While Daniel was praying, an angel appeared to him to explain how Israel would be brought back to God. The passage is difficult to understand. The time units used by the angel to reveal when these things would happen are obscure. Yet one thing is very clear: the angel is speaking of God's forgiveness of Israel's sins and the appearance of the Messiah.

Now while I [Daniel] was speaking and praying, and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication...

[The angel Gabriel] gave me instruction...and said, "O Daniel, I have now come forth to give you insight with understanding"

Seventy weeks [better translated from Hebrew as seventy sets of seven] have been decreed for your people and your holy city (Dan. 9:20,22,24).

The angel then proceeded to tell him that within this time God would 1) finish transgression; 2) make an end of sin; 3) make atonement for iniquity; and 4) bring in everlasting righteousness (Dan. 9:24).

Anyone can see that the angelic time unit of seventy sets of seven has not yet passed because everlasting righteousness has not yet come to the earth. But the angel also told Daniel:

So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks...(Dan. 9:25).

The angel was saying that, from the issue of the order to rebuild Jerusalem until the Messiah's coming, a time of 69 sets of seven would intervene. But the angel also adds that this Messiah "...will be cut off and have nothing..." (Dan 9:26). Are we saying that Daniel prophesied that the Messiah would come and be killed? Most certainly.

We who believe that the Messiah is Yeshua must conclude that the 69 sets of seven have already passed. Thus, one more set of seven remains before the Messianic reign begins.

If a set of seven represents seven years, then 69 sets of seven is equivalent to 483 years. According to this passage, God's special clock started when the command to rebuild Jerusalem was issued.

Scholars differ in their calculations and no one knows exactly when Artaxerxes made his decree to rebuild Jerusalem when the Jews returned from Babylon. It was most likely sometime in the middle of the fifth century B.C. If 69 x 7 (483) years is added, the resulting date falls in the era when Yeshua lived and died. No other person fulfilled Daniel's prophecy during that era. Only Yeshua, Son of David, proclaimed His Messiahship, and then foretold his death.

What is the importance of this? Daniel came in sackcloth and ashes and confessed his sin. And God (through His angel) showed Daniel how, and even when, atonement would be made--by the killing of the Messiah! By His sacrifice, the Messiah releases every Jew who believes in Him from the transgression and resulting curse of the Torah.

The great prophet Isaiah described how the Messiah of Israel was to be made a sacrifice for the sins of Israel.

...He was wounded and bruised for our sins. He was beaten that we might have peace; He was lashed--and we were healed!

We--every one of us--have strayed away like sheep! We, who left God's paths to follow our own. Yet God laid on him the guilt and sins of every one of us!

From prison and trial they led him away to his death. But who among the people of that day realized it was their sins that he was dying for--that he was suffering their punishment?

...My righteous Servant shall make many to be counted righteous before God, for he shall bear all their sins.

...Because he has poured out his soul unto death. He was counted as a sinner... (Isa. 53:5-6, 8, 11-12, LB).

We must tell Jewish people that when our sins are covered and we are no longer guilty as Law breakers, God Himself will write His Torah in our hearts. He will not only be our God, but this time we will be His people!

"Behold, days are coming," declares the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,

Not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them," declares the Lord.

"But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the Lord, "I will put my law within them, and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people" (Jer. 31:31-33).

Paul explains to us that under the New Covenant we no longer have to earn our righteousness by perfectly keeping the Law.

Messiah redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us... (Gal. 3:13).

With the Spirit of God writing His Law in our hearts, we are now released from the demands of the Mosaic Law and from its curses when we break it.

Are we then lawless, free to live in spiritual anarchy? God forbid! We now "serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter" (Rom. 7:6). "...For the letter kills [how well we know that!], but the Spirit gives life" (II Cor. 3:6).

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