After the second time period of 434 years, Messiah is killed. “But not for Himself!” Don’t you love the way the Spirit injects this sad but wonderful truth in the midst of a preview of history? Now is this immediately after? Sometime after? And the destruction of Jerusalem foretold in verse 26, is it the one that indeed occurred after Jesus, or the one we have already seen coming at the end?

Here I can only give my opinion. I believe that consistency to the text and all the other similar texts in Daniel demands that we place this portion of the prophecy in the end time. For in verse 27 that follows there is no question that the war mentioned must be at the end.

Nevertheless, I am not in denial that Rome did destroy Jerusalem shortly after Jesus was crucified, that temple worship stopped, that the city was surrounded, that Jews fled… but we have already seen that much of this will be repeated in the last days, and lead to Christ’s return. Here the mystery is difficult to extricate from the historical. And here is where we need to keep our focus narrow. We are looking for the man of sin who will precipitate the last events of history. He is in this passage…

Notice in verse 26 the destruction of the sanctuary. This matches with chapter 8. Notice the word “desolations”, one of the keys all the way from Matthew. You may even want to consider the presence of a flood as in Revelation 12:15’s mention of a demonic flood sent to stop the woman, who is Israel.

I offer all of this for your meditation and prayer. But to return to things of which there is a greater certainty we move to verse 27.

One thing emerges right away. The seventieth seven does not immediately follow the sixty-ninth. Verse 27 speaks of an end to sacrifice and offering. We now know for certain that when Daniel speaks of this happening, he is speaking of the end time, not of Antiochus of old. Remember, we have Gabriel’s word on that. But now we have Daniel himself admitting that this does not occur until Jesus is killed, some 200 years after Antiochus!

We have a problem of a different sort if we try to attach this verse to the Romans of A.D. 70. The Spirit says there are 490 years, and that after 490 years, the Millennium begins, sin is gone, etc. Those who try to stop the clock at Jesus (as they should) but start it up again with Titus (A.D.70), will find that the clock runs out in A.D. 77, with no return of Christ. That was the dilemma of thinking back in those days, when Jesus did not come, though the abomination had surely occurred. They thought.

In fact, the only place to put a final week, or seven years, is in the end of history. But that is done easily enough, because that is where Jesus places the event of the end of sacrifices, and the following abomination and desolations that verse 27 mentions.

Ultimately, this work I am sharing with you now does not end with the abomination, the desolations, the end of sacrifices, the surrounding of the city, the army. All of this is present, but my question has to do with the man. In verse 26 there is one called “the prince who is to come.” This same one seems to be referred to in 27, as “he” and “one who makes desolate.”

I cannot prove here that all three of these persons are one. But I believe they are. The coming prince seems to be the dictator over the revived Roman Empire, the final form of the beast seen by Daniel and John. He makes a treaty with the Jewish people that lasts for one week (27a), or seven years. This same person who made the treaty will break it (27b) half-way through. That’s about three and one half years later, leaving another three and one half years for judgment and chaos, the Great Tribulation. It is this three and one half year period that is mentioned in Daniel and Revelation as Earth’s final time.

The prince thus starts the clock of Judaism ticking again. No matter that Jewish sacrifices cannot take away sin. They never could. They pointed to Christ. They will still point to Him. No matter that God is not commanding a Temple be built. The Jewish people will be like Israel of old, seeking to go to the Promised Land after God has already pronounced judgment. They will be given seven years to play all of this out, a new Temple, revived worship in the Jewish way, world-wide prominence, even peace for a time. But only a short time. Then the reversal, followed by what Daniel seems to be calling an outpouring of judgment. He uses the word consummation, and “poured out”, reminding us of the bowl judgments of the book of Revelation, chapter 16. And he pinpoints the “one who makes desolate.” Notice here it is not referred to in the neuter sense. Not a “thing” placed in the Temple, but a man.

It is said this man will be on the “wing” of abominations. The old King James used the word “overspreading,” but that word would be a very uncommon usage of the Hebrew “kawnawf”. “Wing”, as in a bird, is a common usage of that word in Scripture. It can even refer to angels’ wings. It is the wings of cherubim (man-made) that sit above the Ark of the Covenant, and are a part of the mercy seat Moses was commanded to make. According to Exodus 25:22, God ordained that this would be the special place where he would speak with his man, between the two overspreading wings of the cherubim. Here God would actually appear “in the cloud above the mercy seat (Exodus 16:2)." Is it possible that when the Jews put together this magnificent structure again that they will create once more the mercy seat in all its detail? And will the one who is so jealous of our God decide to sit there and mock His Holy Name before the world? Could this be the “wings” of abomination?

Be that as it may, the clock of old Jewishness ends when the final earthly-satanic messiah is cast into the Lake of Fire and Christ’s true Judaism is set up in the Holy City. Soon perhaps will come one who will announce to the world that the clock of Israel is about to begin its last works.

We must continue reviewing, so that we not forget important pieces of the puzzle:

• There is a specific sign of the beginning of the end of the world.
• It is the abomination of desolation, albeit it must be the one spoken of by Daniel.
• Daniel speaks of such an abomination, twice so far, and the surrounding of Jerusalem, and the removal of the daily sacrifices, all followed by desolations as God Himself backs off from the scene. Nothing can be more desolate than this.
• No less than a messenger from Heaven, Gabriel, is behind all these prophecies.
• All agree that these things happen in the final days of earth’s history.
• Daniel points out a man behind all the problems: “a little horn”, “a king,” and “the prince who is to come.” He sees him not as a “type” but as the actual perpetrator of the evil.

I tremble as I think ahead to chapter eleven. I believe I have identified there the one who will come. I ask that you reserve your own judgment of this until we confirm the details in Revelation and II Thessalonians. But for now, the last prophecy of Daniel. It is like no other in Scripture.