Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Daniel 9:24-27 | Date: June 16, 2019 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

If you do not have a bulletin, please raise your hand. We’ll make sure that you’ll get one. You’ll need the insert in the bulletin that has today’s passage in it, like last Sunday. If you do not have a bulletin, raise your hand. All right.

Daniel chapter 9. I am glad to say that the difficult part of the 70 weeks is behind us—sorting through the details of it, determining the various portions of it, the 7, the 62, and the last final week, and all of that. And today, now we can move on with the 62 weeks that are mentioned in the prophecy.

There is, for those of you who were here last week, you’ll remember that there is a significant difference in translations, or rather in the punctuation of the translations, between the NIV, which many of you have, and the ESV that I’m using and many of us have. I was afraid it would just be confusing to no end if I didn’t have the ESV text in front of you. You’ll notice the difference on the back side of the handout in verse 25, the difference in the punctuation in this verse 25. But on the front side, we do have the text in the ESV that I’ll be using.

Daniel chapter 9, verses 24 to 27:

“70 weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for 62 weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time. And after the 62 weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed. And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week. And for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abomination shall come one who makes desolate until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.”

Let’s bow for prayer. Our Father, again, we ask that in this, our study of this rather mysterious and much disputed passage, that you will give us right understanding, guide our thoughts, guide our hearts. Through this, give us a greater appreciation of who our God is, His control and rule over history, and a greater appreciation for our Redeemer as well. We pray in His name. Amen.

All right, we have, you remember, 70 weeks that are prophesied. Daniel has been studying Jeremiah’s prophecy, he said, learned that there was to be 70 years of captivity, that time was about up. And so he begins to pray. He confesses the sin of Israel, tells God that what he has done to Israel and sending them into exile in Babylon was a just thing. And in fact, it was exactly what he had warned that he would do if they were unfaithful to the covenant. Confesses all of that in a model prayer of confession, and while he is still praying, then the angel Gabriel shows up to tell him that God has heard his prayer and that he will show mercy; and in fact, He gives him understanding then of what is to come.

And what he has to say then, what is to come, is verses 24 to 27, the 70 weeks prophecy. He tells us in verse 24 that the subjects of the prophecy is your people and your holy city, that is Jerusalem, and that is the people of Israel. Seventy weeks, that is 70 periods of seven, 70 periods of 7 years. 70 periods of 7 years or 490 years have been decreed. And what God has set out to accomplish in this 70 weeks is stated for us. And I have the purpose clauses noted in your verse 24 of the handout. What God intends to do in these 70 weeks is this: to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, to anoint a most holy place. This is what God will accomplish in these 70 weeks.

Now then, notice again, as we saw last time, that these 70 weeks are broken down into segments. We have verse 25, seven weeks, then 62 weeks, and then verse 26, after the 62 weeks. And then verse 27, one week. So seven weeks, that’s 49 years. 62 weeks, that’s 434 years. One week, that’s seven years. That is altogether 490 years.

The first seven weeks we saw last time in verse 25: “know therefore and understand from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks,” 49 years. And we saw that this, in my view, points us to one, the coming of the word—the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem, that’s the word of God to Jeremiah, roughly 586 BC. Move forward 49 years or one week, and that brings us to an anointed one, a prince. And I suggested that that anointed one, a prince, is no other than Cyrus, whom God calls my anointed; he was the prince or the military ruler that God predicted 200 years in advance would come in Isaiah’s prophecy. And Daniel now hears this prophecy that in 49 years from the going forth of the word of God to Jeremiah, Cyrus will arrive. Well, that’s coming up right now.

Then For 62 Weeks It Shall Be Built Again

And then he says, we have this next part of the prophecy. “Then for 62 weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time.” Now the first question before we can get into this—and it’s a bit unusual, but I hope by the end of this you’ll see that it’s really not—the question is, do these 62 weeks follow immediately on the heels of the first seven weeks? Are they immediately successive? Now we know that they come after, we got the word “then,” but immediately after, or is there a time gap between the seven weeks and the 62 weeks? That’s not at all a given.

In fact, Old Testament prophecy is regularly marked throughout by gaps. We call them foreshortenings and telescoping. Often the prophet will look ahead and see an event and speak of another event that happens after that, when in fact with further revelation we find that the gap between those two events is quite substantial. In fact, there are other peculiarities of Old Testament prophecy as well that could play in. In fact, when a prophet gives a given prophecy—God will do this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and itemizes several things—we can’t even be certain the order of the events unless there are indicators like “then,” or “first,” and “second,” and things like that. They simply lay out for us what God is going to do. Whether or not there are gaps, what the order is, questions like that have to be answered with further revelation that comes.

Well, it seems to me that there is such a gap in between the seven weeks and the 62 weeks. In other words, the seven weeks ends, as we said last time, at 538 BC. But the 62 weeks now don’t begin for a period of time yet. And I think there’s some hint of that in the text itself. Notice when we get to verse 26, it says, “after the 62 weeks.” It does not say after the 69. It says “after the 62 weeks.” And I think we have the same, and we’ll see this later, with regard to the 70th week as well.

Here’s where I try to explain that that’s really not that unusual, and I hope this illustration will help you understand it. Suppose that there is a New England academic who gets involved in politics. Now, if it’s a New England academic that gets involved in politics, you know he’s a Democrat. And let’s say that he writes his memoirs. And late in life, he writes in his memoirs, “I spent 16 years in Washington serving in government.” Now then, once you find out the details in his memoirs, you find out that he spent four years serving in Jimmy Carter’s staff in 1976 through 1980. And then he spent eight years serving in the Attorney General’s office under President Clinton, 1992 to 2000. See the time gap between them? And then he spent another four years serving in Washington, this time with the Secretary of State, and this time under President Obama, and it was 2008 to 2012. Well, there you have 16 years, but it’s a spread of 32 years, interrupted between the times.

I think that’s what we have here in these 70 weeks. We have seven weeks. And then again later, we have 62 weeks. And then again, we have the 70th week coming. Verse 25, seven weeks. Verse 25, at the end of the verse, we have the 62 weeks with a later beginning point. Verse 26, after the 62 weeks, not after the 69, but after the 62 weeks. And then verse 27, we have the last remaining week.

All right, so much for that. So verse 25a, the seven weeks brings us to 538 BC. But then for 62 weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat in a troubled time. Now that then is describing for us the period of time of the 62 weeks. It is a troubled time, and it is a time when the city is being built again with squares and moat. That pretty clearly points to the rebuilding of Jerusalem under Nehemiah. “For 62 weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time.” The “squares and moat” phrase, I think in the NIV it’s translated with “street and trench,” or something like that. It’s the interior and the exterior parts of the city with the moat on the outside. The idea is that of complete restoration of the city. And it says that these 62 weeks are characterized by troubled times.

Well, that sounds like Nehemiah as well. We find in Nehemiah chapter 4 that work is being done, but it’s being done hurriedly. It’s being done under very difficult conditions. You remember the story in Nehemiah where we have the famous builders that are building with the trowel in one hand, a sword in the other. Half of the workers were just soldiers to protect the workers, and they’re standing there with their bows and their spears and their swords protecting them from people on the outside. And then once the walls were finally built, the prophets faced the problem of lethargy in the city. People were indifferent with regard to the rebuilding of the temple. Haggai had to deal with that. We read of all of this in Ezra and Nehemiah. We find it in Haggai. We find it in Zechariah as well. And in fact, there’s even mention of it in the books of Maccabees. Decades of difficulty during this time. “Troubled times,” it says.

And in fact, it’s a period of extended troubled times. This is 62 weeks. This is 434 years. And that brings us through much more troubled times. Some we have already seen with regard to Antiochus. We’ll see more of that in chapter 11. Well, Antiochus comes and the havoc that he wreaks on Israel. You remember Israel is caught between the king of the north and the king of the south. You get the Syrian kings, successors of Alexander the Great, in the north and Syria. And we have the king of the south in Egypt. And these two are always battling against each other. And Israel’s caught in the middle. And sometimes they belong to one. Sometimes they’re subject to the other. Finally, they come under the rule of Antiochus IV, Antiochus the Great, so-called Antiochus Epiphanes, who is the monster of Jewish history, who attacked them with just awful vigor. And this is a time of troubled times, as he says here. Finally, after that, it comes under Roman rule. This is the 62 weeks.

Now the question then is when do these 62 weeks begin and end? Well, it describes it as a time of rebuilding in Jerusalem. That’s the time of Nehemiah pretty clearly. Now the decree of Artaxerxes to return to the city and rebuild was 444 BC. Nehemiah did not begin immediately, of course, in 444 BC, but there’s a time of preparation. He has to go to Babylon to get recruits and volunteers to go with him. He has to gather supplies, building materials, and all of that. Josephus, the first century Jewish historian, tells us that Nehemiah finally began working in the 25th year of Artaxerxes. That’s 440 BC.

So if that’s correct, 440 BC is the beginning of the 62 weeks. Run forward then, 62 weeks from 440 BC—434 years—that brings us to 6 BC. And what of significance comes in 6 BC? Now, if you don’t know the history of our calendar, this may be surprising to you, but 6 BC is a rather accepted date for the birth of Jesus. Our calendar, we know, is off just a little bit. A few years. Nebuchadnezzar, we now know, died in 4 BC, and Jesus died sometime before that, and 6 BC or so is the generally accepted date of the birth of Jesus. And so we have this prophecy of 62 weeks of the city being rebuilt thoroughly in a troubled time, taking us from the time, I think, of Nehemiah all the way to the birth of Jesus.

So then in a recap, Gabriel tells Daniel, we have 70 weeks. The first seven weeks take up from the word of God to Jeremiah to the arrival of Cyrus in 538 BC. And then we have 62 weeks beginning at a later point, 440 BC, and taking us to the birth of Jesus in 6 BC.

After The 62 Weeks An Anointed One Shall Be Cut Off

Now that in turn sets us up for the events of verse 26. “After the 62 weeks, an anointed one.” Now we have another anointed one. “An anointed one shall be cut off.” We had one anointed one, a prince, who came up after the seven weeks. And now we have another anointed one after the 62 weeks. “After the 62 weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed.”

Now notice again it says “after the 62 weeks,” that is sometime after the 62 weeks have expired, then we have these events. Number one, the anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. This anointed one has to be Jesus himself, the Anointed One, the Messiah, Christ. And then it says he will be cut off. This Anointed One will be cut off and shall have nothing. The Anointed One being cut off certainly is a reference then to the cross, where Jesus is crucified and cut off in death for his people.

This next phrase, “he shall be cut off and shall have nothing,” is a very difficult phrase to interpret and to understand. Some have thought that this means that Jesus was abandoned by his friends and taken outside in the city to be crucified. Well, I guess that’s possible. That has not won a lot of consensus, though. If some of you might remember the King James translation, “this anointed one shall be cut off, but,” not “and,” “but not for himself, but not for himself.” He shall be cut off, but not for himself. In other words, it’s pointing to the idea of substitutional sacrifice, that Jesus was crucified, but not for himself and not for his own sin, but for the sins of others. Well, that might be, and I think that probably is the idea that’s going on here. So we could translate it, “an anointed one shall be cut off but has nothing in him.” That is, has nothing, has no guilt on his part. And in fact, there’s an old Greek translation, 2nd century BC, a Greek translation of the Hebrew here that implies exactly that and inserts the word guilt. He has no guilt of his own, and that’s the understanding.

So he is pointing here, so after the 62 weeks have expired, at some point after that, this anointed one who has come now is cut off, but not for himself. In other words, it’s pointing to the new covenant promise that God will send his son who comes to die on behalf of sinners in order then to establish these purposes of verse 24: to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for iniquity, and so on, to bring in everlasting righteousness. How is that done? First of all, it is done by the anointed one coming and being cut off, but not for himself, being cut off for sinners. In that respect, then, this resembles the New Covenant promise of Jeremiah chapter 31.

The People Of The Prince Shall Destroy The City

So in verse 26, the first part of the verse, it brings us to the time of Messiah. The second part, the larger part of the verse, after the 62 weeks have expired, tells us what happens then. Now at verse 26, the first line, “he’s cut off,” it refers to Messiah. Then the rest of verse 26 fairly obviously refers to the destruction of Jerusalem. “And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed.”

Now notice it says, “the prince, the coming one.” The people of the prince who shall come—this prince, the coming one, the prince who is to come—probably is referenced, it’s a note of previous reference somewhere. So who is it that’s coming? And the best guess is it has to be referring to Daniel chapter 7, the little horn, the antichrist we saw when we were there. The people of the prince, that is, it’s not the prince himself. You remember the little horn is the one rising out of that fourth kingdom, which is Rome, but it’s not named as Rome because it morphs into the world kingdom that comes at the end of this age. This is the people of the prince who shall come. So the people of Rome will come, not the prince himself, but the people of the prince come and they do their worst. It says, “they shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.”

The destruction of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple, which came about then in A.D. 70. The most horrible period of Jewish history. In A.D. 66, there was a Jewish rebellion against their Roman overlords. They burned the palace of the Roman governor, they seized control of the area, and it was a rather successful revolt, temporarily. Well, Rome wasn’t going to put up with that, and so they sent Vespasian, the military general, to come and to squash it. And squash it he did. He comes. He starts in the north. They work their way down from Galilee. Sometime during this period now, there’s confusion back in Rome. Nero has committed suicide. So there’s a succession of emperors, three of them within a year. Who’s going to be leader? And finally it ends up being Vespasian. So he’s called back to Rome and he leaves his son Titus. Now this is not to be confused with the Titus you find in the New Testament. But Vespasian leaves his son Titus in charge of the Roman armies surrounding Jerusalem.

They’ve worked their way down from Galilee down toward Jerusalem itself. And finally they lay siege to the city of Jerusalem and eventually breach the walls, enter, and it’s just a horrible slaughter. Josephus, who was the contemporary of the time, records that the soldiers’ rage was just unbridled and they destroyed everything. Jesus makes reference to this in advance. You might remember in the Olivet Discourse in Matthew chapter 24: “So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel,” here he’s making reference to this prophecy, “when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in the house, and let the one who is in the field not turn back and take his cloak. And alas, for women who are pregnant and those who are nursing infants in those days! Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a Sabbath. For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be.”

Jesus says, when you see this happening, get out. Don’t take time to pack your suitcase. Get out. And pray it doesn’t happen in winter. It’s too slow of travel. It’s too difficult. Get out when you see the things coming down. There is some evidence, by the way, that Christians took this prophecy of Jesus seriously. And when they saw the armies coming up in the north, they got out of dodge.

Well, Josephus is, as I mentioned, the only first-hand account that we have of the destruction of Jerusalem, and he describes just what Jesus had prophesied as the greatest and most awful thing that had ever happened. His words are: “What I have to recount is an act unparalleled in the history of either the Greeks or the barbarians, and as horrible to relate as it is incredible to hear.” Jesus said it would be great tribulation such as not from the beginning of the world until now and never will be.

What Daniel says here—Gabriel says to Daniel that “the people of the prince who shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed.” The record of this that Josephus gives us of its fulfillment in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 is just as awful a thing to read as you’ve ever read in your life. Mass starvation as the Roman soldiers laid siege against the city—mass starvation. Thousands of people died of starvation during that period. There were reports that are just unthinkable of people starving, eating their own defecation. There’s even a report that Josephus gives of a mother who decided that she must roast her child in order to eat it and to stay alive. Men in the city smelled the roasting meat and came, broke in to steal. They were so repulsed at what they found—that she was eating her child—that they left without it. It’s just a horrible time that he describes with awful kinds of details.

And then when the soldiers finally breached the walls of Jerusalem, Josephus tells us that there’s just an unbridled rage. They’re just having their time doing what they want with every detail of Jerusalem. Destroying the temple, destroying the walls, laying it bare, just desolating the place, burning houses, killing people as much as they want, taking thousands as prisoners to make slaves of them. Many of them sent off to coliseums to provide entertainment for the crowds, and sending the animals after them in the coliseums for the people to watch and cheer as they were eaten. Many of them were taken as prisoners and slaves and made to be gladiators in the coliseums. Forced to fight so that the professional soldiers would have someone to kill for the cheering crowds. Josephus tells us 1.1 million people were slaughtered after the siege and the destruction of Jerusalem.

Now that number, 1.1 million, has been disputed in recent years by scholars and historians. Couldn’t have been that many in the city at that time. Would they have fit? And so it is disputed somewhat. But at the very least, we have tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, who are being slaughtered at every turn. The soldiers go into the city and just kill at will. And slaughtering, burning houses, killing men, women, children, taking prisoners if they want. No one escaped. The city itself, the walls, the temple, all of it laid bare and waste, torn down and desolate. A.D. 70. Jesus described it as a great tribulation such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be.

Now you hear that from Jesus and you think, okay, that’s bad, but that’s hyperbole, right? I’m not sure that it is. You can certainly point to times in history since when more people have been killed. But I’m not sure that we can find a place if we look—think of it in terms of intensity, numbers of people in a given locale being killed. I’m not sure it’s hyperbole at all. The Jews in Warsaw, for example, in World War II were almost completely wiped out. But thousands escaped. Auschwitz, as awful as it was, killed so many thousands. But thousands escaped. Stalin killed millions, millions of Jews. I don’t know that he had anything particular against the Jews. He just killed millions of everybody. Millions—tens of millions of people. Mao—tens of millions of people. But in every case, thousands escaped. When the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem, no one escaped. The only who escaped were those who were taken as slaves and the few who trickled out before and escaped to Masada. They were killed as well. It is probably not hyperbole what Jesus says referring to this prophecy: that it’s the worst ever before or since or ever will be.

“The people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed.” When you hear of it all after fulfillment, it’s hard not to think of the words of the Jewish leaders at the crucifixion of Jesus: “His blood be upon us and our children.”

To The End There Shall Be War

But the Jewish persecution did not end there. Notice verse 26 goes on: “Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed.” Prolonged desolation, perpetual trouble in the city of Jerusalem. And Jerusalem has been marked by that perpetual subjugation to the end of the age. Now again, Jesus picks up on this prophecy, and I want you to see it in Luke chapter 21. Luke chapter 21. We’ll be back to Daniel chapter 9, but look at Luke chapter 21. Luke 21, verse 24. Here Jesus is prophesying the destruction of Jerusalem, and notice what he says in verse 24. Luke 21:24: “They will fall by the edge of the sword and be captive among all nations. And Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.”

Jerusalem is done until the age of the Gentiles is done. In AD 70, Jerusalem is destroyed. Those who survived with their lives are now slaves, as Jesus prophesied would be the case. Virtually no survivors, except that those who were on the outside when it started. Jerusalem then became a heathen city. Pagan temples scattered throughout the city. There were some Jewish rebellions that sputtered on here and there. Finally, in AD 130, there’s the famous Bar Kokhba rebellion. And it was mildly successful for a time, retook the city for a few weeks, but the Romans crushed it again with a horrible slaughter. And after that, the emperor, now Hadrian, the Roman emperor, issued a law that no Jew can come within 10 miles of Jerusalem on threat of death. No Jew within 10 miles. And that continued then as a pagan city for the succeeding centuries.

You remember then in the early fourth century, Constantine, the emperor, becomes Christian. Becomes a Christian empire eventually, but then later his great nephew, Julian, became emperor. He’s known to history as Julian the Apostate. Called Julian the Apostate because he had earlier professed Christianity, had turned against it, and not only turned against it, but turned against it with a particular kind of vengeance, and he was intent on disproving Christianity and stamping it out. He knew—and he learned this—that persecution wasn’t going to work. And so he focused on this verse, Luke 21:24, where Jesus says, “Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.” And he says, “Well, we’ll see about that. We’ll rebuild Jerusalem, make it a Jewish city again. We’re going to rebuild the city. We’re going to rebuild the temple, and Jews will be here. Disprove Jesus. End of story.”

And so he issues this big building campaign for Jerusalem and they no sooner begin their digging and they quit. The workers are too frightened to continue. Evidently, when they’re digging, there are bursts of fire coming out from the earth and whatnot. Edward Gibbon in his History of the Roman Empire makes reference to it. He says it was pockets of natural gas trapped beneath the earth, and when they dug it blew up. And I don’t know if that was it or if God is doing something else. It doesn’t matter. It couldn’t happen. Julian’s plan failed. And interestingly, one year later, a Christian preacher by—this is 361 AD—a Christian preacher by the name of Chrysostom holds all that up as evidence of fulfilled prophecy. Jesus’ prophecy is true.

Seventh century, Jerusalem, of course, is conquered by the Muslims. It becomes a great center of Islam. Alan McRae, who is the founder of the seminary where Pastor Boyd and I both went, said that he was in Jerusalem in 1929. This is some 20 years now before Israel became a state again: 1929. It was in Muslim control, he said, and no Jew was allowed within the temple precincts. Christians could visit for $5, which is quite a hefty fee for visiting in 1929. But Jews were not allowed.

Of course, in 1948, finally, Israel becomes a state again. Many have conjectured from that that the times of the Gentiles must be over. I don’t know that that conclusion can be drawn. But even since the time of Israel becoming a state, Jerusalem has been marked by continued military assault. That is, verse 26, at the end: “even to the end there shall be war. Desolations are determined.” Or as Jesus said it, “Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.”

So then the 62 weeks bring us from the building of Jerusalem, marked by hard times, to the birth of Messiah. And then after the 62 weeks, verse 26, we have the cross, we have the destruction of Jerusalem, and we have the continued desolation and trouble and war and struggle in Jerusalem as predicted. Once again, the prophecy is fulfilled with precision.

Now one very interesting thing seems to me is that according to first century historians—and by that I mean not only historians today who are specialists in the first century, but historians of the first century itself—tell us that the Jewish expectations in the first century at this period were very high. They were expecting the Messiah to come. We see that reflected in the New Testament. You see it in the temple with Anna and Simeon. Simeon, God told him that he’d see God’s promised salvation come. You see with John the Baptist, there’s this excitement. “Are you the one? Are you the Messiah? Is he the one?” And you even have the questions of excitement around Jesus. “Is he the one? He must be the one. Look at the miracles.” You see this excitement.

But it’s not just in the New Testament, but we find it in Roman writers as well. Suetonius and Tacitus, both Roman writers in the first century, talk about this—that the Jews at that time, at that very time they specify, expected a ruler to come that would rule universally. And they mention for us just what we find in the New Testament itself, that they expected that this ruler would come from their own, arise from Judah. Of course, those stupid Jews didn’t understand that that prophecy and that expectation really is fulfilled in Vespasian and Titus—that they should have known that. That’s their take on it. But their recognition is that at the first century, this expectation that Messiah would come was extremely high. And in fact, we see the same in Josephus as well, who confirms that—that the excitement of the ancient prophecies would be fulfilled now.

What’s interesting then is by the third century AD, the Jewish expectations of the Messiah had passed. And they acknowledged, quote, “the predestined times have passed.” For them, then, the return of the Messiah depends now on Israel’s repentance and good works.

Question: What Old Testament prophecy was it that made them expect the Messiah at that time? Daniel 9 verses 24 to 27 is the only candidate. We’ve got lots of prophecies of Messiah in the Old Testament that are just marvelously fulfilled in Jesus: His person, his work, circumstances, and all kinds of things—the place of his birth, all of that. But there’s only one that gives us the time frame. And that’s Daniel chapter 9, verses 24 to 27. The Jewish understanding of it was that it was messianic, that it pointed to the coming of Messiah.

And that is to say that for whatever difficulties there are in this passage—and there are plenty of them—I think my interpretation of it is correct. But there’s not a great consensus with it. But for whatever questions there are about the details of this, the seven plus 62 weeks couldn’t be much longer. And the promised Messiah, if that’s what he’s talking about, must have come by then. So for all that’s uncertain about this prophecy, it does function as a strong apologetic for the Messiahship of Jesus. If Jesus is not the Messiah, who is? Or did the prophecy fail? And of course, the New Testament is written to tell us that it didn’t fail. The Messiah has come. He was cut off for his people, and he established his kingdom and it will come to fruition.

Let’s bow together for prayer. Our Father, again, this passage of scripture, mysterious as it is, we are encouraged to see that you have pointed us again to the Lord Jesus and given us again reason to believe that he is your appointed Messiah. Lord, how we thank you for him. Lord, how we thank you that he was cut off but not for himself, that he stood in the place of sinners as we will remember now at the Lord’s table, taking our sin and bearing our curse. We thank you for him. In his name we pray, amen.