The End of the Seventy Weeks of Daniel 9– Article #4- The Bringing in of Everlasting Righteousness
The End of the Seventy Weeks of Daniel 9 – #4
Seventy Weeks Are Determined… To Bring in Everlasting Righteousness
Did the Seventy Weeks End in AD 34-35?
Be sure to read the previous three articles in this series. #1 #2 #3.
Daniel was told, in response to his prayer about God’s promise to restore Israel from her sin captivity, that seventy weeks were determined… “to bring in everlasting righteousness.”
There is, among conservative scholars, widespread agreement that this is reference to the eschatological consummation when the Lord’s coming, the resurrection, the New Creation come to fruition. Stephen Miller says:
To bring in everlasting righteousness” signifies that at the end of the seventy sevens an era of righteousness will pervade the earth, which will continue for eternity. As the prophecy pertains to Israel specifically, it indicates that at the end of the sevens the nation as a whole will have received permanently a right relationship with God that will result in living according to God’s will. Only when the kingdom of God is ushered in at Christ’s return will such a state of universal righteousness be possible. (Miller, S. R. (1994). New American Commentary, Daniel (Vol. 18, pp. 260–261). Broadman & Holman Publishers- Logos).
It is more than fascinating, and I think revealing, that noted Daniel scholar John Collins goes through the list of elements in Daniel 9:24 giving his explanation of what each element meant, and when it was fulfilled. Collins is a firm believer that Daniel 9 was predictive of Antiochus and his attempted pogrom against Israel and is not a Messianic prophecy. In fact, he says, “Messianic interpretation was for long time the central issue in the interpretation of Daniel 9:24-27 but is now abandoned by all but the most conservative interpreters.” (John Collins, Daniel Hermeneia, (Minneapolis: Fortress, Augsburg Press, 1993), 354). What is so interesting is that although he gives his view of the time and framework of all of the other five elements, he conspicuously omits any comment on the meaning of “to bring in everlasting righteousness.” Why so? From my perspective, the reason is simple: Collins knows that everlasting righteousness was not, in any way, established in the time of Antiochus. Collins, like many scholars, believe that Daniel (the non-existence “prophet” that some unknown scribe decided to use his name to give his work more credibility!) was predicting the consummation of time and human history, but he was, naturally, wrong!
This seems evident from Collin’s comments on “seal vision and prophecy. Collins agrees that the expectation of Daniel 9 was the fulfillment of all prophecy: “The immediate reference is to the prophecy of Jeremiah’s prophecy, but the allusion probably refers to all prophecy that is construed eschatologically” (John Collins, A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, Hermeneia, (Grand Rapids; Fortress, 1993), 354).
Those who hold that Daniel’s prophecy deals with the time of Antiochus and the restoration of the city and temple, claim that this promise of the coming of everlasting righteousness was fulfilled at that time. Recently, a YouTube poster took me to task for rejecting the Antiochan application of Daniel 9. He claimed that my comments had confirmed that view! When I asked him if everlasting righteousness was established during the Antiochan period, he said it wasn’t! He had no explanation for how he could apply Daniel 9 to Antiochus but that the prophecy was not actually fulfilled. Like Collins, he could not explain how this was true. The fact is that those who make the Antiochan application simply do not explain how everlasting righteousness was in fact established in the second century BC.
While many of the critical scholars confidently affirm that Daniel spoke of the time of Antiochus, at least some of them admitted that the “math” of the Seventy Weeks, just does not work. F. W. Farrar, one of my favorite older scholars, wrote:
It may be objected that the Antiochan hypothesis breaks down, because– though it does not pretend to resort to any of the wild, arbitrary, and I had almost said preposterous, hypothesis invented by those who approach the interpretation of the Book with a-priori and a-posteriori assumptions- it still does not accurately correspond to ascertainable dates. (F. W. Farrar Expositors Bible, Daniel, Robertson Nicol Ed. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1885), 287-288).
So, how does Farrar justify positing Daniel in the time of Antiochus even though the math does not work? He simply dismisses the problem by claiming that accurate calculations should not be expected and that, “Precise computation is nowhere prevalent in the sacred books” (p. 288). This is a broad brush argument that has to be supported. It is true that the ancients did not get into minute by minute chronological calculations or predictions. However, to dismiss calculations that are years, perhaps even decades “off” is not proper.
More conservative scholars believe that Daniel foretold the coming of Messiah and his work.
Charles Boutflower said: ‘Everlasting righteousness’ is a description of the coming salvation, which contains within it a promise of victory over death and the grave.” (Charles BoutFlower, In And Around Daniel, (Grand Rapids, Kregel, 1977), 183). Strangely enough, however, Boutflower claimed that the Weeks ended in AD 33 with the stoning of Steven! (P. 197). How could the Weeks end in AD 33 if the bringing in of everlasting righteousness was the promise of the resurrection???
Milton Terry said:
To sum up all in a single paragraph, the seventy heptades represent an indefinite period extending from the end of the exile until the final disruption of national Judaism by the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. This was a period of nearly six centuries (from B. C. 536 to A. D. 70). The symbolical number 70 is divided into three parts of 7, 62, and 1. The first indicates the period of restoration from exile ; the third the end of the age – the last days of the pre-Messianic era, conceived vividly as a single heptade. The intervening period of sixty- two heptades is of course the undefined space of time between the restoration from exile and the final heptade of consummation. The seventieth heptade is the time when Messiah appears, establishes a new covenant with many, and, to use the language of Isaiah (liii, 10), it pleases Jehovah to bruise him and to make his soul an offering for sin, and so to supersede and do away the temple sacrifices. The end of that eventful heptade is signalized by the total destruction of the Jewish sanctuary, which pouring out of judgment on the desolate was the sign of the coming of the Son of man and the bringing in of everlasting righteousness. This was the eonic crisis, which, according to Heb. xii, 27, 28, marked the removal of the temporary and the typical and the coming of “a kingdom that cannot be shaken.” (https://archive.org/details/propheciesofdani00terr).
Of course, in the final analysis, what the scholars say is not the issue nor is it the final court of authority. The question is, what does the Bible have to say about the arrival of the world of everlasting righteousness? And the answer to that is not too difficult to ascertain.
Now, remember that we are seeking the answer to the question: When did- or will- the seventy weeks of Daniel 9 come to an end?
Please remember also that we told that the Weeks ended in AD 34-35. Kenneth Gentry has taught for a good while that the Weeks ended in AD 34-35: “Although the prophecy (Daniel 9:24- DKP) clearly specifies the terminus of the sixty-ninth week, such is not the case with the terminus of the seventieth. The exact event that ends the seventieth week is not so significant for us to know. Apparently, at the stoning of Steven, Christianity’s first martyr, the covenantal proclamation begins turning toward the Gentiles (Acts 8:1).” (Kenneth Gentry, He Shall Have Dominion (Draper, VA: Apologetics Group Media, 2009), 318).
When it comes to the subject of the millennium, Gentry has now altered his view on when the millennium. In his new two volume commentary on Revelation, he says that the Millennium began, “in the complex of events in AD 70 that includes the destruction of the beast and the false prophet, as well as Satan’s own binding” (Kenneth Gentry, The Divorce of Israel, Vol. II, (Vellicito, CA: Tolle Lege Press, 2024), 1592). Needless to say, this is a radical (non-creedal!) change of position. Gentry earlier affirmed that the millennium began in the personal ministry of Christ (Kenneth Gentry, Thine Is The Kingdom (Valliceto, CA., Chalcedon, 2003), 126f).
(Some commentators suggest that the Millennium began on Pentecost and continues until the (imaginary) end of time, (Douglas Wilson, When the Man Comes Around, Moscow, ID., Canon Press, 2019), 232). Others suggest that it began at Christ’s resurrection. I am not concerned with those positions at this juncture The point I wish to make in this article is when the Weeks of Daniel 9 – and thus- the Millennium ended).
Please consider this: If Daniel 9:24 predicted the resurrection and the New Creation by or at the end of the Weeks– as so many commentators admit- then you cannot have the end of the Weeks without the synchronous end of the Millennium (e.g. the fulfillment of the resurrection and the New Creation). The end of the Millennium is the time of the resurrection and New Creation. This being true, you cannot posit the end of the Weeks in AD 34-35 without thereby positing the end of the Millennium at that juncture also. It is clear in the comments of Gentry cited above that he, and many other commentators, see no connection between the end of the Weeks and the end of the Millennium.
It is my personal opinion that these connections are some of the reasons that led to David Chilton coming to accept Full Preterism before his untimely death. He wrote, “We are living in the new heaven and the new earth; we are citizens of the New Jerusalem.” (Paradise Restored, Horn Lake, MS.: Dominion Press, 2007), 206). Chilton clearly posited the arrival of the New Jerusalem at the removal of the Old Jerusalem in AD 70. He wrote this before coming to accept Covenant Eschatology. I asked him on one occasion how he could have written such things and not be a full preterist, and he responded, humorously, “I have wondered that same thing!”
In light of all of the above, the question remains, what does the promise of the bringing in of everlasting righteousness in Daniel 9:24 mean?
Kenneth Gentry and some other commentators claim that “everlasting righteousness was brought in by the finishing of the Atonement at the cross” (Gentry, Dominion, 2009, 315). But this overlooks what the NT teaches about what we will call the consummate arrival of the world of everlasting righteousness.
Now, if Gentry is correct, that the world of everlasting righteousness fully arrived at the time of the cross then Paul was misguided when he said, in circa AD 49: “Through the Spirit we eagerly await the hope of righteousness.” The word translated as eagerly await, is from the Greek word apekdekomai, and means an eager expectant waiting. There is a strong sense of imminence found in apekdekomai.
What “righteousness” was Paul so eagerly awaiting? Was it the same everlasting righteousness foretold in Daniel? Unless Gentry can show that Paul was speaking of a different “everlasting righteousness” from that foretold by Daniel his claim about the Weeks ending in AD 34-35 is false. (BTW, if righteousness is the result of the justification through Atonement, then since Paul was eagerly anticipating the arrival of “the hope of righteousness” then the Atonement was not consummated at the cross. It was in fact awaiting the second coming of Christ for salvation- the consummation of the Atonement, as Hebrews 9 shows. Biblically, the time line is Atonement–> Justification–> Righteousness).
What Galatians 5 shows us is that if Paul was anticipating the fulfillment of Daniel 9, then the Weeks had not ended in AD 34-35. So, to reiterate the point, if Paul was anticipating the fulfillment of Daniel 9 when he wrote Galatians, it is simply untenable to claim that the Seventy Weeks ended in AD 34-35. The apostle Peter concurred.
In 2 Peter 3 the apostle told his audience that his doctrine of the impending Day of the Lord and the ensuring New Heaven and Earth, was found in the Old Covenant promises:
Beloved, I now write to you this second epistle (in both of which I stir up your pure minds by way of reminder), 2 that you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior
Then, in verse 13, he said this concerning his doctrine of the New Heaven and Earth “wherein dwells righteousness”: “Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.”
So, we have two attestations of the source of the promise of the New Creation wherein in dwells righteousness. That promise did not originate with Jesus. It did not originate with the other apostles. It sprang from “the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets.” Those prophets who had spoken before were undeniably the Old Covenant prophets (1 Peter 1:10-12). Thus, we ask, what OT prophets spoke so clearly of the coming world of righteousness?
We could naturally appeal to Isaiah 65-66 and the explicit promises of the coming New Heaven and Earth. While the term “everlasting righteousness” does not appear in either text, it is not necessary for it to do so. That New Creation would be the abode of the Lord and His sanctified people! Since the Lord – the Lord our righteousness, Jeremiah 23:5f- would dwell there, then of necessity, it is a world in which righteousness dwells.
One thing that is important to realize is that the promise of the coming New Heaven / New Earth and New Jerusalem (Isaiah 65:17-19) would only come at the time of the destruction of the Old Covenant creation. This is explicit in both Isaiah 65 & 66. Strangely enough, most scholars either gloss over this connection or seem unaware of it. In my book, These Are the Days When All Things Must Be Fulfilled, I fully and extensively document these connections. This is truly a critical doctrinal reality but, as just noted, few commentators give it much attention.
So, the New Creation would only come when Old Covenant Israel would be destroyed, and God would save the remnant (Isaiah 65:6-8, 13f, 17-19 / Isaiah 66:3-21). The importance of this point can hardly be over-estimated or stated! Let me express it like this:
The New Heaven and earth wherein dwells righteousness, foretold in 2 Peter 3, is the New Heaven and Earth foretold by Isaiah 65-66. (Virtually all scholars agree that Peter is drawing from Isaiah).
But the New Heaven and earth wherein dwells righteousness, foretold by Isaiah 65-66 would only come at the time of the destruction of Old Covenant Israel and the saving of the remnant.
Therefore, the New Heaven and earth wherein dwells righteousness foretold by 2 Peter 3 would only come at the time of the destruction of Old Covenant Israel and the saving of the remnant- i.e. in AD 70.
This is confirmation of what Daniel foretold. Daniel’s prophecy foretold the bringing in of everlasting righteousness by and no later than the end of the Seventy Weeks. But the end of the Weeks was at the destruction of the city and the sanctuary (Daniel 9:26–27). This is brought out by a careful reading of different translations and an examination of the LXX (the Septuagint).
The great majority of translations render Daniel 9:27 pretty much in agreement with the American Standard: “and upon the wing of abominations shall come one that maketh desolate; and even unto the full end, and that determined, shall wrath be poured out upon the desolate.”
Notice that the vision entails the “full end.” What end is in view? It might be responded that it is the “full end” of Jerusalem and the temple, and that would assuredly be true. But it must be kept in mind that “seventy weeks are determined on people and your holy city.” The Weeks and the fate of the city and temple are bound together. (Some commentators, Gentry, DeMar, Mathison, etc., claim that the fate of the city would be determined within the Weeks, but that the actual destruction would lie outside the Weeks. There is NO support for this in the text. See my book, Seal Up Vision and Prophecy for a full discussion and refutation of this claim).
What a careful reading of the text indicates therefore, is that the full end of the appointed time would be at the time of the full end of the city and temple. And this is precisely what the LXX of Daniel 9 teaches.
And after the sixty-two weeks the anointed one shall be destroyed and there is no judgment in him; and he shall destroy the city and the sanctuary with the prince that is coming; they shall be cut off with a flood, and to the end of the war, which is rapidly completed he shall appoint the city to desolations. And one week shall establish the covenant with many: and in the midst of the week my sacrifices and drink-offering shall be taken away-and in the temple shall be the abomination of desolations: and at the end of the time an end shall be put to the desolation. (Brenton’s LXX).
Notice carefully that the text actually says that at the end (consummation) of the appointed time (suntelia kairou), an end (suntelias) would be made of the desolation. What is the only “appointed time” in the text? It is the Seventy Weeks! Thus, at the end of the seventy weeks, the end of the desolation of the temple and city would take place. In other words, the end of the desolation of the city and temple would be the end of the appointed time, i.e. the Seventy Weeks.
Here is what this means for our study of the arrival of everlasting righteousness.
The everlasting righteousness had to arrive: “at the end of the time”– at the consummation (suntelias) of the time (kairos) the appointed time, the seventy weeks that were “cut out.”
But the end of the appointed time was the time of the end of the desolation of the city and temple.
Therefore, the end of the Seventy Weeks was to be at the destruction of the city and temple.
(I believe it would be wrong to do so, but should someone argue that the everlasting righteousness would be fully established at the cross, therefore the Weeks ended either at that time or in AD 34-35, this is patently a violation of Daniel 9 in the LXX. And that rendering is supported by the majority of translations. Thus, the end of the Weeks is connected, inseparably, to the end of the War and the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple.
We turn now to Revelation 21-22 and its promise of the New Creation as it relates to the Seventy Weeks of Daniel 9.
Most commentators agree that Revelation draws heavily from Daniel. In fact, Gregory Beale argues that Revelation 10-11 draws directly from Daniel. He says that Daniel 11-12 serve as the source of Revelation 7 and the 144,000 who go through the Tribulation (A New Testament Biblical Theology, (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 210ff). Beale also sees that Revelation 10:6f is a direct echo of Daniel 12:6 (Gregory Beale, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1999), 537-541).
The reason this is important is that Daniel 12:2 foretold the end times, the time of the end. (But not the end of time). In 12:3-4 we find that the book was to be sealed “until time of the end” (kairou suntelia). This term uses kairos, which scholarship recognizes as reference to a divinely appointed time. Beagley says, “In the New Testament kairos normally refers to one, critical and divinely ordained moment in the line of history.” (Cited in Stephen Smalley, The Revelation To John, (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2005), 31). In his important work, Christ and Time, Oscar Cullman draws our attention to the importance of kairos. He says that the word, “is not human deliberations but a divine decision that makes this or that date a kairos, a point of time that has a special place in the execution of God’s plan of salvation” (Oscar Cullman, Christ and Time, Third Edition (Eugene, OR: Wipf And Stock,1962), 39).
Both Daniel 9 and Daniel 12 use the word suntelia which indicates a consummation. This word alone does not tell you what “consummation” is in view. But clearly, in this text it is the consummation of the divinely appointed time. It is the time of the end, the time of the kingdom and the resurrection. Peter Leithart takes us very close to the significance of kairos by nothing how Revelation uses the word:
John sometime uses kairos in the sense of ‘event,’ perhaps even ‘decisive event.’ At the beginning and end of the Apocalypse, John writs that the kairos was near (13; 22:10), the moment when the prophecy will come to fruition and fulfillment. This repeats Jesus’ announcement of the kingdom: ‘Repent, for the kingdom of God is near. The time (kairos) is fulfilled.’ (Mark 1:15). As the seventh trumpet trumpets (11:8), voices in heaven praise God for bringing redemption when the time to judge the dead came. …. When the time of discipline and patience ends, then the mystery of God will be finished (etelesthe). This is the word Jesus speaks from the cross, when he proclaims ‘it is finished,’ often taken as a declaration that salvation is entirely accomplished by the death of Jesus. Yet the work of the cross is not completed until the resurrection, the resurrection is not completed without Pentecost, and Pentecost is not completed until the end of the old order in AD 70.”… on Page 411, he says the mystery of God is fulfilled when the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of Christ and the saints and he says this is fulfilled! (Peter Leithart, International Theological Commentary, Revelation Vol. 1, (New York; Bloomsbury, 2018), 409).
I have taken the time to discuss the importance of kairos, and Daniel’s use of that word, to now comment on Revelation 21 and 22 in regard to the world of righteousness, the New Creation. Keep in mind that not only does Daniel 12 call our attention to kairos and the end times resurrection, but in Daniel 9, as shown above, we also have the prediction of the resurrection world of everlasting righteousness, at the consummation of the kairos (sunteliea kairous– Daniel 9:27).
The point is that the New Creation is the goal of the end times, the resurrection. I know of no one that would deny that the resurrection brings in the New Creation. Well, in the sunteliea kairos the consummation of the appointed time, the resurrection would take place (Daniel 12:2-7). And in Revelation 10-11, when there would be no more delay in the fulfillment of the mystery of God, we are told that “the time (kairos) of the dead that they should be judged and that you should reward your servants” (Revelation 11:15ff). What would come at the time of the resurrection? John tells us that flowing from the resurrection, the New Creation arrives (Revelation 20-22)!
Now, Daniel 9 and 12 foretold the resurrection at the consummation of the kairos, which demands that they were in fact predicting that the New Creation would arrive at that time – even if they do not use the specific terminology of “New Creation.” Daniel 9 emphatically posits the fulfillment / consummation of the appointed time (the sunteliea kairou) when the desolation of the city and sanctuary would be completed. Likewise, Daniel 12 said that the time of the end, the time of the rewarding of the dead, the prophets and saints, would be when “the power of the holy people is completely shattered” (12:7). And of course, Revelation posits the sounding of the seventh (last- I Cor. 15:52) Trumpet as the time of the resurrection, the time for the rewarding of the prophets and saints in fulfillment of Daniel 12.
The resurrection of Revelation is posited at the time of the judgment of the city “where the Lord was crucified.” There can hardly be any doubt about the identity of that city. It is not some vague, esoteric, “any city and all cities.” It was Old Covenant Jerusalem.
It should be pointed out that the resurrection of Revelation 11 is indubitably the same end time resurrection found in Revelation 20, the resurrection that would usher in the New Creation of righteousness. Some commentators (E. G. Doug Wilson, When the Man Comes Around (Moscow, ID, Canon Press, 2019), create a distinction between AD 70 and the resurrection of Revelation 20. He says (p. 135f) that Revelation 11 spoke of the events of AD 70. But he says that chapter 20, describes the end of human history (p. 233+). But this means that two different sets of living and dead saints receive their reward at two radically disjunctive points in time, in violation of Hebrews 11:39. We can now add Gentry’s name to the list of those who posit this dichotomization, as shown above.
Gregory Beale comments on the relationship between chapter 11 and 20. He says that Revelation 11 is describing “the very end of history” which of course he claims is what Revelation 20 describes. In fact, on page 614 he speaks of the ‘striking parallels” between chapter 11 and chapter 20 (Gregory Beale, New International Greek Testament Commentary Revelation (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, Paternoster, 1999), 611.). It is unfortunate that Beale fails to posit the fulfillment of Revelation 11 and 20-22 within the framework of the consummation of the Seventy Weeks, even though, as noted, he does see that Revelation 11 and 20 are powerful reflections of Daniel 12.
Daniel 9 (and 12) foretold the eschatological consummation, the climax of Israel’s covenant history. It would be the arrival of the New Creation at the time of the resurrection. It would be at the end of the Weeks.
As we have demonstrated the text of both the Hebrew and the LXX inform us that the end of the Weeks would be at the full end of the appointed time, and that desolations on Jerusalem would end at the climax of the “appointed time” i.e. the end of the divinely appointed Seventy Weeks.
We have seen that in Daniel 9 & 12, Isaiah 65-66, 2 Peter 3 and Revelation the Weeks could not end until the War and the destruction of the Temple and city.
We have seen that the NT writers were still, after the Cross and after AD 34-35, awaiting the arrival of the world of righteousness promised by the OT prophets. There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that what Paul, Peter and John were anticipating was something different from what Daniel foretold. Remember that Peter’s eschatology, Paul’s eschatology and John’s eschatology was drawn directly from the Old Covenant prophets. Thus, when we read their comments – written well after AD 34-35 – about the impending arrival of the New Creation, at the “appointed time,” the time foretold by the Old Covenant prophets- and Daniel specifically – (Acts 3:19-24 / 1 Peter 1:10-12 / 2 Peter 3:1-2, etc.) we are on safe ground in saying that the Seventy Weeks did not end in AD 34-35. The Weeks ended when the appointed time came to its close, when the desolations of the city and temple ended.
The End of the Seventy Weeks of Daniel 9– Article #4- The Bringing in of Everlasting Righteousness