Gah! Do I have to clean the litter box again?
Gah! Do I have to clean the litter box again?
Dear Lion:
Last things first. You can attempt to make a lot of hay about my alleged avoidance of
Jeremiah 18 if you like as a deflection tactic, but the fact is that I am being
very detailed in handling
Daniel 9, and if my posts were any longer I would draw a rebuke from Knight. If you are very eager to get to that passage out of turn, then allow me two posts in a row, and it will be disposed of. Otherwise, it will come in due time. Now I know cats are finicky but you have been doing some real selective choosing of which points of mine you are going to deal with and at other times engage in much hand-waving and posturing…. Vogue anyone?
For example, I have noticed your absolute silence on at least two occasions of my pointing out the Great Tribulation is
nowhere (unless you beg the question on this passage) said to be seven years. This deals your chronology a
terrible blow, so no wonder you have swept it under the rug. Second, though I did allow you time to study it out, you
cannot have a coherent picture of the seventy weeks (nor can I comprehensively demolish your view) until you disclose who you believe the “he” is of
verse 27. I have already very conclusively shown that it is Christ and refers to His work on the Cross. This is very important as, if I am correct, then the text
explicitly states that His crucifixion falls in the middle of the seventieth week, thus your avoidance of this verse is not acceptable.
Now further onto the idea of when He was crucified, you again are dancing quite suavely, but I am not in the mood for the Mambo. The text explicitly says that
AFTER the 69 weeks, the Messiah is cut off. You keep insisting that He was crucified within the 69 weeks, specifically at the end of same, but the
text does not say that. You also keep appealing to the normal flow of conversation, and yet repeatedly violate your own mantra. Why doesn’t after means after? There is nothing unclear about “after” is there? And as far as the normal flow of conversation, we also must ask ourselves, normal to
who? Us moderns or the original audience?
I have demonstrated the Hebraic parallelism there, and rather than offering any rebuttal whatsoever, you simply sneered at it as if a mephitic glare would make it go away. It does not. The word
after as I have demonstrated, simply means “following” and does not carry with it any implied baggage that said event is instantaneous. The verses I provided abundantly proved that point.
And about the idea of
natural to who when reading a text, your deprecation without any supporting facts of my assertion about the Hebraic mindset serves no purpose, and although it may give your supporters some cheap comfort, it would not provide anything to anyone seeking for the truth on the issue. There was nice case of attempted well-poisoning [violation of Cypertopia Statute 4.323(a)(1)] by implying that I said that the ancients were so stupid that they were
unable to think beyond the lowest increment of time mentioned, but of course
that is not what I said. Are you denying in the Hebrew culture that this is the way that they dealt with chronological issues? This is a well-documented, and non-controversial fact which makes your whole hoo-ha about calculating down to the exact month misplaced for that reason alone, in addition to the fact that whole prophecy is geared towards cycles of Jubilee years in the first place, and that the dating of very ancient events, despite your swagger, is a very imprecise and suspect science. Are you aware that we have rabbinical records much older than the sources you cite that thoroughly disagree with your data?
Now to backtrack once again to the issue of whether or not the destruction of the Temple falls
within the seventy weeks or not (and referring again by reference to the fact that the Tribulation is not seven years to begin with, thus eliminating the entire 70th week = Tribulation as a possibility). You have stated that my
only textual reason for putting the destruction outside of the 70 weeks is because it is not one of the stated goals in
verse 24, which of course, silly me, I take at their face value. However, that has never been the
only reason to a precise reader. I thoroughly demonstrated by going though
verses 25-27 that the weeks are taken up by other events explicitly described thus putting said destruction outside the 70 weeks by sheer process of elimination. Ironically though, in examining these issues, I have found a better way to argue your own position if I were you which I will now do for you. If you were to hold that the baptism of Christ does mark the end of the 69th week, and that Christ was then crucified midway through the 70th week, that would leave the immediate three and one-half years after His death for the Great Tribulation which you can then say was postponed about one year into it. This would be much more faithful to the chronology of the seventy weeks (especially that nasty little “after” word which refuses to budge despite all your hand-waving and tail-wagging), and be true to the rest of Scripture that times the Great Trib at three and one-half years. Of course I can defeat this on other grounds, but if I were you, that would make
much more sense than the tact you are now taking.
I have another proffer as well though to the idea that the destruction falls outside the seventy weeks, and this again, is proven by that pesky little verse to your position,
verse 24. Young’s Literal Translation gives us an insight into this:
Seventy weeks are determined for thy people, and for thy holy city, to shut up the transgression, and to seal up sins, and to cover iniquity, and to bring in righteousness age-during, and to seal up vision and prophet, and to anoint the holy of holies.
The six goals are actually arranged in three sets of couplets which is very common in Hebrew thought which things you have resisted
since interpreting this passage in its literary form is very damaging to you. I didn’t expect such modern chauvinism from you which is much more typical of the KJV-only crowd.
The first couplet the is “shut up the transgression” and “seal up sins.” These two ideas are intimately related to each other. In the 70 weeks, Israel would finish its transgression against God by murdering their Messiah, and then their sins would be “sealed up” which implies a setting aside for future judgment. This is another strong textual hint that the destruction and judgment upon the city are a
result of the 70 weeks not
within the Jubilee redemption. For those who reject the redemption, judgment is sure to come, but it will not despoil the perfect Jubilee by according in its midst. You have consistently missed that point.
Now as far as whether the initial rebuilding of the Temple is “part” of the prophecy or not, we must quibble on what you mean by “part.” If you mean “part” by stating that it is one of the
goals to be accomplished within the 70 weeks then
no. But I have never stated that the only events on earth that happen during the 70 weeks are the things mentioned, I have only stated that those goals are exactly that, the goals, the pinnacles towards which the prophesy is reaching, i.e. the focus of the prophesy which is solely Messianic and redemptive. As a distraction, you speak about the fact that the rebuilding of the Temple (only the city) was
never mentioned in
verse 25, well I would say that is true only if you want to be pedantically facile. The word for the command to “restore” means to bring back to its former glory (see also
Jeremiah 33:7).
All of this of course was done to divert attention away from the fact that you have made Christ’s earthly ministry
completely irrelevant to this prophesy, despite the fact that He made claim to be the Anointed One (which is the meaning of the Hebrew phrase “Messiah”) bringing in the redemptive Jubilee in
Luke 4:18 and claiming that the time was fulfilled BEFORE His crucifixion in
Mark 1:15:
Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”
… which machine guns your position and is unexplainable by you in any meaningful way. The only passage which explicitly times the coming of the Messiah (and by implication His Kingdom) was
Daniel 9 (and
Daniel 2). Jesus is making obvious reference to both. You cannot escape this, and it was
BEFORE the crucifixion, utterly supporting my chronology. And this of course then explains something already noticed by the
precise reader, and that is that there are
two Messianic events in
verses 25-26 – the
until Messiah the Prince which happens at the end of the 69th week, and then the
cutting off of the Messiah which the text explicitly states is
after the 69th week. The Messiah is presented first, and then He is rejected. You have hopelessly conflated the two. All of the ducks line up and are quacking to my tune.
Now, and I am really sorry to have to do this to you, but you really should have been more thorough in doing your homework with regards to the “anointing of the Most Holy.” Tsk, tsk, tsk. It is true that many translations render it “anoint the Most Holy
place.” But the fact is that the word “place” does not appear in the text, it is added by the translators according to their bias as to what they believe the text means. I am not using the word “bias” pejoratively, I am stating an acknowledged fact. You claim that “kodesh” is never used of a person, but always a place. I wish you had thought a little more deeply about this in light of the New Testament which teaches that all such rituals and places were merely symbolic of heavenly realities which all point to Christ. So even if your point were rock solid (which it is not as I will demonstrate further), it would not matter in light of this typological fact. And if you are going to insist otherwise, then you will be in a
pickle in
Isaiah 53:10 which speak of the Messiah’s seed which a Jewish skeptic will tell you can
never refer to anything but literal natural children. But….. your assertion that “kodesh” (holy) is not used of persons in the OT is flat out wrong, as a simple use of a concordance would have informed you (
Exodus 22:31; Leviticus 21:6; Numbers 18:17; Ezra 8:28, 9:2; Psalm 51:11; Isaiah 6:13, 62:2, 63:10; Ezekiel 36:38; Daniel 12:7) and is in fact used of persons (or animals) multiple times in the Old Testament. In the Septuagint in that verse, the Greek work for “holy” is “hagios” (Strong’s 40) which of course is often used of Christ (see especially
Acts 3:14 and Revelation 3:7). And also note how, if it refers to the anointing of the Temple, that it completely shoots your argument in the foot, for then the only reference to the Temple in the
verse 24 mission statement would refer to the building of the Temple,
not its destruction! Oops! And my position stands irregardless for the reasons already said. Drat!
And what was that you said about the rest of the very damaging New Testament timing verses??? Oh that’s right. Nothing.
That was easy.
