RDean/Daniel Lesson 44

Daniel’s Seventy Weeks; The Future for Israel – Daniel 9:27

 

We’re continuing our study in Daniel 9, finishing up Daniel 9:24-27 which is one of the most significant and important prophecies in the Old Testament.  Its detail, I think, is unsurpassed by any other prophecy and it’s a tremendous testimony to the accuracy of God’s Word and to the fact that the Word of God is supernaturally revealed.  You can’t come up with a prophecy like this and the detail and the specificity of this prophecy simply by reading the daily horoscope in the Norwich Bulletin or calling up Sister Cleo or whoever on the 900 number on television.  This testifies to the fact that man cannot invent something like this and it’s even impossible for man, for someone writing in the 1st century BC to have generated this kind of specificity because in the 1st or 2nd century BC, remember the liberals are the one, liberal theology comes along and says Daniel really isn’t prophecy because at the core of liberalism is an anti-supernatural assumption, that is that God really doesn’t interact with human history and God does not speak in human history and therefore there’s not really anything such as predictive prophecy.  Therefore their claim is that Daniel wasn’t written, as we believe, about 535-540 BC but that Daniel was written sometime between 100-200 BC and it’s really history, not prophecy.  But if you were writing from 100-200 BC you would not be aware of the different calendar systems, you would not be able to construct a prophecy of this caliber to the very day because you would not have access to the information necessary.  So once again this is a testimony to the fact that this is supernatural revelation.

 

Just a little review to go through the details of Daniel’s seventieth week.  In Daniel 9:24 we read, “Seventy weeks” and we saw that that was the first interpretive problem, trying to decide what the weeks are, and in the Hebrew it’s not weeks, it’s seventy periods of seven, and we saw that this is really seventy periods of seven years each or a 490 year period, “has been decreed for your people and holy city,” that is the Jews and Jerusalem, then six purposes are listed, “to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin,” and that would be the sin of Israel and their rejection of God, “to make atonement for iniquity,” that is to apply the atonement to their sin, “to bring in everlasting righteousness,” that is the millennial kingdom, “to seal up vision and prophecy,” that is to bring these prophecies related to Israel to a conclusion, “and to anoint the most holy place” which is the millennial temple.  Remember there are four temples in history; the first temple was Solomon’s temple, the second temple was Zerubbabel’s temple which was the temple they rebuilt after they returned from Babylon, the third temple is the Tribulation temple, it is an apostate temple, it is not a divinely authorized temple but it is one that has to be built during the Tribulation period, and the fourth temple is the millennial temple.

 

Daniel 9:25, “So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat,” actually that’s plaza and trenches for the walls, “even in times of distress.  [26] Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary.”  Notice it’s the people of the prince who is to come, I made that point last time, “the prince who is to come is a reference to the antichrist; it is his people who destroy the city and the sanctuary.  Since the city and the sanctuary were destroyed in 70 AD by the Romans under Titus we know that the prince who is to come has in his ethnic origin in the people that made up the old Roman Empire.  Therefore the antichrist is not going to be an Arab, he’s not going to be Islamic, not all Arabs are Moslems are Arabs, he’s not going to come out of that background, he’s not going to be Asian, he’s not going to be African; he will be western European.  So “the people of the prince who is to come,” are the Romans, who “destroy the city and the sanctuary” in 70 AD.  And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined.”  That means that Jerusalem is always going to be a focal point of warfare.  

Daniel 9:27, “And he” that is the antichrist, we’ll see that tonight when we finish up in verse 27, “will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; and on the wing of abomination will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.”

 

Now we got to a point last time where were reviewing the history of the violence in Jerusalem and asking the question, raising the question that is answered in this passage, is there a future for Israel and what does the Scripture say about a return of Jews to the land, even though they are not yet regenerate, even though they are not yet saved, even though they haven’t accepted Christ as their Savior.  But before we get there let’s continue our review.

 

We saw that the starting point here in this calculation had to do with the second decree of Artaxerxes.  I outlined four options from the ancient world and the one that is most likely to be the correct one is the second decree or Artaxerxes Longimanus which was given in 444 BC.  Then we built a chart; we know the date of that decree which is given in Nehemiah 2:1-3, that Artaxerxes authorized Nehemiah to go to Jerusalem to rebuild the fortifications of the city and to finish its reconstruction.  That occurred on March 5, 444 BC.  There’s two time periods given in verse 25, a seven week period which would be approximately 49 years and a 62 week period.  You add those together you come up with 69 weeks, they are for Israel.  We went through the calculations and see that that covered a period from roughly 444BC to 395 BC and that was the time period when the city was being rebuilt. 

 

We saw that the calendar they used was a 360 day year calendar; this is substantiated by various passages in Scripture from Genesis to Revelation as well as extra-Biblical information that many ancient cultures followed a 360 day calendar system.  Various passages in Scripture use the chronologies to describe the Tribulation period.  Daniel 9:27 uses the phrase a “half a week.”  Daniel 7:25, Daniel 12:7, Revelation 12:14 use the phrase time, “times and a half a time.”  Furthermore, Revelation 12:6 refers to this same period of time as 1,260 days.  Furthermore in Revelation 11:2 it’s defined as 42 months.  So 42 months equals 1260 days and that equals time, times and a half a time, then you work out all the calculations you end up with a 360 day year. 

 

That means that if you take 69 times 7, times 360 days you come up with 173,880 days.  You add that to March 5, 444 BC, and you end up with March 30, AD 33.  To verify that we used a modern 365 days year, we went from 444 BC to 33 and that’s 476 years, subtracting the year zero because there is no year zero when you go from BC to AD, then we took that 476 years, multiplied it by 365.2421989 days and you end up with 173, 855 days.  Then you add in the difference between March 5 and March 30, which is 25 days and you come up with 173,880 days.  So this is a precise calculation and it tells us that on March 30, AD 33, Jesus Christ entered into Jerusalem in what is called the Triumphal Entry, covered in Luke 19:28-40.  It is after that the text says, it is AFTER that that the Messiah is cut off, verse 26 says that “after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing.”

 

So after you work out all the calculations, there’s the cross, then the city is destroyed, there’s a gap of time, at least 2,000 years, and then you have the last week or Daniel’s seventieth week.  We have not entered that yet; that begins, as we’ll see in verse 27, with the signing of a peace treaty, the signing of some sort of covenant or treaty between the antichrist, “the prince who is to come” and Israel.  That’s what starts the clock going again.  So it’s not the rapture that begins the Tribulation, it is the signing of this peace treaty.  The rapture ends the Church Age but it’s the signing of this peace treaty that begins the Tribulation.  And the Messiah returns at the end of that seven week period, but both the first sixty-nine week period and the final seventieth week period have to do with the nation Israel.  That means, since we are now living in the Church Age and we have passages like Galatians 3:26-28 that tell us that there is no “Jew nor Greek, male nor female, bond or slave, we are all one in Christ,” we’ve all been baptized into the body of Christ, that being a member of ethnic Israel is not a spiritual issue in the Church Age. 

 

For God to return the emphasis to Israel as a nation in the Tribulation the Church must be taken out of the way.  So Daniel’s prophecy here is one of the strongest arguments in the Scripture that the Church must be removed before the Tribulation because the Tribulation, which is also called in Jeremiah “the time of Jacob’s wrath,” it is a time for God to pour out His wrath on Israel, He will bring them to the greatest degree and maximum divine discipline as a nation and only in the heat of that disciplinary furnace will many finally to Jesus Christ and accept Him as their Messiah and that will not occur until the end of the Tribulation period, although many will be saved throughout the Tribulation period the vast majority do not turn and accept Him nationally until the end of the Tribulation period.

 

So we were looking at verse 26 last time, “after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing,” that’s the crucifixion, His cutting off and have nothing means He will not have His kingdom at that time.  When He died on the cross He had nothing, He did not begin His kingdom, His kingdom was not inaugurated at the First Advent, His kingdom is postponed until the Second Coming.  The verse goes on to read, “and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary.  And its end will come with a flood,” that’s the overwhelming military destruction that is described by the word “flood,” “even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined.” 

 

Now here is a history of the desolations in Jerusalem.  In 70 AD Titus and the Romans destroyed the city and destroyed the temple.  Then again in 135 AD Emperor Hadrian conquered Jerusalem because there was another revolt there and he renamed the city, Aelia Capitolina, he declared it to be a Gentile city and he removed all the Jews from the city and no Jews were allowed to live in Jerusalem.  Then in 614 AD the Sassanid Empire conquered part of this area that was controlled by the Seljuk Turks, the Sassanid Empire is the heir to the Parthian Empire which was the heir to the Persian Empire, they invaded from the east and gained control of Israel and Jerusalem for a short time until the Arabs came in in 637 AD and conquered the Sassanids and gain control of Palestine and Jerusalem at that time.  Then in 1517 AD the Ottoman Turks took the area over again and it became part of the Ottoman Empire and it remained a part of the Ottoman Empire until the end of World War I.  So in 1917 at the end of World War I, when the British troops marched into Jerusalem, Britain came under the martial rule of General Allenby who was a believer.  Then in 1948 when Israel declared their independence five Arab nations invaded and were defeated by Israel.  Again in 1967, in the 67 war, the Jews took control of the city and then returned the temple mount to the Arabs.  And there are continuing fights over who controls the city ever since.  So the prophecy has come true that until Jesus Christ returns there will be wars and desolations related to Jerusalem.  It is a “cup of bitterness” according to Zechariah.

 

There are some other passages we have to look at, I started last time going through several points, we just covered the first four, to see that the Bible teaches a return of Jews to the land before the Tribulation.  This is crucial because there are some people that think that since no prophecy has to be fulfilled for the rapture to occur that that means no prophecy is fulfilled in the Church Age and those are two completely different statements.  Let me run that by you again.  No prophecy has to be fulfilled in order for the rapture to occur; the rapture is the next event in the calendar.  But what follows the rapture is the Tribulation, generally, and that means that some prophecy might be fulfilled before the rapture but it is not related to the rapture itself or to the present Church Age but is related to what must take place after the rapture in the Tribulation.  So while no prophecy must be fulfilled in order for the rapture to occur it’s still possible for prophecy to be fulfilled during this age that relates to events in Israel that transpire after the rapture. 

 

I started off last time using as an illustration the somewhat facetious trivia question, who was the first person crowned king over Israel.  And most people want to say that was Saul, because we have this blind spot we want to think in terms of divinely authorized events related to believers.  But we forget that in Judge 9 that the men of Shechem crowned Abimelech king over Israel.  Now that doesn’t mean he actually ruled over all of Israel, that everybody recognized his kingship and it doesn’t mean that God anointed him king, but it does clearly state that there were a group of men who politically organized a group behind him and anointed him as king.  Now in the same way we tend to think only of the return as regenerate Jews at the end of the Tribulation and we fail to recognize that there are clear statements in Scripture that God is going to bring about a return of unregenerate Jews to the land that is distinct from that return, that international return of regenerate Jews at the end of the Tribulation. 

 

So you have two returns, you have the first return which is a partial return of unsaved Jews and then there is a second return that takes place at the end of the Tribulation and this would be comprised of saved Jews.  At the beginning you have an unregenerate nation, unsaved; at the end there will be a regenerate nation.  The unsaved Jews are necessary because there must be an apostate temple built to fulfill the prophecy in Daniel; once you have saved regenerate Jews at the end of the Tribulation then you will have an authorized millennial temple built for the worship of God and His Messiah.  So the first point was to recognize that there’s a blind spot and not to think only of regenerate people, regenerate Israel, when we talk about Israel’s return to the land.

 

The second point was to answer the question, why would God restore unbelieving Israel to the land?  What would be a purpose for God to restore unbelieving Israel to the land?  That was to accomplish His purposes; in the same way that God had a partial return of Jews to the land in 535 BC in order for there to be a nation in the land for Messiah to come to in order to fulfill the prophecies related to His First Advent, His rejection and crucifixion, God is going to bring a partial return of unregenerate Jews to the land at the end of the Church Age in order to set the stage for the events of the Tribulation so that there will be the judgment on the nation that takes place to fulfill all the prophecies related to the Tribulation, the time of Jacob’s wrath.

 

The third point, God restored a portion of the people for the purpose of having a national presence in the land for the arrival of Messiah at the First Coming and in the same way He will restore a portion of the people to have a national presence in the land for the arrival of Messiah at the Second Coming.

 

The fourth point was to look at some Scripture.  We started with Ezekiel 37 and moved on to look at some other passage in Ezekiel.  Ezekiel 20:33, there’s a crucial passage to understand this. “As I live, declares the Lord God, surely with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with wrath poured out” now watch that word “wrath.”  Wrath is a technical term for divine judgment; it is a technical term for the Tribulation, “with wrath poured out,” it’s the time of Jacob’s wrath remember in Jeremiah, “with wrath poured out I shall be king over you.”  Verse 34, “And I shall bring you out from the peoples, and gather you from the lands where you are scattered with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm, and with wrath poured out.”  So it is a regathering in the midst of judgment.  Verse 35, “And I shall bring you into the wilderness of the peoples, and there I shall enter into judgment with you, face to face.  [36] As I entered into judgment with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so I will enter into judgment with you, declares the Lord God.  [37] And I shall make you pass under the rod,” that is an idiom for judgment and evaluation, “and I shall bring you into the bond of covenant,” that is the New Covenant that is brought about at the end of the Tribulation.  [48] “And I shall purge from you the rebels,” the rebels indicates that there are unregenerate unsaved Jews.  This is a regathering of unsaved people for God to purge out the rebels, “I shall purge from you the rebels and those who transgress against me; I shall bring them out of the land where they sojourned, but they will not enter the land of Israel.”  That is talking about that final entry into the millennial Israel.  “Thus you will know that I am the Lord.”

 

Then another passage in Ezekiel 22:18-22 parallels this, “And the word of the Lord came to me, saying, [18] Son of man, the house of Israel has become dross to Me,” that means…it’s an analogy with metal, and this is the impurities that you find when you are in the process of purifying and smelting, refining the metals; “the house of Israel has become dross to Me,” that is all of the impurities, so the picture here is of Israel as impure, as unsaved, as unregenerate; “the house of Israel has become dross to me, all of them are bronze, and tin, and iron, and lead in the furnace,” they are the dross of silver, in other words, he’s looking for the pure silver, not the bronze, the tin, the iron or the lead, that’s extraneous.  Verse 19, “Therefore, thus says the Lord God: because all of you have become dross, therefore, behold, I am going to gather you into the midst of Jerusalem,  [20] As they gather silver, and bronze, and iron, and lead, and tin into the furnace to blow fire on it in order to melt it, so I shall gather you in My anger, and in My wrath” notice, they are gathered in His anger and in His wrath; this is not a picture of saved Jews.  God is not treating them, the saved, in anger and wrath, this is directed towards an unregenerate nation, “in My anger and in My wrath, and I shall lay you there, and melt you.”  So it’s a picture that they are going to be brought back to the land and then this tremendous heat of the Tribulation is going to be applied to the nation, so that there has to be a return of unregenerate Jews to the land and have a nation there in order for the Tribulation to take place.  Verse 21, “Yea, I shall gather you and blow on you with the fire of My wrath, and you will be melted in the midst of it.  [22] As silver is melted in the furnace, so you shall be melted in the midst of it, and you will know” and this is really a result use of the conjunction here, the vav consecutive here, it’s a result, “then you will know that I, the LORD, have poured out my wrath on you.” 

 

Then we skip over to Ezekiel 36:22 where we read, “There, say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God, It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you went.  [23] And I will vindicate the holiness of My great name which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst.”  So that’s a picture of all the Jews in the Diaspora, we are in the midst of the Diaspora, that’s the Greek word that describes the scattering, the dispersion, that’s our English cognate, the dispersion of Jews throughout all the Gentile nations which began actually in 722 BC, if you noticed when John Niemela was here and he was going through John 7 the Pharisees were involved in an argument with Jesus and they said where will you go from here, will you go into the Diaspora, will you go into the dispersion, will you go into the dispersion among the Gentiles.  So that was a passage that recognized that at the time of the First Coming when you still had a presence of Israel in the land, a national identity of Jews in the land, the majority of Jews were still outside the land in the Diaspora.  In the Diaspora God says you have not honored Me, you have failed in your witness, you have failed to be a testimony to My grace and so I will bring judgment and I must vindicate My holy name since you have “profaned it among the nations.” 

 

Ezekiel 36:24, “For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands, and bring you into your own land.”  So it’s a clear statement that as unregenerate Israel they will be taken from the nations and restored to their own land.

 

Then we come to Zephaniah 2:12, a strong passage, God says: “Gather yourselves together, yes, gather, O nation without shame.”  So it’s looking at this shameful nation that should have shame but they don’t have shame, they don’t recognize their sin, they are told to gather themselves.  Notice the timing of this gathering is at the beginning of verse 2, “Before the decree takes effect,” now the decree here is the end result, the salvation of Israel at the end of the Tribulation, it is “before the decree takes effect” that they are regathered, “The day passes like the chaff—Before the burning anger of the LORD comes upon you.”  Now “the burning anger of the Lord” is a reference to the Tribulation.  So they are to gather before the burning anger of the Lord and before the day of the Lords anger comes upon you.  So this is a clear reference to the fact that God is going to begin to restore Jews to the land to establish a Jewish presence in Israel before the Tribulation takes place. 

 

And that is exactly the scenario we see in Daniel 9.  The point that we will see clearly, in verse 27, if the antichrist is to confirm, and literally it means to establish, the literal translation means to establish a strong covenant, it is going to be enforced with strong provisions, he shall make this covenant with the many for one week.  Now the term “many” refers to the majority in Israel, not all the Jews are going to be in favor of it but the majority will.  He’s going to impose this treaty.  Now in order for the antichrist, who is the world ruler, the king of the west, in order for him to sign a peace treaty with Israel there has to be a national entity of Israel in the land with a national government and head of government and everything that goes with that in order for them to be able to enter into a treaty agreement with the antichrist. 

So that means that at the beginning of the Tribulation there has to be a nation of Jews in the land established with their own government.  As I mentioned before, a hundred years ago, when there was no nation Israel, dispensational writers often thought that there must be 60 or 70 years between…what they said was that if the rapture were to have occurred in their generation they thought that 60 or 70 years would have to transpire between the rapture and the beginning of the Tribulation to give time for Israel to be regathered, establish a government and for these things to take place.  Now that there is a nation in the land it seems that all of those things don’t have to transpire, perhaps not as much time between the rapture and the beginning of the Church Age.

 

Now the passages we just went through, that was part of point four, these are passages that indicate that there will be an initial gathering of unsaved Jews into the land for the purposes of providing nation there to fulfill the prophecies related to the Tribulation.

 

Point five, there are other passages that relate to Israel’s regathering as saved at the end of the Tribulation.  I won’t go through all of these; I’m just going to give you the references.  There is Deuteronomy 4:29-31; Deuteronomy 30:1-10; Isaiah 27:12-13; Isaiah 43:5-7, Jeremiah 16:14-15; Jeremiah 31:7-10; Ezekiel 11:14-18; Amos 9:14-15; Zechariah 10:8-12 and Matthew 24:31.  I want you to notice that those come from six or seven different books in the Old Testament, it’s not just one book, it’s scattered throughout the Old Testament.  There are these promises and there are many others that I could turn to, that God will restore Israel as a regenerate people.  This tells us that God has a future plan for Israel, that God has a plan for Israel in the future; God has not set Israel aside.  This is what Paul states in Romans 11, God has not permanently set Israel aside, that He does have a future for them and a plan for them as a saved people and it is under those conditions that He will fulfill all of His Old Testament prophecies.

 

Point six relates to Israel’s current regathering.  Here we’re going to spend some time looking at contemporary events and contemporary history because so few people understand this, especially in light of all of the conflict that’s going on now.  If you’re a news junky like I am and you like to sit up at night and watch Alan Keyes and Crossfire or all the other talk shows you probably have already discovered that there are some major discrepancies.  About three weeks ago I had already put most of this together and I had been teaching it at a couple of conferences at Cincinnati and at Houston earlier this year and I was watching Alan Keyes one night on MSNBC and he had a Palestinian representative on and I just loved Alan Keyes, he was just going point by point through this material and he was just right on the money and the more evidence he gave for what actually has occurred in the 20th century in the Middle East the more this Palestinian was going nuts.  I mean, all they can do is scream and yell that all that is nothing more than Jewish propaganda, you’re just paying attention to Jewish lies, Jewish propaganda, and the problem is that the Palestinians and the Arabs don’t know the truth, they’ve never heard the truth.  It’s not that they’re being intentionally or some of their spokesmen are necessarily being intentionally misleading, I don’t they’ve ever even seen the truth, they’ve been lied to by their press and by their leaders for so many years that they are completely deceived by the party line.  So my opinion is you can’t trust any of them because they wouldn’t know the truth if it hit them in the face.

 

Now the modern history goes like this: in 1798 Napoleon invaded the Middle East.  When Napoleon invaded the Middle East, he went down to Egypt, he came up through Israel, that began an entire array of interest in Europe as to what the future of Israel would be; does God have a future plan for Israel.  In fact, Napoleon made the statement when he was in Palestine that they ought to establish a homeland for the Jews.  That got all kinds of people talking and that was in 1798.  See, up until that point there really hadn’t been much focus on the Jews for 1600-1700 years nobody had thought much about the Jews or their future.  But all of a sudden, especially theologians began to think in terms of a future for Israel and that had an impact on Biblical prophecy.  Remember at that time dispensationalism didn’t even exit.  There were people who held to different elements of dispensationalism, the pre-trib rapture and other doctrines, there’s evidence of that in church history, but it’s only in the context of Napoleon’s invasion of the Middle East that many people, popular culture starts to focus on this issue. 

 

I think that modern dispensational theology is built on a four-legged stool.  And if you don’t have that fourth leg, the stool is not going to stand up and the three legs are literal historical grammatical interpretation, the second leg is a futuristic view of prophecy, a view of a literal millennium, and the fourth is that there’s a future for Israel.  Once you have these four elements together, literal interpretation, a future thousand year literal millennium, a futuristic view of prophecy that this hasn’t been fulfilled yet, that revelation has to be fulfilled in the future, and then fourth, a return of Israel to the land, once you’re thinking within those boundaries then dispensational theology becomes very obvious, but if you’re not going to Scripture with those assumptions already then you’re going to miss out on the whole thing.

 

In 1814, just 16 years after Napoleon’s invasion of the Middle East Presbyterian pastor John McDonnell begins to teach that there will be a return to Israel and the land and this begins to have a major influence on people.  A couple of generations go by before the next significant event and in between you have the rise of Darby, the development of dispensational theology, a number of other important events, but in 1878 William Blackstone publishes a book called Jesus is Coming.  And with the publication of that book he predicted and encouraged the return of the Jews to the land and that got the attention of a lot of evangelicals in both England and America and got them interested in backing a return of Jews to the land. 

 

Between 1881 and 1900 there was what is called the first alyah.  Alyah means ascent, and in the history of Israel, modern Israel, they defined about eight different alyah and each one is an assent or return of Jews to the land, and the first alyah between 1881 and 1900, 30,000 Russian Jews fled the persecution in Russia for Palestine.  If you’ve seen the movie Fiddler On The Roof that describes the events with the events of some Jews in a small village in Russia during one of the Russian persecutions.  And it was that kind of event that encouraged many Jews to return to Palestine.

 

In 1896 Theodore Herzl realized, after the Dreyfus trial, that there was no future in Europe for Jews and he began Zionism and the first Zionist Congress was held in Basle, Switzerland and it adopted Zionism, that is the return of Jews to a national homeland in Israel as a program.  Their goal was to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine, (quote) “by public law,” it was to be legal, they weren’t going to go down there and just steal land for the Arabs.  What they did was, it really started almost a generation before this, you had Jews returning to Israel and buying land.  Now if you were to take the time and I didn’t want to distract you with it, but I was reading some excerpts from Mark Twain’s tour of the Middle east, and he just describes Israel, he goes from one major town to the other in Israel in the 1880s and he describes how nobody is living there, there’s just a few Bedouins, there’s nothing there but ruins, the ground is so dry it’s just a desert, there’s no productivity, there’s no agriculture, there’s no irrigation, there’s nothing there, it was just a barren wasteland in the late 19th century.  And so Jews began to go back and they purchased this land that nobody was using for anything.  Remember they are not stealing it from a Palestinian nation or a Palestinian people, they’re purchasing it from the government of the Ottoman Empire, it is their land legally and correctly and bought under all of the proper legal qualifications.  And what they did was they began to turn it into a productive area.  They began to irrigate, they began to plant, they began to do something with it that the Arabs had not done with the land in 2,000 years and now what’s happened is the Arabs, who have never produced anything in that area, have never produced a culture, never produced any art, any music, never produced any industry, never produced any agriculture in that area, all of the sudden the Jews have come back and they’re turned this into a tremendously productive area and they’re just jealous and they want to destroy it. 

 

So that began with the First Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland in 1897.  In 1916 in the middle of World War I there was the signing of a treaty between France and England called the Sykes-Picot Treaty and in that treaty they divided up the spheres of influence, that France would, after the war, take control of Syria and Lebanon and the British would be in charge of the area of Palestine.  Then in 1917 as the war was just about over, a Christian Brit by the name of Balfour had an addendum to the Sykes-Picot that would allow them to make Palestine a homeland and declare it a homeland for the Jews.  And then in 1924-29 there is a tremendous reaction among the Arabs.  Transjordan, which is now Jordan, was set aside as… the area across the Jordan was set aside and there would be no Jewish settlement there.  All of this shows the return of for the modern nation.

 

Now I want to go through about twelve points on the history of modern Israel.  Point number one: before World War I there was no Saudi Arabia, there was no Jordan, there was no Transjordan, no Syria, no Iraq, these were all creations after World War I.  So it’s 2002, one hundred years ago none of these nations existed.  Basically they were created by the British Foreign Office after World War I.  The Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman Turks, ruled the area and Palestine was nothing than an administrative region at …[tape turns] …the Bedouins, nomads and a few Jews lived in what is now Israel.  In 1858 the Pittsburg Dispatch recorded that there were 40,000 inhabitants of Jerusalem, 30,000 were Jews, the remaining 10,000 were mostly various types of Christians, and very few Moslems.  The Koran never once mentions Jerusalem, whereas the Bible mentions Jerusalem over 700 times in the Old Testament.  So before World War I none of these nations exist, Israel, Palestine, is just a barren wasteland and Jews are returning, buying the land.

 

Here’s a map in 1914 on the eve of the war and you see this area is the Ottoman Empire, it comes from the area up here which was ancient Thrace, Macedonia, part of Greece, all the way down through modern Turkey, Mesopotamia, this is the area of modern Iraq, this area here called Persia is modern Iran; this area where you see Mesopotamia that’s mostly modern Iraq; Syria, Palestine, all of these, these weren’t nations, these were just general regions and the Ottoman Empire went all the way down the east coast of the Red Sea, that area is called the Hedjahs, remember that, that will become important in a minute, that’s called the Hedjahs, and in the middle of what is now Saudi Arabia, the Arabian Peninsula you just had various tribes running around the desert, battling each other as they had for many hundreds of years.  So this is a picture at the beginning of World War I.

Point number two: at the end of World War I an evangelical Christian Brit by the name of Balfour got a homeland for the Jews established in the Middle East as an addendum to the Sykes-Picot treaty.  It included all of what is now Israel and Jordan.  This was in 1917, it’s called the Balfour Declaration, and it was a modification of the earlier Sykes-Picot Treaty which divided up spheres of influence between France and Britain.

 

Point number three: in 1919, two years later, the League of Nations, which was the earlier form of the U.N., the earlier attempt at a United Nations that was put together after World War I, the League of Nations mandated that Britain would govern Egypt, Arabia and Palestine.  That was the area that is now called Israel, Jordan, and Iraq.  That’s called the British Mandate.  That’s how you’ll see it referred to.  The League also mandated the French to rule Syria and Iraq.  Then later, after this in the early 20s the Brits declared that the Jews could only settle west of the Jordan, they couldn’t settle east of the Jordan, they began to divide things up.  Just as a side note, the Arabs who lived in this area refused to be called Palestinians in the 1900 because they thought the term was a synonym for Jews, so this concept of Palestinian is a recent creation.  Now in 1919 Palestine still referred generally to this whole area.  Here’s a map of the British mandate; see that it includes all of modern Jordan as well as modern Israel.  But the Brits divided it up. 

 

Point number four:  To pay off their debts to the Arabs who helped them defeat the Turks in World War I, and if you want to know about that watch Lawrence of Arabia, that’s what that’s all about, in fact Lawrence promised Faisal of the Arabs that he would be given Saudi Arabia at the end of the war.  So to help pay off their debts to the Arabs who helped them defeat the Turks the British established Transjordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.  Now after the war the Brits were going to honor Lawrence’s promise to Faisal and give him Saudi Arabia.  Unfortunately there was a Saudi Prince by the name of Ibn Saud who conquered the Hedjahs before the Brits could pay off Faisal. And so what they had to do was work a deal with Ibn Saud and they gave him all of Saudi Arabia, that’s how the Arabian Peninsula came to be called Saudi Arabia.  Now what are they going to do with Faisal.  So they created another country and they called it Iraq and they gave that to Faisal, and then he had a brother, Abdallah and they had to do something to pay off Abdallah so they gave him the Transjordan.  And Abdallah’s son was King Hussein of Jordan and his grandson, Abdullah is now the king of Jordan. 

 

Now Faisal ran Iraq until the Soviets engineered a coup against his on in 1958; one of the Soviet agents was named Yevgini Primakov who was also the contact for two individuals, George Habash and Yasser Arafat who at that time in 1948 were going around Israel blowing up school busses.  Primakov, the Soviet, also developed a contact in a young Iraqi military officer named Saddam Hussein and was instrumental in backing Hussein’s power grab in 1979.  So that’s how the Soviets played a role in engineering current developments. 

 

This is a picture of the post World War I Middle East.  You have Syria and Lebanon, the Transjordan here, Iraq over here, and then all of Saudi Arabia down to the south.  In 1946 after World War II the Brits officially gave the territory of Transjordan to the Hashemites as their own kingdom, granted them independence, and in 1947 the U.N. again restricted the amount of land that would be given to Israel in U.N. Resolution 81.  That left the Jews with about 18% of the original land that was to be theirs under the Balfour Declaration.  So you have Britain’s petition where they give this much land, all of the land west of the Jordan to Israel, and then the U.N. came along, and on this map, this area in the northern part, that area is the area that was Israel’s when they declared independence in 1948; everything else was stripped away from them and that alone was given them, just barely a toehold in the land. 

 

Point number six: In May of 1948 Israel declared independence and five Arab nations invaded.  They rejected the U.N. division, they did not accept it, which would have given a Palestinian homeland, Arabs instead wanted all they land, they don’t want any Jews in there at all; land for peace didn’t work then, it doesn’t work now.  And the Arab nations never recognized in 1948 a Palestinian subgroup.

 

Point number seven: The invading Arabs told the resident Arabs in Israel to flee, get out so you don’t get hurt when we invade.  As a result, 65% of the Arabs left hoping to reap the spoils of war when the Arabs ran the Jews into the ocean.  Unfortunately for those refugees the Arabs lost and they lost their homes.  That was the beginning of the current problem.  At that time the Arab nations ejected 650,000 Jews who were living in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, they ejected them and stole all their property, everything, they could only leave with the clothes on their back, they confiscated all of their property, pilfered their bank accounts and sent them to Israel.  Yet the 635,000 that willingly left Israel following the Arab instructions to flee were not accepted into the Arab countries.  The Arabs that did remain became full citizens of Israel, with freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of press; they like the Israelis they live with have 95% literacy, unlike any Arab country.  There are over 1,000 educational institutions in Israel that are Arab and Muslim oriented; their women have full and equal rights under the law, they have better health care, education, a higher standard of living than any Arab in any Arab country.  70% of them in a recent poll would rather live in Israel than any other country in the Middle East but they still want to side with the Palestinian cause.

 

Point number eight: Jordan captured and held the West Bank after 1948.  Jordan and Jerusalem had been designated to be under Jordanian rule in U.N. Resolution number 81, so that meant that that West Bank area is Jordan’s.  In 1967 when Jordan joined the other Arab nations and invaded Israel in the 1967 Six Day War they lost; they lost the land and it was taken over militarily by the Jews.  No other nation in modern history that’s gained land in a war has been forced to give it up.  So why should the Jews give up the West Bank, they didn’t steal it from the Palestinians; they took it from the Jordanians. 

 

Point number ten: by the 1970s the Arabs were into the big riot technique of Joseph Goebbels who was Hitler’s propaganda chief and they claimed that there should be a homeland for the Palestinians.  Now they’re going to adopt that name for the Arabs.

 

Point eleven: Just a side note, Palestine is a word which originally was coined by the Greeks from their word for wrestler; remember Israel is a name for Jacob who wrestled with God.  The Greek word sounded like Philistine so the pun appealed to the Greeks, that’s the origin of the word Palestine. 

 

Conclusion: the Palestinian problem is a problem generated by the Arabs, not the Israelis.  The Arabs, not the Israelis told the Arab residents to flee.  The Arabs, not the Israelis, violated the U.N. charter and invaded Israel in 1948, 1967 and 9173.  The Arabs, not the Israelis, have more than enough land to resettle the Arab refugees.  The Arabs, not the Israelis, refused to let the Arab refugees have a place to live.  And the Arabs, not the Israelis, are the cause of the problem.  That is why the return to the land today is a fulfillment of prophecy and we continue to see some of these things take place.

 

Now the final verse, verse 27, “And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week,” that’s the antichrist, “in the middle of that week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering,” that would be the abomination of desolation, it’s called here “on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction,” he will do what Antiochus Epiphanes did in the ancient world and that is set up some kind of idol, some kind of statue in the Holy of Holies of the Tribulation temple.  It is a desecration of the temple, and is a warning.  Notice the end of the verse, he “makes desolate, until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.”  So the complete destruction is poured out on the antichrist; he’s the one who makes desolate.

 

Now Jesus referred to this in Matthew 24:15, He said, “therefore, when you see,” warning the Jews, “when you see the abomination of desolation, which is spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place, (let the reader understand,) [16] then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains; [17] let him who is on the housetop not go down to get the things out that are in his house, [18] and let him who is in the field not turn back to get his cloak.  [19] But woe to those who are with child and to those who nurse babes in those days!  [20] But pray that your flight may not be in the winter or on a Sabbath,” see, Jesus’ warning is such that what happens in the middle of the Tribulation is that Jews who are positive are going to be reading Matthew.  They’re going to read Matthew 24 and they’re going to respond.  Jews who are not positive are going to ignore Matthew 24. 

 

Jews that are positive are going to flee to the mountains, they eventually will make their way down across the Jordan, down into ancient Moab, the area south of Petra called Bozrah, it is an area that is ringed by mountains, it can probably hold a couple million people, those Jews who flee there flee because they are positive to the message of Matthew 24.  Some may be saved, but not all, but when they end up in Bozrah they will all call on the name of the Lord and all Israel will be saved.  That’s the foundation of that verse.  That’s why all Israel is saved; all the other Jews outside of Bozrah are going to be killed in the Tribulation.  Those Jews are going to be delivered.  That’s why you can say that all the Jews that survive the Tribulation are saved, not because God forces it but because the only place where they can be delivered in is in Bozrah and the only reason they’re there is because they’ve heeded the warning of Matthew 24 showing that they’re positive.

 

That wraps up our study of Daniel 9 and Daniel’s seventieth week.  Next time we’ll start Daniel 10.