I no longer believe in Gaps in Daniel chapters 9 and 11

I've held that view in the past, but I've slowly come to abandon it.  For that reason I changed the name of this blog, I sadly don't know a way to create a full new URL without rending all existing links to this Blog dead.

I had cited Hippolytus as an early source on Gaps in Daniel.  Thing is he's the only Early Church Father to hold this view, he seems to have invented it.  And while I still agree with him more then most Church Fathers on a number of End Times issues, his bizarre views on the Song of Solomon hurts his credibility.  And his view on when the 69th Week ended does not agree with anyone today, he ended it at Jesus Birth.

I first started work on this 70th Week study when I was still against seeing the 70th Week as already fulfilled.  But as you can see my open minded study of the evidence lead me to become convinced that yes the 70th Week was fulfilled from 30-37 AD.  I talked more on that subject here.

I have also shown that Daniel 11:36-45 was about Augustus.

Gaps have nothing to do with making Daniel 2 or 7 End times, they are in nature incredibly broad symbolic visions of all history.  But the visions in Hebrew Daniel are usually more narrow in scope.  The way in which Revelation draws on Daniel is only really explicitly to Daniel 7 and to some extent 12.  That Daniel 12 is jumping from the first to second Advent isn't a Gap really, it is again a broader in scope prophecy.

Matthew 24 is indisputably End Times.  The basis for making material from Hebrew Daniel end times relevant is Jesus saying "The Abomination of Desolation spoken of by Daniel The Prophet".  Thing is while terminology similar to that is arguably used in the last verse of Daniel 9, the exact phrase is used in Daniel only in 11 and 12, and in 11 it's not the part any reasonable person argues is before the gap but in the part clearly about Antiochus Epiphanes.

Now I do think it's possible that the 70th Week and Daniel 11:36-45 could have end times relevance via Double Fulfillment.  And I think to an extent even Daniel 12's End Times relevance is via double fulfillment.  But the only thing I see absolutely required to happen again is what Jesus specifically refereed to.

But in the case of the 70th Week I've come to view that as only being applicable if the entire 70 Weeks is fulfilled twice, which I have argued a possible model for on this blog.  If that model doesn't bear out, then Daniel 9 is not End Times relevant.

If Daniel 11's relevance is via double fulfillment  Then when it starts being End Times relevant may have to be pushed sooner, because again it's the phrase "Abomination of Desolation" that is the key to Daniel's End Times relevance.

One thought I just started considering is that maybe two End Times Abomination of Desolation events will happen, one that seems more like a direct repeat of what Epiphanes did at the start of the 70th Week, and then what II Thessalonians 2 and Revelation 13 depicts at the Midway Point.  (Update Sept2016: I've now considered an entirely new take on the Abomination of Desolation in Daniel 11.)

Going back to Daniel 9:24, let's look again at what the purpose for the 70 Weeks are.

Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.

It is commonly argued that the Second Advent is required for this to be fully fulfilled, that certain aspects of this clearly aren't fulfilled already.   In fact I've even seen some Christians try to remove the First Advent from this altogether, like Chris White.  To me that grossly undervalues what happened in 30 AD in a way no Christian, no matter how Futurist and Premillennial they are, should be willing to do.

If you think "make an end of sins" means no one will be sinning anymore then you have to move the end of the 70 Weeks to after the Millennium, not before it.  I would be curious to hear someone argue such a theory.  This is referring to Jesus paying the price for Sin on The Cross, when He said "It Is Finished".

Some take "seal up the vision and prophecy" to mean no more Prophecies left to be fulfilled.  Again you have to move the 70th Week to after the Millennium in that case.

I think that the anointing of the most Holy can be seen as fulfilled at Pentecost.

Every argument that the first advent wasn't enough to fulfill that requires an interpretation that places the fulfillment after not before the Millennium.

I feel there is a perfectly very real sense in which all those details were satisfied in 30-37 AD.

In my past study on the first 69 Weeks proving they ended in 30 AD.  I justified the gap concept not with the usual Pre-Tirb/Dispensationalist the Gap is the Church Age logic.  But by arguing that since it revolved around The Temple, the Gap was from when the Second Temple lost it's Holy Anointing when the Veil was Torn till when the future Temple will be consecrated.  I brought that up in some other posts too.

I feel ashamed of that argument now, because it implies what the Veil being Torn achieved is gonna be undone.  I won't remove that argument from that post because it's intent was to refute Chris White which it still does  At any-rate when studying the possible dual fulfillment I realized it didn't revolve around The Temple as much as I thought.  In fact it's barely mentioned at all.