At the end of 70 weeks, God will finish the transgression and make an end of sins. And folks, in those two phrases, you have the destruction of the Antichrist. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. It's the center stage of redemptive history. It's also the hub of constant turmoil and conflict in the Middle East. Still, Israel is secure in God's hands and its future is proceeding according to his plan. John MacArthur continues a series that lays out that plan and shows you what it all means for your life today on Grace to You.
This in-depth look at the prophecies of Daniel is titled, The Future of Israel. So take your Bible, if you're able, turn to Daniel chapter 9 and follow along as John begins today's lesson. Let's look at verse 26 and pick it up where we left off last time.
And stay with me now and we'll see how this unfolds. Tremendous verse. And after...now watch that word after...after three score and two weeks, that is you've got the seven and then the three score and two. After 69 weeks shall Messiah be what? Cut off. Now listen now, watch this. It doesn't say during the 69 weeks, it says what?
After. Now this is essential to complete the prophecy. There is yet one more week left. But before you get to that week, look at verse 27. There you have one week.
You see it? He shall confirm the covenant with many for one week. Before you get to the one week, you have a gap in verse 26.
Now mark that in your mind. There is a gap there. That is utterly essential to the understanding of this prophecy. The 70 weeks did not run sequentially right through the 70th week. There's a gap here. Now you shouldn't be shocked by that because such gaps are very common in prophecy, aren't they?
And I'll show you that in a little while. But look with me now at this verse 26. After the seven and...you always add the seven in from verse 25...and then the 62 or the 69 shall Messiah be cut off. Now the verb to be cut off means to kill or to destroy. It is used that way in Genesis 9-11, in Deuteronomy 20-20, in Jeremiah 11-19.
It means to kill. It literally says, after three score and two weeks shall Messiah be killed. Now any Jew that knew his Scripture would not then say that the preaching of the cross is foolishness because he would know his Messiah had to die. But they couldn't handle that.
They couldn't fathom that. You say, well, maybe the Daniel passage was a little obscure. No, they could have read Psalm 22. And Psalm 22 gives you a detail by detail outline of every event of the crucifixion. It even talks about when they gambled for His garment. Or they could have read Isaiah, what? 53, where it describes Him as a sheep led to slaughter.
It's all there. The Old Testament said it would be so. Look back at verse 26.
This is a great word. After three score and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off. This is a monumental prophecy, but not for Himself, says the authorized. That is a very obscure phrase. That means it's difficult to know exactly what was meant by that phrase.
But perhaps the best way to translate it as we've done all we could with that linguistically is to translate it this way, with nothing for Himself. In other words, Messiah came and they executed Him and they gave Him nothing. What should have been due Him was not received. There was no honor. There was no respect. There was no love. There was no acceptance.
There was no receptivity. He came unto His own and His own...what?...received Him not. He was in the world. The world was made by Him and the world knew Him not. His portion was nothingness.
Tragic. But that's what Daniel said would happen. Four hundred and eighty-three years you'll wait and when He comes, you'll be executed like a criminal and He won't get anything that He deserves. So the prophet spoke of Christ and He was executed like a common criminal, Roman style. But did He do anything to deserve that? It was the very opposite of what He deserved. He didn't receive the honor due, rather He got hatred. Now watch back at verse 26, what happens next? This is tremendous. And here's another thing that's going to happen after the 69 weeks.
Not during, but after. That's how the verse begins. And the people of the prince that shall come. Now here you've got a prince with a little P, not a big one. Who's this prince? Who is the prince that shall come? Antichrist. I'm not going to go into developing that again, but just remember chapter 7 verse 8, the little horn, remember that? Remember chapter 8, the king of fierce countenance?
Remember the willful king? The New Testament calls him the man of sin, the son of perdition. He's never really specifically anywhere in the Bible called the Antichrist, but we use that term and you understand what it means, so I'll use it. This is the Antichrist. So after the threescore and two weeks and seven, or sixty-nine, 483 years, Messiah will be cut off, that is executed like a common criminal, and then watch this, the people of the prince that shall come. Now listen to this.
When the final Antichrist comes, with what people will he be identified? I'll show you. Listen. How many world empires are there that Daniel points out? Four. First one is Babylon. Second one is Medo-Persia. Third one is Greece. Fourth one is Rome. Will there ever be another?
Never. But what will happen in the end time, says Daniel, in chapter 2 and in chapter 7, is that which of those will be revived? Rome. And they will be revived in a ten-nation confederacy.
There will be a revival of the Roman Empire and out of that ten-nation confederacy will rise one little horn. So the people of the prince that will come will be what kind of people? Roman people. People.
Okay? That's very clear from what the Bible says. They will be Romans. Now they may not be called Romans, but they will be the revival of the old Roman Empire.
But let's look back at the prophecy now with that in mind. The people of the prince that shall come. Who are they then?
Who are they? They're Romans. The people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Now Daniel says Roman people, people of the Antichrist, will destroy the sanctuary. You know what happened in 70 AD?
What happened? Jerusalem was destroyed. By whom? The Romans. They are the people of the prince that shall come. They're in one segment of the Roman Empire.
He will be over the last segment, but nonetheless it is the same empire. Amazing prophecy. They destroyed in 70 AD the city and the temple. And notice further in verse 26, And the end of it shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined. In other words, it'll be a flood. It'll be just a devastation. And until it's finally over, there will be a constant desolation. Clear until the end of the war, it says desolations are determined.
In other words, it'll be a holocaust beyond any holocaust. In the 21st chapter of Luke, perhaps it would be well to compare the words of our Lord. And when you shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that its desolation is near. Then let them who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let them who are in the midst of it depart, and let not them that are in the countries enter into it. For these are the days of vengeance that all things which are written may be fulfilled.
Woe unto them that are with child, to them that nurse children in those days, for there shall be great distress in the land and wrath upon the people. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword and shall be led away captive into all nations. And Jerusalem shall be trodden down by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. Jesus, I believe, there in the immediacy had in mind the destruction of Jerusalem. And that's exactly that to which Daniel speaks. Werner Keller has written a book in which he chronicles many of the events that happened. And by the way, we know a lot about the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. because Josephus wrote so explicitly about it. In fact, I'll read you a quote from him in a moment. But Werner Keller says this, quote, "'Old Israel, whose history no longer included the words and works of Jesus, the religious community of Jerusalem which condemned and crucified Jesus, was extinguished in an inferno which is almost unparalleled in history, the so-called Jewish War of A.D. 66 to 70.'"
End quote. Listen to what Josephus says. This will give you a little idea of the devastation. "'The terrible famine that increased in frightfulness daily annihilated whole families of the people. The terraces were full of women and children who had collapsed from hunger.
The alleys were piled high with the bodies of the aged. Children and young people swollen with lack of food wandered around like ghosts until they fell. They were so far spent that they could no longer bury anyone and if they did, they fell dead upon the very corpses they were burying. The misery was unspeakable for as soon as even the shadow of anything eatable appeared anywhere, a fight began over it and the best of friends fought each other and tore from each other the most miserable trifles.
No one would believe that the dying had no provisions stored away. Robbers threw themselves upon those who were drawing their last breath and ransacked their clothing. These robbers ran about reeling and staggering like mad dogs and hammered on the doors of houses like drunk men.
In their despair they often plunged into the same house two or three times in one day. Their hunger was so unbearable they were forced to chew anything and everything. They laid hands on things that even the meanest of animals wouldn't touch, far less eat. They had long since eaten their belts and their shoes and even their leather jerkins which were torn to shreds and chewed and by the way, they also ate their children.
Many of them fed on old hay and there were some who collected stocks of corn and sold a small quantity. But Josephus says, Why should I describe the shame and indignity that famine brought upon men, making them eat such unnatural things? Because I tell of things unknown to history, whether Greek or barbarian. It is frightful to speak of it and unbelievable to hear of it. I should gladly have passed over this disaster in silence so that I might not get the reputation of recording something which must appear to posterity wholly degrading. But there were too many eyewitnesses in my time.
Apart from that, my country would have little cause to be grateful to me were I to be silent about the misery which it endured at this time. In one night 2,000 died. The city was torched.
By August of 70, Roman soldiers erected their banners in the sacred places and began to sacrifice to idols. Murder and plunder followed. It was total devastation. Daniel said, It'll come and it'll be a flood and at the end of the war desolations are determined. The inexorable hand of destiny had drawn a line through Israel's part in the concert of the nations. In a single day following that, it wasn't over. Following the fall of Jerusalem in 70, in a single day 10,000 throats were cut in Damascus.
Many died as gladiators in the games. History just kept going like that for them. I mean, it was desolation upon desolation.
You see, after the 483 years, the Messiah would be cut off and there would be desolation in the land. And that's what happened. But it didn't end there. Because in 1914, in the middle of all of this, 90,000 Jews had come back to their land.
And by 1948, it had a charter as a nation again. You say, What's happening? They're getting set up.
For what? Verse 27. Verse 27, And he shall...who's he? The prince that shall come, the Antichrist.
That's the proper antecedent for he. He shall confirm the league, the treaty, the covenant with many. The many refers to the Jews for one week.
Stop right there. Now we have a gap, don't we, then, between 69 and 70? The gap was at least a few days because it had to be long enough for Christ to be crucified.
It was at least a few years, it had to be long enough for 70 A.D., and if it could be that long, it can be undetermined, can't it? You say, How long will the gap last? It'll last until the Antichrist comes to confirm a covenant with Israel.
That's how long it'll last. Don't be bothered by the gap. There are all kinds of gaps.
For example, in Isaiah, unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders. Do you see a gap there? I see a gap there.
He was born, but it's been a long, long wait to get the government on his shoulders. You see, there was a great period of time, a period of time unperceived by the Old Testament prophets. That's why Peter says they were searching the time that all of this would come to pass, 1 Peter 1-11, because they didn't understand the gap. In fact, in Luke 4, Jesus quotes from the Old Testament and says, All of this has come to pass in my life, and He leaves out the part that speaks of the future because He recognizes the gap. And the gap, friends, is the church age. Paul calls it the mystery period, unseen in the Old Testament, a parenthesis, if you will. We're living in that time now, the church age. And that's why the Lord could say, No man knows the day nor the hour, not for you to know the times of the season. You see, if it was all exact 490 years, we'd all know, but the gap means none of us knows. Verse 27, And he shall confirm the Antichrist makes a league with them for seven years.
This is very important. He comes as a great hero to them. And what is going to happen, according to the prophets, is when that final confederacy of Europe comes together, out of that confederacy will rise this one great world ruler called the Little Horn or the Antichrist, as you would call him, and this world ruler will come to the rescue of Israel and make a treaty to protect Israel. Ezekiel says Israel will be so secure and feeling so good about the protection offered by the Antichrist's treaty that in Ezekiel's prophecy it says she is living in unwalled villages.
In other words, they really believe they are well protected. And so they will make a covenant with the Antichrist, the final ruler of the revived Roman Empire. But he's a liar.
He's vile right out of the pit of hell. And so it says in verse 27, in the middle of the week. Now what is the middle of seven? Three and a...good, class. Coming along.
Three and a half. In the middle of the week he will cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease. Now listen to me. Before a sacrifice and an oblation can cease, what do you have to have? A sacrifice and an oblation. Now before you have a sacrifice and an oblation, what do they have to have?
A temple. I believe that one of the things the Antichrist is going to do is assist them in the restoration of the temple. I don't know how it's going to come to pass, but that's one of the things he's going to do. That may be the thing that makes them sign the treaty with him.
I mean, that may be it. They may be so overawed at his ability to pull off that. And by the way, when he is mentioned in the sixth chapter of Revelation, it says he comes conquering and to conquer with a bow. And I've always thought it was interesting that he has a bow but no arrows. And it seems as though he conquers by peace. He is a statesman unequaled. His mouth speaks great things, but he has forces behind him that intimidate. But he seems to be able to negotiate the right things for Israel, security in the land, a temple in the land, and he lets them have their worship. But in the middle of that period of seven years, which is known as the Great Tribulation, he stops the whole thing and in its place he brings an overspreading of abominations and he turns the temple into desolation.
And it remains desolate till the consummation and that which is determined is poured out upon it. He just stops the whole thing in the middle. We saw kind of a preview of that with what character? Antiochus Epiphanes, who caused an abomination in the temple also in the Maccabean period when he slaughtered a pig on the altar and shoved the pork down the throats of the priests, desecrated the temple and brought about the Maccabean revolt. He was just a little picture of what this one's going to do. He's going to bring an overspreading of abomination.
Now in the temple of God, listen to this, the thing that abominates is an idol, a false god. You know what he's going to do? He's going to bring a false god into the temple. You know who it will be? Himself. Himself. That's exactly what the Bible says.
There's not even any doubt about it. Let me just give you a couple of texts quickly and we'll wrap it up. Revelation chapter 11. Well, let's go to 13. I don't have time to get into what I was going to show you in 11, a couple of verses there, 2, 3 and 7, but we'll go on to 13, verse 4. And here it comes. They worshiped the dragon who gave power to the beast. Now the beast, another name for the Antichrist. And they worshiped the beast saying, Who is like the beast? It was given unto him, verse 5, a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies.
You see, there it is, the abomination. And power given unto him to continue for how long? Forty-two months. How long is that?
Three and a half years. Second three and a half years, he puts himself in power. He opens his mouth for six, blasphemes God, blasphemes his name, blasphemes his tabernacle, blasphemes everybody that dwells in heaven. He's given him power to make war with the saints, to overcome them, and so forth and so forth. And he establishes himself as the one to be worshiped. Verse 15, there is an image of the beast set up and he is to be worshiped. And as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be...what? Killed.
Killed. 2 Thessalonians 2 tells us that he sets himself up as God. Now you know what's also interesting about this?
A footnote. During the same three and a half year period that he's had a treaty with Israel, he has also allowed the apostate church to exist. That's the whore in the harlot of Revelation 17. He allows that to exist too. But at that same midpoint, according to the end of chapter 17, he devours the false church. So he devours Israel. He devours the false church. There's nothing of religion left but him.
And in true Roman style, he sets himself up as the only deity. That goes on for three and a half years. And he makes the place desolate. Verse 27, until the consummation, summation, or until the end, or until the finish, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate. Now that takes us to the end...almost. You say, is that the end?
The whole ball game ends with this guy being worshiped? Is that the end? That's not the end. You forgot verse 24.
Back up. This is the end. At the end of 70 weeks, God will finish the transgression and make an end of sins. And folks, in those two phrases, you have the destruction of the Antichrist, right?
Has to be. And then he makes reconciliation for iniquity. And then he brings in the righteousness of the ages.
He seals up the vision and prophecy, and he anoints the holy of holies. That's the kingdom, isn't it? What an incredible prophecy.
Did you get the picture? Hope so. I tell you, I get so excited to think that me, just little me, knows the whole history of the world. Really, even the part that hasn't happened. You see, Jesus has hidden it from the wise and prudent and revealed it unto whom?
Babes, babes. I hope you're grateful. What an incredible thing that God has done for us. You're listening to Grace to You with John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. Today, John continued his study titled The Future of Israel. John, this portion of Daniel that you're looking at in this series, it's complex, as are books like Isaiah and Ezekiel and Revelation. And yesterday, you talked about the fact that the book of Revelation starts and ends with a promise of blessing to those who read and understand it. But for a new believer, biblical prophecy seems hard to understand.
So give us some help. If I'm a new Christian and I want to understand biblical prophecy, what's your advice on how to tackle that subject? Well, again, that is absolutely true what you said. We can know the flow of prophetic history, but there are lots of details.
And you're right in Isaiah, Ezekiel, and particularly in the book of Zachariah, which is the most eschatological, complete book in the Old Testament. And there's some figures of speech in there that are difficult. Yeah, I don't think I would have understood that book at all if I hadn't read your commentary. Yeah, so I could say the easy answer is, how do you understand the hard places? By the commentary.
But on the other hand, how does the commentator understand the hard places? And the answer is, again, the Scripture is its own interpreter. You just take Zachariah. Going through Zachariah was maybe the hardest thing I ever did in terms of a preaching series. You did that early in your ministry. I did.
I did many, many years ago. And somebody said, why are you doing that? And I said, because it's hard.
And I like to tackle the hard things first. But I found the answers to the difficulties of Zachariah by comparing it to other portions of Scripture. And so, again, I say the Scripture is its own best interpreter.
But apart from commentaries, let me suggest this. I have basically tried to explain every passage in the Bible in the footnotes of the MacArthur Study Bible. It's been around now for, what, 25 years?
Twenty-five years, yeah. And just grateful to see how the Lord has used it. The MacArthur Study Bible is the text of Scripture with about 25,000 explaining notes at the bottom of each page that will help you to understand the interpretation of everything you are reading. You can also see in the MacArthur Study Bible cross-references, lots of them, charts, maps, lists, introductions, all kinds of helps so that you can understand Scripture. Again, this is how you can become a capable student of Scripture if you have your own library, and that's what the MacArthur Study Bible is. And by the way, it's available in English, Spanish, French, Russian, German, Chinese, Arabic, and Portuguese. You can get them all from Grace To You, reasonably priced with free shipping on U.S. orders.
That's right. Thanks, John. Friend, for decades, the MacArthur Study Bible has been helping people understand and apply God's Word, and it can do the same for you. Order the MacArthur Study Bible when you contact us today. You can call us at 855-GRACE, or you can order online at GTY.org. You can order the MacArthur Study Bible in the New American Standard, English Standard, or New King James versions.
Whichever option you choose, we're confident the Study Bible will make a tremendous difference in your understanding and application of God's Word. Again, to order the MacArthur Study Bible, call 855-GRACE, which translates to 800-554-7223. Or you can just go straight to the website GTY.org. And while you're there at GTY.org, make sure you take advantage of the thousands of free resources that we have available for you there. You can read articles by John and the staff on the Grace To You blog. You can follow along with several daily devotionals. You can download more than 3,600 of John's sermons, all of them free of charge in MP3 and transcript format. And all of that's at our website one more time, GTY.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Watch Grace To You television this Sunday, Direct TV, Channel 378. Or you can watch it online at GTY.org. And be here Monday as John continues his compelling look at the future of Israel with another half hour of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace To You.
