Expert: Mr. McClellan - 10/17/2008

Question
Hi I was wondering if you could explain to me the theory that we still await Daniels 70th week. In the book of Daniel 9 it states about the coming of the messiah Jesus and I was wondering about Daniel 9:24-27.Why are there still seven years left to be fulfilled and what was fulfilled in the first 69 weeks. Thank you and God bless.24 “ Seventy weeks[a] are determined
     For your people and for your holy city,
     To finish the transgression,
     To make an end of[b] sins,
     To make reconciliation for iniquity,
     To bring in everlasting righteousness,
     To seal up vision and prophecy,
     And to anoint the Most Holy.
      25 “ Know therefore and understand,
     That from the going forth of the command
     To restore and build Jerusalem
     Until Messiah the Prince,
     There shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks;
     The street[c] shall be built again, and the wall,[d]
     Even in troublesome times.
      26 “ And after the sixty-two weeks
     Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself;
     And the people of the prince who is to come
     Shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.
     The end of it shall be with a flood,
     And till the end of the war desolations are determined.
      27 Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week;
     But in the middle of the week
     He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering.
     And on the wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate,
     Even until the consummation, which is determined,
     Is poured out on the desolate.”

Answer
Hi John, (a revision of the message I sent at first)
I don't have a lot of time to be very thorough this morning, but I will say at least something that will get you to thinking.
Daniel, according to Jesus, was definitely talking about the next time Jerusalem would be destroyed (see Matthew 24 and Luke 21 for example). That event took place in A.D. 70. The Romans had begun the invasion of Palestine in A.D. 66 and the seige of Jerusalem ended sometime in the summer of 70. In Revelation, John speaks of the same things that Daniel did, and in Chapter 13 he indicates that Jerusalem was still standing. This, along with the fact that none of the writers of the New Testament ever even hint that Jerusalem had already been destroyed at the time of their writings, is solid evidence that they wrote before that happened. There is simply no way that they would not have made mention of that if it had already been destroyed. So, whatever the specifics of the details of what Daniel said are, it is absolutely definite that he was not talking about anything that would take place after that. Daniel lived about 500 years before John and was told to keep to himself what had been revealed to him because the time was far off. John was told just the opposite because the time was at hand, or in the immediate future. Those people who are trying to predict the second coming of Jesus have missed the boat and they will always be wrong, according to the Bible anyway. Read "Wars of the Jews" by Josephus. He was a Jewish eye witness of Jerusalem's fall.
Brief notes on Daniel: Chapter 2, Daniel predicts the rise of the next three "world" empires up to and including the Roman Empire and that the messiah would appear during the days of Rome's rule. The messiah is the stone cut out without hands, and he would establish his kingdom in the days of the Roman kingdom.
Daniel 7, the prediction of the next 3 kingdoms, the first 11 kings of the last one (the Roman) are described as horns. Jesus is mentioned as one like the son of man who will establish his kingdom during this time. It is the church of God that he is talking about and it began on Pentecost after the resurrection of Jesus who, just before had gone to heaven to be seated at the right hand of God. So, this vision is just giving more detail to the one mentioned in Chapter 2. The "11th horn," or king that Daniel mentions in 7:24 ff, seems to be Nero because the description fits so well, and because it very unlikely that the book of Revelation was written after the fall of Jerusalem or else John would have said something about it beyond any doubt. Daniel 9 is just more detail about the visions of chapters 2 and 7. Daniel 9:27 is specifically referred to by Jesus in Matthew 24:15 and he applies it to the destruction of Jerusalem that came about 40 years later. Matthew 24:14, Jesus specifically states that the end, that is the judgement, would come when the gospel had been preached to the whole world. In Colossians 1:23, Paul declaired that by the time he wrote that letter, the gospel had been preached to the whole world. Paul wrote that not long before the Romans invaded Palestine in A.D. 66. "The end" came in A.D. 70. Daniel had nothing to say about anything that would happen after that.
Sincerely,
Mr. McClellan