TWO PRINCES AND COVENANT
DANIEL 9
Dale Tooley
An extremely important prophecy of Daniel reads as
follows:
Seventy
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. (Daniel 9:24)
This was, in fact, a six fold list of the purposes
of Jesus' coming in the flesh to earth. Considering them separately we can find
many confirming New Testament Scriptures that support and explain those
purposes. Here are just some of them:
1/ To finish the transgression.
Fill up then, the measure of the guilt of your
fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how shall you escape the sentence
of hell? (Matthew 23:32&33).
Jesus had been telling the custodians of the Old
Order that they had always resisted and killed the prophets God sent unto them.
This was major transgression, so when they rejected and killed Jesus they
filled up the full measure of it.
If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not
have sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. (John
15:22)
I think it would be right to give "sin"
here a capital "S". Of course they had sin before Jesus came
personally, but now it was complete.
2/ To make an end of sin.
Once again we need to get a perspective of
"sin" in regard to the purpose of His Coming.
Hebrews
But now once at the consummations of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of
Himself." (Hebrews 9:26)
When John the Baptist saw Jesus coming towards him
he prophesied in these words:
Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of
the world. (John 1:29)
When did He do that? It was on the Cross.
...this man, after He had offered one sacrifice
for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, from that time waiting
until His enemies be made His footstool. (Hebrews 10:12&13.)
3/ To make atonement for iniquity.
Colossians
....through
Him to reconcile all things to himself, having made peace through the
blood of his Cross....
God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. (2 Corinthians 5:19)
....in due time Christ died for the ungodly....we
were reconciled to God through the death of His Son. (Romans 5:6&10)
4/ To bring in everlasting righteousness:
For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness
to everyone who believes. (Romans 10:4).
For the
5/ To seal up the vision and prophecy.
God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the
prophets, in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to
us in His Son. (Hebrews 1:1&2)
The Law and the prophets were proclaimed until John (the
Baptist) since then the
6/ To anoint the most holy.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me for He has
anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor.
(Luke 4:18)
Some versions of the Bible say "To anoint the
most holy place" but the word "place" is in italics, indicating
that it is not really there. It could certainly not refer to the Old Holy of
Holies because it would contradict Hebrews 8:13 which says:
In that He says "A New Covenant", He has
made the first obsolete.
However even if it could be read to mean the Holy of
Holies we need to understand that the Christian Church (the real one, not the
feigned) is now God's Holy of Holies .
(See
Ephesians 2:21, marginal reading, ASRV.)
We do have an
anointing from the Holy One (1 John
Verse 26a of Daniel chapter 9 reads:
Then after the sixty two weeks the Messiah will be
cut off and have no-one.
(Marginal reading of ASRV.)
This agrees with the witness Matthew gives:
Then Jesus
said to them, you will all fall away because of Me tonight, for it is written,
"I will strike down the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be
scattered".
(Matthew 26:31)
And again it agrees with Isaiah's witness:
He was cut off out of the land of the living; for
the transgression of my people He was stricken. (Isaiah 53:8)
If one is to go through Daniel chapter 9 carefully
it will be noticed that this event (the crucifixion) was to take place in the
seventieth week of Daniel's prophesy.
Count 7, then add 62, plus one more = 70.
To make Daniel's prophecy fit in with the idea that
the 70th week of the prophecy is fulfilled in modern Israel, (which some do)
thousands of years after the events of the first 69, some have it that
God's prophetic clock stopped ticking with the demise of ancient Israel and
then started again with the reestablishment of modern Israel. But this would
exclude hundreds of Old Testament prophecies, clearly fulfilled in the Day of
Grace (see particularly the "In That Day series of
articles"). God's
prophetic clock has never stopped ticking, though it has for
"national"
Let’s take up verse 26 again.
And the people of the prince who will 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.
The people who destroyed the city came under the
command of the Roman prince Titus who was the son of the Roman Emperor
Vespasian. It is interesting to note that this took place in AD 70. The
Jews held 40 years to be a generation. And Jesus had said,
Truly I say to you this generation will not pass
away until all things take place. (Matthew 24:34)
The first part of the following verse 27 reads:
And He will make a firm covenant with the many for
one week.
I am not a scholar of the Hebrew language but I am
told by reliable scholars that the word "for"
is not in the Hebrew text. Could it have been put there in translation by
those who have already decided the interpretation?
It needs to be understood that there are two princes
spoken about here. One is the Prince of the Covenant that is Jesus.
The other is the prince bringing judgment, Titus.
The "He" of verse 27 is Jesus!
It is in the last week of Daniel's prophecy that
He confirms to us the Covenant which is made effective through the six fold
purpose of His Coming that we have just studied. The New Covenant is with
the many, not the nation, as it applies only to the true
For this is my blood of the Covenant, which is
poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. (Matthew
26:28) thus fulfilling Isaiah 53:11:
He shall see of the travail of His soul, and be
satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous servant will justify many, for he
shall bear their iniquities.
The many are mentioned also in Luke's Gospel
at
In the middle of the week He will put a stop to
sacrifice and grain offering.
The "cutting” off of the Messiah and the
shedding of His blood took place in this prophetic week. The introduction of
the New Covenant must annul the first!
And I took My staff, beauty (or Grace) and cut it in
two, that I might break the Covenant which I made with all the peoples. So it
was broken on that day
(Zechariah
11:10&13)
When he said a New Covenant He made the first
obsolete. (Hebrews
8:13)
Who could doubt that the Old Testament offerings are
forever completely unacceptable to God from the moment the veil of the
The rest of verse 27 reads:
On the wings of abominations will come one that
makes desolate, even to a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured
out on the one that makes desolate.
This sounds a little complicated? What Daniel is
saying is that the one that brings the desolation (Titus in AD 70), like the
nation of
Dale Tooley
email: daletooley@paradise.net.nz