CHAPTER XIII
THE CONNEXION BETWEEN THE SANCTUARY CYCLE AND THE "SEVENTY WEEKS,"
OR 490 YEARS, EXTENDING FROM THE PERSIAN RESTORATION ERA TO THE ERA OF
"MESSIAH THE PRINCE."
BEFORE passing from the consideration of this sanctuary cycle, we must
indicate some links of connexion between it and the celebrated prophecy
of seventy weeks, which have, we believe, never before been pointed out.
They possess, however, the highest interest, both as confirming the view
that chronological prophecy deals with eras rather than with years, and
as showing that there is a fulness and an exactitude of chronological
prediction in this prophecy of the "seventy weeks" which is
not generally recognised, making its inspiration more evident than ever.
The facts to which we are about to call attention confirm also, if confirmation
be needed, the importance of the six dates which we have indicated as
starting-points of the sanctuary cycle.
We mentioned above that two of the starting-points of the twenty-three
centuries of the sanctuary cycle (#Da 8.) are the same as those of the
seventy weeks (#Dan 9). The following diagram shows that the chronological
correspondence between the two prophecies is more full and exact than
this. The prophecy of the sanctuary cycle indicates, as we have seen,
four other starting-points in addition to the decrees of Artaxerxes; and
we have considered the various years of close as measured from all six.
If now we take all these six dates as starting-points for the seventy
weeks to "Messiah the Prince," what do we find? That not only
do the dates of the two decrees of Artaxerxes lead up, as is generally
recognised, to the ministry and death of Christ, but that the analogy
extends farther and is even more complete, affording a fresh proof that
there is more in these sacred predictions than lies on the surface, more
than is actually stated, and that they are adapted to history and to astronomy,
in a way that is marvellous in its delicate complexity, and Divine in
its absolute accuracy.
The prophecy of the seventy weeks was given at the close of the Babylonish
captivity of seventy years. It announced that a week of such captivity
periods, or seventy weeks of years, that is 490 years, would elapse to
"Messiah the Prince." It foretold, besides, certain events which
would follow the cutting off of Messiah, the fall of Jerusalem and the
desolation of Judaea; but to these latter events it did not attach any
chronological statement, it did not seem to intimate when they would take
place, further than that they would follow the cutting off of Messiah.
Moreover, the prophecy did not indicate any date for the birth of Messiah,
but only for that of His "cutting off," or death; that supreme
event, which was to make reconciliation for iniquity and bring in everlasting
righteousness, is distinctly assigned to the middle of the last week;
and, as we have shown, [p. 54.] it actually occurred exactly 69« weeks
of years, or 486« lunar years, from the Nehemiah date, B.C. 444.
The six different commencing dates to which we have been led by the study
of the sanctuary cycle extend, it will be observed, over an interval of
eighty-five years in the fifth century before Christ. Now the following
diagram shows that the corresponding terminal period, after the lapse
of seventy weeks, or 490 years, included, not only the death of "Messiah
the Prince," doubly indicated both by lunar and solar measures, but
also the date of His birth, [We have elsewhere demonstrated that the most
probable date of the nativity is B.C.. 6, and not, as commonly supposed,
B.C. 4. See "Approaching End of the Age," p. 519.] and that
of the Jewish war which led to the siege of Jerusalem and the desolation
of the land, and that of the close of the Messianic and apostolic era,
and of the canon of Scripture.
B.C. B.C. Xerxes 480-1 490 lunar years (475 solar) 6 The nativity.
B.C. A.D. Ezra 457 (49 yrs) 490 solar years 34 The cross.
Nehemiah 444 490 lunar years (475 solar) 33 The cross
Artaxerxes 425 490 solar years. 66 The Jewish war.
End of 49 years, 408 490 lunar years. 68 Ezra . . .
End of 49 years, Nehemiah.. 395 490 solar years. 96 Patmos.
Hence this wonderful period of seventy weeks did actually measure, from
the different termini a quo in the Persian restoration era, the interval-
1. To the birth of the Babe of Bethlehem;
2. To the very day when Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us;
3. To that terrible Roman war, which fulfilled the predictions of the
judgment which should fall on the Jews in consequence of their rejection
of Messiah. "The people of the prince that shall come "-that
is, the Roman soldiery of Titus-" shall destroy the city and the
sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end
of the war desolations are determined. . . . Even until the consummation,
and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate." The Jewish
war began in May, A.D. 66, and it terminated in A.D. 70, with the fall
of Jerusalem and the burning of the temple.
4. To the close of the reign of the Roman emperor Domitian, which was
also the close of the Messianic era-the date of the last appearance of
Christ in glory to one of His apostles, the date of the giving of the
apocalyptic visions to the last of the apostles, and thus of the close
of the New Testament and of the entire canon of Scripture.
That the year A.D. 95-6 is the true date of these events is capable of
most satisfactory proof. Domitian reigned from AD. 81 to A.D. 96. It was
in the year previous to his death that his severe persecution of the Christians
took place, in the course of which he banished the Apostle John to Patmos.
The fact is expressly asserted by almost contemporary testimony; for Irenaeus,
the disciple of Polycarp, who was himself the disciple of John, writing
shortly after this date, says that the visions of the Apocalypse "were
seen no very long time ago, but almost in our age, towards the end of
the reign of Domitian."’
" The varied historical evidence which has been inquired into all
concurs to confirm the date originally and expressly assigned by Irenaeus
to the Apocalypse, as seen and written at the close of the reign of Domitian;
that is, near the end of the year 95 or beginning of 96. Accordingly,
the great majority of the most approved ecclesiastical historians and
Biblical critics, alike Roman Catholic and Protestant, French, German,
and English,-writers who have had no bias on the point in question, one
way or the other, from any particular cherished theory of apocalyptic
interpretation; for example, Dupin, Bossuet, Tillemont, Le Clere, Turretin,
Spanheim, Basnage, Lamps, Mosheim, Mill, Whitby, Larduer, Mimer, Tomline,
Burton, etc., etc.,-have alike adopted it; to whom I am happy to add the
living names of the German ecclesiastical historian Gieseler, and of our
own learned chronologist, Mr. Clinton. We may, I am persuaded, depend
on its correctness with an unhesitating and implicit confidence as on
the truth of almost any of the lesser facts recorded in history. And I
must say it seems to me most surprising that respectable and learned commentators
should have spent their time and labour in building up apocalyptic expositions
that rest wholly and only on the sandy foundation of an earlier Neronic
date."-Elliott: "Horæ Apocalyptica," vol. i., pp. 45, 46.
Thus, not only was the cutting off of Messiah the Prince separated hy
490 years to a day from the Nehemiah decree "to restore and to build
Jerusalem," but the whole Messianic era-from the birth of Christ,
B.C. 6, to His last appearance to John in Patmos in A.D. 95-was similarly
separated from the whole Persian restoration era. The different years
of crisis which form starting-points in this latter are answered by events
of supreme importance in the Messianic era; and the close of the Old Testament
history is separated by "seventy weeks" from the close of the
New.
This hidden yet exact analogy is all the more interesting because the
clue to it is found, not in the prophecy of the seventy weeks, but in
that of the cleansing of the sanctuary.
Now when we remember that the former prediction was given in the first
year of Darius, that is to say, 600 years before the closing event which
it indicates, the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus; when we note that
it does not profess to give its chronological point at all,-its exactitude
and comprehensiveness are surely a new and eloquent testimony to the Divine
inspiration of the book of Daniel, and a fresh encouragement closely to
scan and deeply to ponder the sacred chronological predictions of Scripture.
Index Preface
1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8
9 10
11 12
13 14 15
16 17
18 19
20 21
22 23
24 25
Appendix A Appendix
B
