Flight DAN02 - Part B

Ever heard of Isaac Newton? Sir Isaac Newton, the father of modern science, mathematician, astronomer. Isaac Newton was also a believer in the Bible. And Sir Isaac Newton said you could stake the entire truth of Christianity on the text of Daniel chapter 9 alone.

Quite a statement. The ancient native city of God's word. Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Skip begins to unravel for you one of the most significant prophecies in the Bible about Jesus. But first, we want to share about where you can hear even more encouraging Bible messages from Skip. Don't forget to subscribe! Thank you, Skip! We're passionate about helping believers like you strengthen your walk with God.

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Thank you! Now, we're in the book of Daniel as we dive into our study with Skip Heitzen. The fort in the dynasty of Seleucid kings was a guy by the name of Antiochus the fourth. Antiochus the fourth, also called Antiochus Epiphanes.

He I believe was the king arising, verse 23, having fierce features. And destroying the holy people. What did he do? He came into Jerusalem, took it over, killed 80,000 people pretty quickly.

Took 40,000 captive. He dedicated the temple in Jerusalem to Zeus. He put an image of Zeus in the temple. He sacrificed a pig.

Know anything about kosher law? The most unclean flesh in Judaism is a pig. He took a pig and sacrificed it on the altar of sacrifice.

That bronze altar in the outer courtyard. Took the juices of the swine and drenched the temple floor and compounds with it. Just desecrated the whole temple. He put an end to sacrifices. He put an end to the Sabbath. He forbade Jewish circumcision.

The male child of eight days of old. He just shut Judaism down. When he did that in the temple, the Jews gave it a specific title.

They called that the abomination of desolation. That's why last week I said chapter 8 is the historical template of somebody else who will come in the end times and do that again called the antichrist. Hold that thought. Because I'm going to show that to you in just a moment. Now we get to chapter 9. Chapter 9, man, is the Eiffel Tower of Scripture. It is like looking out the window, Bible from 30,000 feet, and you go, oh, there's the Eiffel Tower. Or, wow, look at the pyramids. You can see them when you're flying into Cairo. They shoot up from the landscape. They're an unmistakable landmark.

Or Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. It is one of the towering chapters of all of the Bible. Ever heard of Isaac Newton? Sir Isaac Newton, the father of modern science, mathematician, astronomer. Isaac Newton was also a believer in the Bible. And Sir Isaac Newton said you could stake the entire truth of Christianity on the text of Daniel chapter 9 alone.

Quite a statement. By the time we get into chapter 9, Daniel is much older. He was 15 when we start the book. He's in his 80s.

You know what that means? That he has lived the entire Babylonian captivity in Babylon, 70 years of captivity. He's been there.

And it's just about up. He has been there since he was about 15. He's lived there 70 years.

He's between 85 and 90. And he remembers, you'll see here, that Jeremiah the prophet gave a prediction that the Jews would be in Babylon 70 years. That's given by a prophet who preceded Daniel.

You following me so far? Chapter 9 verse 1. In the first year of Darius, the son of Ahasuerus of the lineage of the Medes, so we're dealing with the second kingdom.

At the head of gold, Babylon is gone, Medo-Persian empire, chest, arms of silver, the bear tilted to one side, depending on which vision you're looking at. Of the lineage of the Medes, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans. So this is 539 BC, right after Babylon had fallen to the Medes and the Persians. In the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood, I love this, by the books. I understood by the books the number of years specified by the word of the Lord through Jeremiah the prophet that he would accomplish 70 years in the desolations of Jerusalem.

If you ever wondered, what did Daniel ever do for quiet time? He read, at least on this day, the scrolls of Jeremiah the prophet. He's reading and contemplating the scripture. And he comes across this prophecy of Jeremiah where it says, Israel is going to be captive in Babylon 70 years and he's thinking back to when that first happened, he's lived through it. And now he knows that time's about up. He looks at his hourglass, yep, it's about up.

Seventy years, man, we're about at the end of it. Verse 3, then I set my face toward the Lord God to make requests by prayer and supplications with fasting, sackcloth, and dashes. And I prayed to the Lord my God and made confession and said, O Lord, great and awesome God who keeps his covenant and mercy with those who love him and with those who keep his commandments. He begins a great prayer of confession as well as prayer of supplication.

Go down to verse 21. Yes, while I was speaking in prayer, the man, Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, that's back in chapter 8, being caused to fly swiftly, reached me about the time of the evening offering, about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. The evening offering in Jerusalem. Even though there's no temple, even though there's no sacrifices, that was how they kept the time.

3 o'clock in the afternoon, that's when the lambs were killed in the temple, evening sacrifice. And he informed me and he talked with me and he said, O Daniel, I have now come forth to give you skill to understand. Please note that.

Why? Because some people think Daniel chapter 9 is hard to understand. And yet the angel said, I want you to understand this. I'm going to give you skill to understand.

This is not some cryptic thing filled with confusion and obfuscation. This is revelation, man. This is God making things clear to Daniel.

I want you to understand and he wants us to understand. At the beginning of your supplications, the command went out and I have come to tell you for you are greatly beloved, therefore consider the matter and understand the vision. Here it is, 70 weeks are determined for your people and for your holy city to finish the transgression, to make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy. Amazing verse of scripture.

One of the most important verses in all of scripture. It says 70 weeks are determined, you see the word determined, it means to divide or to cut. What it means basically is this, God has spliced out of all of history this time period. He's marked out what is called here 70 weeks. This 70 weeks is a divine timetable that God cut out, divided out, spliced out of history for certain things to be accomplished. When those 70 weeks are up, the six things that are enumerated in verse 24 will be accomplished. If you want to look at it again, you can see what's going to happen at the end of that time. Finish the transgression, make an end of sins, make reconciliation for iniquity, bring in everlasting righteousness, seal up vision and prophecy and anoint the most holy.

That is the most holy place. So what does that mean? So 70 weeks, let me give you the exact Hebrew, shebuim shevim, shebuim shevim, literally that means 70 sevens. Now it says weeks here because in a week there are seven days. But the Hebrew is shebuim shevim, 70 sevens are determined. That seven, that set of seven could be seven days, could be seven years. Sometimes in the Bible and in Jewish literature it speaks of a week of days, sometimes it speaks of a week of years. The consensus of both Jewish and Christian conservative scholarship is that we are dealing with 70 sets of seven years or 490 years. You follow 490 years are determined.

Now stop for just a moment. Let me kind of tell you where Daniel's head is at. Daniel's reading Jeremiah the prophet and Jeremiah the prophet said that they're going to be in captivity for how many years?

Shout it out. How many years? So Daniel's thinking 70 years, 70 years, 70 years. You know why 70 years? You know why they were in Babylon 70 years? Did God just say, I like the number 70? No.

No. Second Chronicles 36 tells us exactly why. It says because Israel failed to keep the Sabbath year so he would extract that from them and gave them a 70 year captivity. What does that mean?

Here's what it means. Remember how the Jews, when they would do agriculture, they would till the land for six years, the seventh year they would let it lie fallow, they just give it a rest. The land got a Sabbath for a whole year, every seven years.

They didn't do that. They kept planting, harvesting, planting, harvesting, didn't. They never gave the land a rest. For 490 years, they disobeyed God's Sabbatic commandment to give the land a rest. So what God says in the captivity of 70 years is, you owe me 70 years, I'm going to take it out of you. You're going to go into captivity 70 years, I'm going to give the land a big rest, 70 years in a row, you've disobeyed me that long. So Daniel's thinking along these terms, he's thinking 70 years because of 490 years of disobedience. It's as if exactly at that moment, the Lord says, well, now that you're thinking about those 490 years of disobedience and 70 years of captivity, let me give you 490 other years to consider. Seventy sets of seven are determined for your holy people, the city of Jerusalem.

Now just to clear it up, to even make it more clear, I hope I'm clearing this up and not covering it up. Many versions of the Bible, some Jewish translations, some Jewish commentaries, and several modern translation, including the new century version, just to take the Hebrew text and clarify it in English, instead of saying 77, simply read thus. And I'm quoting now from the new century version. God has ordered 490 years for your people. Okay, so that's what we're dealing with, 490 years cut out, spliced out that when those 490 years are finished, all those six items in verse 24 will be done, will take place.

One of the reasons I know this can't be 70 weeks of days is because that would only be one and a third years, 470 weeks of days would only be one and a third years. That's certainly not enough time for all of those sayings in verse 24 to occur. And by the way, they haven't occurred yet.

We're still waiting for that. Okay, when does all this begin? Verse 25, know therefore, know. I want you to know this. Know therefore and understand. And by the way, I have decided in my 20s that I would take this scripture seriously. Know therefore and understand. I made it my goal to memorize many of the figures I'm giving you so that I could share it in the field.

I worked in Southern California hospitals among lots of doctors who thought they hung the world, they hung the moon, they were the smartest people on the earth, they were atheistic. And so I was able to use Daniel and his prophecies to win many of them to Christ. So know therefore and understand from the going forth of the command, that's when it's going to begin, from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, only time in the Bible, that construction occurs.

Messiah the Prince, Mashiach Nagid. From the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem until the Messiah the Prince, there will be seven weeks, okay, seven weeks of years is how many years? Forty-nine years, that's pretty easy math, forty-nine years. Sixty-two weeks, that's four hundred and thirty-four years.

So a total of four hundred and eighty-three years, you're following me? From the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem until the Messiah the Prince, there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks or sixty-nine weeks. The street will be built again and the wall even in troublesome times. And after the sixty-two weeks, Messiah shall be killed, executed, cut off, I'll get back to that in a minute, 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 the flood until the end of the war, desolations are determined.

This is the very pinnacle of the book of Daniel in my opinion. We are told the exact time of Messiah's arrival into Jerusalem. When is that? After the sixty-ninth week. So what that means is you should be able to count four hundred and eighty-three years from the command to restore and build Jerusalem, you should be able to count four hundred and eighty-three years and end up with Jesus the Messiah, Messiah the Prince, coming to his holy people, Jerusalem. The starting point, the command to restore and build Jerusalem. Do we know when that is?

We know exactly when that is. Now I'm going to cut through some of the, I've waded through the numbers and the scholarship and the explanations, let me just say there were four in history, four different edicts given to the Jews to go back to Jerusalem and do something. But the one edict that was given for them to go back and restore and build Jerusalem, you've read it.

It's Nehemiah chapter two. It was given by Artaxerxes Longimonus and it was March fourteenth, 445 BC. We even know the exact date in history. In our calendar, March fourteenth, 445 BC, and incidentally, it took forty-nine years to restore the walls and the streets of Jerusalem. That's the first section.

Notice the Messiah is predicted after that first forty-nine year period, seven weeks and sixty-two weeks, a total of sixty-nine weeks, four hundred and eighty-three years, okay? There is a book, it was written in 1894, I believe, by the head of criminal investigation at Scotland Yard. He was a math whiz. He was brilliant. His name was Sir Robert Anderson. He was so intrigued by Daniel, he put pen to paper and figured out the dates and the coming of Jesus into Jerusalem.

And here it is. He figured that four hundred and eighty-three years tabulated out by day is exactly one hundred and seventy-three thousand, eight hundred and eighty days. So he counted from March fourteenth, 445 BC, and counted a hundred and seventy-three thousand, eight hundred and eighty days, used a calendar, made variations for leap years, et cetera, and came up with the end of the four hundred and eighty-three years, or a hundred and seventy-three thousand, eight hundred and eighty days, with a very interesting date, April sixth, 32 AD, which happened to be in the Jewish calendar, the tenth of Nisan. The tenth of Nisan, many of you now know from our previous Bible studies, was the day the Jews every year selected the lamb, who would be sacrificed on the fourteenth day of Nisan, the Passover, and they brought the lamb home. What happened on the tenth of Nisan?

What happened April sixth, 32 AD? In the beginning, Jesus crested the Mount of Olives and looked over the city of Jerusalem and said to his disciples, go into the village next to you and get a donkey. He had never done this before.

He always told his followers after he did a miracle, and they said, you're the one, you're the Son of God, you're the Messiah. He said, don't tell anybody. Keep it a secret.

How hard would that be? You just got healed. Don't tell anybody. This is the only time he publicly allowed, in fact, commanded a public presentation into the city of Jerusalem, fulfilling Zechariah chapter 9, verse 9, behold your king comes to you lowly on the full of a donkey. And they saw him coming into the city and they said, Hosanna, Hosanna. You know the story.

But something unusual happened. As he nears the city, he says something, and here's what I want you to grasp. Not only did Daniel give the exact day when the Messiah would come, Messiah the Prince, what's even more astonishing is Jesus held the Jews responsible to know the date. Know therefore and understand.

He held them accountable. In Luke chapter 19, go down to verse 41, if you have your Bible open, or I'll just read it to you. Now as he drew near, that is drew near the city, he saw the city and he wept over it, saying, if you had known, even you, now watch this, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace, but now they are hidden from your eyes, for the days will come upon you when your enemies, that's the Romans, will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you on every side, happened in 70 AD, and level you and your children within you to the ground, and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation. The Romans are going to destroy your city because you should have known this day, this time of your visitation.

That day, the 173,880th day, the 483rd year, as Robert Anderson calculated it to the very day. That's Skip Heitzing with a message from the series The Bible from 30,000 Feet. Right now we want to share about a great resource that helps you live confidently in the peace of Jesus, even in life's uncertainties.

So how is your stress level on a scale of one to ten? As a thief, a robber of peace and joy, here's Skip Heitzing with a pointed observation. If you don't live with an anchor of faith, you're going to drift in a sea of anxiety, and most people in the world, they don't have anything to anchor, they have no real grand scheme or purpose in life. We want to help you live with an anchor of faith, so you can learn to lean into God in times of anxiety by sending you three powerful resources, Skip Heitzing's new booklet, Overcoming an Anxious Mind, his teaching, Worship and the Uncertainty on CD, plus The War is Over Worship CD. This bundle is our thanks when you give $35 or more today to help expand the Bible teaching outreach of Skip Heitzing.

Jesus as Savior brings peace with God, but Jesus as Lord brings the peace of God. Call now to request these three encouraging resources when you give, 800-922-1888, or give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer. From cover to cover, the Bible proclaims God's radical love for you. And at Connect with Skip Heitzig, we want to take that powerful message to more listeners around the world. So please give now to help keep the teachings you love from Skip on the air and online, and make it possible for more people to experience God's life changing love. Call 800-922-1888, that's 800-922-1888. Or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate, that's connectwithskip.com slash donate. Thank you. Tune in tomorrow as Skip Heitzig shares how you can cultivate biblical wisdom in your life.

Some people want to just have a life that's like a lot of flair and boom, bam, like a firework. But if you're wise, you want to shine forever, make it your goal in life to bring with you to heaven as many people as you can. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the crossing. Cast all burdens on His word. Make a connection, connection at the foot of the cross. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.