Thursday, December 29, 2022

John F. Walvoord's Critique of the Amillennial Interpretation of the Final Week of Daniel 9:27

  

Amillennial interpretation. The interpretation of an intervening time period has been strenuously opposed by the amillenarians who do not believe a future 7-year period will be literally period. They attempt to find the final 7 years fulfilled in history. Generally speaking, this is accomplished by ignoring literal fulfilment. One popular approach of the amillenarians is to consider that the last 7 years began when the Messiah began his public ministry. The first 3½  years of the last 7 would then correspond to the life of Christ, and he would be cut off in the middle of the last 7 years, not after the sixty-ninth “seven.” The covenant that is mentioned (Dan. 9:27) is held to be the new covenant of grace brought in through the death of Christ.

 

Numerous problems hinder this interpretation. In order to get in the last 69 times 7 years, or 483 years, it is necessary to begin the 490 years before 444 B.C., requiring an interpretation that the earlier decrees authorize the building of the city. This does not seem to be sustained by the text. Appeal is made to Isaiah 44:28 where Cyrus is quoted as saying of Jerusalem, “Let it be rebuilt,” and of the temple, “Let its foundations be laid.” In stating the contents of the decree of Cyrus in Ezra 1:2-4, no mention is made of the rebuilding of the city, but only of the temple. It is clear that the city itself was left in ruins until the time of Nehemiah in 445 B.C. When the decree was searched out, as recorded in Ezra 6:3-5, the decree related only to the rebuilding of the temple. For these reasons, the interpretation that the rebuilding of the city relates to the Artaxerxes given to Nehemiah in 445 B.C. is preferable. This also makes impossible the amillennial interpretation that the 483 years ended with the beginning of the public ministry of Christ.

 

Objections to the amillennial interpretation. Numerous objections can be raised to identifying the new covenant brought in by the death of Christ with a seven-year covenant mentioned in Daniel. The covenant of grace as instituted by Christ does not exist for 7 years but continues forever. It does not seem to be the reference of Daniel 9. A further difficulty follows in that the last 7 years do not bring in any sense of culmination, as 3½ years after the death of Christ brought no restoration to Israel and no fulfilment of the other precious promises that are related to the Second Coming. Accordingly, the terminus of the 483 years is better identified with the death of Christ in A. D. 33, and the last 7 years are still future, with a time period of indeterminate length between the end of the 483 years and the beginning of the last 7 years.

 

Premillennial interpretation. In this time period two events, the death of Christ and the destruction of Jerusalem, occur at least 33 years apart. It would be impossible to compact these two events into the last 3½ years of the prophecy. For these and other reasons, the premillennial interpretation is considered preferable as providing a more literal interpretation of the prophecy.

 

A study of the events recorded for the last 7 years of the 490 years also seems to relate clearly to events that are yet future. The pronoun “he” of Daniel 9:27, if it refers to the nearest antecedent, would refer to the ruler of verse 26 rather than to the Messiah. This is in keeping with other prophecies that picture the last 7 years as a time of trouble leading up to the second coming of Christ. In the premillennial interpretation during the first half of this period, according to Daniel 9:27, a covenant with Israel will be made and observed. This apparently will be a covenant of peace, which helps explain Israel’s brief time of peace in Ezekiel 38. In the middle of the last 7 years, however, the covenant will be broken. This refers to a covenant made with a political ruler, and will begin a period of Israel’s trouble. This will be characterized by the ending of the sacrifice and offering in the temple, further confirmed in Daniel 12:11: “From the time that the daily sacrifice is abolished and the abomination that causes desolation is set up, there will be 1,290 days.” This coincides with the prophecy of Christ that the desecration of the temple would take place at the beginning of the Great Tribulation (Matt. 24:15-22). The abomination that causes desolation is the desecration of the temple at a future time when the statue of the ruler mentioned in Daniel 9:26 will be placed in the temple as an object of worship (2 Thess. 2:4; Rev. 13:14-15). The Great Tribulation is still future from the viewpoint of the book of Revelation. It is impossible to identify it as something that occurred in the immediate aftermath of the death of Christ as amillenarians contend.

 

The prophecies yet to be fulfilled coincide with that occurred at the time of Antiochus, who desecrated the temple in the second century B.C. He, likewise, stopped the sacrifice and set up a pagan idol in the temple. This was an abomination, and explains why the future desecration of the temple is also described as an abomination.

 

Further examination of the text indicates that the ruler who introduces the final 3½ of Great Tribulation will also be judged at Christ’s second coming (Rev. 13), which again makes it clear that the events described are future instead of past. (John F. Walvoord, Major Bible Prophecies: 37 Crucial Prophecies That Affect You Today [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1991], 172-74)