Segment 6 - Daniel 9
“God’s Timing Is So Perfect”
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“… Who foretold this long ago, who declared it from the
the distant past? Was it not I, the Lord? And there is no God
apart from me, a righteous God and Savior; there is none but me.”
Isaiah 45:21

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The beauty of understanding the synchrony of these clocks begins to appear when one realizes that all Sabbath years and Jubilee years – forward and backward – can be easily calculated once a known year is located. For the sake of comparison, one could say that it is easy to calculate paydays – both past and future – when one knows what day of the week payday occurs and how often payday occurs! Synchrony makes this type of calculation possible.

Look at Chart 6.4 and count off nine years beginning with the Exodus year. You should see a Tuesday year, 1428 B.C. Now count off ten weeks of years from the Exodus year. What year falls in the middle of the tenth week? (1371 B.C.) Bear in mind, the ten weeks shown on Chart 6.4 are not part of the seventy weeks that Gabriel spoke about. Rather, these weeks mark the beginning of the “weekly clock” which God initiated at the Exodus.

As we continue to examine the synchrony of time, it will become apparent that inserting a gap of time between days, weeks and years is impossible! When one year ends, another year begins. When one week of seven years end, another week of seven years begin! When one Jubilee cycle of forty-nine years ends, a new Jubilee cycle begins! If these cycles are broken, the synchrony of the weekly cycle is destroyed and, without synchrony, time cannot be measured.

Why Seventy Weeks?

Gabriel said, “Seventy weeks are determined….” Why did God deliberately choose the number “seventy weeks” as a measure of time in Daniel 9:24? We know that God is deliberate and purposeful in everything He does. He could have said, “Four hundred ninety years are determined upon your people….” Instead, God chose to use the term “weeks” as the measurement of time in Daniel 9 instead of “years,” because weeks have a synchrony that years do not have! We know that God initiated weeks of years at the Exodus because He required the land to lay fallow during the Sabbath year! This fact produces a key point: The seventy weeks of Daniel 9 cannot begin with just any year. God used the word “weeks” because the seventy weeks began with a Sunday year that aligns with the year of the Exodus. Remember, a week of days always begins with Sunday and a week of seven years always begins with a Sunday year and ends with a Sabbatical year. When God determined “seventy weeks” of years on Israel, He gave Israel a tremendous hint to identify the specific decree that would start the seventy weeks! Gabriel’s words were not intended to be mysterious or secret! Review Chart 6.4 again and notice that a week of years always begins with a Sunday year and that “weeks of years” are always synchronous with the year of the Exodus.

When God sentenced Israel into captivity in Babylon, He did it for a specific period of time. “This whole country will become a desolate wasteland, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon seventy years.” (Jeremiah 25:11) It is interesting that God said seventy years in Jeremiah’s prophecy instead of saying ten weeks. (Ten weeks of seven years equals seventy years.) God’s use of “years” instead of “weeks” in Jeremiah’s prophecy reflects the fact that the Babylonian captivity began in 605 B.C., which is a Sabbath year! Therefore, the seventy years in Babylon cannot be called ten weeks of years. This feature, incidentally, unlocks a mystery about the 2,300 days in Daniel 8:14. The 2,300 days (or evenings and mornings) amount to 328 weeks plus five days (counting inclusively). Even though the 2,300 evenings and mornings began at the same time as the seventy weeks of Daniel 9 (the decree of Artaxerxes in the Sunday year of 457 B.C.), the 2,300 days are expressed in units of days instead of units of weeks because it takes 2,303 days to make 329 weeks! Since 2,300 days do not equal 329 weeks, God described this time-period using days.

God’s Signature

In segment 1, remember that seven appears to be God’s signature: there are seven days of the week, seven continents, seven colors in the rainbow, seven churches in Revelation, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls, etc. If seven is God’s signature, then seventy (ten times seven) must have prominence, too. I believe the number seventy suggests the fullness of God’s patience with rebellion. This makes me wonder if there is also a correlation to man’s life being approximately seventy years. (Psalm 90:10)

You may recall the following text: “Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.” (Matthew 18:21,22) This verse is not translated, as it should be. When Peter asked the Lord how many times he should forgive his brother, Jesus did not respond with a numerical count (70x7 = 490), Jesus responded with a much larger concept, the idea of seventy sevens. To the Jewish mind, seventy sevens referred to the seventy weeks of unmerited grace given to Israel in Daniel 9, Jesus told Peter that he was to forgive his brother as God had forgiven Israel! In other words forgiveness was not a numerical total, it was an attitude.

God’s signature of seven and the number ten has an important relationship throughout the Bible. For example, God deliberately put the Day of Atonement on the tenth day of the seventh month. (10/7) This annual event on the tenth day of the seventh month marked the end of mercy in the camp of Israel. All sins had to be transferred to the temple before the Day of Atonement arrived. Because everyone knew when the Day of Atonement occurred, every Israelite knew the limits to God’s mercy, and it ended with the arrival of the tenth day of the seventh month.

The great red dragon in Revelation 12 has ten horns and seven heads. (10/7) The dragon-like beast (or composite beast) in Revelation 13 also has ten horns and seven heads. (10/7) This strange anatomy indicates the fullness of rebellion against God during the Great Tribulation! The seven heads represent seven false religions of the world, and the ten horns represent ten kings who will rule with the Antichrist for a short period of time. (Revelation 17:12)

One more point about the number seventy should be considered: The duration of sin appears to last for seventy centuries or a week of seven millenniums. (7/10) If this is true, the one thousand years of Revelation 20 could be a Sabbatical rest from sin for planet Earth. God will destroy sin with fire at the end of the seventy centuries. God foreknew how long He would allow sin to exist – even before sin began. My study has convinced me that the number seventy indicates the limits of God’s patience with rebellion, and this is why Gabriel told Daniel, “Seventy weeks are determined upon your people…” With this vision, God put the nation of Israel on notice that His patience with them as a nation was limited to seventy more weeks, beginning with a specific decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem that would occur during a Sunday year.

Seventy Weeks Make a Statement

When he defined the probationary time for the Jews as “Seventy weeks,” God informed the Jews of three things: First, God acknowledged the presence and operation of the weekly cycle of years that He had established at the time of the Exodus. (Leviticus 25:1-4) Weeks of years did not suddenly begin during or after the Babylonian captivity. Second, when God said, “Seventy weeks are determined….” He forced the decree and the first year of the seventy weeks to align with a Sunday year, because a week of years always begins with a Sunday year! Last, when God indicated that Messiah could cause sacrifices and offerings to cease in the middle of the seventieth week, He affirmed that His calendar would continue to operate after Jesus died on the cross. This is a key point that many people overlook: God’s calendar could not cease to operate when Jesus died because He died in the middle of the seventieth week! If the week of years ended at the cross, as many scholars claim, then the seventy-weeks prophecy would have been stated as a 69 ½-weeks prophecy, not as a seventy-week prophecy!

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