THE SEVENTY WEEKS

Daniel 9:24-36

By Odon Bulamba (summary only - 23 March 2004)

It is a bit difficult when you read this passage but it is very easy to understand because it was a prophecy and things are being fulfilled so we can see them. When Jeremiah wrote this, people didn’t know what would come on earth. When Jeremiah wrote about what is going to happen to the people of Israel, people didn’t know anything. At that time there was a man called Daniel and he said it would be better to read what the prophets wrote. Although he didn’t know the meaning of his message, I will try. Daniel started to read these prophecies and he saw that Jeremiah prophesized that the people will be in slavery for 70 years and he saw that this was something difficult for him and his people. Although the 70 years were finished they were still in slavery and Daniel asked, ‘why that? 70 years have gone but we carry on suffering, has God forgotten us or not?’

He prayed to ask for forgiveness but instead of God answering his prayer, God gave him another message different from his prayer. How many times have we read the books of the prophets and how long do we take to read these books? And how many churches on earth talk about prophecies? I know churches that teach only from the book of Mathew, Mark, Luke and maybe from the book of Genesis. I also know some servants of God who twist what are the prophecies and they avoid talking about it. But if we don’t talk about prophecies, how will the people of God know what is going to happen? We need to know so we can get ready for the future.

At that time the angel Gabriel talked to David and he talked about the 69 weeks. The first seven weeks and then 62 weeks that follow. The Bible talks about 69 weeks. Don’t forget that in the book of numbers, and also in first Peter that one day for God is a thousand years. And when we talk about a week we see 7 days and if we think 69 weeks we can multiply it by 7 and it gives 483 days. The Bible says that everything that God does is according to a plan and nothing is done without God knowing about it. And when God talked to Daniel about these 70 weeks, He said, “During that time sanctify your self and repent and try to get stronger because on the 70th week I will destroy this nation. Don’t build Jerusalem, I will destroy you and everything that happened from the beginning until the 69 week was all about Israel”.

This was about these people with the 12 tribes of Jacob (not the 12 tribes of Esau). And on the 69th week grace came because people sinned, people committed all sorts of sins and God was most unhappy about it so God stopped on the 69th week and He said, I’ll go and help other nations because they might understand the future and what is going to happen. At that time Jesus was on earth, He preached and was crucified. I’m not talking too much about these 69 weeks because to understand them we first must know what is in Rev 10, 11 and 12. But we will go back to that one day so that we can know better about Israel.

So God gave us a time of grace and Jesus came to set us free because the heaven, His own, protected Him and He turned His face towards other nations (us). God wanted this bracket between the 69 weeks and the 70th week so that we could all have a good opportunity because what we have is a grace and it is a grace because it was not included into the 70th week.

If us today as Christians we talk about grace, it’s because we were not included into God’s program with His people. If we didn’t have this time of grace, today the world would not exist anymore but God wanted to help us so that we could understand His message. Because we are now in the time of the church of Laodicea, soon there will be the rapture. Soon Jesus will be back, soon things will change on earth and soon we will start the last week, so that the 70 weeks will be fulfilled. So those who will be ready in the Lord they will be gone but those who are not ready, will stay to see all that will happen on the 70th week. And that will be the horrible week, during that week even the roots of the trees will shake. Because it is a week and the week is made of days, and a day is made of hours and we cannot have an hour without minutes and the same with minutes we also have seconds. So before this week finishes, we’ll see the little signs of these seconds and these signs are here.

SUMMARY

- A thousand years is like one day for God
- We are living in the 69th week (the week of grace)
- Christ is coming back soon, the signs are there
- We have to make ourselves ready for His return