Considering the Amillennial View, Pt. 2: The Seventieth Week of Daniel

This is the second post I'm making on specific Biblical interpretations from the Amillennial viewpoint. I'm trying to stick to the narrow topic and avoid going beyond it into the many related issues. Since from what I've grasped of the relevant scriptures so far I've been leaning toward the idea of the pre-trib Rapture (to my own surprise), my predominant interest at the moment is in seeing whether key scriptures in support of that idea hold up. Amillennialists specifically oppose the pre-trib Rapture so their arguments should be addressed. I looked at the meaning of the "temple" in 2 Thessalonians 2:4 in the first post in this series and concluded that the Amillennialists have it wrong, so that's one for the pre-tribbers.

Now I'm going to look at the 70th week of Daniel based on Daniel 9:24-27.

Again I'm taking my information from Dr. Kim Riddlebarger's lectures. I haven't listened to all of them, but quite a few at the beginning and end of the Amillennialism 101 series plus the shorter Antichrist series. The following are notes I took from his discussion of the 70th Week of Daniel from the first tape in the Antichrist series. [below the Amil 101 series on the right-hand margin]. They may not be completely accurate so I'm not going to call them quotations.
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[The 70 weeks of Daniel, Daniel 9:24-27] which doesn't teach a seven-year tribulation.

It's a messianic prophecy. It's fulfilled by Christ's active and passive obedience. There's no reference in that passage to an antichrist making a treaty with Israel. There is a reference to Christ cutting a covenant on behalf of his people in the middle of the 70th week before he's cut off. Christ confirms his covenant with the many. It's a passage that talks about his death on the cross, not something the antichrist is going to do.

Here is the passage of scripture. The angel Gabriel has come to teach Daniel about things to come:

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. 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. 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. 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.

In this passage the angel Gabriel reveals the yet-future period of time in terms of "weeks" or sevens of years, between a specific event, "the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem" and the coming of the Messiah for whom Daniel's people Israel have been waiting for centuries. Four decrees were made by various of the pagan kings regarding the return of the Jews to Judea after their captivity, but only one of the decrees specifically concerned the rebuilding of Jerusalem, so that is the one taken as the starting point for the calculations based on this passage.

Those who have studied the historical facts have shown that the first 69 weeks of years were literally fulfilled as a specific time period that can be counted precisely from that particular decree up to Jesus' riding into Jerusalem on the donkey, his public revelation of Himself as the Messiah-King. The 69 weeks are exactly fulfilled and there is nothing in the time frame of Jesus' first coming that fits the 70th week of years, leaving that 70th week yet to be fulfilled.

It seems to me that with this kind of precision there is no reasonable doubt that the "weeks" of the prophecy refer to literal time. The Amillennialists apparently explain the 69 weeks in some other way but I haven't been able to find out how, except that they reject the idea that the weeks are an actual time period. This is clear in their explanation of the 70th week at least:

Kim Riddlebarger says:

"The 70th week of Daniel is fulfilled 56:20

It's a messianic prophecy. It's fulfilled by Christ's active and passive obedience."

I listened carefully and heard NO evidence for this claim. He merely asserts it. Somehow, although the first 69 weeks of years can be shown to have been literally fulfilled in a historically identifiable time period, the last week is not to be treated as a literal week of years but as representative of the Lord's obedience? I really did listen for anything that could make sense of this and came up with nothing, no discussion of the reasoning that should lead one to this view, and no offering of a criticism of the calculation of the literal time frame, nothing -- in this particular study anyway, but such an objection should be here if it's anywhere. So the Amil interpretation remains a bald assertion, and an assertion of a peculiarly bizarre and indefensible kind it seems to me.

There's no reference in that passage to an antichrist making a treaty with Israel. There is a reference to Christ cutting a covenant on behalf of his people in the middle of the 70th week before he's cut off. Christ confirms his covenant with the many. It's a passage that talks about his death on the cross, not something the antichrist is going to do.

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. 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

OK, it's possible to read the passage this way as at first it could appear that the "he" refers back to the Messiah rather than to the "prince that shall come." BUT the rest of the passage couldn't possibly refer to the Messiah as He did not "confirm" a covenant, He made a NEW covenant, and He did not make it "for one week" but for eternity. No Biblical defense has been given for the wild notion that the 70th week refers to the obedience of Christ, none, so I just have to dismiss it.

The reference to the ceasing of the sacrifice and the oblation also could indicate the destruction of the temple in 70 AD which was prophesied by Jesus, and which was the necessary demonstration that His sacrifice on the cross ended the need for animal sacrifices for all time. BUT the wording is a bit odd in that case. His death DID in a sense "cause" the destruction of the temple, of course, but the passage describes something this ambiguous "he" directly DOES to cause the temple observances to cease and Jesus didn't do anything like that.

But there is another passage in Daniel where an antichrist figure does remove the sacrifice:

Daniel 8:11 Yea, he magnified himself even to the prince of the host, and by him the daily sacrifice was taken away, and the place of his sanctuary was cast down.

And this prophecy WAS fulfilled, by Antiochus Epiphanes a few centuries after Daniel (175-163 BC) , whose desecration of the Jerusalem temple was the cause of the Maccabean revolt, now commemorated in the celebration of Hannukah. With this clear preceding reference, and a fulfilled prophecy at that, it's hard to see how the A-mils can insist that the reference in Daniel 9 MUST refer to the Messiah and not the Antichrist.

I think the last verses of Daniel 9 may be one of those deliberately ambiguous prophetic passages that are intended to obscure the truth until the time is close for its fulfillment -- or even until the events in question are already underway. I think we are getting near to that time and the passage is becoming bit by bit more intelligible, and it happens to be the pre-trib rapture scenario that is coming into view with its concomitant understanding of God's separate dealings with the Jews. (Also, the ambiguity helps to underscore the fact that the Antichrist is after all an imitation Christ who will imitate as many of the true Christ's attributes as he can. Confusing the two is his aim.)

Furthermore the Book of Revelation takes the last half of the 70th week [56:50], that 1260 days the 3-1/2 years, the times time and half a time and describes the whole interadvental period as the last half of Daniel's 70th week. And in doing that the biblical writers specifically John in the bk of Rev are doing the very thing dispensationalists tell us ought not to be done. It's JOHN -- well actually it's the angel that's revealing this to John -- it's the angel who now tells us that that last 3-01/2 weeks of daniel's final week -- that 7-yr period the last -- is the entire interadvental period.

I listened quite carefully I thought, in order to find out exactly how he thinks this is the case, what evidence he has that the angel is referring to "the entire interadvental period" -- these last 1900-plus years so far -- and not to a specific time period just as the first 69 weeks of years do. The period of 3-1/2 years is so specifically reiterated in scripture in a variety of forms there's something wildly bizarre about insisting it's not a time period. It's referred to as "times, time and half a time" in a few places, it's referred to as 42 months in others, it's referred to as 1260 days.

There's nothing vague about it, nothing that requires allegorizing it, and nothing the angel says that allegorizes it. It seems to me that Riddlebarger merely loudly asserts that John via the angel says so, but I don't see it. He's also asserted, as I quote above, that the whole last "week of years," this 70th week in question, refers to Christ's "active and passive obedience" rather than a literal time period. So he allegorizes the entire week in that way, but then separately stretches out the last half of the week to refer to a time period of almost 2000 years. The two ideas aren't even remotely compatible that I can see.

And finally there is no 7-year tribulation period affirmed anywhere in the new testament. It's not there.

First, the pre-tribbers I've been listening to take care to correct the idea that the entire seven years is a time of tribulation, saying that only the last half is to be tribulation. Second, the iterations of the 1260 days, the 42 months and so on in the Book of Revelation, are pretty specific indicators of a very specific time period that is exactly half of the "week of years" or 70th week of Daniel that is yet unfulfilled.

Rather, the destruction of Jerusalem is spoken of as great tribulation as is the entire interadvental period. We find this in Matt 24:29, John 16:33, Acts 14:22, Romans 8:35, Rev 1:9. The whole interadvental period is spoken of as a time of tribulation and a time of suffering for God's people. And then a great tribulation is mentioned in Rev 7:14. This is the great multitude with the palm branches. These are the ones coming OUT of the great tribulation. The great tribulation in that passage is the interadvental period. The NT never speaks of a seven-year tribulation, the NT speaks of the time between Christ's comings. That entire period is a time of tribulation.

Maybe I'm missing his point but I read all those verse references, all to "tribulation" in some sense or other, most of them to the tribulations all Christians are to expect, so in that general sense they refer to the "entire interadvental period" but I don't see anything that defines the multitude with the palm branches as those who suffered throughout this period -- it's possible but it's not obvious from the context as he claims it is.

Jesus in Matthew 24 refers to a worst tribulation ever, and while that probably does refer to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 it's one of those prophecies that suggests it has yet a further fulfillment to come. But also I'd point out that it was not believers who specifically suffered that tribulation, but predominantly unbelieving Jews. It was a judgment against the Jewish nation, not about followers of Christ at all. If that event is what Jesus was referring to, then He was talking about His "brethren" in the sense of the Jews rather than in the sense of His disciples. So from there I'd go on to ask whether that event was worse than the Holocaust? If not then something worse is yet to come, and to keep up the parallel this would most likely be the "time of Jacob's trouble" rather than a tribulation suffered by the church.

Jeremiah 30:7 Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble; but he shall be saved out of it.

"Jacob" is clearly unbelieving Jews. And if that is the case then Jesus could very well have been talking to the generation of Jews who would be alive in the very last days, all consistent with the pre-trib point of view. I haven't worked all this out myself, in fact I just now noticed that the fall of Jerusalem was a Jewish disaster, not a Christian one.

I could go over every reference and raise the relevant questions but I didn't want to get too deeply into all this here. I'd just say that it's a big leap to assume that there's no other special time of tribulation to be taken into account, and since he merely asserted his point and gave the references without arguing his case for his understanding of them, leaving me to figure out what he means, all I can say is I don't find whatever he thinks he finds.

What I wanted to address in this post is whether there is a yet-unfulfilled "week" or seven literal years prophesied in this passage and whether the Amillennialists succeed in answering this claim. At least Kim Riddlebarger doesn't succeed at this in my judgment. He insists that Amillennialists do not allegorize the Bible except where the Bible itself allegorizes, but it seems to me there's something awfully disingenuous about that claim as I compare his thinking to the literal-weeks-of-years interpretation. I search in vain for anything that supports his assertion that John himself allegorizes the last half of the 70th week in the Book of Revelation to refer to the entire interadvental period. I don't see it. The best that I can say for his position is that he's failed to prove it.

So I find for the interpretation of a yet-future time period of seven years, a literal 70th week of Daniel that was not fulfilled at the first coming of Christ and is yet to be fulfilled, and since the prophecy of the 70 weeks was a prophecy of the coming of Christ and the ending of sin, then the unfulfilled week must have to do with His second coming. Since the 69 weeks were a precise period of time, so would the 70th week be precise, which means that those alive during that period should be able to calculate when the Lord will appear. And since we are also told that no-one knows the day and to be ready so as not to be taken by surprise, this CAN be taken for evidence that there must be two comings yet future, one that will come suddenly without a clear warning, and one that will be expected at a particular time. But I'm holding this interpretation loosely for now. The point of this post was just to decide if there is yet to come a literal seven-year-period that is to finish up all the unfinished business related to the redemption and the end of the world.