While we’re going to be continuing with our revisit of the end this week, I felt as though there was another message needed first. It comes from arguably the most important event in human history, where the only argument would be that the creation of man is more important: Yeshua’s sacrifice for our sins. And it has to do with the moments right before His death.
We know that when Yeshua started His ministry, the Holy Spirit descended on Him and remained on Him throughout his ministry (Matthew 3:16, Mark 1:10, Luke 3:22, John 1:32-34). However, have you stopped to think about what that means about the end of His life on earth? Some may argue this, but my personal belief is that when Yeshua cried out during His crucifixion, moments before His death, that is when the Holy Spirit finally left Him (Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34). I believe the way the Holy Spirit works today was represented by how He worked with Yeshua, and the only difference was that in order for Yeshua’s sacrifice to meet all the requirements of atoning for the sins of mankind, He had to go through that death alone, without the Holy Spirit.
What does that mean for us, though? In everything Yeshua went through up to that point, the Holy Spirit was with Him. Through the crown of thorns, the beatings, the flogging, the carrying of the cross (a representation of the burdens He was carrying for us), the mocking, the vinegar to drink, the spitting…through all that, the Holy Spirit was there. Friend, through whatever pain and suffering you experience, the Holy Spirit will be with you. It doesn’t matter what it is. Yeshua endured far more than you or I have, or will, endure, and the Holy Spirit was there with Him through it all. I don’t know about you, but that is comforting to me. It's something that gives me rest from any anxiety about what the future holds. I hope you can find rest in that as well.
I also hope you can find comfort in what we’re learning about the end! Remember, these are things that I have come to believe through my studies. You, and I’m sure many others, may disagree with it, but the purpose is not to convince you to come to my side, so to speak. The hope is that perhaps you’ll find some interesting things, or a new perspective, that you can search out for yourself. When we started studying over four years ago, it was always a matter of fact that a person needs to build their own beliefs based on their studying of scripture and leading of the Holy Spirit. Otherwise, all they have is just someone else’s beliefs, and that doesn’t hold up under trial and testing.
Last week, there was an interpretation regarding the woman on the beast presented that was, shall we say, not mainstream. A slightly more mainstream view is that she is the representation of the city of Rome, the seat of power for the Roman Empire. Of course, study that all for yourself to come to your own conclusions, but overall, the idea is that whether she is Rome or Jerusalem, all the events involving her were fulfilled on or around the year 70AD.
This brings us to another crucial aspect of interpreting Revelation: timelines. There are quite a few lengths of time included in Revelation. Especially when you compare it to other, more historical prophecies. Many these days would argue that all these time periods reference something in the future. However, are we able to find events occurring during the Jewish Revolt that line up with these time periods?
We’ll start with the big one: the 42 months. It’s mentioned when John is told to measure the temple (Revelation 11:2), and also when it talks about how long the beast had authority (Revelation 13:5). If you look elsewhere, you also find that there is a 1,260 day time period mentioned (Revelation 11:3, 12:6). When you multiply 42 by the number of days in a prophetic month, 30, you find that you get 1,260. Perhaps all these verses are talking about the same time period?
The other interesting part is that when you divide 42 by the number of months in a year, 12, you get three and a half. If you consider a year to be a “time,” then three and a half years could be considered, “time, times and half a time,” and you also find this phrase in Revelation (Revelation 12:14). When you take a look at history, you find that while the Jewish revolt started in 66AD, with widespread rebellion brought on due to a Roman governor seizing some Temple treasury funds and arresting some senior Jewish figures, it wasn’t until April, 67AD, that the Roman army was dispatched, under general Vespasian, to quell this revolt.
On the backside of this action, during this revolt, we find that Jerusalem finally fell in September, 70AD. If we do the math, how many months do we come up with between these two major events? Keep in mind that typically when counting, Jews at the time would include their current time as “one.” For example, when saying four days from now, today would have been considered the first day in those four days. So, if there were actions in this timeline that occurred during a certain month, even if they didn’t go for the whole month, that month would be counted in the total number.
Did you figure it out yet? That’s right, the number is 42 months exactly. April, 67AD, when Vespasian started invading Galilee, to December of that year, is nine months. Then years 68 and 69 combined are 24 months. Finally, January to September of 70AD is another nine months, for a total of 42 months.
Interestingly, this time, times and half a time statement also occurs elsewhere in scripture. During the reign of the fourth beast kingdom in one of Daniel’s visions, a king that was different from the previous ones was prophesied to have the saints given into his hand for that length of time (Daniel 7:25). Even more, in another of Daniel’s visions, the man in linen stated that the events Daniel saw, involving a king speaking monstrous things against YHWH, would last for that length of time (Daniel 12:7) (the Hebrew in the previous verse means essentially “how long will these things take,” not “how long until these things happen” like some translations state).
While it’s foolish to think that whenever you see a certain time period in scripture they all refer to the same events, the fact that the same phrase is used, “time, times, and half a time,” makes it more than likely that all these prophecies are about the same thing: the events leading up to and including the fall of Jerusalem. I mean, when the man in linen says the power of the “holy people” being shattered is the sign of all these things being complete (Daniel 12:7), it’s hard to argue that this wasn’t fulfilled when Jerusalem fell. It also makes you wonder about the prophecy of the seventy weeks, doesn’t it?
A common argument for this prophecy amongst eschatologists is whether there was a gap between the 69th and 70th week. The prophecy is a bit vague, stating that Yeshua would come at the end of the 69th week (Daniel 9:25), and that “after the [69th week] the Messiah will be cut off” (Daniel 9:26). It doesn’t specifically state that He would be cut off in the 70th week. To assume that would be reading our own beliefs into the text. Regardless of if this is the case, the prophecy states that the last week involves the confirmation of a covenant and an end to sacrifice and offering (Daniel 9:27).
This is where the other big argument comes in: is the prince talked about in verse 26 Messiah the Prince? Or some other prince? In some ways, it doesn’t matter because either way, the events prophesied in Daniel 9 were fulfilled in the first century AD. Yeshua confirmed that when He associated Daniel’s abomination of desolation prophecy with the events of 70AD (Matthew 24:15, Mark 13:14, Luke 21:20).
The way I see it, there’s two possibilities for how the 70th week was fulfilled. First, the “He” in verse 27 (Daniel 9:27) is referring to the Messiah, spoken of in verse 26, and through His ministry He confirmed the covenant that was established between YHWH and Abraham when he was ordered to kill his son Isaac (Genesis 22:1-19). This was the covenant where YHWH was going to send His only Son to die for our sins. That would mean Yeshua’s ministry was about three and a half years and, as many have suggested, the end of that 70th week was the stoning of Stephen (Acts 7:54-60).
The second possibility is that the “he” is referring to the “prince” Vespasian. It turns out, in the middle of the siege of Jerusalem, Vespasian ended up taking over as the Roman emperor. A prince is someone that is going to take the crown at some point, so this fits Vespasian quite well, even if he didn’t know it at the time. It also fits because the prophecy states that it’s his people that destroy the city and the sanctuary, not him in particular. This actually occurred because Titus, who served under Vespasian, took over for him during the siege, so it was the army that Vespasian once commanded that ended up overrunning the city and destroying it and the sanctuary.
In this interpretation, the covenant may be referring to an agreement to quell the Jewish uprising. When you look at the entirety of the Jewish revolt, it lasted almost seven years exactly, with the end being the fall of the fortress Masada. The fall of Jerusalem was exactly in the middle of that “week” of seven years, and it was during its siege that sacrifices and offerings at the temple ceased.
As we continue our study, it seems more and more prophecies in scripture have already been fulfilled, doesn’t it? We’ll get more into some of the imagery of Revelation and what it means next week, but take a moment to think of what these prophecies already being fulfilled means to us as Christians, and to you, specifically. There’s a lot of inherent behaviors the body of Christians has incorporated into it based on some interpretations of end times prophecies. We look to the future a lot, and promises of being saved from great trials, wondering if the next major cataclysm or change in world governments is the beginning of the end. What if it wasn’t? What if it will never be? How should we live our lives as Christians then?
We hope you have a great week! Shabbat shalom and YHWH bless you!
-Rob and Sara Gene
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