Part 2. There are two important points to this portion of the discussion. Let’s start with verse 27.
27 And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.”
That verse is very dense and worthy of considerable conversation. Let’s start with the word “he.” The antecedent of pronouns is a subject that causes grammar teachers to turn blue in the face discussing, and perhaps Daniel should have been subjected to such a tirade. Much has been made of the issue of the antecedent of this one pronoun. The history of the 20th century is punctuated by a lack of understanding of this one word. I am referring, of course, to the recreation of the political state of Israel in 1948. But, I’m moving ahead; let’s go back to the text. Who can “he” be? The dispensational view is that “he” is the desolator at the end of the verse. Also, in verse 26, the prince who is to come and destroy the temple is read as the devil as opposed to some earthly and human prince. Therefore, they believe that the devil is in the covenant making business. This concept is nowhere else seen in scripture. In fact, throughout scripture, it is God who is in the covenant making business. Instead, in the Christocentric view of this pronoun, it is Jesus who makes a strong covenant. Jesus does put an end to sacrifices and burnt offerings. Jesus does declare the end of the Old Covenant and states that there is a New Covenant in Him. It is amazing that Dispensationalists will work so hard to make the numbers fit to get Jesus into this prophesy, but then will clearly miss the prophesy about the New Covenant in Christ, who ends sin.
The second point is that Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed in 70 A.D. While the final apostasy is what is probably meant in verse 27, dovetailing with Revelations, it is this temple destruction that seems to be spoken of in verse 26. The secular accounts of Titus’ reign of carnage over Jerusalem would make a grotesque movie even by modern standards. It is interesting that the preterist position looks at this whole passage as being completed by 70 A.D. As horrible as the sacking of Jerusalem was, the final apostasy most would hold involves the whole world.
We could go farther about which half of the last week Gabriel is discussing, but most people believe that it is the first half of the week. Christ has a ministry on the world for about 3 ½ years. At the end of his ministry, His death and resurrection occur, and that changes everything. The end of the Old Covenant, the end of the bondage of man to sin, the end to the curse of the first Adam, the binding of the desolator, for all who believe in Christ, this all comes with His death, resurrection and ascension. The second half of the week is interpreted by Revelation, according to the amillennial position as representing all of the time between the first and second Advent, however long that might be. The point of 70 x 7 again is symbolic, and the leftover half of a week gets us to the Second Advent. This is not the same as the gap that follows in an important way. All of the events of prophesy except for the final apostasy and the Second Coming are finished by the end of 70 A.D. This means that the last 3 ½ weeks represent the whole inter-advental period. The final apostasy is a result of the unbinding of Satan and his lashing out against the world one final time before the second coming and judgment.
And finally, dispensationalists, where is the second gap, the one between week 69 and week 70? I’m reading along, Gabriel is telling us a smashingly good story, and then Gabriel says, that there will be a gap of 700 weeks between weeks 69 and 70. What? You don’t see those words? Neither do I. The Dispensational view requires some clarification so that you will see the problem. In the dispensational view, remember that the “he” is the devil. The devil has to make a covenant with Israel. And notice that it has to be national Israel. Gabriel says that the covenant will be with “many.” Importantly, there is no mention of Israel in this place. Gabriel knows that Jesus will be redefining the elect in His own covenant. And so “many” is intentionally vague at this point in redemptive history. Assuming that Daniel means ethnic and political Israel by the word “many” flies in the face of logic. It seems more likely that many will be chosen, but some will not. It is easy to see that the Apostles would initially look at this as meaning that many of the ethnically Jewish will be saved and miss at first glance that Christ’s ministry was much larger than that. But it is equally clear that they understood that the New Covenant was with individuals, not with the state of Israel. This is where that often abused idea of a personal relationship with Jesus comes into play. In Christ, there is no corporate deal; personal and individual redemption is on the table. The New Covenant is not with the whole of any nation.
The temple in Ezekiel 40-48 is part of the Dispensational problem. This temple is a real earthly building in their literalistic hermeneutic. The problems for this begin immediately, however. This temple is supposed to be built on a mountain, a mountain that overlooks Jerusalem. Such a mountain doesn’t exist. Secondly, as the temple grows in the text to the size of the whole city, the obvious imagery of the spread of the temple beyond its traditional boundaries is lost. In the NT, this spread, according to Jesus, is to the whole world. See Revelation 21. Read the whole chapter, then look carefully at verses 22-27. Look at verse 22 again.
22 And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.
Remember that the dispensationalist takes the Bible literally. Does the OT interpret the NT or does the NT interpret the OT? Look at verse 27. There is that pesky Book of Life, the one that Daniel had to shut. John is looking at it. There is no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb.
Getting back to the Dispensational view, the idea of the rapture is that Jesus comes and quietly calls his elect from the world just before this new covenant with the Devil is made. In the passage I sited in part one from Matthew 24, it seems that Christ’s second coming will be rather loud and obvious, not the sort of stealth move implied by the idea of the rapture. I will deal with the rapture specifically in a later post, but the implications of this theology in redemptive history are startling and probably not what any Christian really wants to believe, if they just thought it through. For our current purposes, let us just ask the Dispensationalist to show us the 2000+ year gap in the text. If their hermeneutic is that they take the Bible literalistically, and it is, then where is the gap?
Why is this important to the modern Geopolitical debate? If you are a dispensationalist, you need Israel to be back in the land. In order for the end to come, in order for there to be a second coming, in order for there to be a treaty between Satan and Israel, you need an ethnic and political entity called Israel to be in that ground. Not only that, but they expect to achieve national borders that resemble Biblical borders. If you haven’t noticed, somewhere in the last 1000 years, this other group build a mosque in Jerusalem, to follow a descendant of a different of Abraham’s sons. They claim this same real estate and want to convert everyone to their theology or else kill them. And so, while Christ came into this world and made a new Covenant with His elect, the Dispensationalists want another covenant, with a national Israel, after reestablishing old borders, so that they can help bring about the second coming of Christ.
This really is what is at the heart of this whole post WWII drama. We have leaders, who with good intentions, but with really bad theology, who felt really badly for the Jews after Hitler, who took advantage of the political climate to force Israel back into the land. In the book by Hal Lindsey, The Late, Great Planet Earth, in 1970, this was all laid out for us, as plain as day. The thought was that 1948 plus half of 70 or 35 is 1973; there was a war that year in Israel. That year came and went and the rest of the story didn’t unfold. And so the Dispensationalists have had to recalculate. Add another 35 and you get 2018. If you subtract 7 for the rapture, you get 2011. If you pile on the Mayan Calendar and Nostradamus and some planetary alignment that will happen this year, you get a lot of people who are nervous about events in the world and the period around May 21 of this year. My son plans to have a party on May 22. I hope that he comes up with an appropriately clever name for that bash, perhaps the Hal Lindsey earth renewal celebration.
*Is it necessary for Israel to be in the land? No. The land promise of Sinai was broken. Daniel and other OT prophets make that clear. The land promise of Abraham is expanded by Christ to mean the whole world. *Did Jesus make a specific land Covenant with His people? No, not really. He made a wholly, and Holy, different type of Covenant. *Does this make me an anti-Semitic bigot? Absolutely not. The Jews have access to the same Covenant that I do. In fact, it can be argued that they may get one last chance at it before the end (again, for another post.) Many Jews will be saved, but through their faith in the promise that is manifested in Christ Jesus. *Is it horrible that we have such incredible tension in our day in the Middle East? Absolutely, but the Bible is silent about this. Remember Matthew 24. (There are other similar passages, for another post.) *Why is Israel back in the land? Because a bunch of secular rulers decided to make it happen. There is no Biblical prophecy that requires it, nor forbids it. The Bible is silent about this issue. *Is there a reason to be nervous about current events? Yes, for their own sakes, yes. For more, I refer you to Kim Riddlebarger, here: see the right column Amillennialism 101—Audio Resources, or here and here: the printed versions of the material in the audio series.
--Troll-- and --Ogre--
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