March 1st, 2024 update: I consider this Bible study of the prophecy of Daniel 9:24-27, also known as the 70 Weeks of Daniel prophecy, one of the most important articles I have ever written. It’s something I didn’t fully understand until I sat down and did the math based on dates from history.

It’s important to know and understand this prophecy correctly because it’s arguably one of the most misinterpreted prophecies in the entire Bible! Why do I think so? Because the popular interpretation held by the vast majority of American evangelicals today says Daniel 9:27 is all about the Antichrist, and I and a relative minority of other Christians today say it’s all about Jesus Christ! I mean, how far away from the truth can you get but to attribute the work of Jesus Christ to Antichrist?! In Revelation 19:10 the Word of God says, “…the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy,” not the Antichrist, and not the modern State of Israel either, but all prophecy is Christ-centered, it’s all about Jesus Christ. Folks, if you get this wrong, your whole viewpoint of the Endtime will be tainted.

Nearly all contemporary students of Bible Endtime prophecy will answer the question of the title of this article with, “The Antichrist!” But did you know up till the end of the 19th century, Daniel 9:27 was considered a Messianic prophecy of the 7 years of Jesus and His disciples’ ministry of giving the Gospel to the Jews? This article is my best attempt to explain in my own words why the “he” of Daniel 9:27 is referring to Jesus Christ in as clear and concise a manner as I know how. Though I will explain in my own words, please understand I am only rephrasing what the many men of God, all the renowned Bible commentators of the first 400 years of the Protestant Reformation had to say about Daniel 9:27 and the 70th Week of Daniel. It’s by no means a new interpretation I cooked up in my head.

My hope and prayer is that the Holy Spirit will use your knowledge of history and what you read from the Scripture, what the Word of God actually says, to convince you that the 70th Week of Daniel is all about Jesus and His Apostles giving the Gospel to the Jews, and not about a future Antichrist ruling the earth during the last 7 years just before Christ returns.

Let’s start from the beginning of the 70 Weeks prophecy in Daniel chapter 9, one verse at a time.

Daniel 9:24  Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.

Verse 24 is all about the results of the Word of God becoming flesh to dwell among His creation of humanity.

• Seventy weeks = 70 sevens = 490 years
• “Thy people”, meaning the people of Israel
• “Thy holy city”, meaning Jerusalem
• “To finish the transgression”, meaning Christ took away the sins of the people of Israel by taking the punishment of those sins on Himself. 1 John 3:5: And ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins; and in him is no sin.
• “To make an end of sins” meaning to abolish sins which our Lord Jesus did when He offered His spotless soul and body on the cross once for all. This verse can also imply the end of sin offerings. With that in mind, what would a rebuilt third Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem with resumed daily animal sacrifices mean? It would mean further rejection of the Blood of Christ as the final sacrifice for our sins!
• “To make reconciliation for iniquity” meaning to make atonement for iniquity which Jesus did by offering up Himself through His suffering and death. 1 John 1:7b: …the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.
• “To bring in everlasting righteousness” meaning the only true righteousness, the righteousness of Christ. Romans 3:22: Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:
• “To seal up the vision and prophecy”. All prophecy is sealed up in Christ. The prophecies of the Old Testament are fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
• “To anoint the most Holy.” To anoint the Messiah, the Anointed One. This final phrase is probably the clearest and easiest to understand. The final Week, the 70th Week, is all about Jesus the Messiah!

Daniel 9:25 Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.

• “The going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem”, This commandment was given by King Artaxerxes I in the year 457 BC.
• “unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks”

Seven weeks = 49 years. Three score and two weeks = 62 X 7 = 434 years. 49 + 434 = 483 years. 483 years from 457 BC is 27 AD. There is no year 0. Jesus was born in 4 BC according to the Gregorian calendar. That means He was 30 years old when He started His ministry of the Gospel to the Jews in 27 AD. Year 27 A.D. was the start of the 70th Week!

• “the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times” This is referring to the first seven weeks. It took 49 years to rebuild the city and the wall. The Book of Nehemiah describes the troubling times. If the 70th Week began in 27 A.D. it ended in 34 A.D. the end of the Covenant with the Jews only, the start of the persecution beginning with the stoning of Stephen, and close to the beginning of the ministry of the Apostle Paul preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles.

November 4, 2024 update:
The other day when reading Acts chapter 7, I had a revelation! The stoning of Stephen marked the end of the 70th Week of Daniel, the proclamation of the Gospel primarily to the House of Israel by Jesus Christ and His Disciples. In the Bible the number seven is the number perfection. The very fact that the stoning of Stephen occurs in chapter 7 actually verifies that the 70th Week has come to completion!! In Acts chapter 8 the Apostle Philip shares the Gospel to an Ethiopian, a Gentile. The number 8 is the number of new beginnings!

Daniel 9:26 And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.

• “And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off” meaning 434 years after the first 49 years when the city of Jerusalem was being rebuilt. Jesus the Messiah was indeed “cut off” or crucified only 3 years and some months after He started His ministry of preaching the Gospel to the house of Israel.
• “but not for himself” Jesus was executed not for any crime that He did, but for our crimes and sins against our Creator.
• “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.” The “prince” here is General Titus, general of the Roman army. The “people of the prince” is the Roman army. The city and the sanctuary are Jerusalem and the Temple. The “war” was the Roman army crushing the Jewish rebellion against the Roman Empire that ended with the destruction of Jerusalem, the Temple, and the death of 1.1 million Jews in 70 A.D. The “desolations determined” are the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. Verse 26 is a paraphrase of the second half of verse 27.

Daniel 9:27 And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.

• “And he shall …” A pronoun is a word that stands for a noun. The noun most likely that defines the pronoun is the noun most often used that proceeds it. Verses 24 to 26 are all talking about the Messiah. Why would the “he” therefore be called the Antichrist?! Calling the “he” of verse 27 the Antichrist is the prevailing popular interpretation today. Antichrist is not referred to anywhere in the verses preceding it!!! The only candidate for “he” other than the Messiah is “the prince” of verse 26 who is mentioned only once. The prince of verse 26 can only refer to Titus, the Roman General whose army destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 A.D. Titus later became emperor of Rome. He didn’t make any treaty with the Jews, he crushed their rebellion against Rome!
• References to Messiah in Daniel 9:24-27 are, “the most Holy” of verse 24, “Messiah the Prince” of verse 25, and “Messiah” of verse 26, three times in all. Messiah wins as the only reasonable candidate for the pronoun he, not the prince of the “people of the prince” in verse 26, and not a future Antichrist.
• “…shall confirm the covenant with many for one week”. Shall “confirm”, not “make” as modern English translations say. The Messiah confirmed a covenant already in existence, God’s covenant promise to the Jews. That’s why the definite article, “the” is used. Modern translations use the indefinite article. Jesus confirmed the covenant of grace through belief in God’s Word that God made with Abraham by preaching the Gospel to the house of Israel. This is the very same covenant of verse 4, “keeping the covenant and mercy to them that love him”, and the same covenant mentioned by Paul in Galatians 3:17  And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ… One week is a period of 7 years which continued three and a half more years after Jesus died in the middle of the 7 years. It ended when persecution started with the stoning of Stephen and God raised up the Apostle Paul to take the Gospel to the Gentiles.
• “and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease” or in other words, the need for daily sacrifices and oblations for sins. Jesus’ death on the Cross was the cause of the end of such sacrifices. Do you think I’m reading something into this verse that’s out of context? I submit to you that reading into this text a future Antichrist breaking a covenant with the modern state of Israel is an outrageous violation of proper interpretation of Scripture! It’s what is known as “eisegesis” which means, “to lead into” or add something that is not there. I am giving you the “exegesis” method of interpretation. Exegesis means to “lead out of” or use only what the Scripture actually says, not add one’s biased interpretation to it.
• “and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.” This is the second half of verse 26 rephrased. It’s all about the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 A.D.

Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21 are also all about the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 A.D. Just think how an important event that was for it to be talked about in two verses of Daniel and three chapters of the Gospels! It meant the end of the Jewish religion as far as God was concerned! Any attempt to revive it by the building a third Temple would be an abomination in the eyes of God for it would mean further rejection of the Blood of Christ shed for our sins.

Pastor Chuck Balwin of Liberty Fellowship says the Book of Revelation is also all about the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. I don’t agree with Pastor Chuck. It’s pure preterism for him to teach that. He believes John wrote the Book of Revelation before 70 A.D. and I believe what most Bible scholars teach is that it was written much later, after 70 A.D. The Book of Revelation covers all the years from the Apostle John to the present and beyond. Full preterists say that ALL the prophecies of the Book of Revelation have been fulfilled! That interpretation contradicts everything I see in the news today. There’s still lots of suffering, weeping, and tears in the world due to sin and evil.

There is no gap of time between the 69th and 70th Week of Daniel. This is no indication there is supposed to be a gap in time. Some people refer to the so-called gap as a “parenthesis of time.” That’s absolutely false. If there was, Jesus would not have come the first time because the 70th Week was the beginning of Jesus’ ministry! Putting a gap between the 69th and 70th Week, and throwing the 70th Week into the undetermined future was a trick of Jesuit Francesco Ribera circa 1585 to attribute the 70th Week of Daniel to and endtime only Antichrist who is said to rule the earth for a final 7 years just before Jesus returns. Ribera wanted the Protestants to stop thinking of the Popes of Rome and the office of the papacy as the Antichrist by teaching that the Antichrist will rise just before the final 7 years of man’s rule on earth before the coming of Jesus Christ. But Ribera’s doctrine was rejected by the majority of Protestant Bible teachers until sometime in the 19th century when John Nelson Darby taught it in his dispensational doctrines. Ribera’s eschatology became wildly popular in the 20th century because C.I. Scofield promoted it in his Scofield’s Reference Bible. It was taught in the prestigious Dallas Theological Seminary which influenced many Baptist and Pentecostal churches.

I submit to you that calling the work of Jesus Christ in Daniel 9:27 the work of Antichrist is a serious sin and blasphemy against the Holy Spirit! I hope you see I am not talking about a minor hair-splitting theological doctrine, but something extremely important and serious. Those who teach the false Antichrist interpretation are repeating the lies of Jesuit priests. Sad to say some have invested decades of their lives teaching the demonic false Jesuit interpretation of the 70th Week of Daniel. May they wake up to the truth and either change their message or stop teaching any eschatological doctrines before they lead yet more souls astray.

If you don’t agree with this article about my explanation of Daniel 9:27, please ask yourself this question: Would you have thought this verse was talking about an Endtime Antichrist just by reading it on your own? I think not. You were led into it by some Bible prophecy teacher. There’s no way anybody can conclude the 70th Week is all about an Endtime Antichrist just from reading the passage on his or her own. We were led into it, myself included, by a prophecy teacher who taught us what he learned from another prophecy teacher.

Before anybody challenges me in the comments section, you should know I embraced the Futurist interpretation of the 70th Week of Daniel from when I was still young in Christ in 1973 all the way to 2014 when I read the truth from a brother named David Nikao Wilcoxson on his website. And since 2014, the 70th Weeks prophecy of Daniel 9:24-27 has been a subject of intense study for me. I know what you believe about the 70th Week and why you believe it. It was taught to you like it was taught to me when we were young, and we had no reason to question it. We listened to what our pastor or Bible teacher taught us. If we thought he was a false teacher, we wouldn’t have listened to him in the first place. He may not have been false on everything, just this particular doctrine of the 70th Week. He may have been correct about everything else. Nobody’s perfect, right? I’m the first to admit that about myself. I don’t blame you for holding a false doctrine for decades as I did, but after you read this, if you don’t at least do your own research about it, you will be without excuse in the sight of God. And you will be especially accountable before God if you continue to teach the false Jesuit doctrine!

There is much more involved here than just the 70th Week of Daniel. The futurist interpretation of the 70th Week of Daniel is only one of several false doctrines of John Nelson Darby’s teaching of Dispensationalism! It took me time to connect the dots. If you can receive this article, please continue to study about all the other popular but false doctrines of the End-time that arose from Dispensationalism.

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