of that would be "The Epistle of Barnabas" written in AD 100.
The 70th week will begin with the signing of a peace treaty by the anti-christ. In the middle of the week (3 and a half years), he will break his covenant.
Verse 27 says: Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week; but in the middle of the week he shall bring and 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 second 3 and a half years (1290 days) will be the time of the Great Tribulation, where God pours out his wrath upon the earth. This will be finished at the battle of Armageddon. At the end of the week, the end of the 70 weeks of years, Jesus will set up his kingdom.
Apocalypse--The coming Judgment of the Nations--Grant R Jeffrey
