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You talk about a collision of conflicting emotions, welcome to Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into His beloved city of Jerusalem.
As you will hear in this PODCAST, all of this emotional turmoil will come to a climax as Jesus paused during His Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, gazed longingly at breathtaking panorama, and then suddenly sang this song of lament:
41 Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, 42 saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. (Luke 19:41-42)
This your day.
The obvious question: What was it about this day that caused Jesus to refer to it with such a pointed specificity?
This was, of course, the day on which Jesus chose to make His return to the Holy City, and thus to trigger all of tumultuous events of His turbulent last week. It was, as you may know, the final Sunday before Passover that year, what we call Palm Sunday. This because the people gathered in their thousands, and waved palm branches all along the route of Jesus’ ride on the back of a donkey into Jerusalem.
I cannot help but to think that the words of Psalm 137 echoed through Jesus’ mind and heart as He rode into the city:
“If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.”
Jerusalem: Jesus’ beloved city indeed. Let there be no doubt that Jerusalem was, and is, and ever shall be Jesus’ highest joy. Which makes His weeping — His crying convulsively — over the Holy City on this her day all the more poignant, all the more powerfully emotional.
Now, I need you to focus on one important fact that overshadows this entire week: Jesus’ thoughts were focused like a laser beam on one particular book of the Hebrew Bible (our Old Testament): the prophetic book of Daniel. How do I know this? Because on the Tuesday of this final week, a mere 48 hours after this Palm Sunday, Jesus will give to His disciples His grand and glorious Olivet Discourse, recorded in Matthew 24 – 25, and rivaled in its beauty and majesty only by the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 – 7.
That signature sermon was delivered on the Mount of the Beatitudes in Galilee. This final sermon or discourse was delivered on the Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem.
In that discourse, Jesus laid out for His disciples and for us the sweeping panorama of the End Times, and all that will lead up to His glorious return. The so-called Signs of Times.
We will, of course, break it down in allof its majestic splendor when we get to that Tuesday in the coming weeks.
What I need for you to note now is what Jesus said right in the middle of that discourse, the interpretive key both for that sermon and for this moment in His Triumphal Entry:
“So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet Daniel let the reader understand.” (Matthew 24:15)
Note Jesus’ unmistakable reference to Daniel 9:24-27.
Now listen carefully: The Triumphal Entry sets in motion the beginnings of the fulfillment of this great prophecy in Daniel 9, what many call “The Seventy Weeks of Daniel.”
Allow me to read to you the prophecy in full, and then we’ll talk about it.
“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.
25 “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. 26 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. 27 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)
What does this prophesy have to do with Palm Sunday? More than you might think.
Okay, first let’s talk about the “seventy sevens”. We’re talking about seventy periods of seven years each, equating to 490 years. The Biblical writers, going back to Geneses 1 often thought of time as measured in periods of seven. The Creation Story was recorded to take seven days. In Leviticus 25:3-7, we read about a Sabbath Year
3 For six years sow your fields, and for six years prune your vineyards and gather their crops. 4 But in the seventh year the land is to have a year of Sabbath rest, a Sabbath to the Lord. Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards. 5 Do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the grapes of your untended vines. The land is to have a year of rest. 6 Whatever the land yields during the Sabbath year will be food for you—for yourself, your male and female servants, and the hired worker and temporary resident who live among you, 7 as well as for your livestock and the wild animals in your land. Whatever the land produces may be eaten.
And there are so many other examples of the Biblical writers dividing time into eras of seven. Sometimes it was seven days. Sometimes it was seven years. The context always determines which, and the context of Daniel’s prophesy in Daniel 9:24-27 clearly describes seven year periods.
Another thing to understand is that Daniel’s vision in chapter nine is a direct response to his prayer just before the vision he received. You see, the Babylonians had come in and absolutely desolated the land. They destroyed the Temple and left Jerusalem in a pile of rubble. Those who were not sold into slavery or brutally killed by the Babylonians – young men like Daniel – were taken in exile to Babylon. While in Babylon, Daniel happened to be reading Jeremiah’s prophesy that the captivity was to last for 70 years. At this point, Daniel was an elderly man and he did the math, realizing that the 70 years was just about up and the return of the exiles to Jerusalem might be at hand. Then, while Daniel was praying, he had an incredible visitor:
21 while I was still in prayer, Gabriel, the man I had seen in the earlier vision, came to me in swift flight about the time of the evening sacrifice. 22 He instructed me and said to me, “Daniel, I have now come to give you insight and understanding. 23 As soon as you began to pray, a word went out, which I have come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed. Therefore, consider the word and understand the vision… (Daniel 9:21-23)
This vision is the one described in verses 24-27 and is an overview of the rest of human history, including Daniel’s day to the End of Days, including our day.
Gabriel told Daniel that there would be a defining event, and the occasion of that event will start God’s prophetic clock. And once that clock starts, human history as we know it has 490 years left.
Now, many people look at this and say, “Wait a minute! More than 490 years have come and gone since Daniel’s prophesy. What happened?”
Well, looking at Gabriel’s message, the clock hasn’t started yet:
From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem… (Daniel 9:25)
In other words, there is going to be a decree that Jerusalem and the Temple will be rebuilt. Once that decree is issued, then the clock will start.
Now, historically and as far as lining up with the Biblical text, Dr. Alva McClain seems to make the most sense in his explanation of what this event will be.
This decree was actually recorded in Nehemiah 2:1-9,
In the month of Nisan in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes…
…The king said to me, “What is it you want?”…
and I answered the king… “send me to the city in Judah where my ancestors are buried so that I can rebuild it…may I have letters to the governors of Trans-Euphrates, so that they will provide me safe-conduct until I arrive in Judah? And may I have a letter to Asaph, keeper of the royal park, so he will give me timber to make beams for the gates of the citadel by the temple and for the city wall and for the residence I will occupy?” And because the gracious hand of my God was on me, the king granted my requests. 9 So I went to the governors of Trans-Euphrates and gave them the king’s letters. The king had also sent army officers and cavalry with me.
That’s the date of the decree.
Now I’ll spare you all the mathematical computations, but when you factor in the differences between our Gregorian calendar and its leap years with the Jewish lunar calendar, the date of this decree is narrowed down to March 14, 445 BC. That’s when the clock was started, and the 490 year countdown began.
You see, when Gabriel gave Daniel this vision, Gabriel said:
From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem (March 14, 445 BC) until the Anointed One, the ruler (Jesus Christ, the Messiah), comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’
That portion of verses 25 and 26 is what makes this unnecessarily complicated. It would have been a lot easier if Gabriel would have simply said, “There will be 69 sets of seven years each, instead of dividing them into a group of seven “sevens” and a separate group of 62 “sevens”.
But, with the benefit of historical records, we can see WHY Gabriel delivered the message in this fashion. You see it took “seven ‘sevens’” or 49 years for Israel to finish restoring and rebuilding Jerusalem after the decree went out on March 14, 445 BC. Now, on top of those 49 years, the prophesy says there would be 434 years (or sixty-two “sevens”) after the Holy City’s completion before the Anointed One would come!
So, let’s rewind just a bit:
Daniel was in exile in Babylon. Jerusalem was destroyed and laid in rubble. Gabriel appeared to him and said that a decree will go out to rebuild and restore the city, it will take 49 years to rebuild it and then 434 years later, the Anointed One, the ruler will come and present Himself as their promised Messiah, totaling 483 years from the decree. Historical records show that this very decree was signed and sent out on March 14, 445 BC.
When we add 483 Jewish Lunar years to that date, we arrive at April 6 of 32 AD. Everything points to this very day being the very first Palm Sunday – the exact day of Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem when He formally presented Himself as Messiah to the people of Israel.
This is why He stopped and wept over the city saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”
Jesus knew that this was the day that Daniel had told them about. He knew, but he also knew that they were blind to it. He knew that this day they welcomed Him as King, but six days later, they would crucify Him as a criminal. He also knew what was about to befall Israel, as He continued:
43 The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. 44 They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.” (Luke 19:43-44)
They should have known the date that Daniel’s vision prophesied, and nearly 40 years later, this prophesy that Jesus told came true as well, when the Roman Emperor Titus destroyed Jerusalem and leveled it to the ground.
BUT, there is yet another set of “sevens” mentioned in Daniel’s vision.
What’s up with that?
26 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. 27 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.”
So, here’s the deal. When the decree went out to rebuild Jerusalem in 445 BC, God started the clock. When Jesus said “It is finished” and died on the cross, God temporarily stopped the clock. And the prophetic clock of Daniel 9 is stopped still, today. And it will remain paused, indefinitely, until God starts it again.
You and I are now living in this great “pause of time”.
This raises an important question: When will God restart the clock?
Because once He does, there will only be seven years left of humanity as we know it.
What we do know is that sometime during this “pause”, there will be an historic event, which you and I should have our eyes and ears peeled for. It’s an event that was never prophesied or mentioned in the Old Testament. It’s unique to the New Testament, so much so that Paul used a very precise word to describe it – a musterion (from which we get our English word “mystery”).
Paul revealed this mystery and many of us today refer to this musterion as The Rapture of the Church.
For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God. First, the believers who have died will rise from their graves. 17 Then, together with them, we who are still alive and remain on the earth will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Then we will be with the Lord forever. 18 So encourage each other with these words. (1 Thessalonians 4:16-18)
Then, in Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians (2 Thessalonians 2), he writes that after the Rapture, when all of the Believers are taken away from the planet, a very charismatic leader will rise and do a lot of incredible things real fast. Daniel called this man a ruler. Paul referred to him as a “man of lawlessness”. John described him as the anti-Christ… and the beast.
Jesus was the first ruler Daniel prophesied about, and this antithesis to Jesus is the second ruler to come. Jesus is God incarnate. This man will be Satan incarnate.
This is who Daniel prophesied about in the remainder of his vision:
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. 27 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 9:26-27)
This last verse of this passage (verse 27) is critical. It means that God started His prophetic clock with the decree to rebuild Jerusalem, He stopped the clock temporarily with the death of His Son, and He will start it again with the signing of yet another decree – a covenant.
With this covenant, this ruler, this anti-Christ will achieve what, up to this future point of human history has never been achievable. He will accomplish what no other world leader has been able to accomplish. He will negotiate a peace treaty that will bring peace throughout the Middle East, including to Israel and all her neighbors, bringing safety and security to Jews the world over.
This treaty will come with three provisions. And, let me tell you, once these three provisions fall into place, it’s game on!
Here are the three provisions:
- Israel’s peace and security will be guaranteed for a period of seven years.
- During this time, Israel will be permitted to rebuild her Temple. What’s crazy is that Jewish contractors and specialists are ready to have the Temple up and running in three months, if they were allowed to. The building materials and implements are all there. The are ready and waiting. The problem is that the Muslim Golden Dome of the Rock is sitting on top of the Temple Mount where the Temple ought to be. This is a problem. But it is not an insurmountable problem.
- According to Revelation 11:2, Jerusalem is going to become a Gentile city. But, why or how could the Jews ever give up their Holy City? The only thing that makes sense to me is the possible deal that they would give up their capital in exchange for the right to rebuild their Temple.
The key to this is that the moment this agreement is made, God will start the clock again and humanity will have a precious seven years left.
The Bible calls this seven-year stint the Tribulation because it will be a time of great suffering. However, for the first 3½ years, there will be no tribulation or suffering at all. The earth will see worldwide peace during that time. The anti-Christ will unite the world politically, militarily, economically, and even spiritually under a single religion. It will be worldwide utopia for three-and-a-half years. But then, this will happen:
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 9:27)
This “abomination that causes desolation” will be himself. He, himself, will walk into the Holy of Holies, sit upon the Ark of the Covenant in the newly constructed temple and proclaim himself to be almighty god. And, according to Revelation 13:8, the entire world will unite together in the worship of Satan as god.
That’s when what the Bible calls “The Great Tribulation” will begin, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him.
What is that end? It’s when he will be cast into the lake of fire where he will be tormented day and night forever – the lake of fire that Jesus said, in Matthew 25:41, was prepared for the devil and his angels.
So, halfway through that final seven years, literally all the forces of hell will break out across the earth.
But at the end of that seven year period, this will happen:
Then I saw heaven opened, and a white horse was standing there. Its rider was named Faithful and True, for he judges fairly and wages a righteous war. 12 His eyes were like flames of fire, and on his head were many crowns. A name was written on him that no one understood except himself. 13 He wore a robe dipped in blood, and his title was the Word of God. 14 The armies of heaven, dressed in the finest of pure white linen, followed him on white horses. 15 From his mouth came a sharp sword to strike down the nations. He will rule them with an iron rod. He will release the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty, like juice flowing from a winepress.16 On his robe at his thigh was written this title: King of all kings and Lord of all lords. (Revelation 19:11-16)
And, according to Philippians 2, this will also happen:
…at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:10-11)
This will happen all because when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday, something did not happen. The people did not recognize the time of God’s coming to them.
Yet, He will return and everyone will recognize Him and every knee will bow before Him.
How I long for that day to happen!