Dan. 9-I do not think that there need be difficulty in supplying the Scripture authority, which has been sought in vain, for the break between the last week and its predecessors. In fact, the prophecy itself distinctly furnishes the proof. For after the details relative to the periods of seven and of sixty-two weeks, in verses 25, 26, and the plain statement, that after these times were completed the. Messiah should be cut off and have nothing (i.e. of His proper kingdom and rights, as far as the nations were concerned), the prophet goes on to describe the retributive days of vengeance which fell upon the city and the sanctuary through the Roman people (or "the people of the prince that shall come"). Now, it is clear, that here we have events which took place about forty years after the crucifixion, and yet entirely apart from the seventy weeks, save that they necessarily occurred after sixty-nine had run their course. But if they form no part of the previous chain, as shown by the prophecy, with equal certainty are they outside from and before the last or seventieth week, which presupposes the Jewish polity re-established in some sort, and the sanctuary not only rebuilt but in actual use once more, though doomed again to see greater abominations than before. I am confident, therefore, that the Scripture authority of Dan. 9 is, beyond reasonable doubt, against those who make the seventieth week to be in immediate sequence with the preceding sixty-nine, and that the passage itself, without going further, requires us to leave room for (not merely the past Roman destruction of Jerusalem, but) a prolonged series of wars and desolations of indefinite duration, which has been thus far too truly accomplished; subsequently to this, in verse 27, we have the brief but vivid picture of the last week ushered in by a compact or covenant made between the last Roman prince (" the prince that shall come ") and the mass of the Jews; then, in the midst of the week, a stop put to their sacrificial worship, idols protected, and a desolator inflicted upon them, and this till the consummation and the decreed sentence be poured upon the desolate. Thenceforward should the tide turn, through the presence and power of their Deliverer, once rejected but now returning in glory, not only to destroy this antagonist Roman sovereign with all his instruments and followers, Jewish or Gentile, but to apply to Israel, as such, all the predicted blessings of the new covenant. For such was the intimation of verse 24: " Seventy weeks are determined upon thy (Daniel's) people and upon thy holy city (the question being about the Jews, and not the church), to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins," etc. Accordingly, I think it demonstrable that all which God has been doing for and in His heavenly people since the cross is here entirely and advisedly passed by; and this is, no doubt, what is meant by "the parenthetical dispensation of the church." It may be added that this view of a detached seventieth week, reserved for the horrors of the future antichristian crisis, can in no way be objected to on the score of novelty, save by the ignorant: it is really the oldest interpretation that I know on record among the early Christian writers. Thus writes St. Hippolytus in the third century: Τῶω γὰρ ἑξήχοντα δύο ἑβδομάδων πληρωθειςῶν χαὶ Χριστοῦ παραγενομένου, χαὶ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου ἐν πάντι τόπῳ χηρυχθέντος ἐχχενωθέντων τῶν χαιρῶν, μία ἑβδομὰς περιλειφθήσεται ἡ ἐν ἦ παρέσται Ἠλἰας,χαὶ ‘Ενώχ, χαὶ ἐν τψ ἡμίσει αὐτῆς ἀναφανήεσται τὸ βδεέλυγμα τῆς ἐρημώσεως, ἕως ὁ Αντίχριστος ἐρήμωσιν τῷ χόσμῳ χαταγγέλλων, χ. τ. λ." For when the sixty-two weeks have been fulfilled, and Christ has come, and the gospel has been everywhere preached, the times having been consummated, there shall be left one week-the last—in which Elias shall be present, and Enoch; and in the half of it shall appear the abomination of desolation, etc.