What is Daniel's Prophecy of Seventy Weeks?
(Daniel 9:24-27)
"Seventy weeks are determined for your people and for your holy city,
to finish the transgression, to make an end of sins,
to make reconciliation for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness,
to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy.
Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the command
To restore and build Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince,
There shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublesome times.
And after the sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself;
and the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.
The end of it shall be with a flood, and till the end of the war desolations are determined.
Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week; but in the middle of the week He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate, even until the consummation."
"Seventy sevens" in Hebrew is: shabu'im shibim) and is translated "seventy weeks" in English, which most likely means seventy periods of seven years which would equal 490 years. The Bible divides theses seventy years into three separate groups with a parenthetic time lapse for the present "Gentile rule."
The first "seven weeks" (49 years) began at the decree to build and restore Jerusalem under Ezra and Nehemiah.
The second "sixty-two weeks" (434 years) started as the actual building of the wall of Jerusalem and continues to Christ's Crucifixion ("cut off and will have nothing" (Daniel 9:25-26).
From that point, after 483 years, Israel's national time clock stops. Gentile rule, an unknown number of years intercedes after the sixty-ninth week.
This is where we are now, as we await the last or seventieth week (seven years) the final seven years of history when God deals again with Israel and the Tribulation takes place when Antichrist takes power, signs the covenant with Israel, and breaks that covenant in the middle of the week (3.5 years into the Tribulation followed by the "time of trouble" (Daniel 12:1; the Great Tribulation of Revelation).
