TEACHER: Ken Hicks
SCRIPTURES: Daniel 9:20-27
BOTTOM LINE: Jesus didn’t come JUST to fulfill Prophecies! Jesus came to change the lives and destinies of mankind!
QUESTION: Did You Know that God spoke thru Daniel to announce WHEN Jesus would come, long before the Birth of Christ?
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Daniel shares about events that are still in the FUTURE for us, that are also confirmed by predicted that have already taken place.
Through His Prophets, God spoke of this King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who would come to change our lives. One of the most prominent of those Prophets was DANIEL. Daniel was a little different than the other OT Prophets when it came to The Messiah. Most of the other OT Prophets told of WHO the Messiah was … or WHERE He was to be born … or HOW He would live/die. Daniel spoke more of WHEN the Messiah would come!
in Daniel, God gave us 3 separate, powerful announcements of WHEN Jesus was to come.
The 1st 2 Prophecies painted in pretty broad strokes, describing all the various Kingdoms that would rise & fall before Jesus would be born.
And the 3rd … what we see here at the end of chapter 9 … speaks of 70 weeks. Daniel really paints this picture here with absolutely incredible precision about when Jesus would begin, and then complete his earthly ministry.
- The FIRST of the Prophecies
Those 1st of the 2 Prophecies were birthed in a Dream that God gave Nebuchadnezzar, which remember all his magicians, enchanters and sorcerers and astrologers couldn’t help him with. We saw in chapter 2 how God used Daniel to share the meaning of the dream about the crazy statue.
- The SECOND of the Prophecies
The 2nd Prophecy came about in a vision Daniel had where he saw 4 Beasts in chapter 7. These 4 beasts represented the very same Kingdoms the statue point to … Babylon, the Medes & Persians, the Greeks, and Rome.
Daniel paints this portrait of Jesus AFTER these 4 great Kingdoms rise … one after and another … and the Messiah would arise during the time of the 4th Great Kingdom … and HE would be given a Kingdom that would NEVER be destroyed.
- The THIRD of the Prophecies
The 3rd Prophecy that we’ve been reading this week in Daniel 9 is all about WHEN Jesus was to come. Different than the first 2, Daniel sets a specific time table for Jesus’ coming!
This is often called … THE 70 WEEKS OF PROPHECY.
Most theologians and commentaries believe that the 7’s is a group of 7 years. So 70 7’s would be 490 years, and God is declaring that when that 490 years is over …
- He will finish transgression.
- Has that happened yet? YES … at the cross!
- He will put an end to sin.
- Has that happened yet? YES … at the cross!
- He will atone for wickedness.
- Has that happened yet? YES … at the cross!
- He will bring everlasting righteousness.
- He will Seal up Vision & Prophecy
- When Jesus died and rose from the Grave, He fulfilled all the prophecies about Him in the OT.
- And He will Anoint the Most Holy
- What is the Most Holy? It could be Jesus … or it could be Us. Part of the reason Jesus came was to establish His Church of which we are a part He made His Church Holy … to be set apart!
In other words: when Jesus died on the cross for our sins, God declared THAT was the time that the Messiah would put an end to the Tyranny of Sin and fulfill all righteousness for us.
APPLICATION:
The accuracy and detail of these Prophecies is so powerful, and yet there were skeptics for lots of years that truly tried to claim that the book of Daniel MUST have been written decades AFTER Jesus rose from the dead.
The fact that the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint [a Greek translation of the OT] … both known to have existed about 300 years before Jesus … BOTH included the book of Daniel … which has pretty much silenced those critics.
And it’s because of the incredible accuracy of Prophecies like this from Daniel that many can believe God’s Word and God’s Promises are Trustworthy … but REMEMBER … Jesus didn’t come JUST to fulfill Prophecies! Jesus came to change the lives and destinies of mankind!