In our previous lesson we saw that there is no hint in scripture of a "parenthesis in prophecy" where the prophecy clock was stopped for 2000 years. To help you grasp the problem of the stopped-clock theory better, let’s look at the famous "70 weeks" of Daniel 9.

The Day-Means-Year Theory

Daniel makes certain references to time periods such as...

• the 70 weeks of Daniel 9:25 (the topic of this lesson),
• the "time, times, and dividing of times" in Daniel 7:25
• the periods of days In Daniel 12:11-12

It is often asserted, even taken for granted, that in these passages a day really means a year.

In order to support this day-means-year theory, certain verses are taken out of context on the ground that God "hid" them in the text of the Old Testament as clues to crack Gabriel’s "code" in Daniel. The texts are: Leviticus 25:8, Numbers 14:34 Ezekiel 4:5-6. There is no warrant for misapplying these scriptures to change Gabriel’s symbolic "seventy weeks" into a literal 490 years.

Attempts to correlate the symbolic numbers in visions mathematically with actual length of the times and seasons they represent causes a great deal of confusion. We will discuss this in a later lesson on Times and Seasons in Prophecy

The Gap Theory

According to premillennial teaching, the first 69 of Daniel’s 70 weeks were consecutive but not the 70th. Premillennialists say...

• The 69 weeks means 483 years and bring us to the time of Christ
• However 70th week (the final 7 years) did not then come to pass
• Instead, the prophecy clock stopped
• There began a gap or "parenthesis" in prophecy
• The 70th week has waited about 2000 years to occur in our generation

In this way, premillennialists cut the 70th week out of the past and paste it into our own time.

Seven Serious Problems

There are serious weaknesses in this idea.

The "day means year" theory is derived from texts in which the days are as real as the years they represent, so whilst they are symbolic days they are also literal days. This does not square with the treatment of the Daniel passage. What real and literal days are there in that passage to serve as symbols for years?

The day-means-year theory is not consistent with the view that prophecy should be taken literally. Whilst a literal 490 years is derived from the term "seventy weeks", that term itself is not taken literally but as code.

Jesus placed the 70th week’s "abomination of desolation" in the siege and destruction of Jerusalem which occurred in AD 70 (Mtt 24:15; Luke 21:20). This is too late to fit the day-means-year theory.

The starting point of the 70 weeks is "From the issuing of a decree to rebuild Jerusalem" (Dan 9:25). However the date of that decree (536 BC) is far too early to fit the day-means-year theory. (If you wish, you can read the addendum below concerning this).

The prophecy in Daniel gives no indication that the 70th week is disconnected from the 69th week by 2000 years. There is nothing to support the idea that whilst the 69 weeks led up to Christ’s first coming, the 70th week is different --it leads up to his second advent, not his first. There is nothing to support the claim that "after the 62 weeks" (Dan 9:26) means 2000 years after. This is an invention.

If Jesus failed the first time, why should he not fail the second time, making another parenthesis and a third advent necessary?

The idea that God’s clock of prophecy stopped unexpectedly 2000 years ago, and is only now starting to tick again, is an idea that relegates the church of Christ to a stop-gap rather than recognising the church as the true kingdom of Christ (Col 1:13-20; Eph 1:18-23). We will fully discuss The Premillennial View of the Church in a separate lesson.

The main lesson ends here, however you may wish to add the information below.

Addendum: The decree to rebuild Jerusalem

The phrase in Daniel 9:25, "From the Issuing of a decree to rebuild Jerusalem" presents a problem to interpreters because there were several decrees to rebuild Jerusalem.

• The original decree was by Cyrus around 536 BC (Ezra 1.:l). Isaiah predicted this about 200 years earlier (Isa 44:28). Ezra seems to say that Jeremiah had also predicted it (Ezr 1:1-2). Under the Persian constitution this decree could never be revoked (Dan 6:8). Successors of Cyrus were therefore bound to keep it in the law books.
• Cambyses shelved it circa 530 BC (Ezr 4).
• Darius dusted it off (Ezr 6). In his reign the temple ' was rebuilt about 516 BC (Ezr 7:15).
• Then Artaxerxes Longimanus issued decrees supporting Ezr about 458 BC and Nehemiah about 444 BC in their rebuilding of Jerusalem’s wall (Ezra 7, Neh 2). The city was far from rebuilt yet lacking even houses (Neh 7: 4).

So in a century of decree-making, it’s anybody’s guess which decree Daniel meant.

Longimanus’s decree in 458 BC is not very significant as the decrees went, but it is favoured by premillennialists because its timing seems to be right when they work out their sums: change the 69 weeks of Daniel 9 to 483 days, call them 483 years, subtract them from 458 BC and you get 26 AD. That is around the time of Christ’s peak of activity. There is enough uncertainty about the exactness of the dates that you can juggle a year or two if need be.

There is no reason to ignore the original and primary decree made by Cyrus, and arbitrarily chooses a secondary and less important decree, except to shore up the unfounded theory. The six problems presented in this lesson remain.

Our next lesson looks at how the parts of Daniel’s 70 weeks (seven, 62, half and half) fit in to actual history.

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