I’m very open-minded about the Christian faith and all the strengths of its arguments (that’s not the word I mean to use). I’m going to pursue a life of scholarly and personal philosophical study, b/c it’s incredibly engaging.
To be more specific, I’ve examined all the prophecies of messiah from all viewpoints, and choose to believe that Jesus of Nazareth does not fulfill them. I’ve done a search of the SDMB and looked at some old posts on Messianic prophecy, and none of them deal specifically with Daniel 9:27.
I think that I have a very good understanding of many different views on messianic prophecies, from all angles, but I want to stress that I don’t want to start a debate about messianic prophecies here- I read old posts, and great points were made, but I have a really good understanding already- I’m very aware on this topic, at least :rolleyes: 
Daniel’s prophecy of Ch.9, the only ‘time-oriented’ prophecy that supposedly refers to messiah, is a troubling one to understand
25 Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince :smack: shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.26 And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah :smack: be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.27 And 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, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.
I’ve read about it from many different angles, and even though I don’t understand all the math and science and scroll-interpretation behind it, I don’t believe that it’s a buch of crud made up for hocus pocus- but I have MAJOR reservations against it. I agree with sceptical Jewish scholars who argue that King James and other translations, as we see above, who substitute the phrase ‘the Messiah’ in place of ‘the anointed’ are BIASED and MISINTERPRETED; the term Messiah didn’t even exist when Daniel wrote the prophecy, and so he may very well have only referred to a coming KING.
I want a secular but non-biased look at this prophecy, one that considers these things specifically: assuming that Daniel was not referring specifically to the rebuilding of Jerusalem that Christian scholars point to supp happening in 450 BC (the month of Nisan in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes that Nehemiah refers to in Nehemiah 2:1), what other rebuildings of Jerusalem’s streets and wall in troublesome times could he be referring to? What else could the 483 ‘weeks’ represent? And assuming that he never intended the end of the paragraph to be applied to end-times prophecy (the one he refers to as ‘he’ being assumed to be the Antichrist by some and the sacrifice of desolation in the temple and the treaty he made with Israel), what else could those things refer to; also, let’s discuss what he could have meant with the flood at the end?
I also want to bring up another reservation I have against this prophecy- in order to fully understand that God supposedly let Daniel know that ‘Messiah’ would be ‘cut off’ exactly 483 years after the rebuilding of Jerusalem and it’s walls, it required 20th century collaboration between fields of knowledge such as astronomy, knowledge of the history of the reigns of kings in the time of Nehemiah and Daniel and so forth, studying of scrolls not discovered until the 19th century or so, and careful analysis of the combined prohecies of Daniel and other books of the Old Testament. It’s only in our incredible age of information that we could possibly figure out this supposed timeline of exactly 483 ‘years’ to the day from an event that may have quite possibly happened (decree to rebuild Jerusalem March 14th 450 b.c. or so) to another event that may have quite possibly happened (triumphal entry of Jesus of Nazareth on April 6th 32 AD or so).
Matthew was a Jewish man who wrote his book to convince the Jews that Jesus was Messiah. All the apostles at the time had the widely-publicized Greek bible, correct? (the name fails me- please correct me, it’s fascinating!) John wrote a non-synoptic gospel decades later, he was a different man with a loving heart with a different purpose, and he referenced different OT prophecies in addition.
When the apostles originally went out and spread the gospel, according to the book of Acts, and gained Jewish converts, the emphasis was on the fact that Jesus fulfilled the OT prophecies, and Christians now believe that when he returns he will fulfill the final set, that of the Conquering King (it’s actually quite incredible a belief, and inspires awe), in which time he will also finish the final ‘week’ of Daniel’s prophecy, the last 7 years of the 490. But I’m getting sidetracked!
The apostles and the Jewish converts they gained by quoting and pointing out prophecies from this widely-publicized greek bible (such as Paul and Apollos) they did so by using the prophecies, we rightly assume, that Matthew and John refer to in their Gospels.
Descendent of Abraham, Isaac, jacob, judah, david, solomon
Born of a virgin
from bethlehem
preceded by a forerunner, elijah reborn
preached in galileh
rejected by his own
did miracles, healing
betrayed by a friend for 30 pieces/silver
accused by liars
abandoned by his followers
led away as a lamb to the slaughter
hands and feet pierced
burial
resurrection
asscenscion
To reiterate, I don’t want a debate over the veracity of the OT prophecies, etc.- I know the angles, the arguments, the history, etc., and that’s not my goal. My point is that the only times in which it seems that Jesus and his followers refer to Daniel are:
1.) Jesus very much ref. to himself as ‘Son of Man’ -and-
2.) in his Olivet discourse, he supp. refers to the end times in which the sacrifice that causes abominations will occur, at which time Israelites should flee for the end is coming. This is from Daniel 9: 27.
My whole point is that it seems that none of the apostles who referred to OT prophecies and Jesus’s fulfillment of them refer to Daniel’s 483 weeks. Not even John, who may have written Revelations, in which he presents a fascinating look at how OT prophecies from Daniel, Zechariah, Ezekiel, Joel, and prophecies that Jesus supp. gave about the end times in the Olivet discourse all come together in the end. When you put it all together, all the symbolism that John refers to from the OT prophets and the stuff that ties in from Daniel Chapter 9 and the Olivet discourse, it makes me feel awe, I admit, even as a nonbeliever, these guys knew their stuff in any case.
I guess my point is that it seems as if the most probable way a believer would look at it is that God didn’t intend for believers 2,000 years ago to understand everything about Daniel Ch. 9, that he intended for humans to develop astronomy, historical documentation, mathematical precision, archaelogical knowledge, and prophetic coherency to the point where finally, in the 20/21st century, we fully understand how Jesus rode that donkey 483 years to the day after that city’s walls were rebuilt, even if it took us 2,000 years to figure out.
Such an argument would seem crazy to some but encouraging to others as another sign that we have solved one of the last pieces of the puzzle and thus could be nearing the end times.
