Jesus: At the Appointed Time

Introduction

There’s a lot of people who have at different times and for different reasons wanted to convince people that they were predicting the future. A common example of this would be horoscopes. For example I looked up my horoscope the other day and it told me:

“You appear to have settled into an easygoing rut of late and now you must start thinking seriously about how to get out of it. If you allow things to continue as they are you could find you are far less productive over the next few days.”

Wow, how did they know? Of course it’s an easy trick they do with horoscopes. They say something almost anyone can relate to and give advice with a lot of “if,” “may,” “might” kind of language. Notice that if I have unproductive days than it proves them right, but if I buckle down and work hard it also proves them right.

You see the more general you make a prediction, the easier it is to be right. The reverse is also true. The more specific you are the more likely you are to be wrong. So it’s a lot more impressive when somebody predicts something more specific is going to happen.

But even a specific prediction if given to enough people over a long enough time period can be accidentally fulfilled. What really seperates the coincidences from the miracles when it comes to prophecy is when a timeline is predicted. A prophet who claims not only that something will happen, but gets specific and even gives you the time that it will happen is making a bold claim. Once that time comes once and for all suddenly you have proof that the prophet either has seen or been told the future, or is a charlatan.

In the book of Daniel in the Bible we have some of the most specific prophecies that you’ll find. One of these in particular not only predicts the coming of Messiah, but also the number of years until He arrived. Let’s read together Daniel 9:20-27

Daniel 9:20–27 (CSB)

While I was speaking, praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my petition before the Lord my God concerning the holy mountain of my God—while I was praying, Gabriel, the man I had seen in the first vision, reached me in my extreme weariness, about the time of the evening offering. He gave me this explanation: “Daniel, I’ve come now to give you understanding. At the beginning of your petitions an answer went out, and I have come to give it, for you are treasured by God. So consider the message and understand the vision:

Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city—to bring the rebellion to an end, to put a stop to sin, to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy place.

Know and understand this: From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until an Anointed One, the ruler, will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks. It will be rebuilt with a plaza and a moat, but in difficult times.

After those sixty-two weeks the Anointed One will be cut off and will have nothing. The people of the coming ruler will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come with a flood, and until the end there will be war; desolations are decreed.

He will make a firm covenant with many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and offering.

And the abomination of desolation will be on a wing of the temple until the decreed destruction is poured out on the desolator.”

Now the book of Daniel is at least in part what we would call “apocalyptic literature” the same genre of writing as the book of Revelation. This means that it often employs cryptic symbolic language that only make sense if you slow down and analyse it.

For one, what the CSB translates as “seventy weeks” is actually in literal hebres “seventy sevens,” but it’s translated that way because they used the number seven as their word for a week. So you wouldn’t say “see you in two weeks” you would say, “see you in two sevens.” So if you interpret it this way as most interpreters do, this isn’t a prediction of something that will happen in 490 days specifically, and in fact pretty much every interpretation of this verse assumes that years are meant, otherwise the events Daniel are predicting wouldn’t make sense on such a short timeline.

So what is Gabriel telling Daniel will happen in these 490 years? Well these years are further broken down into three groups, the first being seven sevens or forty nine years, sixty two sevens or four hundred and thirty four years and then one final week or seven years. These years are to come “From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem.” The best candidate for what this is referring to in the Old Testament is the decree from Artaxerxes Longimanus that we read about in Nehemiah 2:1-8

Nehemiah 2:1–8 CSB

During the month of Nisan in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was set before him, I took the wine and gave it to the king. I had never been sad in his presence, so the king said to me, “Why do you look so sad, when you aren’t sick? This is nothing but sadness of heart.” I was overwhelmed with fear and replied to the king, “May the king live forever! Why should I not be sad when the city where my ancestors are buried lies in ruins and its gates have been destroyed by fire?” Then the king asked me, “What is your request?” So I prayed to the God of the heavens and answered the king, “If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor with you, send me to Judah and to the city where my ancestors are buried, so that I may rebuild it.” The king, with the queen seated beside him, asked me, “How long will your journey take, and when will you return?” So I gave him a definite time, and it pleased the king to send me. I also said to the king, “If it pleases the king, let me have letters written to the governors of the region west of the Euphrates River, so that they will grant me safe passage until I reach Judah. And let me have a letter written to Asaph, keeper of the king’s forest, so that he will give me timber to rebuild the gates of the temple’s fortress, the city wall, and the home where I will live.” The king granted my requests, for the gracious hand of my God was on me.

There are other possible decrees that people have argued could be the ones referred to here, but this is the only one that gives permission to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, which is what the Daniel prophecy seems to be predicting. We actually have a very specific date for this decree. It was given on March 5th, 444 BC. So let’s look at those three divisions of sevens and see what happened after each of them. First we have seven sevens, or 49 years. What happened 49 years after that decree? Well the best guess that I could find from the commentaries that I consulted was that this is how long it took to restore the city of Jerusalem. We know from Scripture that the walls were completed in 52 days, but there would have still been a lot of work to accomplish clearing debris and restoring the other buildings throughout the city.

Next we get to the really cool part. What happened 434 years after that? Well if you add together 434 with 49 you get 483 years. What you need to know now is that the Hebrew calendar is different than ours. We have 365 days in our annual calendar, but the Hebrew calendar is 360. So if you convert 483 years of 360 days into the gregorian calendar that we are familiar with and account for the missing years due to the errors surrounding the changing from BC to AD, you land on March of 33 AD, when Jesus entered Jerusalem on a Donkey and shortly thereafter died on the cross for our sins. Gives you chills doesn’t it?

That just leaves the last seven years, which most seem to agree don’t happen immediately after the other 483. This is because between the coming of the anointed and the last seven days it says in Daniel 9:26

Daniel 9:26 (CSB)

After those sixty-two weeks the Anointed One will be cut off and will have nothing. The people of the coming ruler will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come with a flood, and until the end there will be war; desolations are decreed.

This seems like a long drawn out time period of pause between the sixty two weeks and the one week. Plus if you read the next verse it seems to be talking about events that are predicted elsewhere to come at the second coming of Christ.

Now that’s all super cool, and a huge confidence booster for the truth of what the Bible teaches, but knowing as we do that 2 Timothy 3:16

2 Timothy 3:16 CSB

All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness,

We need to ask ourselves, What does this prophecy teach us about the nature of God and of Jesus and how we can best live as disciples of Jesus? Well I’ll break it down as usual into three points:

God Always Keeps His Promises

Jesus Put a Stop to Sin and Atoned for Iniquity

Jesus Will Bring Everlasting Righteousness

God Always Keeps His Promises

If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a hundred times. It’s basically the whole thrust of the entire Bible: God always keeps His promises. He promised Noah He would flood the earth but preserve His family and He did. He promised Abraham that he would have a son who would become a nation, and it happened. He promised Moses He would deliver the Israelites from Egypt, and He did. He promised to bring them into the Promised land, and He did, He promised David He would become King and He did, so on and so on.

He also promised to take away the promised land if the Israelites didn’t keep their covenant promises. So you can probably imagine what happened when the Israelites failed to keep God’s law. Daniel is living on the other side of God keeping His promise to judge Israel for their sins and bring them into exile. So the Israelites know well enough now that if they hear the voice of God speak, they better listen because He’s going to keep His word.

It’s in this backdrop that Daniel hears from Gabriel this prophecy. Now keep in mind that Daniel never lived to see this prophecy fulfilled. Yet Gabriel comes to Daniel to answer his petition to God and to reassure him. Daniel 9:23

Daniel 9:23 CSB

At the beginning of your petitions an answer went out, and I have come to give it, for you are treasured by God. So consider the message and understand the vision:

So how could telling Daniel about something that was going to happen long after his death reassuring at all? Because Daniel and the Israelites have experienced the kept promises of God so much in their lives that for them to hear God say that something will happen is just as good as seeing it happen. That’s the trustworthiness of God.

Now here we are in 2023 on the other side of the prophecy given to Daniel, and now it has moved from being something you can trust because of the history of God’s kept promises to further evidence that God keeps His promises. In fact it may be the prophecy that most proves that the Bible is God’s word.

Just think about this, Daniel set a time deadline on when the Messiah could come. You put that together with all the other prophecies before and after Daniel about the Messiah and you find yourself in a web of prophecies that it would simply be impossible to accidentally fulfill. So the fact that Jesus so perfectly fulfills all the Old Testament Scriptures is more than enough evidence to show each and every one of us with immense confidence that Yahweh is a God who keeps every promise that He makes.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Jesus is the ultimate fulfilled promise. He gives us the confidence and boldness to step out in faith to do God’s work knowing that everything that God has told us in His word is something that you can count on.

Jesus Put A Stop To Sin and Atoned for Iniquity

Yet Jesus did not come just to prove once and for all that God keeps His promises, though He certainly also accomplished that. Jesus had a divine mission. A mandate that was His to accomplish since the fall. Daniel 9:24

Daniel 9:24 (CSB)

Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city—to bring the rebellion to an end, to put a stop to sin, to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy place.

You see while God proves throughout the Old Testament that He is faithful and always keeps His promises, mankind proves throughout the Old Testament that they are unfaithful and hopelessly wicked. Time and time again God acts graciously and men break His laws. Time and time again God tells people to choose life and they choose death.

See I think a lot of history was designed by God to show us the necessity of the cross. First, we see in the Genesis flood that God chooses the only righteous family on earth and destroys the rest. Still as soon as they get off the ark the sinfulness of mankind takes over again, proving that you can’t just get rid of all the bad people to solve the problem. God chooses a nation and gives them His perfect law and that nation fails time and again to keep it, proving that you can’t just give people good rules and education to solve the problem. God gives the people an anointed King after His own Heart and then within a generation after Him they stray from Him and follow after other gods proving that a righteous king isn’t enough to fix the problem.

This is because no matter what your government or people group we have proven over and over again Romans 3:23

Romans 3:23 CSB

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God;

and Jeremiah 17:9

Jeremiah 17:9 CSB

The heart is more deceitful than anything else, and incurable—who can understand it?

So mankind was left with an insurmountable debt that we could not pay and wicked hearts that led us over and over again to increase our debt of sin. So the animal sacrifices of the Jews could only ever lead to an endless cycle of atonement and sin.

But there was still hope, because God promised that He would give them new hearts. Ezekiel 36:26

Ezekiel 36:26 CSB

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

And the way that He did that was through Jesus Christ’s death on the cross. Romans 5:6-11

Romans 5:6–11 CSB

For while we were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For rarely will someone die for a just person—though for a good person perhaps someone might even dare to die. But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. How much more then, since we have now been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from wrath. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, then how much more, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. And not only that, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received this reconciliation.

So through Jesus we finally have hope of breaking the endless cycle of atonement and sin and living in God’s Kingdom. Yet we are here living in the “already but not yet” kingdom, because those of us who receive Christ if you haven’t noticed yet still struggle with sin. Even Paul talked about struggling with doing the evil that he doesn’t want to do instead of living right. So are we doomed to live in a sinful world we can only escape through death? Or is there some final hope awaiting in the horizon?

Jesus will bring Everlasting Righteousness

This passage includes not just promises based on past faithfulness and which apply to us in the present, it also has promises that still await us in the future. We’ll look at the final verse of this passage, Daniel 9:27

Daniel 9:27 (CSB)

He will make a firm covenant with many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and offering. And the abomination of desolation will be on a wing of the temple until the decreed destruction is poured out on the desolator.”

Now as I’ve alluded to before, the consensus among people who study the Bible seems to be that this “one week” is referring to a future event, and that we are living in a sort of intermission in between. This verse itself doesn’t say much about this future period of seven years, except that some anointed leader will make a firm covenant in the middle of the seven years but then put an end to sacrifices in the middle of the week and set up the abomination of desolation in the temple. The glimmer of hope is that there is judgment on the horizon against this desolator as the text call him.

Now there are a few different views on what this is referring to. Some think that this abomination that causes desolation actually already happened when Rome destroyed the temple in 70 AD, but that option is kind of closed to you if you believe that the one week is still in the future. According to that view, which I loosely hold to, these events are likely referring to the same things spoken of in the book of Revelation.

Whatever your view on this particular passage, the witness of Scripture is certain on one thing: Jesus is coming back to set up a new heaven and a new earth where we will live forever a life of righteousness and peace and fully fulfill the prophecy of this passage that says the anointed one will “bring in everlasting righteousness.”

Jesus’ return is predicted in glorious splendour in Revelation 19:11-16

Revelation 19:11–16 CSB

Then I saw heaven opened, and there was a white horse. Its rider is called Faithful and True, and with justice he judges and makes war. His eyes were like a fiery flame, and many crowns were on his head. He had a name written that no one knows except himself. He wore a robe dipped in blood, and his name is called the Word of God. The armies that were in heaven followed him on white horses, wearing pure white linen. A sharp sword came from his mouth, so that he might strike the nations with it. He will rule them with an iron rod. He will also trample the winepress of the fierce anger of God, the Almighty. And he has a name written on his robe and on his thigh: King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

and we read of the new heavens and new earth in Revelation 21:1-4

Revelation 21:1–4 CSB

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I also saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband. Then I heard a loud voice from the throne: Look, God’s dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them. They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and will be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; grief, crying, and pain will be no more, because the previous things have passed away.

What a beautiful picture, Amen? And it’s the culmination of everything we talked about. We can believe in this future with certainty because God has proven that He is faithful, and we can have confidence that we will inherit this life if we accept Jesus’ death on our behalf and live according to His righteousness.

Conclusion

So that’s a lot of big ideas packed into a relatively short passage of Scripture. You know, I really like Apologetics, which is basically the art of defending the Christian faith, and I’ve over the years learned a lot of good philosophical arguments for why it is more reasonable to believe that there is a God like the Cosmological Argument, the Teleological Argument, the Moral Argument, and so on, but I’m beginning through my study of Old Testament prophecy to become convinced that one of if not the best arguments for the truth of Scripture lies in fulfilled Scripture.

Sure the existance of the universe and the beauty and evident design of nature prove the existence of a good God, but only fulfilled Scripture shows us that the Bible we hold is really His word. And it’s not like we have a few vague prophecies that sort of get fulfilled. We have a long list of excellent prophecies with specific conditions that are mindblowingly fulfilled in detail in the one person of Jesus Christ. No one else fits the bill, and since the time of Daniel’s prophecy has passed no one else ever will.

Therefore it’s a no brainer to me that this is God’s word and it is true and living by it is the only way to go from dead in our sins to alive in Christ. So if you’re here today and you’ve never really committed your life to Christ and declared your allegiance to Him through baptism now is the time. Don’t wait for a tomorrow that may for all you know never come. Serve God now and inherit eternal life.

If you have given your life to Jesus and become cynical and dry in your faith let this be a reminder that we serve a God who is faithful and true and who has a plan for an amazing future for us. Remember that you died with Christ in your baptism and that He guarantees that you will be raised with Him to an eternal life free of sorrow and death.