Consider the implications of Daniel 9:25: “So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks.”

This verse suggests that a word was to be uttered or a decree was to be issued, to command the rebuilding of the city of Jerusalem. The identity of this specific decree is hotly disputed. There happens to be four edicts in history that are considered as the decree specified in the prophecy. In actual fact, none of these are a decree to “restore and rebuild Jerusalem.” The Cyrus decree concerns the building of the temple only (Ezra 1:1-4). The same is true when this same decree was issued again by Darius (Ezra 6:1-12) or when later amplified by Artaxerxes (Ezra 7:11-26). And when Nehemiah requested permission from king Artaxerxes to go to Judah and rebuild the city, permission was given but this is not a decree in any sense of the term. The king simply said: “How long will your journey be, and when will you return” Neh 2:6 (444 BC). And the king’s letters only granted Nehemiah passage to Judah and timber from the kings forest “to make beams for the gates of the fortress which is by the temple, for the wall of the city, and for the house” to which he was going (Neh 2:7,8). A specific command “to restore and rebuild Jerusalem” was never issued!

So then, with our hermeneutic in mind, we begin our program to amend history by insisting that the prophecy regarding Cyrus and his rebuilding of Jerusalem and its temple (Isaiah 44:26-28; 45:1-5,13) was to be completely and literally fulfilled. Such a hypothesis is very attractive, for God declared of Cyrus: “He is my shepherd! And he will perform all my desire. And he declares of Jerusalem, ‘She will be built,’ and of the temple, ‘Your foundation will be laid.’ He will build my city, and will let my exiles go free, without any payment or reward, says the Lord of hosts.”

Curiously, Cyrus, who is named more that 100 years before he was born, fulfilled every specific detail that was predicted of him except one. He never decreed that the city should be rebuilt. We amend history to what was hoped for. We imagine that Cyrus was to issue a complete decree to fulfill the prophecy of Daniel 9:25, a decree to rebuild the city along with a command to rebuild the temple. As stated, the rebuilding was to take 7 weeks of years. This completion date was a reasonable length of time (John 2:20); It was to be a key marker to the entire time prophecy (9:25-26):

Dating the limited decree of Cyrus is difficult, but the SDA Bible Commentary (Vol 3, pp 96-97) gives satisfactory evidence that it was in the year 537 BC. Based on this date, the Anointed One, who is later identified as Jesus Christ, should have appeared as the Messiah in the year 54 BC. A related matter is the identity of the enemy-prince of Daniel 8-9, that last king of the north in Daniel 11 who was to come and oppose Christ and His people. Since Christ was to come 80 years earlier than He actually did and because the Seleucid dynasty ruled from 311 to 65 BC, we therefore imagine that Antiochus Epiphanes should have come, not in the middle of that dynasty as he did, but “at the latter end of their rule” (8:23) and that he and Christ were to be contemporaries.

We hold that this is a good way to understand and illustrate much of the vision, especially Daniel 11 — if we can imagine Antiochus doing all that is claimed for him and if we can imagine amending the rest of history to meet all other demands of the text. In Daniel 8-9, it is easier to think of Titus as the king of the north. It is as if two real historical accounts of two different periods were combined and re-written in a way to form parallel scenarios. We imagine a history right in-between Antiochus and Titus that could have gone in either of two directions. We accept the text as it reads: The 69th week was to coincide with the conclusion of the Greek period of history and the Christ event was to occur at that time. (Naturally, the Roman era was to immediately follow and continue till the end of the world).

Concerning the time of arrival of the Anointed One, we find the discrepancy of 80 years significant since multiples of 40 occur so frequently in the Bible. This number is often associated with trial and delay. Recall that the children of Israel should have gone immediately from Egypt into the Promised Land, but they spent 40 years in the wilderness because of their non-belief. Noah waited 3x40 years for a flood in a world where it never rained, and when the rains came, they lasted for 40 days and 40 nights. There was Jonah’s message of doom with which Yahweh had commissioned him: “ ‘Yet 40 days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!’“ That was certainly a severe trial for those who lived in the city (Jonah 3:4-9). Jesus went into the wilderness to fast and to be tested by the devil. The entire experience lasted 40 days and 40 nights (Mt 4:1-11). And when Jesus referred to Daniel’s prophecy telling the non-believing leaders of His day, “Behold, your house is left to you desolate” — It was destroyed exactly 40 years later.

We understand the beginning of the 70x7 day/year prophecy as being updated in the following way: Because of problems encountered in the rebuilding program, (specifically, the failure of Zech 6:15), it was necessary for later kings to issue decrees similar to that of Cyrus. The Bible considers these as one and recognizes no others. Ezra 6:14 tells us that: “they finished building according to the command of the God of Israel and the decree of Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes king of Persia.” The last decree therefore, issued by Artaxerxes in 457 BC, became the new starting point of the seventy week prophecy.

We view the failure of Isaiah’s prophecy regarding Cyrus and the Bible’s expansion of the historic Cyrus decree as moving the starting point of the seventy weeks future. Thus Jesus came at the right time (Mk 1:15). However, this shift in prophetic time caused the flow of history to become out of phase with the original meaning of the prophecy thereby masking the full significance of a truly astounding prediction of the Christ event.

The Author | The Seven Faces of Seventh-day Adventism | Christian Court

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