256
July, 1939
T H E K I N G ' S - B U S I N E S S
Danieli
Prophecy of the Seventy Weeks*
III. THE SEVENTIETH WEEK AND [HE COMING OF THE ROMAN PRINCE
By ALVA J. McCLA IN Winona Lake, Ind.
[ This series o f prophetic articles by the President of Grace Theological Seminary is brought to meet the need of persons who desire a careful exposition o f the basis o f the premillennial view o f Christ's return. The final article will appear in an early issue .— E ditor .] I N TH E first section in this series, it was shown that the first 69 of the Seventy Weeks of prophetic years be gan on March 14, 445 B.C., with the issu ing of King Artaxerxes’ decree to rebuild Jerusalem (Neh. 2:1-8);' and that the period ended on April 6, 32 A.D., when our Lord rode up to Jerusalem on the foal of an ass, presenting Himself as the King of Israel (Lk. 19:28-44)—exactly 69 sevens or 483 years to the very day. In the next article, it was established that the 70th week did not follow the 69th immediately but that between the 69th and 70th weeks there is a vast gap of uncharted time which has already extended over nineteen hundred years, and therefore the 70th week of years is still in the future. Coming now in the present article to an investigation of this 70th week and its events, it will be neces sary to reproduce only the last two verses of the prophecy of Daniel 9:24-27, which as before are given as they appear in the King James Version with the exception of a few changes taken from the American Standard Revised Version and indicated by parenthetical marks. "26. And after (the) threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off (and shall have nothing): and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, (and even unto the end shall be war); desolations are determined. “27. And he shall (make a firm covenant) with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease; (and upon the wing of abominations shall come one that maketh desolate; and even unto the full end, and that deter mined, shall wrath be poured out upon the desolate).” Now the reader should notice carefully that in these verses of the prophecy there are two different princes mentioned: first, “Messiah the Prince" (v. 25); and second, “the prince that shall come.” The expres sion "prince that shall come” cannot pos sibly refer to "Messiah the Prince” for the simple reason that it is “the people of the prince that shall come" who are to destroy Jerusalem after the death of Messiah. And since it is now a matter of history that *All rights reserved. Illustration, courtesy o f the Union Oil Co.
Jerusalem was destroyed A.D. 70 by the Roman people, not by the Jewish people, it follows that “the prince that shall come" cannot be the Jewish Messiah but is some great prince who will arise out of the Ro man Empire. Furthermore, we need not speculate about the identity of this coming Roman prince. He is the well-known “little horn” of Daniel 7 with "eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things" (v. 8 ), the king “more stout than his fellows” who rises swiftly among the ten kings of the revived Roman Empire of the end-time, and who for a brief season shall wield almost unlimited power over the nations of the world. His well-known identity is un doubtedly the reason that in chapter 9 he is referred to simply as “the prince that shall come.” For those who had read the great vision of chapter 7, no further identi fication would be needed. This same prince is, in my judgment, also the “king of fierce (strong) countenance” of chapter 8, the willful king of chapter 11, the “man of sin” of 2 Thessalonians 2:3, the Beast “out of the sea” of Revelation 13:1, the last great persecutor of Israel, Satan’s falsef Christ, before whom all the world shall do homage whose names are not written in the Lamb’s book of life. A dark and sinister figure he is, whose ominous shadow falls constantly upon the pages of divine prophecy, until he comes to his fearful doom in the lake of fire (Rev. 20:10). Who Is the Covenant Maker? Turning now to verse 27 of the prophecy of the weeks, a verse which deals specifi cally with the 70th week, our first problem is to identify the antecedent of the pro noun “he," for this person is the chief actor and subject of the verse. Does the “he" refer back to the Messianic prince or to the Roman prince? Grammatically it might refer to either, although presumption favors the latter because he is mentioned last be fore the pronoun. However, there are cer tain other considerations which are de cisive. First, we are told that "he” will make a firm covenant with the Jewish na tion for a period of one week or seven years. There is absolutely nothing recorded in the earthly ministry of our Lord which even remotely resembles such a covenant. Second, the theory that this covenant was t NO TE : Some feel that the coming prince o f Daniel 9:27 cannot also be the personal Antichrist, because the first is a Roman while the latter (they argue) must be a Jew. This, however, is no serious problem, for the same person could b e a Roman politically and at the same time a Jew racially.
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