The first word in the Hebrew of Daniel 9:24 is םי ִ֨עֻב ָׁש
(šā·ḇu·‘îm) or weeks: literally a collection of sevens; but these are not weeks of days but weeks of years.
A year has different lengths based on the calendar it is derived from. A Gregorian or Julian year is either 365 or 366 days, depending on if it is a leap year or not.
A Jewish year will have either 353, 354, 355, 383
,384, or 385 days, because they use leap months, not days, as well as add or subtract a day to prevent Rosh Hoshana from falling on certain days of the week. A Hebrew (civil) year begins on Tishrei 1, but the Jewish (religious) year begins on Nisan 1.
The Hindi and Chinese calendars are similar to the Hebrew, but the length of the years doesn’t coincide, so they are the same length, but not at the same time.
So how long is the year recorded in Daniel 9?
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The Facts About the Rapture
These years are commonly called prophetic years, and are not based on any man-made calendar, as most, if not all, our calendars are solar based (Gregorian, Mayan, and similar) or lunar based (Jewish, Hindi, and such).
A prophetic year is 360 days, and this isn’t a number we’ve pulled out of a hat, we see this timing explained in the book of Revelation, the 12th chapter starting at verse 6, Israel goes into hiding for 1,260 days.
When we get to verse 14, it is called “a time, and times, and half a time”. 1 + 2 + 1/2 = 3 1/2, and just a little reasoning would indicate that a time is a year here, making 3 1/2 years as 1,260 days, and a year, or a time as 360 days.
So how long is 70 weeks? A week (of years) would be 2,520 days; multiply that times 70 and you have 176,400
days in this prophesy. If that prophecy began when it was given (circa 530 BC), it would have ended before Jesus had been born. Since that isn’t the case, let’s see if we can find the beginning of the count.
Luckily the prophecy indicates when it began “from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks”.
Here we see two events as well as two times; the command to rebuild Jerusalem with its walls and the arrival of Messiah the Prince. Rebuilding Jerusalem would take 49
years, and Jesus would reveal Himself as the Messiah 156,240 days or 434 years after Jerusalem was completed.
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The Facts About the Rapture
We can pinpoint when this was all set in motion thanks to both how the Jewish calendar is based as well as the writing of Nehemiah, who recorded when this event occurred. In Artaxerxes’ twentieth year, narrowed down by the Hebrew month of Nisan having just begun. As every Hebrew month begins with the thinnest crescent moon being seen, that would place the date of the decree as between March 5 and 8, 444 BC.
17,640 days later, Jerusalem and its streets and walls were complete, and the countdown to the next part of the prophecy began: Palm Sunday. Messiah the Prince would present Himself to the people as their rightful King, only to be rejected.
However, that is only 69 weeks; the seven to rebuild Jerusalem, and the sixty-two until the Messiah reveals Himself. What happened to that seventieth week?
The rejection of Jesus as Messiah wasn’t a surprise to God, so he had a timeout built in. We are inside that timeout right now, and God has never said how long that timeout is to last.
It is referred to as the church age, the time of the gentiles, the age of grace, and sometimes even simply the great timeout. So, when is this timeout over? Scripture tells us in Daniel 9:27.
The prince that shall come is not the Prince recorded in verse 25. Jesus is the Prince of that verse, and a different prince is spoken of after that. Verse 26 speaks of ‘the people 6
The Facts About the Rapture
of the prince that shall come’, but isn’t speaking of him specifically. Jerusalem was trodden in AD 70. That wasn’t the beginning of the 70th week either.
The event that ends the timeout is the one-week covenant, commonly called the seven-year peace treaty. The world goes quickly downhill after that.
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The Facts About the Rapture
The Doctrine
There are those who would deny the rapture of the saints, first stating that the word rapture doesn’t appear in the Bible, and to be honest, it doesn’t. Neither does the word dinosaur, but few will say that they never existed because fossil records prove they did. The behemoth described in Job 40:15-24 is a dinosaur, unless you believe an elephant’s tail is like a cedar.
The event we refer to as the rapture is described in 1
Thessalonians 4, where the apostle Paul tells us:
14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose
again, even so them also which sleep in
Jesus will God bring with him. 15 For this
we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that
we which are alive and remain unto the
coming of the Lord shall not prevent them
which are asleep. 16 For the Lord himself
shall descend from heaven with a shout,
with the voice of the archangel, and with the
trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall
rise first: 17 Then we which are alive and
remain shall be caught up together with
them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the
air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
In verse 15, the word “prevent” is the Greek word φθάσωμεν (phtha·sō·men) which is also interpreted as to 8
The Facts About the Rapture
arrive, to anticipate, or to precede telling us that those still living don’t meet the Lord in the air until the resurrected saints do.
This gives us the events that make up the rapture, and most Christians agree on this order: (1)
The return of the Lord (This isn’t the 2nd Coming) a. The shout
b. The voice of Michael the archangel. We’ll cover what he says later. (Some think this is the same as
[a], but the events are separated by a comma and a repeat of the word "with".) c. The trump of God
(2)
The resurrection of the dead meeting the Lord in the air. (The 1st resurrection)
(3)
The living saints meeting the Lord in the air.
The events we can agree on, for the most part; it’s the timing that splits us.
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The Heresy
I grew up as a pre-tribulationist. To me, nothing after Revelation 4 affected me until Revelation 19, the wedding supper. I still read and studied it to be able to explain to those I spoke to why they wouldn’t want to be around for these events. If someone asked me who I thought the antichrist was, I’d tell them I didn’t know or care because I was never going to be around to see him.
I would of course, turn this around and tell them if they knew who the Christ was, they wouldn’t meet him either.
Many famous ministers taught a pre-tribulation rapture as well, making it easy to strengthen my belief in it.
I learned the concept of parentheticals, the necessary belief explaining why some events were out of order so that they could be emphasized and explained in detail.
The first time I met someone who wasn't pre-tribulation was when we had a visitor once in our Melbourne church who was post-tribulation saying that if John the Baptist (whom Christ told us there was none greater born of woman) went through what he did, we weren’t too good to avoid God’s wrath.
I’ve always liked to believe that if I was proven wrong on a doctrinal issue that I’d accept the fact that I was wrong and change my belief. And I did. I can admit when I'm wrong, and I no longer believe this heresy.
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Heresy is a strong word, but I'll tell you why I believe it is a hell-spawn doctrine.
If we are spending all our time looking up, we're missing so much of what is going on around us. We don't think we need to get ready for something we think won't affect us, so we'll be unprepared for it when it happens.
The reaction to that will be over-whelming, which can break the spirit of many of God's saints and many will lose faith because they feel that God has forgotten them. It can be believed this is what is referred to as the “great falling away”.
The Bible indicates what must happen before we are raptured, and this is the event that separates the Tribulation from the Great Tribulation. Paul was writing to the church at Thessalonica because they had gotten the idea that they had missed the rapture, so he wrote and told them what had to happen first:
2 Thessalonians 2
1 Now we beseech you, brethren, by the
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our
gathering together unto him, 2 That ye be
not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled,
neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter
as from us, as that the day of Christ is at
hand. 3 Let no man deceive you by any
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means: for that day shall not come, except
there come a falling away first, and that
man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;
Look closely at verse 3. What has to happen before we are caught up to be with God?
That man of sin must be revealed. Does Paul unveil how this man of sin will be exposed? Who is "that" man of sin? He is known by a few names. Here he is called the "son of perdition."
In Matthew 24 and Mark 13, Jesus calls him "the Abomination of Desolation." In Revelation 13, he is called the "beast".
He is most often referred to today as the "antichrist".
Paul tells us in verse 4 how he will be revealed.
4 Who opposeth and exalteth himself above
all that is called God, or that is worshipped;
so that he as God sitteth in the temple of
God, shewing himself that he is God.
If we are raptured before tribulation begins, exactly what is Paul talking about in the first four verses here? If Paul is warning us of some event that no believer will see, why did he refer to this as things that must happen first (verse 3)? Someone's wrong here, and it isn't the apostle Paul.
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The Facts About the Rapture
Where did the idea of a pre-tribulation rapture come from? It certainly isn’t scriptural. This doctrine was started by a young Scottish girl named Margaret MacDonald, who said that Christ’s return would be in two phases, and not just one. This false doctrine was started around 1830.
Later on, John Nelson Darby further strengthened this false doctrine and gave rise to the false idea that there will be a secret rapture, Because God calling His saints home must be a big secret, they must have thought.
With all the prophesies, warnings, and the effect on the entirety of the world, did they think God would be embarrassed to do this openly?
Scripture doesn’t say it begins with a whisper, or even what we call now an ‘indoor voice’. You shout when you want everyone to hear you.
Michael the Archangel speaks here, letting the world know what is going on as he tells Jesus to redeem His saints.
He doesn’t do this for Jesus’ sake; the Lord knows what He is doing, it is for the world to know what is going on.
The trump of God announces three things. First is the proclamation that all are in the presence of a King. Second, it declares that the age of grace, the church age, has ended; the time of the gentiles is over.
Lastly it marks the departure of the Holy Spirit from the earth. The Spirit lives in the hearts of the redeemed, and no redeemed are left on earth for now.
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Some believe in a secret rapture. What purpose would this serve? If the resurrected receive their glorified body now, why wouldn’t we? There will be no doubt in the existence of God at this point, but the rejection is still there.
If there are those wanting to be saved from this time forward, it is too late to be saved by grace. If they wish for heaven, Matthew (Matthew 24:13) as well as Mark (Mark 13:13) tells those remaining how they can get to heaven at this point: believe, but endure until the end (Armageddon and Second Coming of Christ).
They will be enduring without the aid of the Comforter. They will be reading scripture (if they choose to) without a Holy Spirit to provide interpretation. This is not an easy time to find your faith.
They will also have to reject the mark of the beast, which isn’t 666; that’s his number. The mark might be anything from a tattoo to a chip placed under the skin, visible to a machine, but not to us. Dying for not receiving the mark is the same as enduring until the end.
One of the excuses given in support of this heresy is that the days are constantly being counted. I was of the belief that 1260 days after the signing of the "seven-year peace treaty" you knew Jesus was coming back, yet no one is to be able to know that.
However, some unknown amount of time will indeed pass inside the Great Tribulation that we will be going through:
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Revelation 13
14 And deceiveth them that dwell on the
earth by the means of those miracles which
he had power to do in the sight of the beast;
saying to them that dwell on the earth, that
they should make an image to the beast,
which had the wound by a sword, and did
live. 15 And he had power to give life unto
the image of the beast, that the image of the
beast should both speak, and cause that as
many as would not worship the image of the