As we approach Palm Sunday this weekend, it’s a great opportunity to take a brief look at the most amazing prophecy in the Bible. Many prophetic passages in Scripture are very precise, but the fulfilment of Daniel 9:24-27 is staggering – it predicts the triumphal entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem with no margin of error and we suggest this was fulfilled to the very day!
Jesus spent most of His ministry resisting attempts by others to be presented as the “Messiah, the King”, despite having many opportunities to do so. However, on one particular day, Jesus carefully arranges this very event to declare that He was, in fact, the Saviour of the world!
We would argue that the fulfilment of this prophecy alone verifies the God of the Bible as the true God who has revealed Himself to humanity. Let’s take a brief look at this particular prophecy:
“Seventy ‘sevens’ are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the Most Holy Place. “Know and understand this: From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed. He will confirm a covenant with many for one ‘seven.’ In the middle of the ‘seven’ he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And at the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him.” (Daniel 9:24-27 NIV)
A “week” of years is a common Hebrew idiom to refer to a period of seven years (in much the same way that we would refer to a “fortnight” as referring to a period of 14 days). It is also important to recognize that the length of both the Hebrew and Babylonian years were 360 years in duration. The bold text in the above passage is a mathematical prophecy: we are told the length of time between the command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the “Messiah, the Prince” would be a period of 69 “weeks” which equates to 173,880 days. The command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem was given by Artaxerxes Longimanus on the 14th March 445 BC. When you count 173,880 days from this date and correct for leap days, you arrive at the 6th April 32 AD which is the precise day the Jesus present Himself as the Messiah, the King in the triumphal entry! This is amazing…
The text in verse 26 goes on tell us that the Messiah had to be “cut-off” before the destruction of the “city and the santuary” which occurred in 70 AD. This presents a real challenge to Jews: the Hebrew prophet Daniel states that their Messiah would arrive before the destruction of the temple which occurred in 70 AD – who, then, can their Messiah be? Of course, it is none other than the Lord Jesus!
For those who want to explore this in more detail, it’s worth reading this article by Chuck Missler:
It may also be helpful to listen to this short audio description of the most amazing prophecy by John MacArthur:
Just as Old Testament prophecy was literally and precisely fulfilled, we have no doubt that God will also literally and precisely fulfil the prophecies that relate to the end times. If nothing else, we have a responsibility to be ready and alert as we have been warned before the event. We pray that the most amazing prophecy tucked away in Daniel will inspire you to be filled with awe at the treasures within Scripture.
Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. (2 Peter 1:20-21 NIV)
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