Episode 54: Daniel's 70 Weeks Prophecy (Part Two)

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Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 54

Gary continues going through Daniel 9 and the 70 weeks prophecy.

Placing a gap between the sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks of Daniel 9:24-27 “must be fixed” because of the system created by dispensationalists, not because the Bible mentions anything about a gap. As with the time texts of Matthew 24:34 and Revelation 1:1, 3, dispensationalists force the Bible to comply to an already developed system that insists that these events cannot be describing first-century events. The system governs explicit texts.

Clarence Larkin’s famous illustration of the “ten toes” of Daniel 2 (image above) shows the toes being stretched like “Silly-Putty” over more than two thousand years of history. In similar fashion, Scripture must be “stretched” to make it fit the unbiblical “parenthesis” theory of dispensational premillennialism.

An objection that is often raised by those who insist that a gap is necessary to make sense of Daniel 9:24-27 is that the prophecy seems to predict that Jerusalem would be destroyed in the seventieth week. As history attests, Jerusalem was not destroyed until A.D. 70, nearly forty years after the end of the final week. This means, according to dispensationalists, that a gap of 40 years is necessary to fulfill the content of the entire prophecy. This is a curious objection coming from those who see no problem in inserting a two­ thousand-year gap between the sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks. Futurists skip over the A.D. 70 destruction of Jerusalem and conclude that Daniel is describing a future rebuilt temple. If a gap is necessary to fulfill the content of the prophecy, could we not assume that a forty-year gap is much more logical than a gap of indeterminate length? Of course, a gap is not needed to make everything fit.

More importantly, there is nothing in Daniel 9:24-27 that even intimates that a rebuilt temple is in view. All New Testament prophecies concerning the temple have reference to the temple that was standing in Jesus’ day, the same temple that was destroyed in A.D. 70. John Lightfoot, in a sermon on Revelation 20:1-2, concludes that “where Daniel ends John begins, and goes no farther back, and where John begins Daniel ends, and goes no farther forward. For Daniel sheweth the state and persecutors of the Church of the Jews, from the building of Jerusalem by Cyrus, to the destruction of it by Titus, and he goes no farther.”

Last Days Madness

In this authoritative book, Gary DeMar clears the haze of “end-times” fever, shedding light on the most difficult and studied prophetic passages in the Bible, including Daniel 7:13-14; 9:24-27; Matt. 16:27-28; 24-25; Thess. 2; 2 Peter 3:3-13, and clearly explaining a host of other controversial topics.

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Gary continues going through Daniel 9 and the 70 weeks prophecy. He connects the events of Daniel 9:24-27 to the rest of the Bible and proves that a gap is not necessary, but a reassessment of the timing of certain events might be. Assuming these events are still in our future has created all sorts of strange interpretations in history.

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