Page 83 - Satan in the Sanctuary

The Bible Tells Me So 85

siah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and
two weeks" (9:25).
Or to paraphrase, "The Messiah will come sixty-nine
weeks after the commandment to rebuild Jerusalem."
Imagine making such a statement six centuries before
Christ!
The very idea of predicting some kind of commandment
that Jerusalem should be rebuilt must have left students of
Daniel incredulous. The Jews were the captives of Babylon
at the time and could not reasonably look forward to re-
storing their vanquished capital.
Yet, some two centuries later, such a commandment was
issued, in the form of a royal decree by King Artaxerxes,
who gave permission to the governor Nehemiah to restore
the Jewish capital. (Neh 2:1-6).
We know the date of that benevolent proclamation;
Nehemiah 2:1 sets it "In the month Nisan, in the twentieth
year of Artaxerxes," which makes it 445 B.C.
Before going on, we should realize that Daniel's "weeks"
are actually seven-year periods. The Hebrew term used de-
notes "sets of seven," and we know that years are meant
since the restoration of Jerusalem took exactly forty-nine
years (finished in 396 B.C.) and this corresponds with the
prophet's "seven weeks." Also, it would have been impos-
sible to prophecy that a great city would be rebuilt in just
seven weeks' time.
And we should know that Daniel regarded a year as
having 360 days, which was Jewish tradition for calcula-
tions. We can see this in Revelation 11:3 where the three
and one-half year tribulation is given as 1,260 days (three
and one-half years times 360 days per year.)
We can see at a glance that Daniel's calculations are ac-
curate. His "sixty-nine weeks," meaning sixty-nine sets of