Daniel 9

The character of God is central here, His positive character. Daniel says in verse 4

4 And I prayed to the LORD my God, and made confession, and said, “O Lord, great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and mercy with those who love Him, and with those who keep His commandments…

If I suggest to you that the covenant that God made with Israel is no longer enforce, there are some – paticularly dispensationalist – who say that “I am accusing God of not being a covenant keeper. If God has broken His covenant with Israel then how can He be a covenant keeping God?”, they would say. “How could one make such a statement against God’s character?”

Well God doesn’t say He keeps His covenant with those who disobey Him. He keeps His threats towards them, so Daniel has it right. Daniel says God keeps His covenant and mercy with those who love Him. The covenant is reciprocal, its bi-lateral. God makes a covenant of promise conditioned on the fulfillment of the obligations from the party on the other side. Those who don’t keep the obligations have no claim upon the promise. Jesus said whoever loves God loves the One begotten of Him. If you don’t love Jesus you don’t love God. There are Jews who love Jesus and we call them Christians, better yet the Bible calls them Christian.

I want to address the 70 weeks of years, but first in Leviticus 26:17 ,18 we find that God keeps His promises when He predicts punishment will befall the Jews. We know that He sometimes delays in punishing but it does in time come. Here is the promise:

17 I will set My face against you, and you shall be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you shall reign over you, and you shall flee when no one pursues you. 18 ‘And after all this, if you do not obey Me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins.

In fact God repeats this same promise in verse 21 and 24 of Leviticus 18. So what’s my point? We know that Israel, because of their sin went into exile for 70 years. Daniel too was in captive exile because of the sin of the nation. Now we see in Daniel 9 that 490 more years are determined; “For your people and for your holy city,
To finish the transgression,”
See how God is faithful to His word? Seventy weeks of sevens is 490 continuous years. Remember God said “I will set My face against you, and you shall be defeated by your enemies.” and then after this if you still do not obey me I will punish you seven times more. Hence we have Daniel 9:24:

24 “ Seventy weeks are determined
For your people and for your holy city,
To finish the transgression,
To make an end of sins,
To make reconciliation for iniquity,
To bring in everlasting righteousness,
To seal up vision and prophecy,
And to anoint the Most Holy.

I have noticed that some people don’t believe all of this has happened yet. However, if you wish to use the New Testament as your interpretor, which I always advise doing, you’ll find everything in this list of verse 24 is said to have already been accomplished in Christ.

• 1. Finishing the transgression is what the Jews did when they crucified Christ. Look at Matthew 23:29-32

29 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, 30 and say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.’
31 “Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. 32 Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers’ guilt.

Jesus is saying go ahead they killed the prophets and you’ll kill me you’ll finish it off – fill it up! The cup is almost full. When you kill me that will fill it right to the top. The measure of your fathers guilt as been filling up for centuries and you will fill it up by killing Me. This is how the Apostle Paul understood it apparently because over in 1st Thess. 2 he described the Jews as being in this condition. in verses 14-16 Paul says:

14 For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God which are in Judea in Christ Jesus. For you also suffered the same things from your own countrymen, just as they did from the Judeans, 15 who killed both the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they do not please God and are contrary to all men, 16 forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they may be saved, so as always to fill up the measure of their sins; but wrath has come upon them to the uttermost.

So we see the Jews in the days of Jesus and the Apostles filled up the measure of their sins. They finished out the total number of transgressions that they were going to commit before destruction would come upon them.

• 2 To make an end of sins. How is this to be understood? Well, John the Baptist when he saw Jesus said, “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” The reign of sin has been esentially destroyed by Jesus. Not in the lives of all people because not all people have received Him but for the sake of God’s people Jesus has made an end to sin. Romans 5:21

21 so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Sin once reigned in our lives but it doesn’t anymore. Grace reigns in its place. He brought an end to the power of sin. In Hebrews 10:17, 18 the writer says:
17 then He adds, “Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.”18 Now where there is remission of these, there is no longer an offering for sin.

Another thing that is accomplished from that 70 weeks is:

• 3. To make reconciliation for iniquity. I don’t want to take the time to go over all the verses in the NT that say that Jesus has made reconciliation for us but one place is 2 Cor. 5:19 saying:

19 that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.

And Romans 5:11

11 And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.

Plenty of evidence thus far that this has been completed in Christ. What about

• 4. To bring in everlasting righteousness. We have 1 Corinthians 1:30

30 But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption—

• 5 To seal up vision and prophecy.

Some people think this means to bring an end to the prophetic ministry. Others feel that this means to fulfill all prophecy and it might mean that but to seal up something can mean to ratify it or comfirm it. Its not really clear. But one thing we can say is that Jesus said in the destruction of Jerusalem, that all things that were written would be fulfilled. There are ways to understand this part of the vision though that would certainly show that this was fulfilled in Jesus. In fact it says in 2 Corinthians 1:20

(In Jesus) 20 For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us. (emphasis mine)

And Luke 21:20-22

20 “But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation is near. 21 Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those who are in the midst of her depart, and let not those who are in the country enter her. 22 For these are the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled.

Now, what about

• 6 to annoint the Most Holy? The Dispensationalist believes this is still future. They believe this is referring to the holy of holies in the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem in the end times. However, Hebrews tells us that when Jesus asscended into Heaven, He anointed with His own blood the Most Holy Place. Hebrews 9:12

12 Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.

In verses 19-21, of Hebrews 9, we see that Moses sprinkled with blood the tabernacle and all the utensils of ministry but Jesus annointed the Holy of Holies in Heaven with His own blood.

All 6 of these items that need to be fulfilled in the seventy weeks have been fulfilled and we have found everyone of these fulfilled in the NT. All with Scriptural proof.

It is argued by some that the finishing of the transgression, making an end of sins and bringing in everlasting righteousness are things that can’t be fulfilled because there are still sins and transgressions and everlasting worldwide righteousness hasn’t happened. and its true if you interpret those phrases to mean something that universal then we can’t claim that all these things have happened. But the question is should we be interpreting them that way? We don’t need to and certainly the 490 years has passed since they began, but we have better reason to believe that the NT equivalent of these things are the fulfillment of them. And that means we don’t need to look to any part of it for the future.