EAR (6
July 2025) "Steve Coerper (22
June 2025) Confirming the Covenant"
Steve
Coerper (22 June 2025) "To EAR
- Re: Confirming the Covenant -
EAR (15 June 2025)"
Thanks for the reply.
I've see the theory that the
Daniel 9:27 covenant was connected to the events of the "last
supper"
in Matthew 26:27. But there are problems.
EAR:It is no ‘theory’Steve…
it is the true ‘Messianic’
interpretation of Daniel
9:24–27 that is promoted
by the writer of the Book
of Hebrews,
who covers this subject thoroughly in chapters
8 to 10, especially regarding the fulfilment of
the 6-fold
requirements listed in Daniel
9:24 for the Salvation of the Jews, which were all
achieved during the 70th
Covenant week,
or the 7 year period that wasspecifically
set aside for the Jews in Jerusalem (verse 24). Theywerethe beneficiaries of this New Covenantduring
the Gospel week (AD
27–34) intended
just for the Jews. The 70th week ended with Stephen’s witness before the Sanhedrin and Council
in Acts 7 before
they martyred him; (then
afterward the Gospel
was extended to
the Gentiles in Acts 10), where it remains a
universal covenant for any
Jew or Gentile who believes
in the name of Jesus Christ as their Saviour. There are
estimated to be 350,000
Messianic Jews in the
world-wide population!
N.B.
The writer to Hebrews quotes
Jeremiah 31:31–34, which says: after ‘those
days’ of Exile, God would make a New Covenant with
Israel and Judah,
to forgive
their sin (after Calvary), and put the Law in their
minds and write it on
their hearts (on the Day of Pentecost).
You rightly state
that Daniel 9:27 is a reference to a confirmed covenant by
Messiah the
Prince, and not "the Antichrist" as many seem to
believe.
However, the idea that Jesus had a 3½ year public
ministry did not
appear until Eusebius suggested
it in the third century, and he did so to support his
eschatological
musings. Up until then, it was universally asserted that
the public ministry of Jesus was
about one year. The Biblical
requirement for a Passover lamb was a one-year old lamb
without blemish.
Jesus was designated the "lamb of God" by John the Baptist
(John
1:29) and He was crucified about a year later.
EAR: ‘Perhaps venerable
Eusebius in his ‘musings!’
didn’t read the Gospel of St.
John!There is
enough evidence in the
New Testament records to indicate that Jesus attended three Passover feasts, as well as other feasts
during His
ministry over a three year period: Cf.John 2:13–25
(Passover); John 5:1(Cf.
One of the 3
feasts Deut. 16:16); John
6:1–4
(Passover); and His final (Passover)
Luke 22:14–18.
Strangely,
since you take the
phrase ‘one-year
old lamb’literally,
should Jesus
therefore have been a baby when he died?Your reasoning is at odds with Jesus being more than 30
years of age to
qualify as a rabbi or teacher, and most scholars believe his
ministry covered
three Passovers. The important point is that He several
times entered the ‘house
of God’ (twice during his
Passion Week) and was examined by Caiaphas the High Priest
(Matt. 26:57–60a)
and by Pilate (Matt. 27:2, 11–14, 21–23), (like the
Passover Lamb would
be) and found faultless! He was also sent to Herod according
to Luke 23:6–12.
Secondly, if Daniel
is chronological (and there's every reason to believe that it
is) then there is
a seven 'week' period, followed by a sixty-two 'week'
period, then Messiah
is crucified, and then the city and sanctuary
are destroyed,
and THEN the covenant is confirmed. The
unmistakable
sequence is: 1) crucifixion, then 2) destruction, and
then 3)
confirmation. Changing the order of events does
unwarranted violence to
the clear meaning and intent of the text. This is done
to reach a desired
eschatological conclusion (eisegesis) rather than to determine
the meaning of
the text.
EAR:
Steve, if you think Daniel
9:24–27 is absolutely chronological, then explain why
the sentence… ‘The
street shall be built
again and the wall
(during) troublesome times’ (relating to the command that starts
this prophecy to
restore and build
Jerusalem) is inserted after the phrase ‘sixty-two
weeks’
(about 483 years later in real time), and after
Messiah’s name first appears!
Daniel obviously inserts retrospective
information!
Daniel
frequently adds
‘after-thoughts’ or ‘addendum’ to what he has already written.
He didn’t have a
computer to pop things in or extract things out of his
parchment like I
frequently do! He couldn’t change what he had written, so he
added
afterthoughts!
In
this sense, even Ezra has put
Ezra 4:24
about the temple in
the wrong place… it doesn’t fit with Artaxerxes
and the City described in the verse above it in
Ezra 4:7–23, but 4:24
would better fit after Ezra 6:15
(with Darius and
the temple).
Such verse numbers
are often bolded to
show them as a fresh subject, e.g. Ezra 4:6
as well as Ezra 4:7
and Ezra
4:24
(above).
N.B.
Also, most people know that
Daniel’s chapters don’t
run in calendar order
chronologically either! Don’t you think you are
doing the very thing
you suggest I am…
This is done to reach
a desired eschatological conclusion (eisegesis) rather than to
determine the
meaning of the text.
The
meaning of the period called
troublesome
times in Daniel 9:25 occurs in relation to the
command going forth to restore
and build Jerusalem (not
the Temple), but
the City!
Note: Frustration had already been
experienced by the Jews who had
returned under Zerubbabel
and Joshuato build the temple,
from the
2nd year of Cyrus538 BC, (via Cambyses II rule 530–522 BC, whose name
is not mentioned by
Ezra), until Darius’ 2nd year ― Ezra 4:4–5). This
is when the
adversaries of Judah and Benjamin frustrated their work on the temple until the
temple was finished in 516 BC
in Darius 6th
year). It
took a 21 year period to complete the temple, and that was
only achieved after the
prophets Haggai and Zechariah got the Jews building again
(Ezra 6:14–16; Haggai
1:1–15).
However,
Ezra 4:6–23 reports that
the ‘city building
period’ mentioned
in scripture occurred during the days
of Artaxerxes I, (465–424 BC), who ruled about 50 years later. The command to restore and then build
Jerusalem was fulfilled in that order, when in the 7th year of Artaxerxes I’s
rule in (458 BC)
Ezra was authorised to restore
the Law of God to Jerusalem ―
making it the Judicial Capital of Judaea. (Cf. Ezra
7:1–23)
Then,
when Nehemiah went there
in the 20th
year of
Artaxerxes in 444 BC, to
complete the walls (Cf. Nehemiah 1:1–3), the city
was still empty and
desolate. This restoration and building of the City period ―
from Ezra to Nehemiah
― occurred 58–72 years after the Temple had been finished in
516 BC.
Steve,
if you don’t know what those
‘troublesome
times’ were about, then I suggest you read the Book of Esther that fits chronologically
― either into the rule
of (Xerxes I,486–465
BC) who is called
‘Ahasuerus’
in Ezra 4:6, who is likely to be the ‘Ahasuerus’ in
the Book of Esther; or into the first
seven years’ rule of his son
Artaxerxes I, whom
the Jewish sages
believe also bore this Persian
royal
title, and therefore he is the‘Ahasuerus’ in
the Book of Esther).
In
either scenario, those ‘troublesome
times’ extended into the first
seven years of Artaxerxes I’s rule (465 BC until 458 BC)
― when armed
Samaritans prevented the ‘seditious’
Jews from building the ‘rebellious
and
evil city’ of Jerusalem in Ezra
4:7–23. Therefore, it was during the rule of either of
these two kings
when wicked Haman almost
caused a Jewish Holocaust
throughout
the whole Achaemenid (Media-Persian)
Empire that stretched from India to Ethiopia, and Western
Europe and into Egypt,
over 127 provinces (Satraps), if it were not for the actions
of Mordecai an
Esther. These two Jews had a great influence over the court of
the Persian
Empire after the 7th
year of
Artaxerxes.
Mordecai
and Esther’s
intervention may explain the king’s sudden change
of heart from being an enemy of the Jews to being the
Patron of Ezra during
his 7th year of rule!
So,
these 42 plus years (i.e., Daniel’s first
period of 7 weeks,
cf. Dan. 9:25b) after Darius
died in 486
BC, until Nehemiah completed the walls in the 20th
year of
Artaxerxes in 444 BC,
constitute the
‘troublesome
times’ forecast for the Jews’ work to restore Jerusalem as Judicial Capital, via the
command to Ezra in
458 BC, which began the countdown to Messiah, and
then for Nehemiah to build
the walls, streets and gates
etc., during intense opposition from the people of the land
(Cf. Ezra 4:23) beginning
Nehemiah’s time as Governor in 444 BC.These were the ‘troublesome times’
i.e., the conditions
under which the Jews finally got the work done. Then there was
a gap of about 400
years after Malachi, when no
prophetic voice was raised in Israel, until John the Baptist
appeared in AD 26/27!
Third, the covenant
that is confirmed in Daniel 9:27 is "for one 'week' " -
whereas the
covenant Jesus instituted is everlasting:
"Now may the God
of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that
great Shepherd of
the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant..." - Hebrews 13:20
EAR:
Steve
you are missing the point; the length of time during which
the Covenant
would be ‘confirmed’ would take a week, during the 70th
week;
not that the covenant would only last for a week!I think I’ve already
explained it above…
initially the whole ‘Seventy Weeks’ were intended (set apart)
for Daniel’s
People and the Holy City, from 458 BC until AD 34 when
the 70th
week ended (+ or - 1–2 years), and the Gospel covenant was
made available to
Gentiles also.
Why the confirmed
covenant in Daniel 9 is only for seven years is
enigmatic. But THAT it's
a covenant with an expiration date is hard to dispute.
EAR:
I disagree… it has no
expiration date! It is an ‘everlasting covenant’ just as you
say, but the Jews
as a Nation are presently blind and deaf to the Covenant of
salvation (as a
Nation), until they repent…. Read Hosea… or my Letter ‘The Third Day” posted with this one.
You wrote, "So,
on the night before He died for our sins, Jesus confirmed
the New Covenant…"
But Jesus said it was a NEW covenant. "Confirm" means
the
covenant was already in place; it will be a covenant that
already exists that
will be confirmed. Jesus did not "confirm." He
"instituted" or "established" a new covenant.
EAR:
The ‘New
Covenant’ had already been ‘named’
as such, and announced
by Jeremiah
during the Jews period of Exile in Babylon, it
would not be instituted until
‘after those days’ of exile.Read ‘the
letter’ Jeremiah wrote to the
exiles in Jeremiah
29, and ‘theBook’ he wrote to themin
Jeremiah 30–33;
these are ‘the
books’ written by Jeremiah that Daniel had been reading
before his long
prayer, (Dan. 9:2) which informed him that their Exile
would last for 70
years, and that God would make a New Covenant
with his people after
their exile. Daniel was praying to His ‘Covenant-keeping
God’ (Dan. 9:4) just before Gabriel was ‘commanded’
(9:23) to give Daniel
the time-table for this ‘New Covenant’ of Salvation that would
be delivered to
the Jews via the Messiah, who would be cut off to confirm it.
If one believes that
the seventieth week concluded in AD 34, you must necessarily
believe that the
six "agenda items" in Daniel 9:24 have been completed.
Are
they?
EAR:Yes, absolutely.
Jesus ascended into heaven
to minister at the heavenly altar to act as High Priest. Read
Hebrew 9:11–15. His
work is complete.
Not
with the blood of goats and
calves, but with
His own blood He
entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having
obtained eternal redemption…
(Heb. 9:12)
This hope we have as an anchor of the soul,
both sure and steadfast, and which
enters the Presence behind the veil where the
forerunner has entered for
us, even Jesus, having become High Priest forever
according to the order of
Melchizedek. (Hebrews
6:19–20)
I
wait for His 2nd
Coming in
power and glory.The
Jews will repent
when they are revived by the
Holy Spirit on the Third Day, (Hosea 6:1–3); This is when the
Holy Spirit will
open a fountain for Israel for their sin and uncleanness (cf.
Zechariah
12:1–13:1), when the ‘breath’ (mentioned eight times in
Ezekiel 37:1–10) enters
into them and they ‘live’ Ezek. 37:14
That these are all
complete takes more imagination than I have. The seeds
were planted 2,000
years ago, but the work is not complete.
For us it's mostly
academic, since the rapture occurs first. Our
responsibility is to be
reconciled with God through Christ, and to grow up in all
things in Him.
EAR:
It is only academic if you
believe in the rapture! So, I guess you
only read books that
agree with your Dispenationalist dogma! Steve,
when I first began
writing for 5 Doves in 2003, more than 20 years ago, there
were many letters posted
on this site by Bible scholars who taught me a lot about the
unfulfilled prophetic
scriptures relating to the future, and the Messianic
interpretation of Daniel’s
prophecy of 70 weeks. Unfortunately, those Bible teachers
seems to have been
scared away; and since those days most of the letters posted
on 5 Doves; are
from a Dispensational point of view, which are more interested
looking for Antichrist
rather than the return of our LORD! I find those letters
demean the completed
work of Salvation, suffered by my Lord and Saviour.