The whole idea of the popular theory is rooted in three words found in verse 27. "One week", and "he."
Supposedly, the period of the "one week" applies to the final seven-year period of great tribulation at the end of time. This is what is referred to as the gap theory. In other words, the first 69 weeks were fulfilled when "Messiah was cut off-" or when Jesus was crucified. Then there is a gap of 2000+ years before the final week takes place, which is totally illogical, as we will see in few minutes.
The "he" in verse 27, according to the popular interpretation refers not to Jesus Christ, but to a future antichrist who will make a covenant with the Jews during the final seven years of tribulation. This is supposed to take place after the church is raptured away; and in the "midst" of this tribulation the antichrist will "cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease."
Now read carefully, or you'll miss the punch line of the popular interpretation. In order for the antichrist to be able to cause the sacrifices to cease, they must have to be restarted! Therefore, there must be a rebuilt third Jewish temple on the temple mount in old Jerusalem.
A popular Christian magazine called "Endtime," substantiates this popular interpretation with an article titled, "Have the final seven years begun"-May/June 1997, p. 17:
"Three and one-half years after the confirming of the covenant [by the antichrist] the Jews' third Temple must be completed and sacrifice and oblation be in progress. We know this because Daniel 9:27 states that in the middle of the seven years the Antichrist will cause the sacrifice and the oblation to stop."
Did you know that this whole idea of a seven-year tribulation is a fairly recent development? If you were to check out what Protestant Bible scholars taught as recently as one hundred years ago, you would probably find no mention of a seven-year tribulation period at all! But you would find a consensus that the "he" of verse 27 refers to Jesus Christ-not antichrist! And so, this is obviously nothing more than a last ditch effort by Satan to cause a diversion among the professed followers of Christ in these last days, and to cause them to focus on the Middle East rather than heart preparation for the great day of the Lord.
Below you will find 10 points of proof that the "one week" spoken of in Daniel 9:27 does not apply to a future seven-year tribulation period, but to a prophetic period that has already met its fulfillment in the past.
#1 - Daniel's prophecy of 70 weeks covers one complete block of time, each week following the other in sequence, beginning with the Persian Empire (under king Artaxerxes 457 BC) and ending with the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ and the gospel going to the Gentiles.
#2 - It is completely illogical to insert a 2,000-year gap between the 69th and 70th week. There is absolutely nothing in the prophecy itself that would suggest this.
#3 - The 70th week has to follow immediately after the 69th week, or it could not be called the 70th week. Otherwise it would have to be called the 282nd week, because that's how many seven-year periods have passed since the end of the 69th week in 27 AD, and will continue to increase as time goes on.
Allow me to relate an illustration that will bring this point home. Suppose you are in City A, and just as you come out of the Safeway store there is a man driving very slowly up to you. As he begins to roll down his window you know immediately that he wants to ask you for some information because he is an out-of-towner. He says, "Could you please tell me how many miles it is to City B?" And you say, "It's about 70 miles."
This person would naturally conclude from what you told him that it would probably take a little longer than an hour to get there under ideal driving conditions. But lo and behold he finally reaches his destination a week later because there was a 2,000-mile gap between the 69th and the 70th mile. Isn't that ridiculous? It is just as ridiculous to put a 2000-year gap between the 69th and the 70th week of Daniel 9:27.
In a book entitled Daniel, Verse by Verse, I ran across something very interesting on page 138. It says, "One of the most convincing preachers of the gap theory was Harry Ironside. He eloquently described the interval between the sixty-nine and seventy weeks declaring:
"The moment Messiah died on the cross, the prophetic clock stopped. There has not been a tick upon that clock for nineteen centuries. It will not being again until the entire present age has come to an end and Israel will once more be taken up by God. (H. A. Ironside, The Great Parenthesis, p. 23)
"Mr. Ironside convinced thousands of people that the seventieth week was separated from the sixty-ninth. Evidently, he never managed to convince himself. At one stage in his ministry, he stated:
" 'I know that the system I teach is full of holes, but I am too old and have written too many books to make any changes.' (Quoted in Dave Macpherson, The Great Rapture Hoax, p. 86)."
#4 - Daniel 9:27 says nothing about a period of tribulation, or about an antichrist.
#5 - The entire focus of this prophecy is the Messiah, not the antichrist. The popular interpretation applies "the people of the prince" who would come to "destroy the city and the sanctuary" (verse 26) to antichrist, but the verse doesn't say that! It applies rather to the Romans-who under Prince Titus did literally "destroy the city and the sanctuary" in 70 AD.
#6 - The verse in question says, "And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week." Do you know of any place in the Bible where the devil ever confirmed a covenant with anyone and made good on it? No! But God has! Romans 15:8 says that it was Jesus Christ who came "to confirm (or establish) the promises made unto the fathers."
#7 - Gabriel said (to Daniel), "he shall confirm the covenant with many." Matthew 26:28 records the fulfillment: "For this is my blood of the new testament (or "covenant" - Strong's #1242), which is shed for many for the remission of sins." Jesus used the same words because He knew that He was fulfilling Daniel 9:27.
#8 - The 70th week is not future, but history! The last week of the prophecy was from 27 AD to 34 AD. After 3 ½ years of ministry, Christ died in 31 AD-"in the midst of the week." At the moment of His death "the veil of the temple was torn in half from top to bottom" (Matthew 27:51) signifying that all animal sacrifices had ceased to be of value.
#9 - Jesus plainly applied the "abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet" (Matthew 24:15) to the time when His followers were to flee from Jerusalem before the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. Luke 21:20 says, "When ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies," ("The people of the prince" or the soldiers of Titus) "then know that its desolation is near."
#10 - Gabriel told Daniel that the 70-week prophecy literally applied to the Jewish people. He said, "Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city." To apply it any other way is to reinterpret this time prophecy, and if we begin to do that we can come to all kinds of erroneous conclusions.
From 27 AD to 34 AD, Jesus told the 12 disciples to go "to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." (Matthew 10:5, 6)
At the end of the 70 weeks (34 AD) Stephen was the first Christian to be martyred by the Jewish Sanhedrin. Shortly afterward the gospel began to go to the Gentiles in full force. After his Damascus road experience, Saul became Paul, "the apostle of the Gentiles" (Rom. 11:13). About that same time Peter was given a vision and was told that he should not call the Gentiles "common or unclean." (Acts 10:28)
"Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold, and said, It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you (Jews): but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles." Acts 13:46
As we've studied it out, the evidence is overwhelming, isn't it? Point by point every event brought out in the 70-week prophecy has been fulfilled in the past!
One of the main reasons why the Jews failed to receive their Messiah was because their leaders failed to interpret the 70-week prophecy correctly. They failed to recognize the Messiah, who they "cut off" in the "midst of the" 70th week. And the same prophecy is being misapplied today! And just as it had eternal consequences for the Jews, it will have eternal consequences now!
The popular interpretation of this prophecy is nothing more than a smoke screen of the devil to try to hide the truth for these last days.
Most Christians today believe that the church will be raptured away before antichrist "sits in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God". Another reference they believe applies to their third temple theory, and because of this they are not looking for apostasy within the church, but apart from the church, or outside the church, when all the while Satan is working within their very midst, and they don't even know it.
The apostle Paul understood that "the temple of God" here on earth is the Christian church, made up of individual members of the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 6:19, 20; 2 Corinthians 6:16). Are you beginning to catch the spiritual application?
In 2 Thessalonians 2:1-4 it begins to come clear. "Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day {speaking of the second coming of Christ} shall not come, except there come a falling away first {sounds like apostasy within the church to me}, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God."
In other words, antichrist would enter the temple of God, which is the Christian church, and then sit in a position of supreme authority and claim to be "the voice of God on earth."
Oh brothers and sisters, "That wicked" (according to 2 Thess. 4:8) needs to "be revealed (or exposed), whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming."
There are multitudes today whose security rests in the fact that their church is a city of refuge, when in reality, the temple has been taken over by "the son of perdition".
Let's make sure that the Holy Spirit dwells in our temple. Let's
examine ourselves to see "if we be in the faith." Make
sure that "ye are not your own, for ye are bought with a price:
therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are
God's."