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<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n In this chapter we will refute the idea that Daniel rounded off numbers in the prophecy of the 70 weeks. But in doing so, it will be necessary to detail information about biblically defined liquid and dry measures, temple measurements and their explanations, and the length of a biblical cubit. Because the nature of this material can be \u2018rough-slogging\u2019, some readers may wish to skip to Chapter 5. On the other hand, readers should know that this chapter shows (1) the connection between the three forms of matter\u2014gas, liquid, and solid, and (2) where the Second Temple location truly lies\u2014a point that naturally arises in the course of this chapter.<\/p>\n We recall that in Chapter 3 we discussed Chris Sandoval\u2019s The Failures of Daniel\u2019s Prophecies. <\/em>In it he criticizes Evangelical Dispensationalism, particularly Harold Hoehner\u2019s view of Daniel 9. And, in fact, I would concede one of Sandoval\u2019s points, namely, that Hoehner\u2019s calculations for the beginning \u2018bookend\u2019 date of the 69 weeks of Daniel is a month too early. We know this because of 14 examples from 5th century BC papyri at Elephantine, which shows that Nisan ran from about March 26 to April 24 (Julian dates). Also, the dates Hoehner gives for the span of the 69 weeks are 4 days too long. That is, he cites Julian dates March 5, 444 BC and March 30, 33 AD as the beginning and ending dates, yet this amounts to\u00a0173,884 days, not 173,880. Hoehner believed the 483 years (69 weeks) were 360-day-years, but apparently calculated the \u2018equivalent\u2019 in 476 solar <\/em>years and 25 days, and erroneously multiplied 476 by 365.25 (the amount of days in a Julian year) instead of by 365.2422, resulting in 4 days too many. Working backwards from March 30, 33 AD, Hoehner thus calculated to March 5, 444 BC instead of March 9. But overall this is a somewhat minor consideration, since it is plain what Hoehner\u2019s intent was.<\/p>\n The real problem is that Hoehner\u2019s beginning \u2018bookend\u2019 date for the 69 weeks puts Nisan too early according to Elephantine records. In fact, even if we use the date Hoehner should have identified according to his own assumption\u2014March 9\u2014that date is outside the (Julian) March 26 through April 24th dates that the Babylonians and Elephantine Jews would have used. In other words, records show that the beginning of Nisan never began any earlier than spring equinox (or perhaps a day earlier). And so, Hoehner\u2019s date of (Julian) March 9 would mean a Proleptic Gregorian (modern day equivalent) date of March 3, about 2\u00bd weeks earlier than Elephantine records support. Yet for all that, Chris Sandoval admits that the correct amount of days (173,880) should not be the focus of criticism against Hoehner.<\/p>\n And so Sandoval reserves his most aggravated complaints to chiefly two others. First and foremost (though in my opinion the less serious of his two objections) is what Sandoval sees as the absurd creation of a stop-gap between the 69th and 70th weeks of Daniel. Sandoval explains that the brand of Evangelical eschatology known as Dispensationalism believes the 69th week of Daniel ended on the Day of Triumphal\u00a0Entry and that because of the rejection of Christ, the 70th week\u2014the last seven years of this present epoch of history according to the Apostle John\u2014will take place in the future. Sandoval sees this as just an Evangelical excuse for why Christ didn\u2019t return about 40 AD, seven years after his resurrection. Says Sandoval:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Finally, the biggest problem of all with the dispensationalist theory is that the seventieth week never happened. The Roman \u201cpeople of the prince who is to come\u201d should have cruelly oppressed the Jews and destroyed Jerusalem along with its Temple from 33 to 40 AD, after which Jesus should have come to rule the Earth. To dispose of this error, dispensationalists have argued that God postponed the seventieth week to the distant future because the Jews crucified Jesus instead of accepting him as their king on his terms rather than theirs. Under this interpretation, Daniel\u2019s seventieth week is the Tribulation Period in our future, and the \u201cprince who is to come\u201d is the Antichrist, who will desecrate the Tribulation Temple in the middle of the period. The Church Age, a mystery that God had kept hidden until Pentecost, fills an invisible gap of many centuries separating the sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks. To describe this theory is to refute it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The problem, however, with Sandoval\u2019s insistence that the 70th week should have ended in 40 AD and must <\/em>be contiguous with the rest of the 69 weeks during this 490 year period, is that continuity was not the case in the first <\/em>period of 490 years (already discussed in Chapter 3). As Chapter 8 (The Book of Judges) shows, Israel at first followed the Lord (for about 60-65 years) at the beginning of the 650-year period which stretched from Israel\u2019s entrance into the Promised Land under Joshua in 1411 BC to the Amos eclipse of 763 BC (the latter signaling God\u2019s impending chastisement for the Jews\u2019 sabbath year failures).1\u00a0<\/strong>This means the 490 years of disobedience occurred within a window of about 590 years. This leaves only\u00a0100 or so years of obedience post-Joshua\u2019s generation, or an average failure of 5 times out of 6 that the Jews failed to rest the land in the 7th year of their sabbatical cycles. But the point here is that those times of disobedience were not contiguous, as the Book of Judges clearly shows. It is therefore an unsound argument by Sandoval that no <\/em>interruptions of any <\/em>kind should occur between the \u2018weeks\u2019 of years. Furthermore, consider the way Scripture states the matter. It says the Messiah would be cut off after the\u00a069th week, instead of stating the matter in a way that would seem more natural to us, i.e., that the Messiah would be cut off at the beginning of the 70th week. Thus, arguably, Scripture implies there would <\/em>be a hiatus between the 69th and 70th weeks.<\/p>\n Furthermore, statements in the gospels show that even Christ did not expect the 70th week to immediately follow the 69th. For example, when immediately prior to his ascension Christ tells his disciples to wait in Jerusalem a short time until they receive the Spirit, the apostles reply by asking, \u201cWill you at this time restore again the kingdom of Israel?\u201d Christ replies it is not theirs to know the times and seasons, known [only] by the Father (Acts 1). Thus Christ implied that an indeterminate period of time would transpire before the appearance of the kingdom. But this is hardly a statement Christ would have made if he assumed, and thought his disciples should assume, he would return after seven years. Such a Scripture forces us to ask why Sandoval, despite his fairly accurate synopsis of the Dispensational view before dismissing it as absurdly self-refuting, writes as though it were a man-made contrivance absent any\u00a0Scriptural support. For the very prophecy of Daniel 9 itself explains that the 70 weeks are \u201cdetermined\u00a0upon thy <\/em>[Daniel\u2019s] people and upon thy <\/em>holy city,\u201d i.e., the Jews and Jerusalem (Dan. 9:24).<\/p>\n Therefore the 70 weeks are a thing \u201cdetermined,\u201d i.e. literally in the Hebrew, marked out<\/em>, by God himself according to how God <\/em>thinks best for his people. And God is not obligated to follow a contiguous timeline because of the expectations of skeptics ignorant of the biblical history that shows that the first set of 490 years were interrupted by occasional times of obedience regarding the sabbath year.<\/p>\n Additional passages in the gospels also show that an interruption was expected between the 69th and 70th week, though one looks in vain for any citation of them by skeptics. For example, in the synagogue Christ quoted Isaiah 61 in\u00a0reference to himself, saying he had come to heal people emotionally, physically, and spiritually, ending his quotation of Isaiah by saying he was there to \u201cpreach the acceptable year of the Lord.\u201d Thus Jesus omitted from Isaiah 61 the very next phrase \u201cand [to execute] the day of vengeance of our God.\u201d\u00a0This shows that Jesus did\u00a0not expect that vengeance from God would necessarily happen\u00a0immediately or shortly after\u00a0his rejection by the Jews (a rejection Christ predicts in all the gospels). Second and hardly less important, Jesus himself said even he did not know the time his Father would send him to return to earth. Had, then, Jesus assumed his reign of judgment would begin after a 70th week that would follow his resurrection, i.e., a brief period of seven years during which the Jewish people would unite themselves behind the gospel until they acted as one man to call for his return so they might enthrone him\u2014why did Jesus profess such\u00a0ignorance about the time of his return? This certainly implies a hiatus between the 69th and 70th weeks.<\/p>\n Third, Jesus spoke a parable (Mt. 25:14ff; Lk. 19:12ff) in which he likened himself to a man who went away into a far <\/em>country to receive a kingdom from which he would return, and that his servants should occupy while he was gone.<\/p>\n Finally, Jesus once questioned whether there would be [the true] faith on the earth when he returned. Such a statement would make no sense if after his resurrection Christ expected to return seven years later in 40 AD, when his miracles would still be fresh in the minds of his apostles and in the minds of that first generation of hearers whom the apostles would be energetically evangelizing.<\/p>\n And so, despite the critics\u2019 assumption that Dispensationalists have had to create an artificial hiatus between the 69th and 70th weeks of Daniel, the idea of a stop-gap has considerable scriptural support in both <\/em>the Old and New Testaments, and is therefore not a contrivance or invention of theology.<\/p>\n \u00a0Now, as for why <\/em>there is a divinely instituted hiatus between the 69th and 70th weeks, at least one reason is given by Paul in Romans 11. It is so that many Gentiles might be saved from their sins, with the result that <\/em>this might lead to a proper jealousy and change of mind among the Jews for having rejected Christ the Savior who had first come to them, his own race. Recalling a point earlier in this book, this is all part of God trying to give people (in this case, the Jews) sufficient<\/em>, not startling<\/em>, evidence of what is the truth, and to show them what is their responsibility to it. God preferred this method rather than to force upon the majority of Jews a kingdom of spiritual principles they had no interest in. For the Jews had shown they wished Christ to accommodate their desire to live by physical bread alone, without regard to the spiritual<\/p>\n \u2018bread\u2019 of life. Therefore Christ pointed out they were ignoring the spiritual (and therefore) greater component of life\u2014the need to accept the provision of the Manna from Heaven\u2014the body of Christ which would be bloodied, bruised, and sacrificed for them.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n T<\/strong>HE <\/strong>R<\/strong>O<\/strong>UNDING <\/strong>O<\/strong>FF OF <\/strong>N<\/strong>UMBERS<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Now, besides Sandoval\u2019s criticism that there should be no gap between the 69th and 70th week, he also claims that numbers in the Bible are often rounded off for the sake of convenience. Therefore in his view Christians are reading such prophecies as Daniel 9 with \u201cmicrometer\u201d precision, when examples like the measurements of Solomon\u2019s Sea (says Sandoval) clearly show that the numbers are meant to be rounded off. Solomon\u2019s Sea will be addressed in a moment, but regarding the rounding off of numbers, note that John in Revelation defines the (future) 70th week to be first and second periods of time, being 1260 days and 42 months, respectively (Rev. 11:3,7; 13:5-6). Logically, then, if the last week is implied to be 2520 days, so should be the length of each of the other 69 weeks. Thus John specifies the exact length of time so that there can be no mistake about the length of the remaining week in Daniel\u2019s prophecy, or any other weeks. Yet Sandoval does mistake it, because to admit John was specifying exact numbers instead of rounding them off would prove disastrous to Sandoval\u2019s claim that Daniel 9:25-26a has not been fulfilled.<\/p>\n <\/p>\nMADE TO MEASURE<\/strong><\/h2>\n