DANIEL’s; LAST WEEK: WHERE FOUND
(Dan. 9:24-2724Seventy 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. 25Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. 26And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined. 27And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate. (Daniel 9:24‑27).)
IN the April number, W. J. C. considers this question rather from the point of view as to what is the meaning of “unto the Messiah the Prince.” It may be helpful to consider it for a moment from the other point of view, as to what is meant by the word “after” in verse 26. “And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, and shall have nothing.” When is the cutting off?
Now it should be noted that Scripture does not say after sixty-nine weeks shall Messiah “come,” but shall be “cut off” It should be equally noted that Scripture does not say “during,” or, “in the midst of,” the seventieth week, shall Messiah be cut off, but it says distinctly, “after sixty-nine weeks (7+62) shall Messiah be cut off” Scripture does not say how long after, but it is perfectly clear that the cutting off is subsequent to the completion of the sixty-nine weeks, “unto the Messiah the Prince.” Therefore though Scripture does not speak of the seventieth week in so many words, the seventieth week is, for faith, clearly entered on before Messiah is cut off, there being no break between the sixty-ninth week and the cutting off.
I doubt not, therefore, that W. J. C. is correct, and that Matthew 3., that is, the Lord’s baptism and presentation to Israel, after John had prepared His way, marks the moment “unto the Messiah the Prince,” and that the three and a half years of the Lord’s ministry immediately following after the sixty-nine weeks, are a certain fulfillment of the first half of the last or seventieth week. The nation had not eyes to see it. The Messiah was cut off and had nothing. The break in the seventy weeks is clearly at the cross.
This same “unbelieving generation” that received not Him who came in His Father’s name, will, in their willfulness, again in the land, in accepting the “one week,” be allowed to repeat the first half of the last or seventieth week, receiving the one that shall come in his own name. In the midst of that week, the godly remnant giving heed to the Lord’s warning, “When ye shall see the abomination,” &c., will, in faith, connect that moment, the beginning of the last half of the last or seventieth week, with the cross, which consummated the cutting off of Messiah, and closed the three and a half years of the Lord’s ministry, or first half of the last or seventieth week, which to unbelief but surely not to faith, had gone for nothing.
The first half of the last or seventieth week has therefore a double fulfillment: first, when Messiah was here and was cut off — the true half week; and secondly, when the Antichrist will be here, and will be received of the many — a sort of Satan’s counterfeit.
The break in the seventy weeks — the entire Church parenthesis — is therefore not between the sixty-ninth and seventieth week, but between the cutting off of Messiah at the cross and the definitely receiving of the Antichrist at the setting up of the idol of desolation, that is between the true first half and the last half of the last or seventieth week.
I say entire Church parenthesis, because the catching up of the saints (1 Thess. 4.) is short of the entire interval.
The false or repeated first half of the week is really a part of the break or parenthesis, and will retrospectively overlap the true first half of the week, and thus connect the last half week of Israel’s history directly with them both, and so close up again the gap.