Day: April 27, 2025

Sunday, April 27, 2025

“Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy” (Daniel 9:24 KJV).

What precisely are these seventy weeks of Daniel? How do they form the backbone of prophecy?

Today’s Scripture highlights seventy weeks of years, or 490 years overall. Daniel 9:25-27 divides them into three segments: “seven weeks” (49 years) followed by “threescore [3 times 20, or 60] and two weeks” (434 years) followed by one last “week” (7 years). Verse 25 declares these seventy weeks commence with “the going forth of the commandment to restore and to [re-]build Jerusalem [what the Babylonian invasions destroyed]… the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.” Nehemiah 2:1-8 fulfills this circa 445/444 B.C., roughly a century after Daniel prophesied it.

“Seven weeks [of years]” (49 years) is the length of time from the commandment of Nehemiah chapter 2 to the completion of the Hebrew Bible with Malachi (circa 397/396 B.C.). Another “threescore and two weeks [of years]” (62 weeks of years, or 434 years) brings us up to A.D. 32. Featuring years of 360 days each, God’s calendar in Daniel closed the first 69 weeks of years (483 years) just days before Calvary when “the Messiah” was “cut off” or killed (Daniel 9:25,26; cf. Isaiah 53:8). Daniel’s 69^th week of years ended on the very Sunday Jesus entered Jerusalem on the donkey a few days before His crucifixion (see Luke 19:28-44, noting that significant “thy [Israel’s] day” and Israel’s pitiful ignorance of it in verses 41,42!).

Messiah Jesus died after Daniel’s 69^th Week, leaving the last week of years unfulfilled even today. This final week is Daniel’s 70^th Week of Daniel 9:27, to run its course after our dispensation closes. Incidentally, the war against Jerusalem in Luke 19:43,44 is that of Daniel 9:26, corresponding to the battles of Daniel 11:5-20. Conflicts against Jerusalem will eventually lead to the diabolical Antichrist’s rise to power and his one-week (seven-year!) peace treaty in which he promises to protect and bless Israel and Jerusalem (see Daniel 11:21-45). We are in the “gap” between Daniel’s 69^th Week and Daniel’s 70^th Week, our dispensation totally isolated from the seventy weeks of Daniel….