Revelation Episode 15: Daniel’s 70 Weeks and Ten Kingdoms The Book of Daniel is a key book in the unlocking of revelation concerning the prophetic purposes of God, and the end-time events in the ‘latter days’ and today we will be looking at visions of Daniel that enlarge upon and explain Revelation. This episode becomes camera angle 6. Of the three and a half year times of tribulation
The prophecy given by God to Daniel actually pinpoints to the year that Jesus begins his ministry in 33AD.
Daniel 9:24–27 Seventy weeks are determined – marked out in history – to both judge and to save your people and your holy city,
God then tells Daniel of six things that must happen to Israel to wrap up every prophetic event until the Second Coming of Messiah and then the judgement of the Antichrist system.
John also relied upon Daniel’s image of the dream of Nebuchadnezzar to show the historical sequence of the nations that have ruled the world over thousands of years. - Especially the nature of the last day cruel oppressive kingdom that is being formed in this current era of time. So while we are studying John’s prophecy of Revelation today we will be drawing from the Book of Daniel
The prophecy of Daniel is called the 70 weeks prophecy – now Seventy weeks is an absurdly short period of time but that has been taken out of our hands because there is a theological precedent that states that each day is one prophetic year. That means 70 weeks becomes 490 years.
Ezekiel 4:6 I have laid on you a day for each year.
This 490 year timeline is needed to achieve key prophetic events in the 3 and a half years of the ministry of Jesus and the three and a half counterfeit ministry of the Antichrist, the Beast or the lawless zone.
2 Thessalonians 2:3–12 Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming. The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
But when did these 70 weeks (490 years) start? An astounding specific sequence of events has been verified by historical records. Here is the flow of events:
1 In 443 BC. Artaxerxes the Persian King Decreed for Nehemiah to restore and rebuild Jerusalem —
Nehemiah 2:1–8 … let letters be given to me for the governors of the region beyond the River, that they must permit me to pass through till I come to Judah, and a letter to Asaph the keeper of the king’s forest, that he must give me timber to make beams for the gates of the citadel which pertains to the temple, for the city wall
Mathematical Calculation of the 69 Weeks The prophecy calculates the time "unto the Messiah the Prince" as 69 weeks of years, totalling 483 lunar years (360 days) which equals 476 solar years (365.3 days).
That brings the date of ‘unto Messiah the Prince’ to the year 33AD – Absolutely accurate!
Jesus then ministered for 3.5 years and was cut off – (in the midst of the 70th week!).
leaving another 3.5 years (tribulation) yet to come to fulfill the second half of the 70th week.
Prophetic Year Calculation — Details
Prophetic Year Length — 360 days
Total Prophetic Years — 483 years
Total Prophetic Days — 173,880 days
Converted Solar Years — 476 years
Starting Point — 443 BC
BC Duration — 443 years
AD Balance — 33 years
Result — 33 AD
Conclusion — The calculation concludes in 33 AD, the year of the Messiah’s appearance.
The objectives to be fulfilled in Daniel’s prophecy are To finish the transgression, To make an end of sins, To make reconciliation for iniquity, To bring in everlasting righteousness, To seal up vision and prophecy, To anoint the Most Holy.
Objective — Status
To finish the transgression — Not yet fulfilled
To make an end of sins — Not yet fulfilled
To make reconciliation for iniquity — Fulfilled
To bring in everlasting righteousness — Fulfilled
To seal up the vision and prophecy — Not yet fulfilled
To anoint the Most Holy — Fulfilled
Daniel then says Daniel 9:25 that after 69 weeks Messiah will confirm a covenant with his people for one week (7 years) and then he will be cut off in the midst of the week (after 3.5 years) and bring an end to all sacrifice (the Cross). That leaves another 3.5 years for everything to be finished. That is the 3.5 years of the tribulation at the very end when another evil prince, the Lawless one (the Antichrist) will rule over people.
Daniel 9:27 then there will be an overspreading of abomination and the people of the prince who is to come Shall destroy the city and the sanctuary (3.5 year tribulation). The end of it shall be with a flood and till the end of the war desolations are determined.
That overspreading (wing) of abomination between those two 3.5 years has lasted for 2000 years up till now.
The strength of the Daniel 9:24–26 prophecy lies in its accurate prediction of the sequence of redemptive history, pointing to the earthly ministry of Jesus and the yet to come 3.5 year tribulation under the Beast
The Vision of the End Time Kingdoms
In chapter 2 Nebuchadnezzar had a dream where he saw a vision of a great statue that had a head of gold and shoulders and arms of silver and an abdomen and thighs of brass and legs of iron and feet and toes of iron and clay. And a stone was cut out from a mountain but not by human hands, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay and broke them in pieces. This vision terrified the king, and he demanded that whoever was chosen to interpret the dream for him had to get it right or he would be killed. and when Daniel heard this, he prayed and asked for guidance and mercy from God and he offered to interpret the dream.
This vision may be one of the most important prophetic visions in the Bible since it lays the foundation for the rest of the book of Daniel and also the Book of Revelation or the apocalypse of John. This vision also gives an understanding of many other end-time events. Daniel said to the king ‘There is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will come to pass in the latter days (aḥărîyṯ yom – time of the end) (Daniel 2:28) and the ‘latter days’ refers to what would happen to Israel and the Church and the world in the end times. This vision depicts the nature of the world kingdoms from Babylon down to the present day and history shows us the dates when these kingdoms ruled.
Daniel gives the king the interpretation that God showed to him.
Firstly Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar that he was the head of gold, representing the Babylonian empire from 606 BC according to history (v.12)
Secondly He told the king that the two shoulders and arms of silver represented the cruel double empire of Medo-Persia which would overtake his kingdom (in 536 BC - history)
Thirdly Daniel told the king that the kingdom of the abdomen and thighs of bronze would defeat the Medes and Persians. And history show that this was Greece –Alexander the Great, (331-333 BC)
Fourthly There were two legs of iron which would break in pieces and subdue all the other nations. History show us that this was the Roman Empire which would defeat the kingdom of Greece in 63 BC and rule the entire known world.
The significance of the two legs of iron is that the Roman empire would later be divided into the Eastern and Western Empires. And the political and cultural and religious disparity between East and West still remains.
The fifth and final worldly kingdom of the feet and ten toes of a mixture of iron and clay speaks of a ten-nation world power that will emerge at the end of the age. And we read the emergence of that divided and divisive kingdom in
Daniel 2:41 And as you saw that the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron shall be a divided kingdom, but some of the firmness of iron shall be in it, just as you saw iron mixed with the fragile clay. And as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile. As you saw the iron mixed with fragile clay, so they will mix with one another in posterity (zera), but they will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with clay.
The iron in the feet is the expression of the increasing use of force that has replaced diplomacy in the current geopolitical warfare politics of today reflecting the nature of harsh dictatorial rule that represented the Roman empire in the statue. And the fragile earthly clay represents people. God made Man from the dust of the earth. And that clay speaks of vulnerable communities of people that once looked to elected governments to care for their domestic orderly and peaceful well-being.
That is ceasing to exist as witnessed in the oppressive and restrictive and intrusive mandates during the recent Covid pandemic.
But worse than that is the spectre of a resurgence of religious crusade wars the like of which were the greatest blot on Christianity in the Middle Ages when Rome sent the working farming communities into religious wars against pagans and Muslims and other religions – all in the name of Jesus, pillaging cities and slaughtering millions of people.
This has begun again in recent weeks with prayer rallies from the White House calling upon working class citizens by Christian leaders to fight religious wars against people in the Middle East. This is worse than the crusades of the Middle Ages because we have since experienced the reformation and the many moves of the Holy Spirit and blessed waves of evangelism and missionary ventures to the nations of the world. We are actually doing Jihad more ferociously than Islam and feeling holy and righteous about it.
This has become the modern-day replay of the ten toed kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar of the book of Daniel. The iron and the clay will not mix.
This is a picture of the fragile nature of our global political and economic community of today which is being sensationally and confusingly reported as ‘news’. There has not been seen this level of civil and civic and economic and military strife since the last two world wars.
Add to this the threats of nuclear warfare and plummeting energy crises and serious regional proxy wars all over the Middle East and the rudderless leadership of European nations in their feuds with Russia and we are left in a vacuum of floundering global uncertainty. God foresaw this before the foundation of the world and Daniel prophesied it and John warns us of it in Revelation chapters 13 through to chapter 19.
Add to this that Israel is under the mistaken impression that it is under the protective Old Covenant of Moses. That Covenant was abolished by God as seen in Hebrews 8:13. Israel, like everybody else on the earth since Jesus is accountable to the New Covenant under Jesus that he came to preach to them and which they resisted.
The Jewish apostles tried in vain to persuade Judaism of the New Covenant through Jesus. That new Covenant was prophesied to them through Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:31). That is why the two witnesses will preach to the Jews through the three and a half years of the tribulation, and some will obey the Gospel and others will take the mark of the Beast.
This issue will be resolved in the millennium, when God fulfills the Abrahamic promise of their land to them, which we will be studying next week.
And don’t forget the Lion and the bear and the leopard, also from Daniel’s prophecy that we can map onto America and Russia and China in our multipolar geopolitical competitors.
This ten-nation configuration of power is seen in the book of
Revelation 17:12 And the ten horns that you saw are ten kings.
These kingdom rulers will one day join forces from amongst the global prominent nations in Europe and Asia and Africa and the Middle East and the Americas and Oceania and the South Pacific – down under.
The Scripture says ‘they will mix with one another in posterity (Hebrew = zera = posterity which means planning together for a forever future. But we know they will not hold together despite the trade agreements and so-called treaties. So that ten toed kingdom is a configuration of ten nations that will plan to rule their world together forever, and this reflects their arrogance.
The precise geographic boundaries of their kingdom.
Whether the ten kings represent individual heads of ten literal modern nation states or rulers of political entities, or allies of a tenfold political confederation, or billionaire oligarchs
And it remains to be seen exactly when their authority is established.
Scriptural and Historical Evidence Strict Chronological Succession: The strength of any alignment lies in its sequence. History confirms the order of Decree of the Rebuilding of the Temple, the Messiah’s Appearance, the Messiah’s Death, and the Temple Destruction without any deviation.
Mathematical Precision: By applying the 360-day prophetic calendar (173,880 days), the 443 BC implementation date lands with pinpoint accuracy on the lifetime and ministry of Jesus.
External Validation: This interpretation is not a modern construct; Daniel Chapter 9 was always widely recognized as a Messianic countdown, proving that the chronological expectations were established long before the events of the first century.
In conclusion, the harmony and accuracy of the 70-weeks prophecy provides a compelling historical-prophetic map. The 2,000-year "gap" of desolation following the AD 70 Temple destruction serves as the current historical context, pointing toward a final 3.5-year period that will complete the "determined" plan of history. The timeline is precise, but the sequence of events in Scripture is the ultimate forensic proof of the prophecy’s accuracy.
