Daily Devotion 21 June 2024 Daniel 9:24-27 The Seventy ‘Sevens’

Good morning,

Daniel 9 serves as a powerful testament to the potency of prayer, God’s faithfulness, and the unfolding of His divine plans. Despite Israel’s repeated sins, God’s enduring love and willingness to forgive offer hope for restoration. The prophecy of Seventy ‘sevens’ reminds us of God’s sovereignty over time and history, and His ultimate plan for redemption.

Daniel 9

Gabriel’s Prophecy of the Seventy Weeks

The Seventy ‘Sevens’ (Daniel 9:24-27)

24 Seventy 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.25 Know 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.26 And 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.27 And 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.

Gabriel delivers the prophecy of Seventy ‘sevens’, explaining that 70 weeks are decreed for Daniel’s people and the holy city. This prophecy encompasses the coming of an anointed one, a period of distress and desolation, and the ultimate establishment of everlasting righteousness.(Bible Hub Chapter Summaries-Daniel 9)

 V. 24 “Seventy weeks” represents seventy sevens of years. The term set the time of the end of Israel’s punishment. The seven weeks of years (49 years) in v.25 may refer to the time of building the Temple  walls at Jerusalem and to the reestablishing  of the nation after the captivity. There were to be sixty-two (434 years) plus seven (49 years), or sixty-nine weeks of years, 483 years until the time of the Savior.

V. 26 After the mentioned “threescore and two weeks” in verse 24 (following the seven weeks)-thus, after the 483 years preceding the time of the Messiah-the Messiah will be cut off. 

The sixty-ninth week is reckoned to have ended at the death of Christ. God left the Temple: “Behold your house is left unto you desolate” (Matt. 23:38). Israel had killed her Messiah and with her empty forms of worship, could not represent God on earth. Soon Titus would destroy the Temple, and Israel would be scattered all over the world. 

Rome destroyed Jerusalem under Titus in A.D. 70. Titus later became emperor of Rome (A.D. 79-81), so Romans are “the people of the prince that shall come” (the Antichrist) in the restored Roman Empire.

V. 27  The dictator-to-be of the restored Roman Empire in the tribulation time will make a covenant with Israel for seven years that they may restore the O.T. worship with priests, sacrifices, and Temple. This great gap for Israel as a nation will exist from the death of Christ until the Antichrist’s decree. Today God has no nation Israel, no Temple, no priests, no sacrifices, serving the true God. The little nation Israel, formed in 1948, is not counted here as Israel and will not be counted  until the Antichrist appears and agrees to the O.T. worship–sacrifices, and priesthood again.

After three and one-half years, the Man of Sin, or Antichrist, will stop Israel’s sacrifices and commit the “abomination of desolation” (Matt. 24:15). Second Thessalonians 2:3 mentions the Antichrist, “man of sin…the son of perdition”; and verse 4 records, “Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” 

This coming ruler of the revised Roman Empire–the Antichrist or Man of sin–is the same as the horn rising among the ten horns in Daniel 7:24. His persecution of the saints and Jews after he stops the sacrifices will continue for “a time and times and dividing of time” (7:25). That is the last three and one-half years, the forty-two months, or, 1,260 days, of the Great Tribulation (Rev. 11:2, 3, 12:6, 14; Dan. 8:14; 12:7)

From many Scriptures we know that Christ’s coming for His saints is imminent. He may come at any moment before these revealed matters about the Antichrist, but the Bible gives no hint as to an exact date. We only know that Christ is bound to come before those other prophesied events occur. (The Rice Reference Bible,1981, pg.925-926)

Daniel 9 unfolds as a heartfelt episode in the life of Daniel, the prophet in Babylonian exile. It is marked by his fervent prayer for his people, Israel, pleading for God’s mercy and forgiveness. Through divine revelation, this chapter unveils God’s future plan for the redemption of His people and the prophecy of Seventy ‘sevens’ shared by the angel Gabriel, making it a significant chapter in biblical prophecy. (Bible Hub Chapter Summaries-Daniel 9)

Themes

The prophecy of Seventy ‘sevens’

God’s Righteous Judgment

The role of angels in communication with humanity

People

Daniel

Gabriel – the angel

Darius – the king of Persia

Jeremiah – the prophet (mentioned)

God

Locations

Babylon (where Daniel was exiled)

Jerusalem (mentioned in the context of restoration)

Tom Stearns, WASI Chaplain, 907 715-4001 chaplain@alaskaseniors.com