DANIEL 9 – The Truth of Daniel 9’s 70 Weeks Prophecy – Rabbi Michael Skobac – Jews for Judaism

So on top of page one here, you should have a passage from the ninth chapter in the book of Daniel. And this is, uh, actually a paradoxical kind of Christian proof text because on the one hand, we're going to see that it could be the very most powerful proof text that Christians have potentially. And yet, we'll see that in many ways, they have difficulty presenting it.

So let's just dive right into this passage, beginning with the 24th verse. Daniel writes, "Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people." We're reading now from the King James version, just about the most popular Christian translation of the Bible. "Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon the holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end to sin, 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."

It sounds like the introduction here is saying that there's a, there's going to be a total transformation of the world order. It's going to be reconciliation and end of sin, uh, everlasting righteousness. It's describing what seems to be a utopian kind of world. And the prophet begins by saying that there is a period of 70 weeks that are determined to actually bring about this transformed world.

And now in verse 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 trouble is times."

In verse 26, "And after 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."

And then verse 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 conservation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate."

Obviously not the simplest passage to decipher. And it's basically used by missionaries in one of two ways. The most prevalent way in which Christian missionaries use this passage is to make the assertion simply to say that, you see, from this passage in Daniel, that the Messiah is going to come and be cut off, be killed before the destruction of the Second Temple. That's basically the, the simplest way in which missionaries use this passage to make the assertion without getting into a lot of detail, without getting into a lot of calculation, simply to make the assertion that based upon this passage in Daniel, what you see is that the Messiah is going to come and be killed before the destruction of the Second Temple. You see that, let's say, primarily in verse 26. "And after the three score, after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself. And the people of the Prince that shall destroy the city and the sanctuary."

So we see what's going to happen is that the Messiah is going to be killed, and then the city and the sanctuary are going to be destroyed. So they basically present that as their assertion. And then they ask the rhetorical question, "Well, who is this Messiah? Who is this Messiah that was killed, that was cut off before the destruction of the Second Temple?" That's the simplest way in which missionaries try to use this passage.

The more ambitious missionaries actually try to go much further. They say that Daniel here is actually providing us with a very precise timeline. He's giving us very precise dates. And the missionaries argue, we'll see how this works out in a few minutes, that if you follow the historical timeline provided by Daniel, what we are getting here is not just simply a vague, uh, presentation about the Messiah being killed sometime before the destruction of the Second Temple, but the claim that Daniel here is giving us the precise year, the precise year in which the Messiah is going to be killed. And what the missionaries will do is calculate this passage and show that it works out exactly the year that Jesus was crucified.

Now, that's, I believe, an incredibly strong proof, or at least a strong piece of evidence for Jesus, if it were true. Meaning that if this were true, if Daniel was really giving us the exact year in which the Messiah is going to be killed, and it turned out to be the exact year that Jesus was killed, obviously it wouldn't prove that Jesus was the Messiah. It could have been someone else that was killed at that time, but it would be quite strong. And I believe that this passage, again, if it were actually teaching that, would be much stronger than what is normally considered to be the most powerful Christian missionary proof text, which is Isaiah 53.

Because we saw in our class dealing with the suffering servant in Isaiah chapter 53, that that passage had two, among many problems. There were two serious problems. One problem with Isaiah 53 is that when you studied that passage in Isaiah, it says nothing about Messiah. It doesn't tell you that the passage is speaking about the Messiah. It just speaks about God's suffering servant. And the missionaries have to argue that somehow the suffering servant is the Messiah. But the passage itself doesn't really contain any clue, any textual hint, that the passage in Isaiah is dealing with the topic of the Messiah. That's one weakness.

Another weakness is that we saw that even if you could say that Isaiah chapter 53 is about the Messiah, if you could say that, the other problem is that there's nothing in that chapter that specifically points to and identifies Jesus. Meaning that all Isaiah 53 would be saying is that the Messiah is going to suffer. But ultimately, it could be speaking about anyone that suffers. Why assume that it's pointing to Jesus specifically? So the one, two of the major problems with Isaiah 53 is that there's nothing in the passage that specifically identifies the Messiah as its subject. And number two, it doesn't really in any way point specifically to Jesus.

However, Daniel chapter nine seems to overcome both of those deficiencies. Number one, at least if you read the King James translation here, it speaks specifically about the Messiah. You can't get better than that. And secondly, again, if the missionary calculus works out, it would be pointing to Jesus, at least in the sense that it identifies the year in which this Messiah would be killed. And if that corresponds exactly to the year of Jesus' death, I would say that's a fairly strong piece of evidence to back up the claims that Jesus was the Messiah.

So when you think about it, this chapter in Daniel should be the most powerful, the best Christian proof text out there. And you're ever going to see, things are not that simple. We're going to see that it doesn't live up to its height in many ways, but we'll work that out as we go through the class tonight.

One of the problems, and we're going to basically spend a lot of time tonight deconstructing the Christian reading of this, or the missionary reading of this passage, it has a plethora of problems. There are many, many problems with the way missionaries try to explain this passage. One of them should be obvious to all of you right from the start. Meaning that what we've done at this point is dive right into the middle of chapter 9 in Daniel, into verse 24. And it's obvious that we're in the middle of something, and we don't really know what's going on here. Um, who is being spoken to? What's the context? What's going on? I mean, this clearly is a difficult passage. And to rip it out of its context and present presented as if it was a passage that works all by itself is obviously difficult.

And usually when missionaries refer to this chapter in Daniel, they don't say Daniel chapter nine. They say Daniel chapter 9, verses 24 to 27, or usually verses 25 to 27. They zero in on these three or four verses. But it leaves the reader with the question, what's going on here? And we'll get to that obviously tonight. What we're going to do is begin slowly. We're going to point out many of the problems with the Christian reading. And again, we're going to be building up as we go through this. Let's at least begin now with looking at the King James, uh, version that we have in front of us.

One of the problems, uh, here is that the King James editors, uh, the people who put this translation together, took incredible editorial license with their translation and their rendering of this passage in Daniel. For example, point out a number of these difficulties. The Hebrew word in chapter 9 here, verse 25, is the word *mashiach*. So the word *mashiach* appears here in the Hebrew of verse 25. The problem is that throughout the Jewish Bible, the word *mashiach* appears many, many times, dozens and dozens of times. And if you were to read a King James translation of the Bible, it is never translated as Messiah. Because obviously, Messiah is not a translation of the Hebrew word *mashiach*. Right? The Hebrew word doesn't mean Messiah. Messiah is not a translation of *mashiach*. Messiah is just an English rendering of that Hebrew word. For example, my Hebrew name is Yitzhak, which is difficult to say for people that don't speak Hebrew, they choke on the part. So it becomes Isaac, right? It's an English version of the Hebrew word. But Isaac is not a translation of Yitzhak. It means "he will laugh." So usually, the King James translation translates the Hebrew word whenever it occurs in the Bible, and again, dozens and dozens of times, the King James translation always renders *mashiach* as "anointed" or "an anointed one." That's what the word means. It means that someone or something is anointed. Oil has been applied to it.

There are only two exceptions. Two places in the entire Bible where the King James translators render the Hebrew word *mashiach* just simply as Messiah. They don't translate it. They give you the English version, the English equivalent of the Hebrew word *mashiach*. The question is, why? Why all of a sudden, after dozens and dozens of times when they've always consistently translated *mashiach* as "anointed," why is this left basically, is the Hebrew left as the Messiah?

Second problem. You all know that Hebrew letters do not have lowercase and uppercase. There's no capital letters in Hebrew. And yet, what you'll notice the King James translators did was to capitalize the word Messiah. Right? So it doesn't just have the, the, the word Messiah here instead of anointed, but it capitalizes it. Again, we're going to understand in a moment why these, like this, license was taken.

And the third problem is that what the King James translators did in verse 25 was to insert the definite article where it doesn't appear in the Hebrew. The Hebrew does not say "the Messiah." The Hebrew simply says, [Music] "an anointed prince, an anointed ruler." But what the King James translator did here was to basically insert a word that doesn't appear in the original Hebrew. He puts the definite article in, "the Messiah."

Now, again, what is the King James translator doing by these three, that could seem like almost insignificant editorial, editorializations? Number one, rendering *mashiach* as Messiah instead of anointed. Number two, to capitalize it, Messiah, capital M. And number three, to insert the definite article where it doesn't appear in the original Hebrew. The reason is very simple. What the King James editor translators are trying to do is to direct our minds. They're trying to essentially tell us that this passage in Daniel is speaking about the Messiah, right? That special anointed one that Jews and Christians debate about, uh, forever. King James is obviously trying to make the point very, very, in a very non-subtle way, that this chapter 9 of Daniel is speaking about the Messiah, capital M, and the definite article.

There are many other problems. Let's look together in verse 25. And again, we have not yet explained the context here. We'll be getting to that, and things will become clear. But just to see the problems with the reading here in the King James translation. In verse 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."

So what the translator here is doing is telling us that there'll be a period of time that begins with a commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem. We're going to see that that's another one of King James translations. We're going to see that this passage is rife with mistranslations. The original Hebrew does not speak about a commandment. Many of the Christian translations have the word decree. The original Hebrew does not speak about a commandment or a decree to restore and to build Jerusalem. But we'll get to that a little bit later.

But what the King James editor here says is that from that point in time, from the going forth of that commandment or decree to restore and to build Jerusalem, how long will it take until this Messiah the Prince will be coming? What's the period of time? So according to this translation, what we're told is it will take seven weeks and threescore and two weeks. Three score is 60. When the score of weeks is 20 weeks, three score is 60 weeks. So the way he's reading this is that it'll be a period of seven plus 62 weeks from the going forth of the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem until the Messiah comes will be 69 weeks.

Now, one of the questions that arises, no matter who is reading this passage in Daniel, is what does it refer to when it speaks about weeks? Is it referring to a seven-day week? Is that what it's referring to? So this is a concept that basically all Jews and Christians agree to, that this chapter in Daniel is speaking about periods not of seven weeks in the sense of a seven-day week, but seven weeks of years. So when Daniel refers to a week here, the word "week," the Hebrew is *shavu'a*, it refers to a period of seven years. The week here, again, is not seven days. A week here is seven years.

So what Daniel is saying is that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem until the coming of the Messiah, again, according to the King James translator, is a period of 69 weeks of years. So again, if a week of years is seven years, so talking about a period of 69 times seven, which is 483. So what the King James translation does is to essentially collapse or telescope these two periods of time into one period of time. He takes a period of seven weeks of years, which is again, seven times seven, or 49 years, and he attaches that to a period of 62 weeks of years, which is 62 times seven, or 434, for a total of 483.

Now, the problem here is very simple. The problem is that in no language to be expressed the number 69 by saying 62 plus 7. If Daniel wanted to tell us that something was going to happen after a period of 69 years, Daniel would have said it would take place after 60 and 9. That's how we say the number 69 in English, sixty-nine. And it's the same rule in any language. The number 69 is expressed by the number 60 plus the number 9, 69. And no one would ever express the number 69 by saying 62 plus 7.

And what happens here when he essentially combines these two different periods of time into one period of time is that he essentially eliminates an entire character from the text. Meaning that what we're going to see happens here is that Daniel is describing two different anointed people. Daniel is describing an anointed prince, an anointed prince or anointed ruler, who comes after a period of 49 years, seven weeks of years. And then a second anointed one, who comes after an additional period of 434 years, or 62 weeks of years. And because the King James translation collapses these two periods of time into one period of time, he gives the impression that it's speaking about one anointed person, one what he calls Messiah, who comes after a period of 483 years, 69 weeks of years.

So that's a very serious problem in the King James translation. And I want to share with you a number of reasons why we know that this is incorrect. If you look on the bottom of page one, you'll see that as an example, in Genesis chapter 5, verse 27, we have someone who's living 969 years. So when the Torah wants to express that number, it expresses the 69 year part as *tash'ah vishishim veshava* - nine and sixty, right? So it's not seven and 62, but it's nine and 60 to give you the number 69. This is essentially the way that number would be expressed in the Hebrew Bible and any other Bible. 69 is always expressed as 60 plus 9, not in any other combination.

Another problem is that the King James reading ignores a punctuation mark that we have in the Hebrew text, which serves as a semicolon. It's called the *etnah* or the *atnach*. So what you'll see there is that in the original text, it speaks about, let's actually jump now to the Jewish translation of Daniel 9. So you'll see in verse 25, "And you shall know and comprehend from the going forth of the word to return and rebuild Jerusalem until an anointed prince will be seven weeks. Seven weeks, which is 49 years." And you'll see there a semicolon. And the Hebrew, if you look at the Hebrew side, it speaks about *shavu'ot shiv'a* and underneath the word seven there is that which again is the Hebrew symbol that's used for a semicolon. So what King James does essentially is to ignore that semicolon and run the two periods of time together. He says, "seven weeks, comma, and threescore and two weeks." In the King James, again, it becomes all together, "seven weeks and threescore and two weeks," as opposed to breaking it up into two separate periods of time.

The proof that the proof that the 62 weeks, the 62 weeks of years, is a separate period of time comes in verse 26. If you look at verse 26, and again, the Jewish translation, you'll see that it says, "And after the 62 weeks, after the 62 weeks, an anointed one will be cut off." Now again, here it's not the anointed prince. The anointed prince comes after seven weeks of years. Here, after the 62 weeks, and you'll see that in the Hebrew, there's a definite article, "after the 62 weeks." The Hebrew makes it clear that it's a separate period of time. It uses a definite article. "After the 62 weeks of years, then just an anointed one comes, not described [Music] as an anointed prince, just an anointed one. He comes and is cut off."

So what becomes clear in the Hebrew of Daniel 9 is that we're talking about two different anointed people. First, in verse 25, an anointed prince, an anointed prince who comes after a period of seven weeks of years, 49 years. And then in verse 26, 434 years later, just an anointed person or anointed thing comes and is cut off. What's interesting is if you go back to the King James version, in verse 26, here he eliminates the definite article. Here, in the Hebrew, it appears in verse 26, but in the King James, he takes out the definite article and just says, "And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off." Now, there's no reason why in verse 26, uh, in the King James translation, it should be talking about a period of threescore and two weeks, meaning 62 weeks of years. There's no significance to that period of time for the King James translator. It really just should have said, "And after the, the, the, uh, the 69 weeks of years, the Messiah is going to be cut off." So it's unfortunate that the King James, uh, is guilty here of some what seem to be minor problems, but they really are manipulating the text in a way that creates a false impression.

Now, I'd like to show you on page two, is that many of the translators of the Christian Bible understood that the King James version was inaccurate. And, uh, actually quite a few here, this is not all of them, but many of the Christian versions of the Jewish Bible actually correctly break this passage up in a way to show that there is a semicolon, uh, or a break between the two periods of time, and that is describing two different people. What's interesting is that the King James version that we have today, that we would buy today, is not the original King James version. The original version came out in 1611. Since that original version, it's been revised many times. But if you look at the original King James version in 1611, you'll see that it actually gets it correct. He writes, "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." Or a period for a period of 62 weeks, 434 years. "The street shall be built again and the wall, even in trouble with times." So there, he actually gets the, the, the syntax correctly. So too with the King James version of 1885. "Know therefore and discern that from the going forth of the commandment to restore it to rebuild Jerusalem unto the anointed one." Interesting, he doesn't say "the Messiah" here. "Unto the anointed one." Although in the original Hebrew, there's no definite article. "The Prince shall be seven weeks; again here is a colon. And for threescore and two weeks it shall be built again with street and moat, even in troubled times." The New American Bible, which is a more modern translation, "Know then and understand this: From the utterance of the word regarding the rebuilding of Jerusalem and to the coming of an anointed and a leader there shall be seven weeks; during 62 weeks it shall be rebuilt with streets and trenches in a time of affliction." And again, you can read the rest of these modern translations, they all actually break up the passage correctly.

Let's turn back to page one, and I want to point out just another problem with the King James reading. If you go back to verse 25, on top of the page, "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." So again, it says that this Messiah is coming after a period of 69 weeks of years. And then, "the street shall be built again and the wall, even in trouble as times." Is a phrase which seems to be hanging in out of nowhere. It seems to be, uh, just coming out of left field. It's not clear why that last part of verse 25 is just there at all. It doesn't attach itself to anything.

Let's move on to verse 26. In verse 26, "And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off." And here, the, not just King James, but many of the Christian translations render this, "but not for himself." So many Christian translations have the Messiah being cut off, but not for himself. The implication is that his death was for the purpose of other people, right? It was really to serve as something important for other people, namely the Christian claim that his death was for the purpose of atoning for other people. That's the implication of saying, "but not for himself."

And we go on, "And the people of the Prince shall come and destroy the city and the sanctuary." And here we have a serious problem with the Christian readings of this passage. It's clear from verse 26 that at the same time, essentially, that the Messiah, this Messiah, is cut off, at during the same period of time, the city and the sanctuary are destroyed. That's very clear from the reading of verse 26. The problem is that from a Christian point of view, they maintain that this Messiah who's cut off, as Jesus, Jesus is killed approximately the year 30. But we know that the sanctuary was not destroyed until the year 70. That's 40 years later. Now, 40 years, if you take every seven years as a week, so 40 years would be five and a half weeks of years. And so what happens here is there's a gap in this passage. There's a gap of five and a half weeks of years. But it's not at all accounted for in the Christian reading of the passage. Meaning that what Daniel should have said, if the passage was really speaking about Jesus being the one who's cut off, it should have said, "And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself. And after another five weeks, for another five and a half weeks, then the city and the sanctuary will be destroyed." So the problem here is that there's a gap of five and a half weeks of years that's unaccounted for in the chronology. Right? We're going to see that according to the Jewish reading of this passage, we don't have any problem of a five and a half week gap of years.

Another problem, again, I'm going to be just cataloging a whole boatload of problems for us tonight, is the Christian translation of "but not for himself." Now, again, that translation serves the needs of Christian apologists well, because again, they're trying to make the case that this Messiah is cut off for the purpose of atoning for the sins of the world. But the Hebrew simply says, *lo*. The Hebrew is *v'lo nishpat*, which is better translated as "and he will have nothing" or "he will not be." The sense is that when this anointed is cut off, he will lose something that he had previously. He will lose something that he previously had. Uh, there's no sense that he's being cut off, but not for himself. That, that turn of phrase, "but not for himself," is not an accurate translation.

Okay, let's move on. Probably the biggest problem that the missionaries face with this passage, you can imagine this is a serious problem, is that the calculations don't add up. The calculations simply don't add up. Which is probably one of the reasons why this passage is rarely presented. Probably most people that would present this are not capable of doing the math themselves, or in order to present this properly, the average listener would go into a coma listening to, you know, sort of a detailed analysis of how all these weeks work out. And the calculation, it's not an easy to present kind of passage. So again, the way missionaries normally present this is by skipping all of the math and just making an assertion, going to the bottom line, which is simply to say that the Messiah is killed before the destruction of the Second Temple. But we're going to see that regardless of how they try to present this, the calculations simply don't work out.

Let's see why that is. Now, we're going to have to try to understand how the missionaries calculate this. So going back to verse 25, "Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem." Now again, we saw that the Hebrew text does not speak about a commandment or a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. The Hebrew word is simply *davar*, a word, "going forth of a word." But the King James here translates it as, or mistranslates as, "commandment." And they ask the question, "When was there a commandment given? When was there a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem?" So virtually all missionaries assert that this decree was given by King Artaxerxes. King Artaxerxes. And they say it was given in the year 444, 444, you know, I'm from New York, now BCE, 444 BCE.

Let's at least work through the math from a Christian point of view, and then ask our questions. If the going forth of this commandment was in the year 444 BCE, so they're going to say that a period of 483 years later, right, a period of 62 plus 7 weeks of years, 69 weeks of years, which is 483 years later, this anointed one, this Messiah, comes and is killed. The problem is that if you add 483 to the starting point of 444, you come out to the year 39 of the Common Era. Now, again, this is, this is going according to the Christian math, right? It's, we would ask a question. We would ask a few questions. We would say, "How do you know?" We would say to the Christian, "How do you know that this decree that we're speaking about to historical Jerusalem was the one given by Artaxerxes in the year 444 BCE?"

The truth is, when you read through the scriptures, there were four different decrees given by various kings regarding the return to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. Four different decrees that were given. So why do the Christians pick on this particular decree, the one by Artaxerxes that's mentioned in the book of Nehemiah, what they refer to as Nehemiah chapter 2? In the second chapter in the book of Nehemiah, it speaks about this decree, permission being given by King Artaxerxes, given to Nehemiah, to go back and restore and rebuild Jerusalem. So we could ask a very obvious question. Number one, why did you assume that's the decree that Daniel's speaking about when there are three other decrees in the Bible that speak about a king giving permission to return to Jerusalem? Especially when this one that the missionaries point to is the last of the four. Meaning that the, the first three are mentioned earlier in the book of Ezra. Ezra mentions, uh, I'll just tell you where they are, in chapter 1, in the book of Ezra, verses 1 to 4. So Ezra mentions the decree of Cyrus for the Jewish people to go back to Jerusalem and restore and rebuild the city and the temple. Then there's a decree by someone else named Artaxerxes. Artaxerxes was almost like a, uh, generic name for rulers, like the name Pharaoh. So in the book of Ezra, chapter 7, verses 11 to 16, there is a decree by Artaxerxes that was given to Ezra to go back and restore and build Jerusalem. And then even earlier, there's a decree by Darius in the sixth chapter of the book of Ezra, verses 12 and 13. So there were three earlier decrees, so to speak, for the Jewish people to return to Israel, rebuild and restore Jerusalem. And yet the missionaries say, "No, Daniel is referring to the last of the decrees that was mentioned in the book of Nehemiah, chapter 2, the decree by Artaxerxes given to Nehemiah." So that's one question. Why do they pick on the last of the decrees?

Secondly, why do they assume that this decree was given in the year 444? Where did they get that year from? How did they determine that year? And again, it's not so clear. So those are two questions we could ask about the missionary assertion that the decree that Daniel is referring to is a decree by Artaxerxes in the year 444. Again, that's the Christian missionary assertion. But the problem is, even with their assertion, even with understanding the passage in Daniel the way they would like us to read it, the math doesn't work out. The math gets them to the year 39 of the Common Era. Again, 444 plus, if you go from that year 444 BCE and you add 483 years, you come to the year 39 of the Common Era. No one says, no one has Jesus being crucified anywhere near the year 39. Most people have been crucified between the year 28 and the year 33, 33 at the outside. So we have a problem here. We have, according to the math of the missionaries, this Messiah being cut off in the year 39.

So what is a missionary to do? So if you ever studied physics or math, you know something called the fudge factor. And that's what they do. They say, "Well, Daniel was not speaking here about normal years. He wasn't speaking, he wasn't referring to normal regular years like we all would know about." They claim that Daniel was referring to something that they call prophetic years. And they claim that in the Bible, a prophetic year does not have, as a solar year would have, 365 and a quarter days. They say a prophetic year has 360 days. So what they do is the following calculation. They say that if Daniel is referring to a period of 69 weeks of years, which is 483 years, so they want to find out how many prophetic days would that be if a prophetic year is 360 years. So they do is they multiply 360, again, that's a prophetic year, 360 days, by 483 years, which is again, the number that they're working with, period of 69 weeks of years. So 483 times 360 gives you 170,880 days of prophetic years. Now, what we want to do is reconvert that to solar years. So how would you reconvert 173,880 days of prophetic years? What you do is divide that by 365.25 to get the actual number of solar years. And if you do that calculation, 173,880 divided by 880 divided by 365 and a quarter gives you 476 solar years. So if we now start off with, start off with Artaxerxes' decree in the in the year 444 BCE, again, where do they get that as the 444? How do they know that that decree was given in that year? That could be discussed. But if you begin with 444 BCE and you add 476 years, you come out to the year 32 of the Common Era, 32 CE, which they will say is the year that Jesus was crucified.

The problem here is very obvious. The problem is that this is bogus. And that there's no such concept. There's no existence of anything like a prophetic year anywhere in the Bible or in Jewish sources. It's not mentioned anywhere in the Bible. It's a total invention of the missionaries. As we say, necessity is the mother of invention. They needed a fudge factor to be able to get from the year 39 back to a year that was more reasonable in terms of the death of Jesus. So they came up with this convenient, uh, idea of a prophetic year.

The truth is that in the Jewish Bible, we know how the years were calculated. The truth is that according to Genesis chapter 1, verses 14 to 18, the Bible says that we're to use the sun and the moon. The sun and the moon, the Bible says, will be for signs for seasons, for days and for years. What we're told in the Bible is that we will calculate our calendar by the sun and the moon. Now, what happens is the Jewish calendar is essentially a lunar calendar. The Bible says, while the Jews are still slaves in Egypt, whether about to become free, "this month, the month of Nisan, the month they were liberated, God says will be the first of months to you." And so throughout the Jewish Bible, we're always speaking about the, the seventh month, the tenth month. The, the Hebrew calendar is clearly a lunar calendar. The problem is that a lunar calendar is 354 days long. A lunar month is usually 29 or 30 days long, and generally speaking, a lunar year has 354 days. A solar year, again, 365 and a quarter, which means there's an 11-day difference between a lunar year and a solar year.

Now, the problem is that if you maintained a lunar calendar, like the Muslims do, an Islamic calendar is purely lunar. So what happens is every three years, you're losing a month. There's 11 years, 11 days you lose every year. After three years, you lose a month. After nine years, you lose three months. So what happens in a purely lunar calendar is that the holidays begin traveling around through all the seasons. For example, Ramadan in an Islamic calendar can be in the winter, spring, summer, fall, it depends, right? How the correlation is between the lunar calendar and the solar calendar. The problem is that the Jews could not have a purely lunar calendar because the Bible says that we're supposed to celebrate Passover in the spring. So if we had a purely lunar calendar, we would not be able to celebrate Passover in the spring. It would be in the spring for a few years, but then several years later, it's going to be in the summer, and a few years after that, it's going to be in the fall, and years after that, it's going to be in the winter. So because we're again told to use both the sun and the moon to calculate our seasons and our calendar, what the Jewish people do is to add, every approximately three or four years, we add an additional month to our year. We have a 13-month year to add 30 days so that we make up for those, again, if it's 11 days every year, or lost every year, so after three years, you're losing a month. So we put in another month every approximately three years. That's called our leap year, and that ensures that the Hebrew lunar calendar is going to basically be in sync with the solar calendar, and our holidays will maintain themselves in the proper season.

Now, there's a very serious problem that missionaries are playing when they insist that Daniel here is giving you the exact year the Messiah is going to be killed. They're playing actually a very dangerous game. Because the truth is that they don't really know the exact year that Jesus was killed. They don't know the exact year. And what we see, they've had to do is they begin with Daniel. They assume that Daniel is predicting the exact year that Jesus dies. So what they do is they determine the year that Jesus died based upon where it seems Daniel is pointing them. Meaning they don't begin with an exact knowledge of when Jesus died and then see, "Oh, does that fit in with the chronology of Daniel?" They reconstruct the entire chronology of Daniel with their assumption at the outset that Jesus was the Messiah. If he was the Messiah, and Daniel is calculating exactly when the Messiah is going to be killed. So the Christian then is able to figure out when Jesus was killed based upon where Daniel is pointing. The problem for the Christian is, if they received some information later on, they gave them the actual date that Jesus was killed, and it didn't line up with Daniel's calculus, then Daniel would not be helpful to them. On the contrary, Daniel would then prove that Jesus was not the Messiah. So they're playing a very dangerous game when they try to show that Daniel is giving us the exact date when the Messiah is to be killed. If that's the case, then they have to be very sure that Jesus died on the exact date that Daniel is pointing to. And if Jesus does not die on that exact date, then the missionary case is in big trouble.

Now, I asked the question before, it was a pretty much a rhetorical question. I asked the question, "Why did missionaries pick the decree of Artaxerxes as their starting point for the calculation in Daniel as opposed to the other three decrees that were given?" Again, there was a decree given by Cyrus in the first chapter of Ezra, verses 1 to 4. There was a decree given by Darius in the book of Ezra, chapter 6. There was a decree given by Artaxerxes to Ezra in chapter 7 of the book of Ezra. And then in the book of Nehemiah, chapter 2, a decree by Artaxerxes to Nehemiah. So I asked the question before, why did the missionaries pick, of all of these decrees, the one by Nehemiah, which was the last of the four? So again, the answer is very obvious. They picked that one because it plays into their assumption that Jesus was the Messiah. And therefore, they're going to pick the decree that at least works out the best for them in terms of arriving at the date of Jesus's crucifixion. But again, that's working backwards. It's what we call circular reasoning, right? Start, it's putting the cart before the horse.

Now, there's a very serious reason why Daniel would not be referring to Artaxerxes' decree to Daniel here in the ninth chapter. It's speaking about a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. Now, the truth is that by the time the second chapter of Nehemiah comes around, this is the, again, this is the decree by Artaxerxes that was given to Nehemiah, the ones that Christians point to. By that point in time, there was no reason to give a decree to return to Israel to rebuild Jerusalem and rebuild the temple and rebuild the city. Chapter 2 in the book of Nehemiah took place at a time when Jerusalem had basically been rebuilt. And if you study chapter 2 of Nehemiah, all that Artaxerxes is doing is giving the permission, and really not permission, but safe passage to go back to Jerusalem to repair the breaches that were made in the walls and gates around Jerusalem. They weren't going back to rebuild the city. Well, we see that when Nehemiah goes back to Jerusalem to Israel, people are living there. There are houses. The place is inhabited. It's just that there were breaches that were made in the walls and in the gates, and that's when he was given permission to go back to repair. So picking Artaxerxes' decree to [Music] in the second chapter of the book is actually the worst of the four decrees because that specifically was not a decree to go back to restore and rebuild the city.

Now, if we think about it, on some level, it's counterintuitive. It would be counterintuitive to maintain that Daniel here actually, Daniel was speaking on behalf of God, that God is giving through Daniel the exact year in which the Messiah is going to come and die. Again, that's the Christian assertion. The Christian assertion is that Daniel is giving us the exact year that the Messiah is going to come and be killed. And I think that it's really counterintuitive to make that claim. Why? Because ultimately, what God would be doing would be to be painting himself into a box. Why would it serve God's purposes to tell the Jewish people in advance exactly what year the Messiah is going to come and be killed? And the reason I say this is because we have other places in the Bible where there were people who were interested in revealing when the end is going to come. There were other stories where people wanted to find out when is it going to happen? When is the end going to take place? The first time it happens is in the book of Genesis, where Jacob, at the end of the book of Genesis, Jacob wants to reveal the case, the end times, to his sons. So the Bible says, and right after saying that Jacob wanted to reveal the end to his sons, nothing is revealed. We don't find in the continuation of the story that Jacob reveals anything to his sons. So the rabbinic interpretation of that story in Genesis is that yes, that's what Jacob's intention was, but God took away the ability. God didn't allow him to. Right? It wasn't in God's interest to have people know that kind of information.

And then we see actually in the book of Daniel itself, at the end, very end of the book of Daniel, Daniel is interested in revealing when is the end going to take place. In the 12th chapter, the very last chapter of Daniel, starting with verse 8, Daniel wants to know when is the end going to be. And what does God say to Daniel at the very end of the book? He says, "Seal up the vision. It is not to be revealed." God is not interested in telling us exactly when everything is going to happen. It wouldn't serve God's purposes. It would unnecessarily paint him into a box. He doesn't need to have that determined ahead of time. And he consistently in the Bible does not want it to be revealed. So why in Daniel chapter 9 would God have Daniel revealed to everyone exactly the year in which the Messiah would be killed?

I think there are many, many other problems we could go through. We're going to probably come up with a few of them as we go through the rest of the evening. But I think based on what we've seen so far, it looks like this passage in Daniel is not a very strong proof text for Jesus. And I think that if we [Music] reversed our thinking for a few moments, we can see that there's something very peculiar going on. Again, we mentioned before that if the Christian reading of Daniel 9 was accurate, that's a big if, but if the Christian reading of Daniel 9 was accurate, that would make it a very, very powerful proof text. Meaning that of all, I mean, we've, in this course, we've gone through quite a few of the Christian proof texts, and they're quite lame. They're very lame. They're either based upon passages that have nothing to do with the Messiah, they're mistranslated, they're quoted out of context, they're based upon circular reasoning. I mean, most of the Christian proof texts are like, we say, cotton candy. You bite into them, and there's nothing there. But here, they would seem to have, again, according to their reading, a very strong argument. Again, their reading is that Daniel is telling us exactly when the Messiah is going to be killed, and it turns out to be exactly the.

year Jesus was killed, that would be very strong stuff. What's the problem? So the problem is that the Christian Bible, the New Testament, puts forth many of these so-called prophecies from the Jewish Bible, right, establishing that Jesus was the Messiah. We studied in this class, for example, Matthew chapter 2, which gave a few of these prophecies which were extremely weak. So they referred to, for example, uh, Hosea, which speaks about the Messiah going down to Egypt. And then we saw that Hosea is not speaking about the Messiah. The Messiah that Hosea is speaking about is the Jewish people coming out of Egypt. And then we saw that the second chapter of Matthew refers to a passage in Jeremiah, claiming that it's a prophecy for the killing of all the babies in Bethlehem by Herod, right? The New Testament says that after Herod found out that the Messiah was born in Bethlehem, he killed all the Jewish babies under the age of two in Bethlehem and all the surrounding cities. And Matthew says that this fulfilled a prophecy from the book of Jeremiah, chapter 31. And yet, when we read Jeremiah 31, it doesn't speak about Rachel there weeping for children who were killed. It speaks about Rachel weeping for her children who are taken into exile, that will come back to the land of Israel. So we have in the New Testament dozens of quote unquote proof texts that are incredibly weak and incredibly lame. And here they could have wheeled out Daniel 9 at some point. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Jesus, someone could have said, "Hey, Jesus is the Messiah because he fulfilled the exact timeline in Daniel." No one says it in the New Testament. It would have been a slam dunk. They had a beautiful case to make. And yet, the New Testament never wheels out Daniel chapter 9 and makes the claim that Jesus fulfilled the timeline of Daniel chapter 9.

Justin Martyr was one of the early Christian apologists. He wrote a very famous work called The Dialogue with the Jew named Trifo. And in his Dialogue with the Jew Trifo, Justin Martyr cites hundreds, hundreds of passages from the Jewish Bible to prove that Jesus was the Messiah, hundreds of prophecies. And yet, he never cites Daniel chapter nine.

Here's a book that was written by the late Moshe Rosen, the founder of Jews for Jesus. And in his book, Overture to Armageddon, Moshe Rosen writes the following. He says, "Following is a complete list, a complete list of all 61 of the major messianic prophecies of the Jewish scripture and their fulfillments." So here he's giving you, he claims that the Jewish Bible has 61 major messianic prophecies. And by the way, in his list of these messianic prophecies, he has Herod killing the children from Jeremiah 31. He has, uh, another passage we studied in this class, the, uh, Psalm 41, verse 9, the Messiah betrayed by a close friend. We saw that that Psalm has nothing to do with the Messiah. I mean, we saw that so many of these passages that Moshe Rosen quotes here are so incredibly weak and lame. And yet, in his list of all the major messianic prophecies of the Jewish scriptures, he does not mention Daniel chapter 9. Why not? If it was so strong, if it was so powerful, if it gave you the exact year that the Messiah was supposed to be killed, and it worked out to the year that Jesus was crucified, that would be wonderful to prove that Jesus was the Messiah. That would be the strongest proof text around. And yet, it doesn't make it into the New Testament. It doesn't make it into Justin Martyr. It doesn't make it into Moshe Rosen. And we're going to see tonight why maybe it doesn't make it into these sources.

What is actually going on in Daniel chapter nine? I mean, we've looked now at some of the problems with the Christian reading, not all of them. But obviously, in order to understand what's really going on here, there shouldn't be any mystery at this point. We have to read the entire chapter. It is totally unrealistic to think that you can parachute down onto verse 24 in an extremely complicated and obscure passage and make heads or tails out of it. It's impossible. So what we have to do is obviously go back to the beginning of the chapter. And when I've asked this question to Christians, I almost never get an answer in the same way. When Christians ask us, "Did you ever read Isaiah chapter 7, verse 14?" That's the passage of Isaiah that they claim refers to the virgin birth of the Messiah. And when I ask Christians, "Well, that's chapter 7, verse 14, but what's going on in chapter 7, verse 1? What, what's the context of chapter seven in Isaiah?" I virtually never get a Christian who knows the answer to the question. They simply know chapter 7, verse 14, biblical rolodex, right? That the Messiah is born of a virgin. But what's going on in that chapter? What is Isaiah speaking about? What's the context? Very few people know. And in the same way, those Christians who I speak with that might challenge me and quote Daniel 9, they'll say, "Daniel 9, that he has to be killed in the year 32, the Messiah." Say, "Okay, but what's happening in Daniel chapter 9? What's taking place in the beginning of the chapter?" And we're going to see that very few Christians know the answer to this. And it's very clear what's going on in the beginning of the chapter.

So turn, if you will, to page three. I want to mention before we get into this one further point. By the way, what Daniel says about this Messiah, this anointed one, in verse 26, that's cut off. So Daniel says that this anointed one will be cut off, yikaret. Now, in the Jewish Bible, this is a term that's invariably used for wicked people. Throughout the Jewish Bible, there are many ways of saying that someone is killed, that someone is, their life is going to be ended. But when the Jewish Bible uses this term, yikaret, to be cut off, that's a term in the Jewish Bible that's usually referred to, it's reserved for people that are extremely wicked, and they are cut off. Let's look at a few examples on top of page three. In Exodus chapter 12, "Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses. Whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day shall be cut off from Israel." Right, the very serious penalty for eating bread on Passover. Numbers chapter 9, "But anyone who is clean and is not on the journey and yet refrains from keeping the Passover shall be cut off from the people for not presenting the Lord's offering." A person didn't bring the Passover lamb, they were cut off. In Psalm 37, "If the Lord loves justice, he will not forsake his faithful ones. The righteous will be kept safe forever, but the children of the wicked will be cut off. But transgressors shall be altogether destroyed. The posterity of the wicked shall be cut off." In Psalm 37. In Leviticus 17, "For the life of the flesh, for it is the life of the flesh, the blood of Israel. The blood of it is for the life thereof. Therefore, I said to the children of Israel, you shall not eat the blood of any manner of flesh, for the life of the flesh is in the blood thereof. Whoever eats of it shall be cut off." If you consume blood, the penalty is that you are cut off. Hosea chapter 8, "They have set up kings but not of me. They have made princes, I knew them not. Of their silver and their gold have they made their idols, that they may be cut off." People that worship idols will be cut off. Elijah chapter 1, "For the only chapter, Novada, shall I not on that day, says the Lord, even destroy the wise men out of Edom and understanding out of the Mount of Esau, and your mighty men, my Taiman, shall be dismayed, to the end that every one of the Mount of Esau may be cut off by slaughter." So the, the concept of being cut off in the Jewish Bible is not for good people. And yet Christians are saying that Jesus was cut off. Very difficult to understand why, according to Christianity, if Jesus was this anointed one being spoken of, why would he be described as someone who is cut off, when again, the term "cut off" is used for wicked people in the Bible.

Now let's get to the context of Daniel chapter 9, verse 1. "In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, by birth a Mede." So it's telling you that this is not the Persian Darius, this is the Mede Darius, who became king over the realm of the Chaldeans. The Chaldeans are another name for Babylonians. So basically, the Babylonians were in power, and then they were conquered by the Medes. "In the first year of his reign." So Daniel is now giving you the timeframe of this passage in Daniel chapter 9. It's important. Daniel is telling us when this chapter 9 takes place. "In the first year of the reign of Darius, I Daniel perceived." That's not really a great word, really. It's saying, "I tried to understand, I tried to figure out, I tried to understand in the books the number of years that, according to the word of the Lord, we'll have to go back to that, the word of the Lord to the prophet Jeremiah, must be fulfilled for the devastation of Jerusalem, namely 70 years." Now, we're going to see that Daniel, that Daniel was bothered by several prophecies in the book of Jeremiah. The prophet Jeremiah had two different prophecies about a period of 70 years. Again, Jeremiah spoke about two different periods of 70 years. And Daniel was bothered by that. He couldn't figure something out.

So let's turn for a moment to page four and see what was bothering Daniel. The two prophecies in Jeremiah about the 70 years are in Jeremiah chapter 25, verse 11 and 12, and Jeremiah 29, verse 10. Before we read these two passages, I want you to look at the chart on the right-hand side, which shows you what year we're now speaking about. Daniel 9 takes place in the year 3389. Year 3389, Daniel chapter 9. Again, it shows you it's the first year of Darius the Mede, who had just killed Belshazzar, who was the king of Babylon. So Jeremiah 25, "And this whole land shall be a desolation." Jeremiah is speaking about the land of Israel. "This whole land shall be a desolation and an astonishment, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon 70 years." The Jewish people are going to serve the king of Babylon for 70 years. "And it will come to pass when 70 years are accomplished that I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, says the Lord, for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans, and I'll make it a perpetual desolation." So in Jeremiah chapter 25, Jeremiah 25, what the prophet tells us is that the Babylonians who destroyed the first temple, the Jewish people will serve them in exile for, for 70 years. But after those 70 years, what Jeremiah says is that the Babylonians will be essentially destroyed. That was prophecy number one. Prophecy number two is in Jeremiah chapter 29, verse 10, where the prophet says, "For thus says the Lord, that after 70 years be accomplished at Babylon, I will visit you and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place."

Now, here's the problem that Daniel had. Daniel assumed, listen carefully, Daniel assumed that these two prophecies were congruent. Daniel assumed that Jeremiah was speaking about two things that would take place 70 years after Babylon came to power in Israel. Number one, that 70 years after Babylon came into Israel, they will be destroyed. And after 70 years, the Jews would go back to Israel. Those are again the two things that Daniel sees from these prophecies in Jeremiah. That number one, from Jeremiah 25, Babylon is going to be destroyed after 70 years. And in Jeremiah 29, that God will perform his good word to you in causing you to return to this place, being to go back to Israel. And again, Daniel assumed that these two prophecies were congruent.

What's his problem? So his problem is that he knows that Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian, became king of Babylon in the year 3318. Again, look at your chart. In the year 3318, Nebuchadnezzar became the king of Babylon. And the next year, one year later, he conquers Jerusalem. One year after becoming king of Babylon, he comes, invades Israel, and conquers Jerusalem in the year 3319. In the year 3389, which is how many years later? It's 70 years later. The king of Babylon, Belshazzar, is killed, and the Medes come to power. Darius the Mede now takes over. So Daniel now is again writing in this year 3389. And Daniel has seen the fulfillment of Jeremiah 25. Daniel has seen, yes, after 70 years, the Babylonians have been destroyed, just like Jeremiah prophesied in chapter 25. What was his problem? His problem was that he assumed that chapter 29 was congruent with chapter 25. And that what would also take place after 70 years would be that the Jewish people would be going back to Israel to rebuild the temple. And what was Daniel's problem? His problem was that he was sitting in Babylon, and he didn't see any forward motion. He didn't see any movement of Jews going back to Israel. And he couldn't understand it. If he saw the fulfillment of the destruction of Babylon, he assumed at the same time the Jews are heading back to Israel to rebuild Jerusalem. And nothing is doing. There's nothing, no indication that they're about to go and leave Babylon. And he was very bothered by it. And he assumed, Daniel assumed, that, you know what, maybe God was either postponing this prophecy, or he was annulling it. Meaning, maybe this whole promise about going back to Israel and restoring Jerusalem, maybe God is not going to fulfill this promise from Jeremiah chapter 29. And Daniel is extremely upset because that's what he wants. He wants the Jewish people to leave the exile of Babylon, to go back to their homeland in Israel, and then rebuild Jerusalem and the temple. And he's worried, he's bothered. What's going on? I see that Babylon's been destroyed. What about going back to the land of Israel?

So again, verse 2, "In the first year of the reign of Darius, I Daniel was trying to figure out, I was trying to figure out in the books the number of years that, according to the word of the Lord to the prophet Jeremiah, must be fulfilled for the devastation of Jerusalem, namely the 70 years." I wanted to know what's going on with these 70 years. So I turn to the Lord God to seek an answer by prayer and supplication with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. Now, again, I want to reiterate, if you ask virtually any missionary who is bothering Daniel in chapter nine, what was he not able to understand that he began praying for an answer, and then finally, an angel comes to make things clear to him. Again, ask almost any missionary, what was bothering Daniel in chapter nine? What couldn't he understand? What was difficult about the prophecies in Jeremiah? What prophecies was he even referring to? All they'll know is verses 24 to 27. So Daniel turns in verse 3 to God to seek an answer by prayer and supplication with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. Again, what I'm trying to point out is that verses 24 to 27 are an answer to a question. They're an answer to a question. But unless you know what the question is, the answer will not make any sense.

"And I prayed in verse 4 to the Lord my God and I made confession, saying, 'O Lord, great and awesome God, keeping covenant and steadfast love with those who love you and keep your commandments and ordinances. We have sinned and we have done wrong, we have acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and ordinances. Righteousness is on your side, O Lord, but open shame, as as that this day falls on us, the people of Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and all Israel, those who are near and those who are far away, in all the lands to which you have driven them because of the treachery that they have committed against you. Open shame, O Lord, that falls on us, our kings, our officials, our ancestors, because we have sinned against you. To the Lord our God belongs mercy and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God by following his laws which he has set before us to his servants the prophets. All of Israel has transgressed your law and turned aside, refusing to obey her voice. So the curse and the oath written in the law of Moses, the servant of God, has been poured out upon us because we have sinned against you. He has confirmed his words which he spoke against us and against our rulers by bringing upon us a calamity so great that what has been done against Jerusalem has never been done before under the whole heaven, just as it's written in the law of Moses. All of this calamity has come upon us. We did not entreat the favor of the Lord our God, turning from our iniquities and reflecting on his fidelity. So the Lord kept watch over this calamity until he brought it upon us. Indeed, the Lord our God is right in all that he has done, for we have disobeyed his voice. And now, O Lord our God, who brought your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand and made your name renowned even to this day, we have sinned, we have done wickedly. O Lord, in view of all your righteous acts, let your anger and wrath, we pray, turn away from your city Jerusalem, your holy mountain, because of our sins and the iniquities of our ancestors. Jerusalem and your people have become a disgrace among all our neighbors. Now therefore, O God, listen to the prayer of your servant and to his obligation, and for your own sake, Lord, let your face shine upon your desolate sanctuary.'"

This is the strategy that Moses always used when he prayed to God to forgive the Jewish people. He said, "Don't do it because they're righteous." He said, "Do it, God, for your sake, because you, God, are going to look impotent in the eyes of the world if you don't help your people." But what is Daniel praying for here? This is very important. He's clearly praying that God allowed the Jewish people to go back to Israel to rebuild their temple. "Incline your ear, O my God, and hear. Open your eyes and look at our desolation and this city that bears your name. We do not present our supplication before you on the ground of our righteousness, but on the ground of your great mercies. O Lord, hear, O Lord, forgive, O Lord, listen, act, and do not delay, for your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people bear your name." Again, context, context, context. What is Daniel praying for? He's praying for the Jews to be able to return to their land. What is Daniel not asking about? You see, what's important to understand is Daniel, in this chapter, he's not turning to God and asking God, "When is the Messiah going to come? God, who is the Messiah? When is he going to die?" He simply is asking for the fulfillment of Jeremiah's promise that the Jewish people will be able to return to their land and rebuild their temple. That's the context. So it's important to know A, what the context is, and B, what the context is not.

"While I was speaking, Daniel speaks here, while I was speaking and was praying and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before the Lord my God on behalf of the holy mountain of my God." That's the object of his prayer, the mountain of God, Jerusalem, the Temple Mount. "While I was speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, is the angel Gabriel. The man Gabriel, who I had seen before in the vision, Daniel was someone who had many visions before chapter nine. He had seen Gabriel before. The man Gabriel, who I'd seen before in a vision, came to me in swift flight at the time of the evening sacrifice. He came and said to me, 'Daniel, I have now come out to give you wisdom and understanding.'" Right, again, the beginning of the chapter, Daniel does not understand. In the beginning of the chapter, Daniel was puzzled. He can't figure out what's going on with these prophecies of Jeremiah, 70 years. And the angel says, "I'm coming now to give you wisdom and understanding." "At the beginning of your supplications, a word went out." Now, it's so important to remember this Hebrew word, davar, because it's the theme of the entire chapter. The angel says that at the beginning of your prayers, a word went out, and I have come to declare it. This is a prophetic word for you are greatly beloved, Daniel. So consider the word and understand the vision.

"And now he goes on, 'Seventy weeks are decreed for your people and your holy city.'" Now, 70 weeks is 490 years. 490 years. One of the great problems with the Christian reading of Daniel chapter 9 is that Christians only deal with 69 weeks of years. Again, Daniel says this is a time of 70 weeks of years, 490 years. Daniel says 490 years are decreed upon your people. And yet, the Christian reading only has a period of 69 weeks of years, 483 years. And the big question mark is, what do the Christians do with those last seven years? How do Christians understand the 70th year? So there are two basic approaches within Christian interpretations of Daniel. One approach among some Christians is that the 70th week is describing the destruction of Jerusalem, which takes place 40 years after the death of Jesus. Again, that gap of five and a half weeks of years. Most Christians say that the 70th week that Daniel speaks about is going to happen before the second coming of Jesus, which is at least now 2,000 years later. So what Christians end up doing is again, splitting off the 69 weeks of years from the 70th week of years. No Christian reads this chapter of 70 weeks of years, a period of 490 years. No Christian reads it like that. They all read it as a period of 69 weeks of years, 483 years, which they believe ends with the death of Jesus. And that seventh year, which talks about the destruction of Jerusalem, Christians are forced to put it off for a period of 40 years or a period of 2,000 plus years. That's a huge problem. And the reason is, a huge problem is because it makes it, it doesn't give any relevance to this period of 70 weeks of years that the angel is speaking about. The angel comes to say, "70 weeks are decreed for your people." That's the period of time that the angel is coming to talk about, 490 years. And there's no Christian reading which deals with 490 years.

So in verse 24, "Seventy weeks are decreed for your people and your holy city." To do what? What is the purpose of this period of 490 years? "It is to finish transgression, put an end to sin, to atone for iniquity, to bring an everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint the most holy place." That sounds like amazing stuff. And what's clear is it hasn't happened. We're not living in a world where these things have happened yet. So from the Christian point of view, the whole purpose of Jesus coming was to accomplish these amazing things. And yet, these amazing things have not happened. And now Daniel is told how to figure out this period of time. "Know therefore and understand. Know therefore and understand from the time that the word, not the commandment, not the decree, from the time that the word, the prophetic word, went out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, until the time of an anointed prince, there will be seven weeks." Against seven weeks is a period of 49 years. So what Daniel is being told here is there's going to be an anointed prince, meaning a ruler, an anointed ruler, an anointed prince will come after a period of seven weeks of years. Now, who is this anointed prince? Who is this Messiah that comes 49 years, seven weeks of years after this prophetic word goes out? And what is this prophetic word?

So I want you to turn back for a moment to page three. [Applause] You'll see in verse 2, Daniel says, "In the first year of the reign of Darius, I Daniel perceived in the books a number of years that according to the word of the Lord to the prophet Jeremiah, there was a davar, a prophetic word that went out to the prophet Jeremiah, and that must be fulfilled for the devastation of Jerusalem, namely 70 years." Now, the same word, davar, appears in Daniel chapter 9, verse 2. And if you turn the page to Daniel chapter 9, verse 23, where the angel says, "At the beginning of your supplications, a word went out, and I've come to declare it, for you are greatly beloved." Now, this is helping Daniel understand where he went wrong. This is going to help Daniel understand where he went more. Look at Jeremiah chapter 25. In Jeremiah chapter 25, it speaks about 70 years after which Babylon will be destroyed. But in Jeremiah 29, it speaks about after 70 years be accomplished at Babylon, I will visit you and perform my good word. This davar will take place. And this prophecy of Jeremiah chapter 29 was given in the year 3338. Jeremiah gave this prophecy in the year that Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the temple. And in verse 2 of chapter 9, and Daniel, we're told that the calculation of Jeremiah is going to be from the devastation of Jerusalem. Now, here's where Daniel was mistaken. There were two things that took place by the Babylonians. Again, if you turn to page four, look at the chart. It will be helpful. The Babylonians conquered Israel in the year 3319. Top of the chart. In the year 3319 is when the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem. And indeed, 70 years later, as Jeremiah prophesied, the Babylonians were destroyed in the year 3389. What Daniel assumed, what Daniel assumed was that the prophecy in Jeremiah 29 was congruent, it was contiguous, and that it would also begin, the count would begin in the year 3319, from the subjugation of Jerusalem. But what Gabriel tells Daniel is that no, the counting of the 70 years for Jeremiah 29 takes place not from the conquering, the subjugation of Jerusalem. The 70 years of Jeremiah 29 takes place from the destruction of Jerusalem. And the Babylonians did not destroy Jerusalem until 18 years after they conquered it. That's very important to remember. There was an 18-year gap between the time that the Babylonians conquered Israel and the time they destroyed the temple. So Daniel now is sitting here in the year 3338, I'm sorry, 3389. Daniel is sitting in the year 3389, 70 years after the conquest of Jerusalem. He sees that Babylon has been destroyed, as per Jeremiah 25. He's wondering, "How come Jeremiah 29 has not been fulfilled?" And the angel here tells him, "Because Jeremiah 29, the count does not begin from the subjugation of Jerusalem. It begins from the destruction of Jerusalem." And if you count from the destruction of Jerusalem, from the year 3338, and you count 49 years, please turn the page. Now we have an expanded chart on page five. So again, if you look at the top of the chart, Nebuchadnezzar conquers him and the Jewish land becomes a vassal state of Babylon in 3319. Top of the chart. In the year 3389, 70 years later, Jeremiah's 70 weeks basically are concluded when Belshazzar is killed by Darius the Mede, and his reign lasts for only less than a year. And then his son-in-law, Cyrus the Persian, takes over. If you begin counting from the year 3338, the destruction of Jerusalem, until the year 3390, you have a period of 52 years. 52 years. What Daniel is told is that after a period of seven weeks of years, which is 49 years, there's going to be an anointed prince who comes. An anointed Messiah, a ruler who comes. Who is this anointed prince? This anointed ruler who comes to make things clear for Daniel? The answer is that it's referring to Cyrus. Cyrus is someone who comes seven weeks of years, again, seven weeks of years will be 49 years. 52 years is within a week of 49 years, within the seven-year period. And look what we're told in the book of Ezra, chapter 1. What's interesting, by the way, it's fascinating, is that in a Christian Bible, the books are reordered. In a Christian Bible, they order the books differently than in the Jewish Bible. In a Jewish Bible, immediately after Daniel comes the book of Ezra. Immediately after Daniel comes the book of Ezra, not in the Christian Bible. And one of the things that you see in the book of Ezra, chapter 1, verse 1, is help in understanding Daniel's prophecy. Ezra 1, chapter 1. "Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia." Again, this word, the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, we saw that the word, the davar, to Jeremiah was Jeremiah 29. "So in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah the prophet might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and put it also into writing, saying, 'Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia, the Lord God of heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who among you of all his people, his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the Lord God of Israel. He is the God which is in Jerusalem. And whoever so remains in any place where he travels, let the man of his place help him with silver, with gold, with goods, and with beasts, besides the free will offering for the house of God that's in Jerusalem.'" Cyrus is this anointed Messiah, this Messiah, this ruler that comes to send the Jewish people back to their homeland to build the temple. Cyrus is a Messiah. Cyrus is a Messiah. Look at Isaiah chapter 44, right on top of this, that God says of Cyrus, "He is my shepherd and shall perform all my pleasure, even saying to Jerusalem, you shall be built. Cyrus is the one that's going to send the Jewish people back to Jerusalem to build it, and to the temple, your foundation shall be laid." And look at chapter 45 in Isaiah, the very next verse. "Thus says the Lord to his Messiah, to his Mashiach, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held to subdue nations before him, and I will loose the loins of kings to open before him the two-leaved gates, and the gates shall not be shut. I raised him up in righteousness. I will direct all his ways. He shall build my city and he will let go my captives, not for Christ, the rewards of the Lord of hosts."

So Babylon, again, has been destroyed. Daniel is wondering, "What's going on? If Babylon's destroyed, why are we not going back to Israel?" And the prophet is told, Daniel was told by the angel Gabriel, "Look, Daniel, there's going to be a period of seven weeks of years, and after those seven weeks of years, an anointed one is going to come, a Messiah of God, a ruler is going to come, and he will be basically the one to send you back to Israel." What the angel is telling Daniel is, "Daniel, it's just around the corner. You're in the year 3389. When is Cyrus coming? In the year 3390. Be patient, Daniel. It's happening very, very soon." That's the first part of the prophecy. However, Daniel was only asking about that, right? Daniel was only asking, "When are we going back to Jerusalem? When are we going to rebuild our temple? When are we going back to our land?" And Daniel was hoping that this was going to basically be the end of the tribulations of the Jewish people. Daniel was assuming, hoping, that this exile in Babylon would be the final suffering of the Jewish people, and then when they go back to Israel, they're going to essentially establish a permanent spiritual kingdom. That was Daniel's hope. That all the prophecies of the Bible would be completed when they go back to Israel. But now the angel tells Daniel something he was not hoping to hear. The angel gives him more information than he wasn't asking about. Again, Daniel only wanted to know, "When are we going back to rebuild the temple?" And the angel tells him, "Daniel says, look, Daniel, in another few months, this anointed one's going to send you back to rebuild Jerusalem."

But let's go back, let's go on now to page four and continue reading what the angel says. Page four, verse 25. "Know therefore and understand that from the time of the word went out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, that word again is the, from the time of the destruction, from the year 3338, from that time until the time of an anointed prince, Cyrus will be seven weeks." And when Cyrus comes, you're all going to go back to Israel, rebuild the temple. But then Gabriel tells Daniel some bad news. "And for 62 weeks it will be built again. Jerusalem will be built and the temple will be rebuilt, but with streets and moat, and in troubled times. You're not going to have a peaceful existence during the time of the Second Temple." And indeed, the Second Temple time was a very difficult time for the Jewish people. We suffered under the Persians, we suffered under the Greeks, we suffered under the Romans, three different kingdoms that were oppressing us. And that's what Daniel's being told here. You will go back to Israel, you will rebuild your temple, but it's going to be in very troubled times. Verse 26, "And after this period of 62 weeks, an anointed one will be cut off." Who is that referring to? It's referring to either King Agrippa, who was the king of the Jewish people at the time that the Second Temple was destroyed, or it's referring to the high priesthood. Because when the temple is destroyed, the whole high priesthood is being cut off. They're losing. What does it say? "The Anglo and the priests will have nothing. They will have nothing." And after the 62 weeks, an anointed one will be cut off. It's either referring to the king who will be killed, or the high priest who, either the priest himself or the whole priesthood will be cut off. "We will have nothing. And the troops of the prince who is to come will destroy the city." The Romans at that time will destroy the whole city and its sanctuary. "Its end will come with a flood, and to the end there will be a war." And in verse 27, what Daniel is given now is a detailed, a thumbnail sketch, almost a zooming in on the last week. He's now given the last seven years. He's given the last seven years. And he's told, "He will make a strong covenant with many for one week." These Romans that are going to destroy Jerusalem, they're going to make a peace treaty with the Jewish people for one week. "And for a half of a week," which means a week and a half, that means three and a half years, "he will make sacrifice and offering to stop." He's going to stop the Romans did that three years before the temple was destroyed. The Romans stopped the Jews from bringing sacrifices. "And in their place there shall be an abomination that desolates until the decreed end is poured out upon the desolator." So it's describing the ultimate destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70.

What I tried to show you so far tonight was how Christians tried to use this passage to prove their contention that Jesus was the Messiah, killed in the year 7, killed in the year 30. I tried to show you some of the weaknesses with their presentation. I tried to help you understand how the passage really is constructed, what it's really talking about. I wanted to go back and share one final observation, which is why it's impossible, it's impossible to suggest as Christians do that the decree that Daniel was speaking about regarding the restoration and rebuilding of Jerusalem is a decree of Artaxerxes in the year 444, the one that was given to Nehemiah. I want to share with you why that's impossible. To understand this last reason, I'd like you to turn to the chart on page five again. The ninth chapter of Daniel takes place in the year 3389. Ninth chapter of Daniel takes place in year 3389, right before Cyrus orders the construction of the temple in the year 3390. And again, remember what's going on in the book of Daniel. Daniel is bothered, he's upset. He's seeing in the year 3389 the fulfillment of Jeremiah 25. He's seeing that Babylon has been destroyed. He's not seeing any movement of the Jewish people back to their homeland. And he's bothered. What's going on? And he can't understand these two prophecies in Jeremiah chapter 25 and Jeremiah chapter 29. So what happens? An angel, Gabriel, comes to Daniel and says, "Daniel, because you are so beloved, I'm going to come to make things clear and understandable to you. I'm going to come to clear everything up for you. Everything is going to be clear after I have my conversation with you." Daniel. Now, again, according to the Christian reading, what's happening? According to the Christian reading, the angel tells Daniel, "There's going to be a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. From that decree, you're going to count, according to Christians, you're going to count 483 years." Now, we saw that the Christian reading was inaccurate because really what he was saying was from that decree, you're going to count seven weeks of years, 49 years. Here's the problem. You have to sort of think now for a little bit deeply. This is the year 3389. The angel Gabriel is saying to him, "Daniel, I know you're confused. I know you're confused. Now I'm going to make everything clear." He says, "There's going to be a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. There's going to be a decree to restore Jerusalem. And from that point, you're going to count." Again, according to the Christian interpretation, 483 years. And then from that point on, the Messiah is going to be killed. What is the problem? The problem is that according to the Christian understanding, Gabriel is giving Daniel a starting point for the calculations that he has no access to. Because Nehemiah received permission from Artaxerxes over 40 years later. Meaning that the Christian reading is referring to an event that has not happened yet, and it will not happen for at least 40 years. So what the angel, in effect, is saying to Daniel is, "Daniel, I want to make everything clear to you. There's going to be a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. From that point, you're going to count." Right, it should say 70 weeks, 7 weeks of years. But they say it's going to be 69 weeks of years. But again, the problem is that Daniel would walk out of that meeting scratching his head. Daniel would walk out of that meeting saying, "Mazel tov, I'm supposed to count 483 years, but from what point in time?" And if the angel is referring to something which has not happened yet, and Daniel does not know when it's going to happen, he's going to walk out of that meeting extremely frustrated because he was all bothered, "God, what's going on? Why are we not going back to Israel? What's happening? How do I understand this?" And the angel says, "Daniel, I'm going to make everything perfectly clear to you." And then, according to the Christian assertion, that it's referring to a starting point of 444 BCE, when when Nehemiah is given permission by Artaxerxes to go back and rebuild the walls around Jerusalem, that's at least 40 years away. Daniel has no idea when it's going to happen. So again, according to the Christian reading, Daniel would walk out of his meeting with the angel and have absolutely no clarity. He would not know when to start counting. He would not know what these numbers meant. He would be more puzzled than when he came into the meeting. However, according to that, we've explained it tonight, the angel is telling him, "Daniel, the point that you begin the calculations is from the time that the temple was destroyed." That was the year 3338. He's now in the year 3389. I'm sorry, the time that the temple was destroyed was 3338. He's now in the year 3389. Daniel is now able to use the information that Gabriel gave him. He can make the calculations. He can say, "Oh, there's going to be a Messiah who comes just any moment now." So according to the Jewish reading of this passage, Gabriel has given Daniel information that he can use, that has cleared up his problem, that he walks out of the meeting with a starting date that he can access. That's the point I'm trying to make. That according to the Christian understanding of this passage, Daniel does not have a starting point for his calculations that he has any access to. He does not know when that point is going to be. According to the Jewish reading of this passage in Daniel, the angel is telling him, "Daniel, the starting point for the calculations is the date that the temple was destroyed, which has happened already in the past." Daniel knows exactly when to begin counting. When the angel says, "I'm coming to make everything clear to you," indeed, that's what happens in this passage.

But there's one more point that I think that you have to appreciate. Again, this is a subtle point, but it's a critical point. What the angel is basically telling Daniel, right? The bottom line, the angel is saying, "Look, Daniel, you were only focused on when you're going to go back to Israel and rebuild the temple. That's all you were concerned about." And the angel says, "You're going to go back. You're going to go back, right? It's going to be around the corner. Cyrus is going to make the announcement very soon. So you're going to go back, you're going to build your temple. But he says, 'But you're not going to have a picnic.'" That the Second Temple period is going to be very difficult. You're going to have troubled times. But listen to what the angel is implying. The angel is saying, "Look at verse 24, 70 weeks of years are decreed upon your people." He's saying, "There's going to be a period of 490 years. 490 years." The Second Temple stood for a period of 420 years. The Second Temple lasted 420 years. The First Temple lay destroyed for for 70 years. Meaning, between the destruction of the First Temple and the destruction of the Second Temple is a period of 490 years. What the angel is saying in verse 25, this is not immediately evident, but it's very, very critical. The angel says in verse 24, I'm sorry, "70 weeks, which means 490 years, are decreed for your people." Meaning that he's saying, "Look, Daniel, when will you be able to have all these things? To finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. When will that be possible?" The angel is saying, "You people, your people need to pay the price. You need to atone for your sins. You need to go through a period of cleansing." And so the angel is saying, "Look, Daniel, you're going to go back and build your temple, but you're going to all be suffering. It's going to be a very difficult period of time, the period of the Second Temple." And he's saying, "It's going to be a period of 490 years from the moment the First Temple was destroyed. You're going to have 490 years. And during that, listen carefully, during that period of 490 years, you have the ability, if you repent during that period of time, if you get your act together, once that period of cleansing is over, once you've finished 490 years, then you'll be able to bring in a time of this obviously utopian world." Meaning he's saying that when can you have, when will it be possible to bring in what we call the Messianic Age? Where will it be possible to have a time of forgiveness of sins, total wiping out of sin, and total righteousness, right? And having everlasting righteousness to seal the meaning he's talking about the, the sealing of the vision, the prophecy, meaning the completion of all the prophecies of the Bible. When will it be possible to have all that take place after 490 years? What Daniel 9 is saying, it's amazing. It's not telling you when the Messiah is going to be killed, which is the Christian interpretation. It's telling you when will the Messiah first be able to come. What it's saying is, the Messiah will be able to come if you guys use this period of cleansing properly. You know when it can come? As soon as the 490 years are up. 70 weeks of years have been decreed, 490 years. If you use this period of suffering properly and you cleanse yourself, then immediately can be ushered in an age of righteousness and perfection. That takes place with the destruction of the Second Temple. What are the rabbis teaching? The Talmud, rabbis taught, "When was the Messiah born?" "On the day that the Temple was destroyed." What the rabbis are doing is linking the possibility of Messiah with the destruction of the Temple. But Daniel 9 is telling us something amazing. He's telling us that the Messiah cannot come until after the year 70. The Christian assertion was always to tell us the Messiah has to come to be killed before the Second Temple is destroyed. Now, again, we saw that they left the gap of five and a half weeks of years. But Daniel is really saying that the Messianic Age can only begin once the Second Temple has been destroyed. Jesus died 40 years before the Second Temple was destroyed. And if we take the dates in Daniel seriously, Jesus could not be the Messiah. Not that it proves he is the Messiah, proves he's composite.