Daniel 9:27 — The Confirmed Covenant and the Pattern Already Set at Calvary
Israel's Third Temple This Year? Israel's Immediate Solution Proof
The covenant that is confirmed, restored, or strengthened for one week involves the sacrifices and oblations starting again. That means the Jews begin again to worship with sacrifices and oblations on the temple mount on the first day of the seventieth week, the Day of the Lord.
Daniel 9:27: "he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week... and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease." Israel's covenant of worship, transacted since Sinai through blood (Exodus 24:5-8; Leviticus 17:11). To strengthen that covenant is, by definition, to restore its content: sacrifice and oblation on the altar. The restart of sacrifices is the sign the seventieth week has begun.
But the same actor who confirms the covenant guts it mid-week. It is his signature throughout Daniel — rising "by flatteries" (11:21), working "deceitfully" after every league (11:23), destroying "by peace" (8:25). The confirmation was never sincere. It is a trap sprung on schedule.
Israel has walked this road before. When Judas struck his bargain with the Jewish leaders — "they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver" (Matthew 26:15) — this act of a deceitful betrayal is being repaid. And at the moment Israel's own leadership stood before their true King and true sacrifice, they did not renew their covenant with God — they usurped it: "We have no king but Caesar" (John 19:15). A covenant confirmed with a foreign power, therefore "as you have done it will be done unto you".
This is the pattern the seventieth week repeats, at national scale and at world-historical scale. Jesus said you need to forgive 70x7 times. A week is seven days. So you need to forgive 70 weeks. This is the sin that the Jews still need to deal with. In Matthew 18 you are to go to the person who sinned against you four times. First you go alone. Second you go with two or three others. Third you go with the elders and fourth you tell the church. 4x7x70 = 1,960. Jesus told the Pharisees if they reject him they will have committed the unforgivable sin because there is no forgiveness unless you accept the blood of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the only way to the Father, no man comes to Him but by Him. The Jewish leaders asked for a sign to prove that Jesus was indeed the Messiah and that they had indeed committed the unforgivable sin. Jesus said He would give them the sign of Jonah and sure enough, for forty years beginning in 30 AD the temple records say that the atoning sacrifice was not accepted by God and the odds of that are 2^40 or 1 in a trillion.
After 40 years the Jewish leaders had refused to repent, the temple was destroyed and they were scattered to the four corners of the earth. At this point the process of forgiveness 7x70 times began, and it went through the same escalation process that we see in Matthew 18. 70AD + 1,960 years is 2030 AD. The Jews have little over 3 1/2 years left to repent, maybe as much as 4 full years from today.
Just as Israel's leaders once confirmed allegiance to Caesar in the very act of rejecting their true King, so Israel's current leaders will confirm allegiance to this final ruler in this deceitful act — knowingly or not — of rejecting the true sacrifice their restored altar can never replace. The sacrifices cease not because the confirmation was hollow from the start, a premeditated betrayal timed to the moment of greatest trust — as it was with the kiss in Gethsemane, so it will be with the covenant of the seventieth week.