The Clock That Has to Stop (2 of 4)

Who is "he" in verse 27. The dispensationalist case here is grammatical, and it is the best grammar the futurist reading has. Daniel 9:26 says, "the people of the coming prince will destroy them," and verse 27 opens, "He will confirm a covenant with many for one week." "The coming prince" is the nearest noun before "he," and nearest-antecedent is a real principle of reading.¹¹ If it settles the matter, "he" is a future ruler and the covenant is his.

It doesn't settle it. "An anointed one" is the subject of verse 26's main clause, while "the coming prince" sits inside a phrase saying whose people destroy the city. The only prince the prophecy has introduced before verse 26 is the anointed one himself: "until an anointed one, a prince arrives" (9:25). Then the echoes. "With many" sounds like Jesus at the supper: "this is my blood, the blood of the covenant, that is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins" (Matthew 26:28). In the middle of that week he "will bring sacrifices and offerings to a halt," and that is what Hebrews says the cross did: "when this priest had offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, he sat down at the right hand of God" (Hebrews 10:12), so that "there is no longer any offering for sin" (10:18). Paul describes Christ's work with the same kind of verb: Christ became a servant "to confirm the promises made to the fathers" (Romans 15:8). That is a parallel in idea, not a quotation of Daniel.

The NET renders the Hebrew verb higbir "confirm." The ordinary idiom for starting a covenant is karat berit, "cut a covenant," and higbir more often means to strengthen something already there. Scholarship on the verb is divided (Peter J. Gentry himself allows that higbir berit may be a calque on the ordinary idiom), so this is evidence, not proof.¹² The Messiah as the subject of verse 27 is not a fringe reading in this camp: Meredith Kline, Kenneth L. Gentry Jr., and Peter J. Gentry all hold it.¹³ The result is narrower than a win and broader than a draw. The question is grammatically contested, and every canonical echo points toward Messiah.

The futurist reading also needs "the people of the coming prince" to be the first-century Romans who burned the city, while the prince himself is a figure two thousand years later. "His people" ordinarily means the people he leads. The system has to explain that, not assume it.¹⁴

The six goals. Daniel 9:24 lists what the seventy weeks were determined to do: "Seventy weeks have been determined concerning your people and your holy city to put an end to rebellion, to bring sin to completion, to atone for iniquity, to bring in perpetual righteousness, to seal up the prophetic vision, and to anoint a most holy place."¹⁵ Dispensationalism's careful writers say none of the six happened near Christ's earthly life. All six are national promises to Israel, and all wait for her turning at the second coming.¹⁶ That is coherent, and it has a cost. Daniel was told these things would happen to "your people and your holy city," inside the weeks Gabriel had just described, in answer to the sin Daniel had just confessed on their behalf.¹⁷ Moving all six about twenty-five centuries past that window is a large ask, and the futurist reading has to carry it.

Two of the six have first-century candidates. "Seal up the prophetic vision" echoes Daniel's last charge: "But you, Daniel, close up these words and seal the book until the time of the end" (Daniel 12:4). Revelation opens with a sealed scroll that no one can open until a slain Lamb takes it (Revelation 5). Many non-dispensational readers take it as the same scroll, opened because the appointed time had come.¹⁸ A futurist can answer that Daniel's "time of the end" is also still future, which keeps both scrolls sealed together. The point is only that this goal has a first-century candidate, not an assumed one. "Anoint a most holy place" is usually read as a future temple. Storms argues it points to Christ's own anointing at his baptism (compare Acts 10:38), since the Old Testament has no clear precedent for anointing a building. The word count runs against him: qodesh qadashim names the sanctuary far more often than a person.¹⁹ That goal is contested, and no more than that.

A futurist can reasonably ask where "perpetual righteousness" or a finished end of sin is today. No serious reading claims the six goals are observably done. The partial preterist answer is that all six began at the cross and will be completed at Christ's return, begun now and finished later, the same shape as the already-and-not-yet reasoning progressive dispensationalists use.²⁰ That does not rescue the two-thousand-year gap. It does mean this essay's own reading needs a future horizon for these goals too, and it says so.

The temple's real anchor is Ezekiel, and Hebrews answers it. The textual basis for a future temple is not one phrase in Daniel 9:24. It is Ezekiel 40–48, nine chapters of measured gates, cubit counts, and a restored sacrificial system, and Pentecost and Walvoord both build the millennial temple on it.²¹ The specificity is part of the case. A reading that makes all nine chapters pure symbol for the church has to say why a figurative vision would be this exact.

The case has an internal problem its defenders argue about: Hebrews 10:18. Ryrie and Walvoord hold the sacrifices will be memorial, looking back as the Lord's Supper does.²² Other dispensationalists find that too thin for Ezekiel's language of atonement. Jerry Hullinger argues Ezekiel says the offerings "make atonement" (45:15, 17, 20) with the same Hebrew word Leviticus uses, so a memorial reading fails.²³ If the sacrifices do real work in Ezekiel, the natural account is ritual purification, and Hebrews 9 meets that directly. The old sacrifices were "gifts and sacrifices ... that could not perfect the conscience of the worshiper" (9:9), "external regulations imposed until the new order came" (9:10). Then the argument turns on ritual purity itself: "For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a young cow sprinkled on those who are defiled consecrated them and provided ritual purity, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our consciences from dead works to worship the living God" (9:13–14). A purification view revives the ritual-purity system Hebrews says ran until the new order came, and its signature example, the ashes of a red heifer, sits in that very passage. Section 11 follows what is happening with the heifer now. The temple expectation rests on contested ground, and dispensationalists dispute it among themselves. One critic adds that Ryrie's Dispensationalism Today does not cite Ezekiel 40–48 while defending the nature of the millennial kingdom at length.²⁴