The Messianic Meta-Timeline | Sunday, August 6, 2023

In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus... I, Daniel, understood by the books the number of the years specified by the word of the Lord through Jeremiah the prophet, that He would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem. Then I set my face toward the Lord God to make request by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes... (Daniel 9)

How God wrote His redemptive timeline in advance—and why we should read it with humility, prayer, and hope.

The Fall of Babylon and Layers of Advance Warning

In October of 539 BC, the armies of Cyrus the Great, king of the Persian Empire, marched into Babylon with little to no resistance and took the city virtually without a fight. The reigning king, Nabonidus, had left the city in the hands of his son Belshazzar. When Cyrus's armies entered, Nabonidus was deposed, Belshazzar was killed, and Cyrus placed in authority a ruler the Scriptures call Darius the Mede—believed in history to be a king named Cyaxares II.

The night before this happened, Belshazzar was throwing a drunken feast, as we saw in Daniel 5. A hand appeared and wrote on the wall, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. Daniel was called to interpret and told Belshazzar, "You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; this night your kingdom will be taken from you." The next day it happened exactly as Daniel said.

But Daniel had far more than one night's warning. About fifteen years earlier, in Daniel 7, he was shown a vision of the Babylonian lion overcome by a bear—the Medo-Persian kingdom. And decades before that, as a teenager in Daniel 2, he interpreted Nebuchadnezzar's dream of four kingdoms: Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. Daniel knew, before Cyrus came, exactly what was coming.

Isaiah Names Cyrus More Than 160 Years in Advance

The most astonishing advance notice came not from Daniel but from Isaiah. More than 160 years before Cyrus took Babylon, the prophet Isaiah told King Hezekiah exactly what would happen: Judah and Jerusalem would be exiled to Babylon (fulfilled in 605 BC under Nebuchadnezzar), and then God would deliver them and bring them home.

In Isaiah 44, God describes Himself as the one "who frustrates the signs of the babblers... who confirms the word of His servant," and then says of Cyrus, "He is My shepherd, and he shall perform all My pleasure, saying to Jerusalem, 'You shall be built,' and to the temple, 'Your foundation shall be laid.'" When Isaiah spoke this around 700 BC, Jerusalem stood and the temple was intact—yet God announced its ruin and rebuilding.

Thus says the Lord to His anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held—to subdue nations before him... I will go before you and make the crooked places straight... For Jacob My servant's sake, and Israel My elect, I have even called you by your name; I have named you, though you have not known Me. (Isaiah 45)

God calls this pagan king His "anointed"—the Hebrew word mashiach. Cyrus entered Babylon with little resistance because God went before him. Why does this matter? Because God Himself appeals to it as proof: "I am the first and I am the last; there is no God besides Me. Who like Me can announce the future?" (Isaiah 44).

Point One: God Reveals Himself by Disclosing Mysteries

This is not the only way God reveals Himself, but it is an important one. The father of Christian apologetics, Francis Schaeffer, used to say, "He is there, and He is not silent." One way God shows us that He is involves leaving His fingerprints on the crime scene through predictive prophecy—telling us what will happen before it happens.

The prophet Amos says, "Surely the Lord God does nothing unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets." From eternity, God speaks, revealing the truth of future realities. He did this through Isaiah nearly two hundred years in advance, and He did it through Jeremiah at the very moment the exile began.

Jeremiah and the Seventy Years

In Jeremiah 25, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim—the first year of Nebuchadnezzar, 605 BC. Jeremiah warns Judah that because of their disobedience, God will send them to Babylon as exiles. He tells them not to fight it; this is punishment from the hand of the Lord. Build houses, he says, because you will be there a while.

And this whole land shall be a desolation and an astonishment, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. Then it will come to pass, when seventy years are completed, that I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation... (Jeremiah 25:11–12)

Beginning in 605 BC, one could literally start a seventy-year clock and know when God would call His people home.

Why Seventy Years? The Neglected Sabbath

Why exactly seventy years? When you piece together Kings, Chronicles, Jeremiah, and Isaiah, the tapestry becomes clear. The exile was judgment for idolatry and, very specifically, for Israel's unfaithfulness to God's Sabbath commands.

The fourth commandment was, "Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy"—one day in seven for rest. But Exodus 23 and Leviticus 25 also commanded a Sabbath every seventh year. Six years they would work the land; the seventh year they were to leave it fallow, take no harvest, and trust God to provide. Trusting God for all your needs is challenging—have you tried it?—and the people simply did not do it.

Take 490 years of neglected Sabbath years, divide by seven, and you get seventy. As 2 Chronicles 36 says, the survivors were carried to Babylon "to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her Sabbaths... to fulfill seventy years." The land would get its rest one way or another.

Daniel Reads the Books

Daniel was among the very first exiles, taken to Babylon around 605 BC as a fifteen-year-old along with his three friends. By the time Cyrus took Babylon in 539 BC, Daniel had been there at least sixty-six or sixty-seven years—now over eighty years old.

In Daniel 9, in the first year of Darius, Daniel says, "I understood by the books the number of the years... that He would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem." Reading the Torah, the histories, and Jeremiah, Daniel begins assembling the puzzle: I was fifteen when we arrived, I'm over eighty now, it's been about sixty-six years, and God said seventy. Imagine the anticipation. Cyrus has just liberated his people, and the words of Isaiah—"Cyrus will say to Jerusalem, be rebuilt"—are unfolding before his eyes.

Point Two: When God Reveals His Plan, the Best Response Is Prayer

How does the old man Daniel respond to seeing God's word fulfilled? Not with celebration, but with humble prayer.

Then I set my face toward the Lord God to make request by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes... O Lord, great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and mercy with those who love Him... we have sinned and committed iniquity, we have done wickedly and rebelled... (Daniel 9:3–5)

Daniel's great prayer reveals an extensive knowledge of God's word. He directly quotes Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Exodus, Kings, and Jeremiah again and again. It is the word of God that compels him to cry out to the God of mercy.

His prayer also reveals deep contrition. He takes the sin of the kings, elders, priests, and fathers upon himself: "To us belongs shame of face... we have sinned, we have rebelled, we have done wickedly." And it reveals a longing for God's action: "O Lord, hear! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, listen and act! Do not delay for Your own sake, my God."

God Answers Swiftly and Calls Daniel "Greatly Beloved"

Now while I was speaking, praying, and confessing my sin... the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, being caused to fly swiftly, reached me about the time of the evening offering... "O Daniel, I have now come forth to give you skill to understand. At the beginning of your supplications the command went out... for you are greatly beloved." (Daniel 9:20–23)

Daniel's brokenness invited the swift presence of God. God draws near to the brokenhearted. As James says, "Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you." Many people have told me they don't sense God's presence or feel He answers prayer. The honest question I ask is: how much do you actually pray? When we set ourselves in a humble attitude to seek God, He answers—without fail.

Notice, too, that God's heart was oriented toward Daniel: "You are greatly beloved." Some of you question whether you are truly loved by God, but Colossians 3:12 says you are "chosen of God and beloved." Our culture says trust your gut, trust your heart—but the heart is deceitfully wicked; don't trust that thing. Trust the Lord, who so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.

Richard Dawkins opens chapter two of The God Delusion by calling the God of the Old Testament "the most unpleasant character in all of fiction," and his first complaint is that God is jealous. Oprah Winfrey similarly turned away when a preacher said God is jealous. On one point I agree with them completely: if God were jealous of us, that would be terrible. But He is not jealous of us—He is jealous for our affection, jealous for our time with Him. And when you draw near to Him, He draws near to you.

Point Three: Some Mysteries Are Only Understood by Divine Revelation

Gabriel came to give Daniel understanding of the vision—the vision of chapter 8, in which Daniel saw a ram (Medo-Persia) overcome by a goat (Greece). Even after the angelic interpretation, Daniel said at the end of chapter 8, "I was astonished by the vision, but no one understood it." Twelve years had passed, and now Daniel had watched the ram appear and Cyrus fulfill Isaiah's prophecy. His mind must have been exploding: This is happening just as I saw, but I don't understand it.

Seventy weeks are determined for your people and for your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness... Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, there shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks... And after the sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself; and the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary... (Daniel 9:24–27)

Reading the Seventy Weeks with Humility

Let me be clear: Gabriel's message was meant to bring clarity to Daniel's vision, yet his explanation remains cryptic and strange. Bible scholars almost unanimously agree this is one of the most confusing passages in all of Scripture. If you think you have it perfectly figured out with charts and all, you are smarter than virtually every commentator I know—and certainly smarter than me.

We must approach apocalyptic passages with what I'd call "prophetic epistemic humility"—a fancy way of saying that what you think you know, and how you think you know it, is probably (or at least might be) wrong. I have read hundreds of pages on these four verses, and the striking thing is that almost no one agrees with anyone else, even the best commentators.

Here is where we get into trouble: we 21st-century Westerners love exactness and specificity, and we try to apply that to a text written 2,500 years ago by people who did not write with such precision. So step back and zoom out. Look at the general over the specific.

The Messianic Meta-Timeline

When you zoom out, you see a "meta timeline" for God's plan, and it falls into a beautiful pattern. Israel was unfaithful for roughly 490 years, which brought a 70-year exile in Babylon. Now Daniel is told of another period of 490 years. Most commentators agree the "seventy weeks" are weeks of years—seventy times seven equals 490. So Israel's seventy-year exile sits like a parenthesis between two sets of 490 years: 490 — 70 — 490.

What happened about 490 years before the exile? Israel demanded a king. Around 445 years before the exile they crowned Saul, when God had said, "I will be your ruler." Their kings led them in unrighteousness for nearly five centuries, producing the seventy-year punishment. And now God says: from the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, there will be seventy sevens until Messiah, the true King, comes.

When you zoom out, this becomes wonderfully clear. When we try to nail down the specifics, we often look foolish. Yes, there are books showing that 69 weeks of years equals 483 years, times a 360-day biblical year equals 173,880 days, calculating from Artaxerxes' decree right down to the day of Jesus' triumphal entry. It's a striking calculation—except that the dates don't quite agree (445 BC or 444 BC?), and people choose dates to fit their patterns. We end up forcing a specific interpretation onto a text that doesn't yield one.

Point Four: Some Divine Revelations Are Still Quite Mysterious

The danger of an overly specific lens is real. Bart Ehrman, perhaps today's best-known skeptic, released Armageddon this year aiming to make Bible-believing evangelicals look foolish over specific predictions that don't calculate out—and he has led many young people to abandon their faith. Others have made bold claims; one taught that Daniel's prophecies pointed to Jesus returning in 1844. Well, if He returned then and we are in His millennial kingdom, this kingdom is awfully disappointing. We must be careful.

But the general picture is powerful and clear. Israel demanded a king; their kings led them in idolatry for nearly five hundred years; they were exiled to Babylon—where, ironically, they lost their idolatry. They returned to rebuild Jerusalem, and roughly 490 years later Messiah came to finish transgression, make an end of sins, reconcile for iniquity, and bring everlasting righteousness. He was cut off and killed—not for Himself, but for you. He rose again, and within four decades Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed. You can go see the ruins today.

Does this still have something to do with us? It very possibly does, and I would say it probably does—and that's where the question of the seventieth week comes in, which we'll take up next week. But Jesus would say to us what He said in Acts 1: "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me."

The last chapter of the last book of the Bible has the church saying, "Lord Jesus, come." For 2,000 years we have said it, and He keeps answering, "Yes, I am coming—and you have work to do. I gave you a commission, a call, and My Holy Spirit. Go and make disciples of all nations... and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." You have the Spirit, and the clock is flashing—which means it's time to go to our mission field.

Closing Prayer

Father God, we thank You for Your word; it is living and powerful. It is awesome to see this meta timeline for Your plan and for Jesus' coming revealed in the pages of Scripture. Throughout history we look for a king, a messiah, someone to deliver—and every time we select the person ourselves, we have a terrible way of choosing wrong while thinking we're right. But You have a plan that You are fulfilling. It is not completely wrapped up, yet You have hit every mark on the bullseye so far.

And so we say, Lord Jesus, come. May Your kingdom come, may Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. But until You come, would You empower us and embolden us to share the good news of Your glory and grace with everyone we meet—because there are so many people we know who have no hope. Compel us to share the good news of Your grace with them, for we ask it in Jesus' name. And now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of His Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.