Rapture: The End-Times Error That Leaves the Bible Behind (17 page)

Let us first read this vision, verse by verse.

“Seventy weeks [seventy times seven seasons] are decreed concerning Your people and Your holy city
,

to finish the transgression
,

to put an end to sin
,

and to atone for iniquity
,

to bring in everlasting righteousness
,

to seal both vision and prophet
,

and to anoint a most holy
.

Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks [seven times seven seasons]
.

Then for sixty-two weeks [sixty-two times seven seasons] it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time
.

And after the sixty-two weeks [sixty-two times seven seasons], an anointed one shall be cut off, and shall have nothing; and the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war; desolations are decreed
.

And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week [seven seasons]; and for half of the week [three and a half seasons] he shall cause sacrifice and offering to cease; and upon the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.”

Without a doubt, this is a very unusual passage. The sevens appear four times in the vision. The initial mention of seventy sevens is subdivided into a first set of seven sevens, a second set of sixty-two sevens, and a final, lone set of seven commonly called the final week.

The rapturists’ first assumption, however, confounds all their subsequent efforts to understand these numbers. They assume that all of these sevens signify years. As a result, they place the first set of seven weeks (verse 24) and the second set of sixty-two weeks (verse 25) in chronological order. Added together, they approximately equal the 483 years between Daniel and Christ’s first advent (GR8).

Although I believe this understanding is flawed, that problem is dwarfed by the presumptuous parenthesis that rapturists insert between the second set of sixty-two weeks and the third, final week. They insert the gap into the middle of verse 26. They teach that up to this point, the vision applies to the first advent. Then, after the cutting-off of the Messiah is mentioned, rapturists try to insert a two-thousand-year hiatus before the Temple and Jerusalem are destroyed in the second half of verse 26. They do this to place the final, lone set of seven as a seven-year Great Tribulation that is still in our future.

Rapturists split every one of Daniel’s visions this way. In the first vision, a two-thousand-year gap is introduced into the statue, between the iron legs and the iron-clay feet. In the second vision, this two-millennia interruption is inserted between the fourth beast and that beast’s very own horns! And in this third prophecy of time periods, the same presumptuous parenthesis is inserted mid-sentence.

The question remains: where is the textual justification for these massive interruptions in Daniel’s time line? The answer is: there is none; not a shred of justification apart from the rapturists’ desire to deny that Christ set up a Kingdom during His first advent.

Even the small minority of early Church theologians who believed the seventieth week was still future argued against the introduction of any gap between the sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks. Apollinarius of Laodicea believed in a future seventieth week, but still said, “It is impossible that periods so linked together be wrenched apart, but rather
the time-segments must all be joined together
in conformity with Daniel’s prophecy” (cited in
CID
). That is the reason he predicted the end of the world in the sixth century. Of course, that is not a viable alternative for present-day rapturists.

St. Augustine certainly had no patience for any gap inserted between the sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks. He points to Luke’s Gospel as proof that this could not be done. “For let us not suppose that the computation of Daniel’s weeks was interfered with … or that they were not complete, but had to be completed afterward in the end of all things, for Luke most plainly testifies that
the prophecy of Daniel was accomplished at the time when Jerusalem was overthrown”
(
EPA
, 199:31; cited in
GCC
). St. Augustine was referring to Jesus’ Olivet Discourse, which we will examine most closely in Matthew’s Gospel. The long and the short of it is this: the rapturist system doesn’t work unless you approach the text with preconceived notions that it does not support.

This presumptuous parenthesis totally destroys the unity of this vision. Understood most simply, the vision teaches that there will be one Messiah who will come, and then He will be “cut off.” The Messiah’s career is preceded by the second Temple (Herod’s), which must first be rebuilt for Him and will then be destroyed. There is only one Messiah and one Temple, and their rise and fall are described in relation to each other.

Rapturists see this vision as predicting the first advent after the rebuilding of Herod’s Temple. But then they claim that mid-sentence in verse 26, the vision skips over two thousand years of history. Unbeknownst to Daniel, during this two thousand years, Herod’s Temple is destroyed, and the rapturist must now postulate the rebuilding of a third Temple. Without mentioning any of this, the end of verse 26 discusses the destruction of this third Temple (rather than the one already mentioned in verse 25). These mental gymnastics are necessary to substantiate a future seven-year Great Tribulation. In the meantime, the simple and evident unity of this vision is destroyed.

This leads to perhaps one of the most peculiar beliefs in Christianity. Rapturists believe that Jewish priests will restart the ancient animal sacrifices in a rebuilt Jerusalem Temple about the time that the Great Tribulation begins. This is necessary for the rapturist system to explain the phrase of this vision that states that someone “shall cause sacrifice and offering to cease.” The Jewish people cannot stop something they have not been doing.

But ask rapturists why God would ever allow a resumption of animal sacrifices, especially in light of His Son’s final Sacrifice, and they have no answer. To make their system coherent, rapturists must believe that the animal sacrifices will be resumed, even in the face of Hebrews 9:24–26: “Christ has entered … into Heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer Himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the Holy Place yearly with blood not his own; for then He would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, He has appeared once for all at the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.” Rapturists believe animal sacrifices will resume in a rebuilt Temple, but they are at a loss to explain why.

Daniel states that the purpose of these seventy weeks is to bestow six blessings. As Catholics, we believe that these blessings were bestowed as a result of the first advent. But rapturists must argue that these six blessings have not yet been fulfilled and will not be fulfilled until the end of the future seven-year Great Tribulation.

But look at these six items that they claim have not yet been accomplished. The seventy weeks are decreed “to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy.” I do not believe it is possible to claim that these six blessings were not bestowed by Christ at His first advent.

Absolutely without exception, the early Church believed they were bestowed then. Tertullian wrote, “The day when Christ was born … eternal righteousness was revealed, and the Saint of saints was anointed, namely Christ, and the vision and prophecy were sealed, and those sins were remitted which are allowed.… It was because the prophecy was fulfilled by His advent that the vision was confirmed by a seal; and it was called a prophecy because Christ Himself is the seal of all the prophets, fulfilling as He did all that the prophets had previously declared concerning Him” (cited in
CID
). It could not be stated any more clearly.

Julius Africanus (Julius Hilarianus) wrote at the end of the fourth century that there would be no future fulfillment of the seventieth week, but that is not all: “There is no doubt [that this prophecy] constitutes a prediction of Christ’s advent, for He appeared to the world
at the end of seventy weeks
. After Him the crimes were consummated, and sin reached its end and iniquity was destroyed. An eternal righteousness also was proclaimed which overcame the mere righteousness of the law; and the vision and the prophecy were fulfilled, inasmuch as the Law and the Prophets endured until the time of John the Baptist, and then the Saint of saints was anointed. And all these things were the objects of hope, prior to Christ’s Incarnation, rather than the objects of actual possession” (
CH
, X–XI). Notice his point? If these six blessings have not been accomplished, then New Testament saints are in no better a position than were the Old Testament saints.

St. Augustine strongly argued against any future fulfillment of this vision of Daniel, pointing out instead that the prophetic events fit the first advent very well. “At the end of the age, Christ will
not need to be anointed or put to death
, in order that this prophecy of Daniel may then be expected to be fulfilled” (
EPA
, 199:912; cited in
GCC
).

These six blessings were so clearly bestowed through the Incarnation that it almost sounds as though these six phrases were written by a New Testament writer. And in fact, the New Testament echoes these words. In Hebrews 9:26 and 28, we read, “For [Christ] has appeared once for all at the end of the age
to put away sin
by the sacrifice of Himself.… Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time,
not
to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for Him.” The phrase “put away sin” is an obvious reflection of Daniel’s phrase “to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity.” Hebrews makes clear that this happened in the first advent. He also makes clear that this will not happen at the second advent: “Christ will appear a second time, not to deal with sin.”

Further confirmation is seen in Luke’s Gospel. At the beginning of His public ministry, Jesus stands in His hometown synagogue of Nazareth and reads the Messianic prophecy of Isaiah 61:1–2: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me.…” He then shocks His audience by stating, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (4:16–21). Jesus declared Himself to be the Anointed One of the Old Testament, the anointed of Daniel’s vision. He came to fulfill the task of the “anointed” described here during His first advent.

The New Testament confirms, then, that all six benefits of the seventy weeks have been bestowed by Christ already. This is not surprising. If not through the Passion, when can we realistically ever hope for these benefits? In this view, we unreservedly agree with the unanimous historical interpretation of the Church.

Yet rapturists must claim that this is not true. If these blessings were bestowed in the first advent, then Daniel’s seventieth week is also history. If Daniel’s weeks are completed, then rapturists have no basis for a future seven-year Great Tribulation. If there is no tribulation, there is no need for a secret rapture. So, to justify their system, rapturists must contradict both the clear meaning of Scripture and the teaching of the early Church.

This is ironic, for rapturists take great pride in asserting that their theological position most closely resembles that of the early Church. They usually relish the opportunity to inform the Catholic that his Faith is based on later accretions added to the pure, simple Faith of the Apostles. Of course, others may believe them wrong in this assertion, but their stated aim is always to restore the original belief of the early Church—except, it seems, in this case.

They claim that in this instance, concerning the timing of Daniel’s seventieth week, the early Church was utterly and completely mistaken. Proponents such as Walvoord try to justify this with vague references to progressive revelation. In reality, however, this rejection of the beliefs of the early Church flies in the face of everything rapturists claim to believe on every other issue of theology.

The fact that the early Church believed that the blessings of the seventy weeks have already been bestowed should make this next issue seem self-evident. Almost all of the early fathers believed that the last week of Daniel
ended
no later than 70 A.D. In this they were in total agreement with the common Jewish interpretation of their time: that Daniel’s seventy weeks ended with the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. (cited in
CID
).

As we examine the early Church writers on this issue, we will not find unanimity as to the exact end of these weeks. This is largely due to an important handicap of the early Church writers. Some of the early Fathers had a very poor text of Daniel’s prophecy from which to work. In addition, they did not have an accurate idea of when Cyrus’s reign commenced. This undoubtedly affected some of their opinions when they attempted to work out exact timetables
(ISW)
.