Daniel's 70th Week and the 'Great Tribulation'

Over the past month I've been giving some serious thought to the subject of end-time prophecy and the Kingdom of God and I want to write today about a very challenging passage of Scripture that for many Evangelicals, has become a linchpin in understanding the chronology of eschatological events.  First, I'm going to outline the Dispensationalist or 'Futurist' interpretation of Daniel 9 which uses this text to teach a future seven year tribulation period which is unparalleled in all of human history.  I'm then going to sketch out what I've come to believe is a better interpretation of this passage.  I will attempt to show in this post that Dispensationalist/ extreme futurist expositors make an almost unthinkable error in formulating their teaching about the Great Tribulation - their interpretation of the seventieth week of Daniel 9 actually mistakes the Lord Jesus for the eschatological Anti-Christ!! 

Daniel 9 and the 'Great Tribulation'

I suspect that the majority of Christians who've read Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series and are expecting a literal seven year 'Great Tribulation' would have considerable difficulty if they were asked to validate this doctrine from the Scripture itself.  The reason for this is that a seven year 'great tribulation' is never plainly taught anywhere in the Bible!!  At best it is an inference which comes from superimposing certain theological presuppositions upon the Scripture.

The Dispensationalist expositor begins with the  presupposition that the Church and Israel are two completely different entities in God's redemptive plan. (a presupposition which I personally don't think can be substantiated when you examine how the NT authors apply OT Covenant passages to Gentile followers of Jesus!)  Because of the Jewish context of Daniel 9, these expositors insist that this prophecy is dealing exclusively with ethnic Jews and the nation of Israel.  Indeed, the concept of the 'great tribulation' is required in the traditional Dispensationalist system if we are to get the Church (Plan B) out of the way at the so-called 'secret' pre-tribulational rapture so that God can resume Plan A with ethnic Israel back here on earth.    

Chapter 9 begins with Daniel reading from the book of Jeremiah during the Babylonian exile, openly confessing the sins of Israel before the Lord and pleading His covenant mercy on behalf of the disobedient nation.  In response to his earnest prayers, the Angel Gabriel is sent by the Lord with the following words of comfort: 

²⁴ “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.  
²⁵ 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.  
²⁶ 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.  
²⁷ 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 first exegetical move that Dispensationalists make is to interpret the 'seventy weeks' (or 'seventy-sevens') in terms of literal years - in total this would equals 490 years.  The passage is therefore interpreted in a strictly chronological fashion.  
Secondly, they identify the decree mentioned in v. 25 with the decree that went out during the 20th year of King Artexerxes when Nehemiah was permitted to return from exile to rebuild the fallen walls of Jerusalem, an event that occurred in 445 BC.  (Neh 2:1-8).  
Next, they calculate the fulfillment of v. 26 as occurring 483 years after the issuing of the decree (69 weeks or (7+62) x 7 = 483).  This is actually pretty amazing when you think about it because it brings us fairly close to the year of Jesus' death!  And so, the first 69 weeks bring us chronologically to the prophetic fulfillment of v. 26 when the "Messiah will be cut off and have nothing" - an event which was historically fulfilled when Jesus was crucified on a Roman cross.   
But here's where the Dispensationalist interpretation begins to get a bit far-fetched for my own comfort.  They proceed without any exegetical warrant, to postulate an indefinite gap between week 69 and week 70 which has now stretched to 2000 years and counting!!!  The clock apparently stopped after week 69, and the 70th week - a period of 7 years known as the 'great tribulation' - will not begin until the eschatological anti-Christ comes to make a covenant with "the many" (v. 27).  Notice that in the Dispensational interpretation, the one who makes the covenant in v. 27 is identified with the "prince who is to come" in v. 26 rather than with the Messiah!  This, I want to suggest is a serious misunderstanding of this text which breaks not only with their own so-called literal or 'grammatical-historical' hermeneutic (funny that Gabriel totally forgot to mention that itsy bitsy 2000 year gap!!), but also with the historic Protestant interpretation.  The Dispensationalist view, although attractive on the surface and popular in many Evangelical circles, appears on closer examination to be a novel interpretation of this passage which confuses the Messiah with anti-Christ and breaks sharply with the history of interpretation.

Daniel 9 and the Year of Jubilee

For any unprejudiced interpreter of Scripture it should be somewhat clear that the Dispensationalist interpretation of this passage rests on rather shaky exegetical soil!!   I have suggested above that the need for a seven year 'great tribulation' is artificially created by the presuppositions of the theological system itself rather than by Scripture.  Secondly, the Dispensationalist interpretation totally falls apart if the "decree" of v. 25 cannot be identified with the decree given by Artexerxes in Nehemiah 2:1-8.  Thirdly, the Dispensationalist interpretation inserts a gap between week 69 and week 70 which is not even remotely suggested or demanded by the context itself!  Fourthly, the Dispensationalist uses a dangerous hermeneutic, by interpreting the NT in light of the OT, rather than the other way around.  As Christians who affirm the progressive revelation of Scripture, we ought always to interpret the OT in light of its fulfillment in Christ!!  So here's what I personally think is a better interpretation of this passage which actually calls into question the idea of a future seven year tribulation:

First of all,  the 'decree' of v. 25 is better understood in the overall context of this passage as a reference to the decree of Cyrus (538 BC) mentioned in Ezra 1:2-3 and. 2 Chron. 36:21-23 since it was this decree, and not the decree of Artaxerxes which signaled the end of Israel's 70 year Babylonian exile.  Because Daniel was praying about the end of the Jewish exile when Gabriel visited him, it makes more sense that the 70 weeks would immediately follow the conclusion of the 70 year captivity - otherwise it is difficult to see how this prophecy is an answer to Daniel's prayer in any meaningful sense.  Of course, this throws a monkey wrench into the precise calculations of the Dispensationalist scheme, but as we will see, I don't think it really matters because the text is not really concerned with precise dates and times, but is dealing with symbolic numbers that find their ultimate fulfillment in Christ.  We're dealing here with a form of 'typology'.

I agree with the older Protestant interpreters that the seventy weeks are most likely an allusion to the Sabbatical laws and  the Year of Jubilee from Lev 25:1-4, rather than to a strict chronology that we can use to calculate precise dates and times.  The year of Jubilee occurred every forty-nine years (seven sevens), and so it is more than reasonable to assume that 490 years is a symbolic representation of 10 Jubilee periods! In other words, 490 is a symbol for the ushering in of the Messianic era of Sabbath rest which  Daniel and the Jewish people anticipated for thousands of years!

Now for the interesting part!  I am in full agreement with Dispensationalists that the cutting off of Messiah in v. 26 is a reference to the crucifixion of Christ.  The "prince that shall come" mentioned in v. 26 is most likely Titus, the Roman general that destroyed the Jewish temple in AD 70.  It was at this time that the Jewish people underwent some of the terrible persecution that Jesus himself describes in the Olivet Discourse.  In contrast to the Dispensationalist interpreters, I think that the one who confirms the covenant in v. 27 is the Messiah Himself!  This is not a reference to some future covenant that anti-Christ will with Israel during the great tribulation - it is a reference to the New Covenant ratified in Christ's blood!!  Messiah himself confirms the covenant with all of His elect people, both Jews and Gentiles who are children of Abraham by faith (Gal 3:29).  The New Covenant which was brought to full fruition by the Lord Jesus rendered all of the Temple rituals blasphemous abominations to God - and that is which is what v. 27 is talking about!   All of the Temple sacrifice which occurred between Jesus' death in AD 33 and the destruction of the Temple in AD 70 was a form of blasphemous idolatry that was totally displeasing to God. It was worshipping the 'types' and 'shadows' rather than the reality which had come in the person and work of Christ.  As the author to the Hebrews puts it, the coming of the New Covenant renders the Old Covenant obsolete and ready to pass away!

And so, I understand the 70th week of Daniel not as a future tribulation period that will last seven years, but rather as a symbolic representation of the age in which we are currently living.  We have been living in the 'last days' for the past 2000 yrs!!  The 70th week began when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, the first 'half' of the week ended when He died on the cross, and the end of the week will not occur until He comes back again to receive the Church to Himself!