Smoodock's Blog

The Seventy Weeks Prophecy is found in Daniel 9:24-27, and the angel divided it into three periods: 7 weeks + 62 weeks + 1 week. The first division governed the 49 years it took to build the Temple and the walls surrounding the city. The second division governed the time from the completion of the Temple and the city walls to the coming of the Messiah (434 years). Most scholars today believe the seventieth or final week of the prophecy has been cut off from the previous 69 prophetic weeks and represents the final 7 years at the end of this age just prior to Jesus’ return. However, this understanding doesn’t seem to fit the scriptures. So, for the next several posts I hope to offer a reasonable explanation of what Daniel really prophesied, and in so doing show the prophecy stands fulfilled.

The final week (7 years) of the Seventy Weeks Prophecy comprises the 1260 days, 1290 days and the 1335 days of Daniel chapter twelve. Taken together, these days, as I hope to show in later posts, comprise the week in which God confirmed the New Covenant with mankind and in particular with believing Jews (Daniel 9:27; Jeremiah 31:31). It stands to reason that, if the Seventy Weeks Prophecy is fulfilled, there should be ample evidence of it throughout the word of God. The problem is that for centuries both scholars and preachers have declared that this final week of years had to point to a future return of Christ, sometime in our future. Consequently, it is difficult for many Christians to imagine the scriptures saying anything else.

For centuries men have used the above-mentioned days (1260 or 1290 or 1335) to calculate the return of Christ, but this simply cannot be done, because we’re told it is impossible to know the day or the hour of Christ’s return (Matthew 24:36-51). Therefore, it doesn’t matter what we know about prophecy or the events that have been fulfilled. We simply cannot know the date of Jesus’ coming by mathematically using certain dates to come up with a chronology of the events leading up to the return of Christ. Remember, the angels of heaven know accurate chronology. Does knowing accurate chronology help them? Therefore, these days (1260, 1290 and 1335) cannot refer to Jesus’ Second Coming! If they did, we’d be able to calculate the return of Christ by using these days, to count from or to what the heavenly being revealed in Daniel chapter twelve.

Isn’t it a bit arrogant of Christians today to conclude they could know or understand, what Jesus found it impossible to know (cp. Mark 13:32)? Is it possible for any of us to know what Jesus couldn’t know when he was physically with us? Doesn’t all of our truth come through him? Doesn’t scripture say that he is made wisdom and knowledge to us? How, then, is it possible to know anything about what the Father says, if it doesn’t first come through Jesus? So, if Jesus admitted that he didn’t know, wouldn’t it be arrogant, to say the least, to claim **we** have figured it out?

I suppose it was knowing the incongruity of things like these that caused me to wonder about what is really prophesied in Daniel. I began asking God to reveal to me what those days actually foretold. Obviously, they were put there for a reason. If not to show when Christ would return, then to what do they point? God answers prayer! I love his word, and I’m convinced we can know all that he tells us in the scriptures (Deuteronomy 29:29; cf. Acts 1:7). To begin with understanding how the seventieth week figures out in history will involve some math and knowledge of the Jewish calendar.

The Hebrew calendar follows the moon rather than the sun, as our solar calendars do today. It contains 12 lunations of 29½ days each, giving us a year of 354 days of 30 and 29-day alternating months. The first month is called Nisan (or Abib), which has 30 days, the second has 29 etc. (odd number months having 30 days and even number months having 29). Seven times in a 19-year time cycle a 13th month is added (like our leap years add a day to February). The additional month has 29 or 30 days, making that particular year 383 (or 384) days long.[1] The prophetic year, as implied in the Bible, however, has 360 days and is composed of twelve 30-day months. Both the prophetic year and the actual Jewish calendar year are important to our study. With this groundwork laid, we have what we need to consider the specifics of Daniel’s prophecy. May God bless the understanding of all who read and consider the meaning of this important prophecy.

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[1] See my study, The Ancient Hebrew Calendar where I show how calculations were probably made. They had to have been made similar to my calculations, if the calendar was user-friendly at all (and it was user-friendly, see 1Samuel 20:5, 18). Otherwise, no Jew in the world would know when the month changed from one to another, unless he had some instant communication with the rabbis in Jerusalem. Such a thought would be ridiculous, so the Hebrew calendar had to have had some kind of user-friendly rules in order to know when the new year began, and when each month began afterward.