Red Moon Rising—The Rapture and the Timeline of the Apocalypse
Chapter One:
___________The Foundation of Bible Prophecy
There is a single prophecy that creates the foundation on which much of the framework of Bible prophecy can securely rest. If it is properly understood then it helps to unify all of the visions, signs and symbols into a structure that makes sense and is easily understood. But if it is ignored or misunderstood, then the rest of Bible prophecy remains a largely impenetrable enigma, and a confusing collection of separate visions, signs and symbols that make almost no sense. All by itself this prophecy demonstrates that there is quite a lot more to Christian expectations of the Second Coming of Jesus than simply blind faith.
This prophecy, the single most important prophecy in the entire Bible, was written down by the prophet Daniel over 2500 years ago. Daniel received it from the angel Gabriel, and it was given specifically concerning the Jewish people and the holy city of Jerusalem. This prophecy is commonly referred to as “Daniel’s Prophecy of the Seventy Weeks,” and can be found in the ninth chapter of Daniel, verses 24 through 27,
“Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and 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 most holy place.
So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, 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 determined.
And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; 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, NASB)
Gabriel’s message included two predictions that concerned the coming of the promised Messiah: First, it predicted the exact day on which the Messiah would be publicly presented to the people of Israel and to the city of Jerusalem. Second, it made a further prediction of a final seven-year period at the end of the age that would involve Israel, Jerusalem, and the “abomination of desolation.” This simple prophecy is given according to the following outline which will help us as we try to understand it:
Verse 24: The Introduction
Verse 25: The Date of the Messiah’s First Coming
Verse 26: Events After the Messiah’s First Coming
Verse 27: The Final Seven Years of the Age
Verse 24: The Introduction
“Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and 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 most holy place.”
First of all, it must be understood that the word that is translated here as “weeks” is the word shebua. This word means a period or unit of seven, similar to the English word score, which refers to a unit of twenty. A shebua usually refers to either seven days or seven years. In Biblical times the Jews observed a shebua of seven days, resting on the seventh day Sabbath, but they also observed a shebua of seven years, when every seventh year they allowed the fields to lie fallow in order for the ground to regain its nutrients. In the context of this prophecy we can be sure that the “weeks” described here are yearly “weeks” and not daily “weeks,” and other Biblical prophecies support this fact. In other words, this prophecy encompasses seventy “weeks” of years, or 490 years.
The first sentence of this prophecy makes it clear that this 490-year period applies to Daniel’s people and the holy city; therefore, we know that this prophecy specifically concerns the people of Israel and the city of Jerusalem. The entire prophecy will then be concluded when six things relating to the Jews and Jerusalem have occurred:
- Transgression will finish.
- Sin will be ended.
- Iniquity will be atoned for.
- Everlasting righteousness will be brought in.
- Vision and prophecy will be concluded.
- The Most Holy place of the Temple will be anointed.These six things can only be accomplished at the Second Coming of the Messiah, which means that the seventy weeks, or the 490 years of this prophecy, are concluded when Jesus returns. And yes, the Messiah is Jesus of Nazareth, as the next part of the prophecy makes clear.
Verse 25: The Date of the Messiah’s First Coming
“So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress.”
In this verse the angel Gabriel explained to Daniel that the Messiah would come after a total of sixty-nine weeks from “the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem,” which would take place “even in times of distress.”
King Artaxerxes of Persia gave this decree a few years after Daniel’s time and it is recorded in Nehemiah 2:1-8. The text states that it was given in the month of Nisan in the 20th year of Artaxerxes' reign, a reign that began in July of 465 BC [1]. The Hebrew month of Nisan in which Artaxerxes’ decree was given began on March 14, 445 BC [2]. Therefore the angel Gabriel gave Daniel a very simple and very specific prediction that the Messiah would appear to Israel and to Jerusalem after a total of sixty-nine “weeks,” (seven plus sixty-two), or basically 483 “years” (69x7), from the month that began on March 14, 445 BC.
This seems rather straightforward, but unfortunately it is not quite so simple. The problem has to do with the way in which the “weeks” of Daniel’s prophecy, which count down to the coming of the Messiah, should be calculated.
A minimum amount of research shows that the ancient world, from the time of the early Sumerians, observed a calendar of 360 days per year [3]. It was a flawed calendar that differed from the true lunar year of about 354 days and the true solar year of about 365.25 days, but it was accurate enough to be retained, although with periodic adjustments, up until about 500 BC [4]. The book of Daniel was originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic, and the evidence suggests that it was written at the end of Daniel’s ministry in Babylon around 535 BC. This evidence alone supports the conclusion that the seventy “weeks” of Daniel’s prophecy should be viewed as seventy seven-year periods of 360 days per “year.”
Further evidence comes from within the book itself. In Daniel 4:23, part of the portion originally written in Aramaic, Daniel gave a divine prophecy that the king of Babylon would suffer a period of insanity that would last for seven “times.” In Daniel 7:25, in a reference to the Antichrist at the end of the age Daniel uses the phrase “a time, times and half a time.” Then again in Daniel 12:7, in a portion originally written in Hebrew, Daniel writes again of “a time, times and half a time” that would be fulfilled at the very end of the age.
Why did Daniel use the strange term “times” rather than “years” when recording his predictions? The answer is that a “year” refers to either a period of 354 days (lunar) or 365.25 days (solar), whereas a “time” refers to a period of 360 days. Daniel often referred to “years” in his writings, but he used the term “time” or “times” when he was relating the prophecies he received in dreams or through the messages received from angels.
The conclusion that a “time” equals a “year” of 360 days is supported, and indeed proven, by the book of Daniel’s New Testament counterpart, which is the book of Revelation. It too gives a prophecy of a period of time at the end of the age and it uses the same terminology of “a time, times and half a time” (Revelation 12:14). This exact same period of time is also given as “1260 days” in Revelation 12:6. Therefore if three and half “times” equals 1260 days, then a single “time” equals 360 days.
The bottom line is that Daniel’s prophecy of the Seventy Weeks should be understood as weeks of “times” rather than weeks of astronomically accurate lunar or solar years. This 360-day per “time” calculation is proven by the book of Revelation, which in fact refers to the very end of Daniel’s prophecy of the Seventy Weeks in its references to “1260 days” and “a time, time and half a time,” which we will examine later.
From this formula we can calculate that Daniel’s prophecy predicted that the Messiah would appear sixty-nine weeks, or exactly 173,880 days (69 multiplied by 7 multiplied by 360), from when the command to rebuild Jerusalem was given in the month that began on March 14, 445 BC. The target date of 173,880 days from March 14, 445 BC calculates to April 6, 32 AD, and this calculation has been verified by a number of sources including the British Royal Observatory of Greenwich, England [5].
Daniel’s entire prophecy is focused on the city of Jerusalem, and the first part of this verse mentions the rebuilding of Jerusalem, so it is reasonable to expect that the Messiah would make his predicted appearance to Jerusalem. The prophet Zechariah supports this idea and also predicted the manner in which it would take place when he wrote,
“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; He is just and endowed with salvation, Humble, and mounted on a donkey, Even on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (Zechariah 9:9)
In order to understand how these prophecies were fulfilled we must examine the important dates that surround the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. According to Luke 3:1, Jesus of Nazareth was baptized in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, who was crowned Emperor on August 19, 14 AD [6]. The year from August 19, 28 AD to August 19, 29 AD was Tiberius' fifteenth year. Jesus is believed to have been baptized in the fall season, which would have been the fall of 28 AD. Jesus’ ministry lasted for three and a half years and from this it can be calculated that He was crucified in the spring of 32 AD. The crucifixion took place on the eve of the Jewish Passover holiday, and in 32 AD the Sunday before that Passover fell on April 6, 32 AD [7]. This was the day, Palm Sunday, when Jesus Christ rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey claiming to be the Messiah. As Jesus was entering the holy city the crowd cried out, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” They were testifying that they believed Jesus was fulfilling Zechariah’s prophecy.
This was the first time that Jesus publicly claimed to be the Messiah. Previously he had privately revealed this fact to his disciples and he had given a number of unmistakable signs and miracles that he was the Messiah, but he refrained from making a public statement of this magnitude until the very day that was predicted in Daniel’s prophecy.
As Jesus approached Jerusalem and the crowd around him went wild, the Pharisees asked Jesus to tell them to keep quiet. Jesus responded by saying that if everyone became quiet then the very stones themselves would cry out to testify that he was the Messiah! Then, prior to entering Jerusalem, Jesus stopped and wept, because he knew what was going to soon happen to His city. He said,
“If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you.” (Luke 19:42-44)
In this statement Jesus himself gave evidence that he was fulfilling Daniel’s prophecy when he referred to a very specific day, a day that, had Israel’s leaders accepted him, would have brought them peace. Jesus then predicted the destruction of Jerusalem, saying that it would come as a result of Israel’s failure to recognize “the time of God’s coming.”
Daniel’s prophecy of the Seventy Weeks is the only prophecy that predicts the exact time of the coming of the Messiah to Israel and Jerusalem as their leader. Jewish religious scholars who reject Jesus have even admitted this fact in the centuries after the time of Christ. The celebrated thirteenth century Jewish Rabbi Maimonides wrote,
“Daniel has elucidated to us the knowledge of the end times. However, since they are secret, the wise have barred the calculation of the days of Messiah’s coming so that the untutored populace will not be led astray when they see that the End Times have already come but there is no sign of the Messiah.” [8]
In another Jewish commentary on the prophecies that are found within the Hagiographa, a section of Scripture that includes Daniel, Rabbi Jonathan ben Uzziel wrote,
“And the (voice from heaven) came forth and exclaimed, who is he that has revealed my secrets to mankind?… He further sought to reveal by a Targum the inner meaning of the Hagiographa, but a voice from heaven went forth and said, Enough! What was the reason? Because the date of the Messiah was foretold in it!” [9]
Only the prophecy given to Daniel from the angel Gabriel predicted the exact time of the Messiah’s coming, and even history’s most respected Jewish scholars admit to this fact. Daniel’s prediction was fulfilled by Jesus Christ to the very day, and Jesus indicated that he knew he was fulfilling the prophecy by the very words He spoke.
Verse 26: Events After the Messiah’s First Coming
“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 determined.”
Verse 25 described two time periods that would precede the coming of the Messiah: a period of seven weeks followed by a period of sixty-two weeks, which adds up to sixty-nine weeks until the public appearance of the Messiah. Verse 26 then gives a list of events that would happen after the coming of the Messiah.
First, the Messiah, would be “cut off,” meaning killed. Then, the people of a future prince would destroy the city and the sanctuary. Remember that when Jesus entered Jerusalem He referred to the day of the Messiah’s appearance to Jerusalem, and then He referred to the destruction of Jerusalem that would follow that day. Jesus was again confirming the prediction that Gabriel gave to Daniel.
The prophecy continues by predicting that war would continue until the end, and that the end would come like a flood, meaning quickly as in a catastrophe. Jerusalem and the Temple (the “sanctuary”) would be destroyed and then Israel would be desolate. These terrible events: the death of the Messiah, the destruction of Jerusalem through war, and the end of Israel as a nation, all took place after the coming of the Messiah to Jerusalem.
When Daniel received his prophecy from the angel Gabriel around 530 BC there was no Jewish Temple because it had been destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BC. At the beginning of his prophecy Gabriel states that the seventy weeks would begin with the decree to rebuild the Temple, and then he ends with the prediction that it would then be destroyed after the appearance of the Messiah. In the Babylonian Talmud there is a passage that shows that the rabbis understood that the Messiah would appear during the days of the Second Temple, after which it would be destroyed,
“Granted that they knew it would be destroyed, did they know when this would occur? Rabbi Abaye objected; and did they not know when? Is it not written, seventy weeks are determined upon the people, and upon the holy city? All the same, did they know on which day?” [10]
Jesus was crucified several days after he appeared to Jerusalem as Messiah and King. After he was nailed to the cross a sign was placed above him with the words, “THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS.”
A generation later in the year 70 AD the city of Jerusalem and the Second Temple were both destroyed at the hands of the Roman army. This helped bring an end to Israel’s unified political and religious structure and led to the nation’s dispersion and desolation.
These events took place after the initial sixty-nine weeks of Daniel’s prophecy, but before the climactic seventieth and final week of Daniel’s prophecy. The first sixty-nine weeks are ancient history, but the seventieth week is the key to understanding the Bible’s prophecies for the future.
Verse 27: The Final Seven Years of the Age
“And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; 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.”
The “he” of this verse is the same person who was last described in the previous verse. He is the “prince who is to come,” whose people destroyed Jerusalem two millennia ago. The Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD and therefore the subject of this verse is a future Roman prince or ruler.
This future ruler will initiate the seventieth and final week of Daniel’s prophecy by making “a firm covenant with the many.” A covenant is a treaty or agreement, and because Israel is the focus of Daniel’s entire prophecy most scholars assume that it is made with Israel or at least with “many” of her leaders.
Many prophecy scholars believe that the prophet Isaiah referred to this covenant, doing so in very negative terms, giving evidence that Israel is indeed one of the parties to this covenant,
“Therefore hear the word of the LORD, you scoffers who rule this people in Jerusalem. You boast, ‘We have entered into a covenant with death, with the grave we have made an agreement. When an overwhelming scourge sweeps by, it cannot touch us, for we have made a lie our refuge and falsehood our hiding place.’
So this is what the Sovereign LORD says: ‘See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation; the one who trusts will never be dismayed. I will make justice the measuring line and righteousness the plumb line; hail will sweep away your refuge, the lie, and water will overflow your hiding place.
Your covenant with death will be annulled; your agreement with the grave will not stand. When the overwhelming scourge sweeps by, you will be beaten down by it. As often as it comes it will carry you away; morning after morning, by day and by night, it will sweep through.’ The understanding of this message will bring sheer terror.” (Isaiah 28:14-19)
The confident leaders of Israel will believe that the Roman ruler and the covenant he makes with them will offer protection, but they will be proven wrong. Instead, Israel’s leaders will be betrayed and they will be “beaten down.”
Gabriel told Daniel that the covenant would initially be made for one “week”, which is seven years, but that in the midst of this seven year period the Roman ruler would “put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering.” This message implies that the Jews will once again rebuild their Temple, because sacrifices and offerings are not a part of the system of Rabbinical Judaism that exists today—it is a practice that could only take place in the context of Temple observances. A Third Temple will be rebuilt, the system of sacrifices and offerings will be resumed, and then a Roman leader will put a stop to them three and a half years after he makes a covenant with Israel’s leaders.
Gabriel’s message concludes with a strange reference to “abominations” and “desolations,” after which the individual responsible for all of these things will be destroyed. The “wing” that Gabriel refers to is viewed by scholars as a reference to a wing of the Temple and the NIV Bible gives a translation of the text that is easier to understand,
“He will confirm a covenant with many for one 'seven.' In the middle of the 'seven' he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on a wing (of the temple) he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him.”
The “abomination of desolation” is an object that is directly mentioned by Jesus in his end-times talk that he gave on the Mount of Olives. By mentioning it he makes it clear that the seventieth week of Daniel’s prophecy will be fulfilled at the time of the end immediately prior to his return,
“Therefore when you see the abomination of desolation which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place, then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains… For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will… But immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory.” (Matthew 24:15-30, NASB)
The passage above is part of the sermon given by Jesus on the Mount of Olives that we will return to often throughout this book. Jesus clearly states that the “abomination of desolation” will one day stand in the “holy place,” which can only refer to the holy place of the Jewish Temple. This will be an event that initiates the most terrible time of tribulation that the world has ever seen, after which the Messiah will make his return on the clouds of heaven.
The fact that Daniel’s “abomination of desolation” is clearly placed in an end-times context by Jesus is a very important point to consider, and it has important ramifications on the way in which the rest of Bible prophecy is to be understood. Before we move on to identify what exactly this abomination is, and who the Roman leader is, we must first examine these ramifications to make sure our study is headed in the right direction.
Notes
1. The Search for Messiah, Mark Eastman, M.D., Chuck Smith, 1996, p.105 (citing the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1990).
2. The Coming Prince, Sir Robert Anderson, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1894.
3. “Calendars Through the Ages” at http://webexhibits.org/calendars/calendar-ancient.html
4. “Babylonian Calendar” at http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/astronomy/ Babylonian Calendar.html
5. Sir Robert Anderson was the first modern Bible scholar to compute the exact date of the appearance of the Messiah using Daniel’s prophecy of the Seventy Weeks and his numbers were verified by the British Royal Observatory in 1894. Since that time scholars have offered minor corrections to Anderson’s data, but his overall conclusion remains strong.
6. The Search for Messiah, Mark Eastman, M.D., Chuck Smith, 1996, p.107 (citing the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1990).
7. The Coming Prince, Sir Robert Anderson, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1894.
8. The Search for Messiah, Mark Eastman, M.D., Chuck Smith, 1996, pp.108-9 (citing Igeret Teiman, Chapter 3, p. 24).
9. ibid, p. 109 (citing the Targum of the Prophets, tractate Megillah 3a).
10. ibid, pp.111-12 (citing the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Nazir 32b).
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