God's Unstoppable Timetable Text: Daniel 9:24-27
Introduction: The Prophetic Anchor
We live in an age that is drunk on newspaper eschatology. Men pore over current events, trying to jam every headline into the book of Revelation, looking for the Antichrist behind every political stump and a fulfillment of prophecy in every Mideast squabble. The result is a constant state of breathless agitation, a series of failed predictions, and a profound misunderstanding of what God has actually accomplished in history. This kind of approach treats God’s Word like a Nostradamus almanac instead of the covenant document that it is.
But the Word of God is not a collection of cryptic puzzles for end-times hobbyists. It is a rock. It is a foundation. And nowhere is this more apparent than in Daniel's seventy weeks prophecy. This is one of the most astonishing, precise, and faith-building prophecies in all of Scripture. It is not a foggy prediction about a distant, future tribulation. It is a divine timetable, delivered with mathematical precision, that climaxes with the central event of all human history: the first coming of Jesus Christ, His death on the cross, and the consequences of His rejection.
This passage is given to Daniel while he is in exile, praying for the restoration of his people and his city, Jerusalem. He is concerned with the seventy years of captivity prophesied by Jeremiah. In response, the angel Gabriel comes not just to answer his prayer about the seventy years, but to zoom out and give him the grand picture. Gabriel gives him a prophecy about seventy sets of seven years, or 490 years, that will define the history of his people until the Messiah comes and accomplishes our salvation. This passage anchors the entire Old Testament to the cross of Jesus Christ and to the judgment that fell upon that generation that rejected Him. If we get this right, much of the New Testament, particularly the Gospels and Revelation, snaps into sharp focus. If we get this wrong, we are left adrift in a sea of speculative nonsense.
So let us set aside the charts and graphs of the dispensationalists, which create unbiblical gaps and postponements in God's plan, and let us simply look at what the text says. What we find is that God is meticulously sovereign over history, that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of all prophecy, and that His covenant is established right on schedule.
The Text
“Seventy weeks have been determined for your people and for your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Holy of Holies. So you are to know and have insight that from the going out of a word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be restored and rebuilt, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress. Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are decreed. And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will make sacrifice and grain offering cease; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.”
(Daniel 9:24-27 LSB)
The Six-Fold Accomplishment (v. 24)
We begin with the magnificent summary of what this 490-year period is all about.
“Seventy weeks have been determined for your people and for your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Holy of Holies.” (Daniel 9:24)
Gabriel lays out six glorious accomplishments that will be completed within this time frame. Notice that these are not six separate events scattered across millennia; they are a package deal. They are what the Messiah will achieve when He comes. The first three deal with the problem of sin, and the last three deal with the establishment of God’s kingdom.
First, He will "finish the transgression." This refers to Israel's covenant rebellion, which reached its apex when they rejected and crucified their own Messiah. Jesus Himself speaks of this, telling the Pharisees to "fill up, then, the measure of the guilt of your fathers" (Matt. 23:32). The ultimate transgression was the rejection of the Son.
Second, He will "make an end of sin." This is the definitive, atoning work of the cross. Christ, by His sacrifice, dealt with the sin problem once and for all. He didn't just cover sin; He ended its reign and paid its penalty in full. "He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself" (Heb. 9:26).
Third, He will "make atonement for iniquity." This is the heart of the gospel. The Hebrew word here is kaphar, the same word used for the mercy seat on the Ark of the Covenant. Christ is our propitiation, our mercy seat, where the wrath of God is satisfied.
Fourth, He will "bring in everlasting righteousness." This is the flip side of atonement. Not only is our sin taken away, but Christ's perfect righteousness is imputed to us. This is not a temporary fix; it is an everlasting righteousness that secures our standing before God forever.
Fifth, He will "seal up vision and prophecy." This means to fulfill and close the canon of Old Testament prophecy. The coming of Christ is the grand subject of all the prophets. Once He has come and accomplished His work, and once that work has been authoritatively interpreted by His apostles, the period of revelatory vision and prophecy is brought to its appointed end. This points directly to the completion of the New Testament canon, which I believe occurred before the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
Sixth, He will "anoint the Holy of Holies." This is not about anointing a physical room in a stone building. The ultimate Holy of Holies is Jesus Christ Himself (John 2:19-21) and His body, the Church, which is the new temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 3:16). His baptism, transfiguration, and ascension were all anointings that consecrated Him for His work and established the new temple, the new locus of God's presence on earth.
All six of these things were accomplished by Jesus Christ in His first coming. To push any of them off into the future is to gut the gospel of its power and historical reality.
The Divine Timetable (v. 25)
Next, Gabriel provides the starting point and the timeline.
“So you are to know and have insight that from the going out of a word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be restored and rebuilt, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress.” (Daniel 9:25)
The clock starts with "the going out of a word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem." This is the decree of Artaxerxes given to Nehemiah in 445 B.C. (Nehemiah 2). From that point, there will be a period of sixty-nine weeks (seven weeks plus sixty-two weeks) until "Messiah the Prince." A "week" here is a week of years, so sixty-nine weeks equals 483 years.
If you do the math, counting 483 prophetic years of 360 days from 445 B.C., you land precisely at the time of Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the very week He was "cut off." This is a staggering confirmation of the divine inspiration of Scripture. God does not estimate; He decrees.
The prophecy divides the sixty-nine weeks into two parts: a period of seven weeks (49 years) during which the city would be rebuilt "with plaza and moat, even in times of distress," which perfectly describes the turbulent period of Nehemiah's work. This is followed by a longer period of sixty-two weeks (434 years) leading up to the Messiah's arrival.
The Central Event of History (v. 26)
Verse 26 describes what happens at the end of this 483-year period.
“Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are decreed.” (Daniel 9:26)
After the sixty-nine weeks are complete, the Messiah will be "cut off." This is a clear reference to a violent death, a judicial execution. Isaiah 53:8 uses the same language: "He was cut off from the land of the living." And when He is cut off, He will "have nothing." He was stripped, abandoned, and crucified outside the city. He died as a pauper, owning nothing, so that we might inherit everything.
But notice what follows immediately. The rejection of the Messiah has consequences. "The people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary." Who is this prince? It is not the Messiah. It is the Roman general, Titus, the son of the Emperor Vespasian. And who are his people? The Roman armies. In A.D. 70, just as Jesus had prophesied in the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24), the Roman legions surrounded Jerusalem, breached its walls, and utterly destroyed the city and Herod's temple, leaving not one stone upon another. Its end came "with a flood," a military term for an overwhelming invasion. This was the decreed desolation, the judgment of God upon covenant-breaking Israel for crucifying their King.
The Final Week (v. 27)
This brings us to the final, seventieth week.
“And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will make sacrifice and grain offering cease; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.” (Daniel 9:27)
The dispensationalists tear this verse out of its context, insert a 2000-year gap for which there is zero textual warrant, and claim the "he" is a future Antichrist. This is exegetical malpractice. The antecedent of "he" is the most recent prominent figure mentioned: the Messiah. It is Christ who confirms a covenant. What covenant? The New Covenant, which He confirmed "with the many" (cf. Matthew 26:28, "My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins").
This final week, this last seven-year period, is the time of Christ's earthly ministry and the birth of the early church. "In the middle of the week", after about three and a half years of ministry, He is "cut off." By His death, He makes the entire Old Testament sacrificial system obsolete. He causes "sacrifice and grain offering [to] cease." His one-time sacrifice was the reality to which all the temple sacrifices pointed. When the reality comes, the shadows are no longer needed. The tearing of the temple veil from top to bottom at the moment of His death was the divine exclamation point on this fact.
The final clause describes the consequence of rejecting this covenant. "And on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate." The "abominations" were the sins of the apostate Jews, who had turned the temple into a den of robbers. Their rejection of the Messiah was the ultimate abomination. This brought upon them the "one who makes desolate," which was the Roman army in A.D. 70. This desolation was not a temporary setback; it was a "complete destruction," a final, decreed judgment poured out upon that desolate generation, just as Jesus warned.
Conclusion: History with a Point
Daniel's seventy weeks are not about our future; they are about our foundation. They are about the historical, datable, verifiable work of Jesus Christ. He came right on time. He died right on time. He established the New Covenant right on time. And judgment fell on those who rejected Him, right on time.
This prophecy is a stake driven into the heart of all unbelief. It demonstrates that God is sovereign over the rise and fall of empires, over the details of history, and over the plan of salvation. It proves that Jesus of Nazareth is the promised Messiah, the Prince, the one who atoned for iniquity and brought in everlasting righteousness.
And because this is true, because God’s timetable for the first coming was executed with such breathtaking precision, we can have absolute confidence in His promises for the future. Not a future of panic and retreat, but a future of victory. The Messiah who was cut off was also raised from the dead. He ascended to the right hand of the Father, and He was given all authority in heaven and on earth. The stone cut without hands has struck the great statue of human empires, and that stone is now growing into a mountain that will fill the whole earth (Daniel 2). The kingdom is advancing, the gospel is conquering, and history is moving toward its God-ordained consummation. Our job is not to decipher headlines, but to proclaim the crown rights of the King whose coming was planned before the foundation of the world and executed right on schedule.