The period between the two comings of the Lord Jesus Christ

Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and for your holy city, to put an end to transgression, to make an end of sins, to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, until the vision and prophecy are sealed, and until the Holy of Holies is anointed. Know, therefore, and understand that from the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the Ruler, seven weeks will pass; then for sixty-two weeks, the streets and the moats will be rebuilt, and this will be during a time of distress.

After these sixty-two weeks, the Anointed One will be cut off and will have nothing. The people of a ruler who is to come will destroy the city and the Holy Place, and his end will be like a flood; it is decreed that war will continue until the end, and with it, desolation. He will make a firm covenant with many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put an end to the sacrifice and the grain offering, and on the wing of abominations will come one who brings desolation, until the decreed destruction falls upon the desolate one. (Daniel 9:24–27).

This is the prophetic word received by Daniel from the angel Gabriel, while he was praying for the restoration of the Jewish people to Jerusalem, after they had been taken into captivity in Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar, who destroyed the Temple and the city of Jerusalem (2 Kings 25, 2 Chronicles 36). In response to Daniel’s prayer, God sent the angel Gabriel to reveal to him the prophecy of the 70 weeks of years.

The subject of the prophecy is the Jewish people and Jerusalem. The prophecy covers a period of 70 weeks of years. In this context, one week equals seven years. This period is divided into three segments (7 + 62 + 1) × 7 years, which amounts to 490 years. Verse 24 tells us that, by the time the prophecy is fulfilled, the following will have taken place:

1. The end of lawlessness and the atonement for sins.

2. The atonement for iniquity and the bringing of everlasting righteousness.

3. The sealing of the vision and prophecy, and the anointing of the Most Holy Place.

This prophecy has not been fully fulfilled. Regarding point 3, there are unfulfilled prophecies concerning the Messiah and Jerusalem. Therefore, this prophecy will be fulfilled in the future. It is stated that, at the end of the 69th week, the Anointed One will be cut off and will have nothing. However, “the city” (Jerusalem) and “the Holy Place” (the Temple) will be destroyed. At the time Daniel received this prophecy, the site where the Temple had stood was in ruins. Now, he learns that the Temple will be rebuilt on the same site, but it will be destroyed again, just like the first one. This prophecy was fulfilled when the Temple was destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70. Some time before this event, the Messiah would come and be put to death.

Bible scholars have calculated that the dates indicated in Daniel coincide exactly with the crucifixion of Jesus. In Daniel 9:26 we read that the Messiah will be cut off, but will have nothing. In Hebrew, this expression has a double meaning: “not for himself” or “he will have nothing.” Both meanings apply to the Lord Jesus.

He was cut off / suffered the punishment for sin, not because of His own sins, but because of the sins of others, fulfilling the prophecy in Isaiah 53:6: We all went astray like sheep; each of us turned to his own way, but the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

Among the Old Testament prophecies, there are two sets of prophecies concerning the Messiah. One set portrays Him as a man of sorrows, acquainted with suffering, and the other as a ruling King. At His first coming, Jesus fulfilled the prophecies about the Man of Sorrows, accustomed to suffering, but not those about the reigning King. He did not have a visible kingdom—that is, “He will have nothing.” Contrary to Jewish messianic expectations, at His first coming, the Messiah did not defeat Israel’s enemies, nor did He reign on earth from David’s throne in Jerusalem. Instead, He was put to death and rose from the dead. He brought forgiveness of sins and eternal life to all who call upon His name for salvation. His Kingdom was unseen, consisting of souls saved and brought into the Kingdom of God through repentance and faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior.

According to Daniel’s prophecy, the Messiah’s death will be followed by the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. This historical event will be accompanied by a flood (an image often used in prophecy to symbolize an invasion), wars, and desolation. The Lord Jesus warned that the period following His first coming would be characterized by “wars and rumors of wars” (Matthew 24:6), the opposite of an age of peace. Jesus also prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem: “The days will come upon you when your enemies will surround you with trenches, besiege you, and hem you in on every side; they will raze you to the ground, you and your children within you; and they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.” (Luke 19:41–44)

This prophecy was fulfilled to the very last letter when the Romans destroyed the Temple and Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Thus began the long exile and the scattering of the Jewish people to all the nations of the world, and Jerusalem was ruled by various non-Jewish powers (referred to in the Bible as “the nations”), just as the Lord Jesus had prophesied in Luke 21:20–24. As a result of the Messiah’s death and resurrection, Israel’s countdown to the fulfillment of the 70 weeks of years came to a halt. This creates the interval between the 69th and 70th weeks of Daniel’s prophecy, which separates the events of the Messiah’s first coming from those leading to His second coming.

Other prophetic texts describe this period, including Hosea 3, namely a long, unspecified period of time during which Israel will no longer have a king, a priesthood, or revelations from the Lord: For the children of Israel will remain for a long time without a king, without a leader, without sacrifice, without an idol, without an ephod, and without teraphim. (Hosea 3:4, see also Isaiah 29:9–13). However, this period will end when God turns His face toward Israel once more, when they find the Messiah in the last days: “Afterward, the children of Israel will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king; and they will tremble at the sight of the Lord and His goodness in the latter days.” (Hosea 3:5)

The New Testament also shows that the Jewish people will remain a united people before God and will find salvation when they recognize Jesus as the Messiah in the last days of this age (Romans 9–11). The prophetic cycle in Daniel resumes once again when the 70th week begins. The first event of this “week” is this statement: “He will make a firm covenant with many for one week” (Daniel 9:27). The question is: “Who is he?” The Messiah, or the last person referred to in verse 26 as “a prince who is to come”? If it is “the prince who is to come,” then the prophecy refers to the Antichrist, who will emerge from the revived Roman Empire: The people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the Holy Place. It was the Romans who destroyed the city of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.

It is possible that the covenant mentioned in Daniel will follow the War of Gog and Magog (Ezekiel 38). The leader of the alliance will conclude a peace treaty with Israel to guarantee Israel’s peace and security, but this treaty will ultimately come under the control of the Antichrist. It appears that this treaty will allow Israel to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, which will then be desecrated by the Antichrist halfway through the seven-year period, when he will set up his image, the “abomination of desolation,” in the holy place (Daniel 9:27, 11:31, 12:11; Matthew 24:15; Revelation 13:14–15). This will be followed by the “Time of Jacob’s Trouble” or the “Great Tribulation” (Jeremiah 30:5–7, Daniel 12:1–4, Matthew 24:21–2).

When the armies of the world unite against Jerusalem (Joel 3, Zechariah 12–14, Revelation 16 and 19), history will reach a climax with the visible, physical return of the Messiah to earth,  when He will set foot on the Mount of Olives (Zechariah 14) and rule the world and the Messianic Kingdom from Jerusalem. All of this takes place during the 70th week of Daniel’s prophecy and concludes with the fulfillment of the prophecy in Daniel 9:24, where the Messiah, Jesus, fulfills the prophecies concerning His first and second comings. So, does this prophecy speak of the Church? No, because it focuses on Jerusalem and the Jewish people. However, even though the clock of Daniel’s prophecy stops as far as Israel is concerned, it starts ticking for the Church. On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was poured out upon Jewish believers in the risen Lord Jesus, who, according to the Great Commission, were to carry the good news of salvation, beginning in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, and extending to the ends of the earth. The Church, composed of Jews and non-Jews (the Gentiles) who receive Jesus as Lord and Savior, becomes the means through which salvation reaches all the peoples of the earth.

This period will end with the Rapture of the Church described in 1 Thessalonians 4: For the Lord Himself, with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will always be with the Lord. Thus, the present age falls within the period between the 69th and 70th weeks of Daniel’s prophecy. After the Lord takes the Church in the Rapture, the text once again focuses on Israel, and the time begins with the final 70th week of Daniel.

Revelation 6–19 describes this final seven-year period, the return of the Lord Jesus to earth, which corresponds to Daniel’s 70th week. According to Revelation 7, at the beginning of the period described as the Great Tribulation, 144,000 Jews will recognize that Jesus is the Messiah. They will receive supernatural power to spread Jesus’ message during this period, following the rapture of the Church. They will refuse to compromise or make a covenant with the Antichrist and will preach about the true Messiah. People will find salvation through repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus, and for this reason, many of them will be martyred.

In Revelation 11, we read that two witnesses will prophesy in Jerusalem for 1,260 days (three and a half years, half of the seven-year period). They will possess supernatural power, like Elijah and Moses, and will be divinely protected from their enemies until they are killed by the Antichrist, after which they will rise from the dead. After this, there will be “a great earthquake in Jerusalem,” when “those who remained were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven” (that is, they accepted salvation through Jesus).

Zechariah 12:10 tells us that, at the end of the period of tribulation, the Spirit will be poured out upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and “they will look upon Me, whom they have pierced” (that is, they will receive Jesus as Savior). At the end of the seven years, before the Messiah’s physical return to earth, the focus will be on Israel and the Jewish people, and multitudes of people from all nations will come to believe in the Lord. Then He will return to earth “with the saints” (that is, those believers who have died in Christ from previous generations and those taken in the Rapture) and will establish His Kingdom, which He will rule from Jerusalem, thus fulfilling all the prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures concerning the Messiah.

In Hosea 5:15, the Lord says: “I will depart; I will return to My dwelling place, until they acknowledge their guilt and seek My face. “When they are in distress, they will run to Me.” This interval begins with Israel’s offense of rejecting the Messiah. Romans 11 tells us that “through their stumbling, salvation has come to the Gentiles.” Nevertheless, Israel will remain a people before God, and Romans 11:26–27 continues: “And then all Israel will be saved, as it is written: ‘The Deliverer will come from Zion and will remove all iniquity from Jacob. This will be the covenant I will make with them when I take away their sins.’” This corresponds to Hosea’s prophecy, namely, that they will accept Jesus as the Messiah, acknowledge their wrongdoing (confess their sin), and “seek my face.” The next verse tells us: “Come, let us return to the Lord! For He has torn us to pieces, but He will also heal us; He has struck us down, but He will also bind up our wounds. He will revive us after two days; on the third day He will raise us up, and we will live before Him” (Hosea 6:1–2). We can think of the third day as referring to the day of Jesus’ resurrection, but also to a “day” as a period of 1,000 years in the Bible: But, beloved, do not forget this one thing: that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day (2 Peter 3:8, Psalm 90:4).

As we draw closer to the end of “the two days” (2,000 years) since Jesus’ resurrection and the birth of the church, we eagerly await “the third day,” the day of the establishment of the Messiah’s Kingdom on earth at His coming, when His people, Israel, will seek Him and wait for Him to come! He told us: “Then they will see the Son of Man coming on a cloud with power and great glory.” “When these things begin to take place, look up and lift up your heads, for your redemption is drawing near.” (Luke 21:27–28).

Those who believe in Jesus will soon meet the Lord, who is coming to take His Church to Himself. Maranatha—the Lord is coming!