Daniel’s 70 Weeks Prophecy: Meaning, Timeline, and End Times Insight
Daniel 9:20–27 contains one of the most remarkable prophecies in all of Scripture—the prophecy of the seventy weeks. Given while Daniel was in prayer, this passage reveals God’s precise timeline for Israel, the coming of the Messiah, and events that reach into the last days. Through the message delivered by Gabriel, we are given both understanding and assurance that God’s plan is unfolding exactly as He has declared.
This morning, if you have your Bibles and will turn with me, I want to go back to Daniel and we’re going to go back and pick it up a little bit, going back to chapter 9 of Daniel and look at some of the things that Daniel was given as prophecies by the Lord of things that would happen in the last days. So, if you have your Bibles, turn with me to Daniel chapter 9 this morning and I’d like to begin reading at verse 20 through the end of the chapter. We’ve looked at this once before, but I want to go back and review it and also compare it to some things that are happening in the world today.
Daniel’s Prayer and Confession (Verses 20–21)
20 And whiles I was speaking, and praying, and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before the Lord my God for the holy mountain of my God; 21 yea, whiles I was speaking in prayer, even the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, being caused to fly swiftly, touched me about the time of the evening oblation.
Gabriel Brings Understanding (Verses 22–23)
22 And he informed me, and talked with me, and said, O Daniel, I am now come forth to give thee skill and understanding. 23 At the beginning of thy supplications the commandment came forth, and I am come to shew thee; for thou art greatly beloved: therefore understand the matter, and consider the vision.
The Purpose of the Seventy Weeks (Verse 24)
24 Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.
The Timeline to Messiah the Prince (Verse 25)
25 Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.
Messiah Cut Off and Jerusalem Destroyed (Verse 26)
26 And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.
The Final Week and Future Fulfillment (Verse 27)
27 And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.
Daniel 9:20-27
May this work in our hearts and lives help us to realize the importance of being committed to you in all that we do and understand the shortness of the hour.
And Lord speak to us we pray in Jesus name. Amen. On the back table I’ve got those little diagrams that show the 70 weeks of Daniel.
The first 69 weeks came about to a conclusion when Jesus was crucified. About the last six Sundays we’ve been dealing with Jesus entering the city of Jerusalem for the last Passover. The things that happened during that last week and what led up to his crucifixion, his burial and his resurrection.
The amazing thing is the 70th week which was spoken of in the portion of scripture we just read has not occurred yet. Even though the 69th week came to a conclusion when Jesus died on the cross when it said that he would die but it wouldn’t be for his own cause it would be for another cause and the cause was you and I. It was for our salvation and we talked about that last week. The amazing thing is after the 69th week God has put a time hold before the 70th week will appear.
This has been referred to as the time of the Gentiles. It is during this time that the church was born. It was during this time that the gospel has gone out throughout the whole world.
The gospel has been preached on literally every continent. It has not been preached to every tribe and nation yet but it’s very close. Way back in the book of Genesis for those of you who were here when we went through the book of Genesis you will remember that Abraham was given a promise from God that the whole world would be blessed through his seed.
That was the Messiah that would be a descendant through the line of Abraham and the whole world is blessed by that. The fact that the gospel has been given to all mankind, all of us are descendants of Adam, all of us are descendants of Noah, all of us have been created in God’s image and God has said that the gospel has been given so that you all can hear, you all can respond and the choice is up to you. Last night my wife and I were invited to go see the movie about Ben Franklin and George Whitefield.
It’s showing at a theater. We normally don’t go to theaters and I would recommend that you go and see this movie. However, the previews, plug your ears and close your eyes because they are ungodly and demonic.
But the movie itself was amazing. It showed the salvation of George Whitefield and his life and it showed the influence that he had on our nation and it was amazing. George Whitefield went to Oxford University.
George Whitefield grew up in the Church of England. Both Oxford and the Church of England weren’t necessarily godly. But George Whitefield got saved while in college as he joined with the Westleys and others and formed a club called the Holiness Club.
But they really were trying to earn their salvation through holy living and even the Westleys didn’t get saved until later on when they began to really grasp the content of the gospel. In the movie it presents that George Whitefield went one day with the Westleys to minister to prisoners and it was really a social gospel they were giving. But George Whitefield had been given an amazing voice and he’d been trained for theater.
And so when he spoke, literally he could speak and whole regions of a city could hear his voice. It was amazing. That day he was convicted to read the gospel of John because he told John Wesley, he said, Why are we just giving them food? They need something much greater than food.
They need their souls saved. And when he began to read the gospel of John, it not only touched them but it also touched his heart as he read about Nicodemus’ encounter with Jesus. As he read that encounter and then he challenged one of the prisoners, Do you understand? Have you accepted Jesus today? Whitefield was led to go out and preach.
He’s being trained to be a preacher in the Church of England. One of the first things he did was he went back to one of the areas that he’d grown up in and he went to that church and he began to preach there. But on the first Sunday, he was virtually kicked out by the pastors because the first thing he did is he said, I’ve come to present the truth and to present it in all of its glory and not make it so boring everybody will fall asleep.
The people were amazed. The Church of England pastors were not. He was kicked out of the Church of England.
Couldn’t preach there. So he built a portable pulpit and went preaching to the coal miners. Now I want you to understand what was happening in England at this particular time in history.
Children as well as adults were being forced to earn a living by mining coal. Black lung was a major form of death of those miners. Children were dying for the profit of the wealthy.
Whitefield went and preached and when he first got there, they started throwing rocks at him, but he didn’t stop preaching. And when he got done preaching and expounding upon God’s Word, men’s hearts were broken and he began to see men saved and he was baptizing them. In the company trough.
And as the water ran in, it ran in clear. As it ran out, it was covered with coal dust and black as they were being baptized. George Whitefield was given a burden by God that the world needed to hear the Gospel.
At that particular time in America’s history, troublous times were on the horizon. Even though our nation had been founded upon biblical principles, there was much tension between England and the colonies. Whitefield came to America, the first place he preached was in Philadelphia.
They had heard of his preaching in England where he would literally fill up parks. Fill up open spaces. Preach to 25,000 people in open air without amplification and they all could hear him.
A guy by the name of Benjamin Franklin was running a newspaper in Philadelphia and he heard Whitefield was in town and the people were gathering in the streets as he was going to be preaching that day. Benjamin Franklin didn’t believe a man could preach and be heard. And so Franklin walked the streets of Philadelphia as Whitefield was beginning to preach and to see if he could hear and to count the number of blocks and approximate the number of people.
And when Franklin got done, he came back to his printing press office and his man asked him, what did you discover? And he said, Whitefield is preaching to 30,000. George Whitefield died a fairly young man, but he poured out his heart to God. Before there was vehicles and cars, he had to ride horseback.
He would hold a meeting in the morning, ride 50 miles on a horse and hold another meeting in another town that night because people needed to hear the gospel. God, after Jesus died on the cross, created the church. Those of us who believe in him and trust him, he calls us his bride.
We are to be an example to the world of the reality of the existence of God, the transformation of a man’s heart and his character and the ability of God to bring us and use us where once we have been in rebellion against him. And he desires that the whole world would hear. So from the time that Jesus died on the cross and rose again from the dead, God’s dealing with the nation of Israel was put on hold while he dealt with the world.
The church today is in a unique position. Never before have we had the opportunities that we have today to reach out to the whole world through electronics, through communication, through books. But the sad thing is we’ve become much like the Church of England during George Whitefield’s time in that the gospel has been so watered down and made so impractical that most people don’t even want to hear.
Yet the word of God is true in all of its aspects. It reveals to us things that we would never have known apart from it. And it shows to us amazing things.
Many young people are walking away from biblical Christianity. And there’s talk in our nation that there’s a revival, but the revival amongst many of the young people seems to be towards Roman Catholicism. I want to tell you Roman Catholicism has no answers because it’s not biblical and it’s not Christian.
The Bible gives us answers. Ken Ham a number of years ago did a study on what caused kids to leave the church. And it’s because they weren’t giving answers from the word of God that were real answers.
Yet I want you to see in the word of God it tells us there is no such thing as umpteen different sexes. There’s two men and women created in the image of God. And he created them for a specific purpose.
That out of that union the two could be one flesh. And out of that one flesh would be born another child. You can’t have that in same sex.
You can’t have that in any other relationship. And God established as his first institution the institution of the family. And it was very important.
And you know the first institution that Satan attacked? The family. The Bible reveals to us why it’s so important. The Bible reveals to us what is the power and the purpose of the father and the mother within the home.
How are they to respond? How are their children to be raised up? How are they to respond to their parents? It’s in the word of God. You know what the church is doing today? They’re ignoring it. Many people say today, oh the Bible is an archaic book.
It doesn’t really relate. Where are the Hittites today? Where are all these people that it’s talking about in scripture? Do you know something? Archaeological wise everything in scripture has been proven true. The problem is often times the archaeologists don’t get caught up to where the Bible is telling us.
The Bible is reality. For years the Hittites were viewed as a culture that didn’t exist. Today you can go to Turkey and you can go to Israel and you can see Hittite artifacts in Hittite museums.
On a culture that didn’t exist according to the world. The world wants to give all kinds of explanations for existence and reality that are not real and aren’t explanations. But the Bible is real.
And we are not to be ashamed of it. You know when I go to work people that are living their lives not by biblical principles will let you know exactly what they believe. They’ll tell the dirty jokes.
They’ll make the snide comments. They’ll talk about each other in derogatory terms just to get ahead in the eyes of supposedly others. But we as Christians are often times afraid to share.
Yet we have the truth. They’ve got nothing but lies. The word of God tells us that the truth sets men free.
Do we believe it or don’t we? My concern is as you look at what’s happening in the world today time is growing shorter. People are concerned. And you look at what’s happening even in our own nation.
And you see Lord how can our country be turned around? We read the statistics of the polls and it shows the majority of the people want to do that which is right. But then we elect people that are wicked and evil and do everything wrong. And then complain about them.
In our own city here in Fargo we have a very important election coming up in June. If you’re a Fargo resident please get yourself advised on the candidates what they really believe. What they really want to happen with our city.
And vote for those that are righteous in character and want to do that which is right. But within our own city you can see the results. People complain.
Complain about giving away free needles. Complain about giving away crack pipes. Complain about giving away other drug paraphernalia to drug addicts to help them recover.
But what do we do? Do you realize you’ve got the answer to that drug addicts problem? There’s Jesus Christ. You’ve got the answer to that person’s problem whose marriage is breaking and blowing up. And it’s Jesus Christ.
And God has given us this time which is called the time of the Gentiles. Where He presents the gospel through us. Prior to this He had set aside the Jewish nation.
And the Jewish nation was to be used by God to reveal to the world the reality of His existence. And the power of His might and the authority that He possessed. And you know what most Gentiles and even most Christians today do? Blame the Jews.
Because they failed. But are we doing any better? And we’ve got the power of God’s Spirit indwelling in us. And Jesus Christ has redeemed us from the depth of our sin.
And He walks with us daily. He has said, boldly come into my throne room with your requests. And you have not because you ask not.
So have we asked God to help us? And have we asked God use me? In that movie it was very interesting to see when men want to try and manipulate the things of God. It doesn’t go well. I didn’t know and I hope that it was correct in the movie.
Benjamin Franklin supposedly grew up in a Puritan home. And he had 13, there were 13 children in the family. Ben Franklin was number 10 of 13.
His father told him, you are my offering to the Lord. You are my tithe to God. You are the one that God out of this family will use.
Ben Franklin was turned off by his father’s Puritan religion. He was turned off by his father’s churches and ministers that gave boring sermons with no answers. And it wasn’t until he met George Whitefield that he saw a man so consumed by the power of God and desiring to serve his Lord that it began to change his heart attitude.
I don’t know if Ben Franklin ever got saved or didn’t get saved. But I know that in the movie it showed a difference in his attitude. I have read that there was a difference in his attitude.
And he said, I never met a man like George Whitefield. George Whitefield was sold out to God. Every one of us here, God wants us to be sold out to him.
The Bible talks about the fact that we read in the text this morning there’s going to be a 70th week. The 70 weeks of Daniel, when we were back looking at that earlier in our study in Daniel, we saw that those 70 weeks were to deal with the nation of Israel. Those of you who have been going with us through our studies in Jeremiah, and now Ezekiel, and prior to that the kings of Israel, you will know from looking at the Bible, the Jews, throughout their history, the majority of the Jewish people have not been godly.
And God says, I did not pick you for your character. He said, I picked you in spite of your character. And I will use you.
He used the Jewish people, he used Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and their descendants to preserve this word and to teach this word. Do you realize this word was written by Jewish men? Under the inspiration of God. The lineage of Jesus Christ was Jews.
It wasn’t Gentiles. Today you have people in the church saying, Oh, Jesus was a Palestinian. Jesus was an Arab.
No, he wasn’t. As a matter of fact, you can go back and see, there wasn’t an Arab in the house of Abraham, and Abraham did have an Arab wife, and Abraham did have a son of Arab descent. His name was Ishmael.
And when Ishmael was a teenager, Ishmael was a Jew.
May God can be different other names in that lineage of nations, but Israel isn’t there. God made them a nation, and they were the ones that were to bring ultimately the gospel to the rest of the world. And guess what? They did it in spite of themselves.
God worked through that people. He always had a remnant, and if you look at the Word of God and see that there are various times in the history of the nation of Israel, those that were godly became very discouraged. But God always had a remnant, and it’s more than you think.
The Bible tells us in the last days, and we looked at this, that when the 70th week starts, there’s another prince that’s coming, not the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, but another prince, Satan’s prince, the Antichrist. And he will deceive the whole world. The whole world will think that he’s got all the solutions and answers, and they will begin to follow him.
Even the Jewish people that haven’t become Christians will follow him, believing he’s their Messiah. But the problem is, he’s Satan’s man. And you can look at the world today, and you see the ones that are under the control of Satan, and what are they? They are liars, they are murderers, and they’re thieves.
Exact words of Jesus when he’s talking to the Pharisees. You are of your father, the devil, who was a murderer from the beginning, who was a liar and a thief. What’s amazing is you can tell the true conversion of someone who was involved in these various offshoots of Iran’s, Ayatollah’s rule, Hamas, Hezbollah.
You can tell when they get saved because there’s a total transformation. They went from wanting to kill all the Jewish people to loving Israel. You can’t do that in your own strength.
They love the God of the Bible, they love Jesus Christ, and they will tell you Islam is a religion of the devil, and it is a religion of death and destruction. But I want to tell you, why can the whole world be so duped when the 70th week begins? Because they’ve been led to believe this is the book of lies, not the word of this man that’s going to come. And when he speaks things that are against this book, they’ll believe him and not this book.
As a matter of fact, the Bible tells us that during his reign, during what is referred to as the time of Jacob’s trouble, and then the last three and a half years, the great tribulation of the world where God pours out His wrath upon an unbelieving world, that during that time, there will still be those that get saved. But this man will hate this word so much, and Satan hates this book so much, that the minute he finds you profess Christ instead of him as God, you’ll be put to death. And that’s in the word of God.
Now, what is the whole point of what I’m saying this morning? I don’t know how much time we’ve got left. The Bible tells us, and again you can go to 1 Corinthians, which we looked at briefly last Sunday, it talks about the resurrection. You can go to 1 Thessalonians and 2 Thessalonians, it talks about the resurrection, and it talks about the rapture that occurs at the time of the resurrection and the rapture occurs.
And God takes His church, Gentile and Jewish believers and Jesus alike, He takes them to heaven. And it says the restrainer will be moved, and when the restrainer is moved from the earth, the 70th year begins and things go crazy in the world. You think they’re crazy now? They’re really going to get crazy.
Who’s the restrainer? Well, there are different theories on that from the Bible, or from Christian teachers. I personally believe the Bible reveals to us that the restrainer is the Holy Spirit, but God’s Spirit is still at work in the world. But the problem is, how is His Spirit today working different than at any other time in history? The Bible tells us if you’re a believer in Jesus Christ, His Holy Spirit resides in you.
His Holy Spirit convicts you, He directs you, He teaches you, He empowers you, He gives you gifts so that enable you to do things to bring glory to God. And even the greatest men and women of God in the Old Testament never had the Holy Spirit residing in them like we do today. And yet we view ourselves as weak and helpless against a world that’s filled with wickedness and destruction.
The problem is, we are holding Satan back by our mere presence here and our trust and belief in Jesus and our willingness to take a stand for righteousness. But when the church is removed, where’s the salt and where’s the light? It’s gone. There is no more salt, there is no more preservative there to preserve people’s lives in the face of all the wickedness.
Instead, they’re drawn to the wickedness. All one has to do is look at those that have not heard the gospel and have rejected the gospel of Christ and where are they drawn to? Not drawn to righteousness, they’re drawn to wickedness. All one has to do is look at politicians in Minnesota, California.
Look at people who aren’t believers in what they do with their lives. Look at those that we put our trust in, musicians and actors, actresses, and look at what they value. You have more ability to touch lives than you know.
What prevents us from doing it? I think part of it is we don’t view the urgency and the shortness of the hour. Jesus said, I’m not going to tell you the time when I’m going to come. I shared with you before the wedding ceremony that went on in the area of Galilee in Israel during the time of Jesus and how the bride wouldn’t know exactly the day or the hour.
She’d have an idea, but there’d be signs, but there wouldn’t be any exact knowledge until all of a sudden the trumpet would sound and the father would say, go get your bride and everybody better be ready. Is his church going to be ready when he comes to get his bride? Are you and I going to be ready? Jesus talked about the fact that he’d given talents to some men. He gave ten talents to one, he gave five talents to another, he gave one talent to another.
This was a man who owned property and he went away. And when he returned, he called these men before him and he said, what have you done with the talents I gave you? The man with ten came in and he says, well, I took the ten and I’ve gained ten more. The one with five said, I’ve taken the five and I’ve gained five more.
And he commended both of them. But then the one with one talent came and he said, well, I knew that you were a hard man. I knew that you were difficult.
I knew that you would be very angry if I lost this talent. And so what I did is I went and I buried it in the ground. And here’s your talent back.
And he was told, a wicked and slothful servant. The least you could have done was put it out for usury and gain me interest. But you did nothing.
I want you to understand, Jesus was speaking at that time to the Jewish Pharisees, but he’s speaking indirectly through his word to us as his bride in his church. What are we going to do with the talents God’s given us? What are we going to do with the opportunities he puts before us? And when he comes back, what will we have to offer him? Daniel was placed in very difficult situations, more difficult situations than you and I find ourselves in at this time. As a teenager, he was brought into the house of Nebuchadnezzar to be trained to be a Babylonian, a Chaldean, a mystical magician.
He wouldn’t do it. Instead, he stood on truth. He stood up, even though it would mean possibly his death as a teenager.
The Lord used his integrity and his faithfulness to become a bright and shining light in comparison to all the Chaldean magicians around him that could never give Nebuchadnezzar a straight answer. Because they were afraid. Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar the truth because it came from God.
And he rose up. The Medes and the Persians take over. You never take your previous administration of your enemy into your courts.
Guess where Daniel was in the courts of the Medes and the Persians? He was rising up. He was going to be the president of all the presidents within the Medes and the Persians. And the day came when his hour of choice was there.
Those that were jealous of him because of his integrity and his loyalty and what the king saw in him tried to arrange it. Do you remember the account? Tried to arrange it to have him thrown into the den of lions because they knew he prayed. And he opened his window and prayed towards Jerusalem.
The reason he prayed towards Jerusalem is because the God that he served was a God who one day would have his throne on Mount Zion in Jerusalem in the temple. Daniel didn’t stop. As a matter of fact, he made it perfectly clear what he was doing.
He opened the window and he sat by it and he prayed towards Jerusalem. He was thrown in the den of lions. The king was terrified that he had Daniel killed.
But there was nothing he could do about it because once a Mede or a Persian had made a declaration, you couldn’t change it even though you saw how devastating it would be to your own country. But God preserved Daniel. George Whitefield died at a fairly young age.
He was burned out by preaching the gospel. But he made such a difference in this nation. He was preaching in the late 1730s when the Great Awakening broke out.
More people came to Christ in America than had ever come to Christ before. Real conversions, not church membership. Much of it done by the preaching of George Whitefield where he preached this word.
And it wasn’t long after that that our nation was thrust into the war against England for our independence. But we’ve been prepared for it spiritually. And the foundation of our nation was born in the conversions that were there during Whitefield and reaffirmed later on when our constitution was written.
But the problem is Benjamin Franklin made a statement that is so true. We have given you a republic, a republic that can only be governed by those that are morally capable of governing it. Will you be able to hold it? We are this close to losing our nation.
And know how I blame it on? I don’t blame it on the communists. Don’t blame it on the Muslims. Don’t blame it on a democratic party that wants to turn totally communist and Muslim and that have gone totally crazy.
Or the republicans that want to say they’re not but act just about as bad. Know how I blame it on? We quit preaching. We quit teaching.
We quit praying. We quit living godly lives. We quit being salt and light before God called us home.
And what happened is you move to remove the restrainer and all of a sudden literally all hell breaks out. And that’s what you’re seeing. You and I can still pray.
You and I can still witness. You and I can still live our lives in a godly fashion. There will be light and guess what? Our light can shine like it’s never shown before because there is so much darkness and false light around us.
May we truly bring glory to him who redeemed us. Let’s just close in prayer. Lord, I pray that you would just help us to understand the lateness of the hour.
We are in the time of the Gentiles but the 70th week of Daniel is approaching quickly. We’re seeing things happen, making ready for the Antichrist’s kingdom. Things happening in our world today that have never happened before and happening very quickly.
And Lord, I pray that you would help us as Christians to understand the lateness of the hour and help us to be a witness to those that do not know you and help us to live our lives to glorify your name. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Dive deeper into God’s prophetic Word and see how every detail points to Christ. Explore our full study series on Daniel and strengthen your understanding of Scripture.
- Daniel series page
- the Resurrection of Christ
- end times / tribulation
- Old Testament prophecies fulfilled in Christ