Studies in Revelation: Revelation’s Timeline (Part One)

Assuming as we are that the events of Revelation 6-19 are all future, dealing with the time of God’s outpouring of wrath on the earth, there is a very specific timeline for these events. And it is a timeline coinciding with the prophet Daniel’s timeline of events.

Daniel’s Timeline

Daniel relates it this way:

²⁰ While I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and making my request to the Lord my God for his holy hill— ²¹ while I was still in prayer, Gabriel, the man I had seen in the earlier vision, came to me in swift flight about the time of the evening sacrifice. ²² He instructed me and said to me, “Daniel, I have now come to give you insight and understanding. ²³ As soon as you began to pray, a word went out, which I have come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed. Therefore, consider the word and understand the vision:

²⁴ “Seventy ‘sevens’ are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy Place.  (Daniel 9:20-24, NIV)

It is interesting that this angel flies (from heaven, we may presume) and that he comes during the evening sacrifice (about 3pm and the time for evening prayer), a sacrifice that cannot actually be offered because it must be offered at the temple and that temple lies in ruins.  Though the Israelites are not doing sacrifice, they keep this timetable.  We are told that Jesus gave up his spirit on the cross at this same time 483 years later (Matthew 27:46 Mark 15:34 Luke 23:44).

“Seventy ‘sevens’,” Gabriel declares, are decreed for the people of Israel and for Jerusalem to accomplish several very important matters:

(1) to finish transgression, put an end to sin, atone for wickedness

(2) to bring in everlasting righteousness

(3) to seal up vision and prophecy and

(4) to anoint the most holy place (or most holy one)

What are these ‘sevens’?  Are they days?  490 days would occur in about a year and a half.  Did any or all of these matters happen that soon?  No.  Are they months?  490 months would only be about 9 years, and none of these things happened within that time frame.  What about years?  483 years would take us to what we now know as the 1^st century AD (anno domini, the year of our Lord) or CE (Christian era), and as we’ll see, to exactly 33 CE, the year in which we believe Jesus was crucified.  Was wickedness atoned for then?  By all means!  Was everlasting righteousness brought in then?  No!  But we will see that there seems to be a gap set between the 483’rd year and the remaining 7 years.

Gap Theory

Gabriel continues:

²⁵ “Know and understand this: From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. ²⁶ After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed. ²⁷ He will confirm a covenant with many for one ‘seven.’ In the middle of the ‘seven’ he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And at the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him.  (Daniel 9:25-27, NIV)

Gabriel sets the beginning marker for this remarkable timetable as the time when the decree goes out to “restore and rebuild Jerusalem.”  There are four possible decrees that might be considered here:

Cyrus (538 BC) – decree to allow the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple (Ezra 1:1-4)

Darius I (520 BC) – a restatement of Cyrus’ decree after a challenge by Israel’s enemies (Ezra 6:1-12)

Artaxerxes Longimanus (457 BC) – decree to provide for sacrifices at the temple (Ezra 7:11-26)

Artaxerxes Longimanus (444 BC) – decree to rebuild the walls around Jerusalem (Nehemiah 2:1-8)

It is only this last decree that fulfills the requirements of Gabriel’s words.  And what is really intriguing is that Gabriel says that from the time this decree goes out until the Anointed One comes, there will be “seven ‘sevens’ and sixty-two ‘sevens’,” or, in other words, 69 sevens or 483 years, seven years shy of the 490 years predicted.  And he says the city will be rebuilt in times of trouble, which the book of Nehemiah accurately attests to.  But after the “sixty-two ‘sevens’” have been accomplished, Gabriel says, the Anointed One will be put to death.  The sixty-two sevens follow the seven ‘sevens’, so we are looking at 483 years from this decree until the cutting off or death of Messiah (that’s what “anointed one” translates to).

So there is a marker for the first 483 years, the death of the Messiah.  Then there is a description of events after this:

²⁶ After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed. ²⁷ He will confirm a covenant with many for one ‘seven.’ In the middle of the ‘seven’ he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And at the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him.

There is a people of the ruler who will come.  These people will destroy the city of Jerusalem and the temple in it.  Then, the ruler will make a covenant (with the people of Israel, we assume) for seven years.  But three and a half years into the covenant he will violate the covenant and desecrate the sanctuary, thus putting an end to sacrificing.  He will do this until the end decreed for him is “poured out” (he is judged).

This covenant time is our last seven years, our seventieth ‘seven’.  Has this last event happened?  Yes and no.  Jesus was crucified, resurrected, and ascended in 33 CE.  Thirty-seven years later, in 70 CE, the Romans invaded Jerusalem and destroyed it and its temple.  So if this is the fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy, there was a gap between the first sixty-nine ‘sevens’ and the last or seventieth ‘seven’.  There were 483 years completed, then a 37-year gap, then….  Well, there was no clear seven-year period that ended with what the prophecy depicted, “to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the Most Holy Place.”  There was no seven-year covenant made, broken halfway through.

Was the prophecy mistaken?  Of course not.  Given that there is a gap between the 69^th ‘seven’ and the 70^th ‘seven’, it makes sense that the last ‘seven’ has not yet occurred.  The destruction of Jerusalem and her temple in 70 CE is a partial fulfillment, but the ultimate fulfillment is yet to come.  This means that Jerusalem will have to be rebuilt and the temple as well, for a future desecration and end to sacrifice.

Of course, it is extraordinary that Israel’s nation has been restored to her homeland in 1948, with great conflict, we might add.  Visitors to the city will see the place where the temple stood, bereft of a temple, occupied instead with a shrine and a mosque.  The shrine to Muhammed built over the dome of the rock sits likely exactly where the temple did, and to the side on the same temple mount sits the mosque.  It is a holy place in Islam.  It seems impossible that Israel could rebuild the temple there without a great conflagration ignited.  Perhaps this is what the evil ruler will be able to achieve with his covenant, the freedom for Israel to build the temple there.  Only he will then desecrate the rebuilt temple.  And this act, according to Jesus (Matthew 24) sets off the time of great distress or tribulation, three and a half years of divine retribution and human vying for power.  This is described in Revelation 6-19.

Summary of Events from Daniel 9

So, to summarize what Daniel was told by Gabriel in this extraordinary prophecy:

• In 483 years from the decree to rebuild Jerusalem (March 444 BCE), the Messiah will come but be killed (33 CE).
• Jerusalem and her temple will be destroyed by the people of the ruler to come.
• The final seven years of 70 ‘sevens’ will begin with that ruler making a covenant with Israel for seven years that allows her to rebuild the temple and reinstitute sacrifice.
• The ruler will break the covenant three and a half years into the seven years of agreement and desecrate the sanctuary by setting up something abominable in it.
• The ruler will be finally judged by God.

This ruler may safely be identified with the antichrist (1 John 2:18-22; 4:3; 2 John 7), the man of lawlessness (2 Thessalonians 2:3,4), and the beast who comes out of the sea (Revelation 13,17-19).  His great fame will be brokering a deal to let Israel reclaim the temple mount for building its temple.  His great infamy will be desecrating that rebuilt temple, perhaps with an image of himself to be worshiped and with himself dwelling there to receive worship.

Daniel’s clock is still ticking and it is the clock Revelation follows.