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You wrote: “After the rapture God turns his focus back on Israel and Daniels 70th week.”

For your consideration:

Daniel and Daniel’s 70 weeks

[snip]

.......With this Daniel 7 comes to a close, but there are a few more verses we need to consider. Our study continues in Daniel 9, with part of the “70 weeks” prophecy. Daniel 9:24-27 is of concern:

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. Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah 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. 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.

Many have written on the subject of how the coming of Jesus precisely fulfilled the timing of this passage on terms of the first 69 weeks, and we have no reason to dispute or discuss that here. What is at issue is the last or 70th week. The dispensational paradigm holds that this 70th week is on hold until a future time called the Tribulation. I disagree.

The 70th week, or last 7-year period, transpired around the crucifixion of Jesus (ending around the time of Paul’s conversion), giving the Jews time to accept him as Messiah (during which the punishment for this rejection was determined). The war on the Jews from 66-73 AD (which some preterists argue is the 70th week, and may have allowed a 40 year gap, programmatic of the Exodus, for Jesus to still be accepted, between 30-70) need not be part of Daniel’s 70 and indeed likely is not (a point Ice, in his book noted below, fails to grasp).

Gerhard Hasel in a study for Andrews University Seminary Studies titled “The Hebrew Masculine Plural For ‘Weeks’...” notes that the grammar of the verse is done in a way that is “purposeful and by design so as to stress the unitary whole, the totality, and the completeness” of the 70 week block. The weeks “cannot be split apart in such a way as to separate the final ‘one week’ “ as dispensationalists require.

Recently in response to this view, futurist Thomas Ice in The End Times Controversy defended the dispensational view against specific preterist arguments; we will comment only where Ice addresses claims that we hold to, which turns out to not be much. The first point needful to address is how the list of six requirements relates to the first century:

“to finish the transgression” — It can be agreed with Ice that this refers to a specific sin of the Jewish people. Ice must see this in his view as the rejection of the Messiah and does not even ask what a preterist would suggest; we would say that it is the broader sin of rejecting YHWH as He really is and for what He really offered. Rejection of YHWH was the hallmark of Jewish history.
“to make an end of sins” — Without any explanation, Ice says that this can only be after the installation of Messiah in the millenial reign; so he thus admits that even by his view, this is not something that Israel will realistically accomplish in that future period he sees. Thus it is just as well to say that it is a deadline given to Israel of the ancient world, to stop sinning or else.
“to make reconciliation for iniquity” — Ice makes no specific dispensational application here; it is little more than a restatement of “clean up your act” in the phrase above. However, Ice makes a critical error [315] in saying, “if [these three phrases] are descriptive of elements that have yet to be fulfilled, then the seventy weeks of Daniel have yet to be fulfilled” and week 70 is yet in the future. This misses the salient point that these are but goals for Israel to meet, and there is nothing to say that they will succeed in meeting them prior to the Messiah’s arrival. In other words Ice begs the dispensational question yet again.
“to bring in everlasting righteousness” — Ice once again merely states what he thinks this must be in his futurist view; for the preterist, this is as well to say that warning is given of the need to recognize and honor the Messiah when he comes in the first century AD.
“to seal up the vision and prophecy” — Ice notes Gentry’s view that Christ did this on earth, and offers a response that this cannot be since there were later visions and prophecies in the New Testament. What this fails to note (again!) is that the six phrases are contingent upon Israel “doing it right” and recognizing the Messiah. As I note here, “Plan A” would have Jesus recognized as Messiah and enthroned as King of Israel — and thus, there would be no need for any more prophecy. Because we have “Plan B” instead, the need for prophecy continued a bit longer.
“to anoint the most Holy” — Gentry relates this to Jesus’ baptism; I would say it would relate to the anointing of Jesus as king that should have happened under “Plan A”. Ice objects to Gentry in a way that relates to my own view, noting that “most holy” is “never used of a person, only of things” — but then turns right around and quotes someone else who says that it refers to “Daniel’s people Israel”! We are constrained to ask what about the words “most holy” keeps it from being applied to the person of Jesus. That it was used before only to apply to the Temple means nothing against such an identification.
In defense of the idea of a “gap” separating the 70th week, Ice’s bibliography is notably missing Hasel’s article (which defeats his weak plea that because it says the seventieth week come “after” the 62, a “gap” is implied).
He presents a defense for a gap that is so absurd as to be comical. He claims that “Israel had violated the sabbatical year 70 times” — based on a deductive reading of 2 Chron. 36:20-1, which says that the land “enjoyed its sabbaths” while the Jews were gone 70 years!
It’s bad enough that he bases this logic on deduction alone, but he argues that since Judah was in the land about 800 years (1400 BC-c.600 BC), and they must have ignored the Sabbath during only 490 of those years to earn that punishment, there must have been “gaps” in their observation of the Sabbath!
Even if this numerological fantasy could be substantiated with actual data showing that the Israelites historically failed to observe exactly 490 years of Sabbaths, it ignores the point that this did not make for any sort of “gap” in the punishment (!) of 70 years in exile, which is the only number that is actually declared by God!
It is not as though we have a prophecy that says, “you will be disobedient about the Sabbath for a period of 490 years” (not, “a period that adds up to 490 years”!) is dated to 1400 BC and from which we can look forward and say, “ah, they failed to observe Sabbaths for 5 weeks in 1010 BC, then 3 weeks in 1009,” etc.!
An irony in this is that Ice quotes Wood as noting that Daniel would see the 70 weeks as represented in the 70 years of Exile — a period which was NOT an exile of 69 years, followed by a “gap”, and a remaining year that was not served for years afterwards! His own quoted analogy only reinforces the preterist position denying that a gap can be allowed!

“The people of the prince that will come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary” — obviously this is fully interpretable as the Romans under Vespasian (with Titus perhaps, as Vespasian’s son, qualifying as the “prince”) destroying Jerusalem and the Temple. It was so interpreted by Josephus, by ancient rabbis, and by medieval rabbis [Miller, 268]. It’s also possible to see Jesus as the “prince” using Rome’s armies to judge Israel (as God used Assyria and Babylon previously) and noting Jewish responsibility for the war, thus making the Jews the “people”. Amusingly, Ice disdains this identification because Christ was earlier “cut off” — as if Jesus had no power to do anything in heaven!
“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.” — the dispensational paradigm sees this as a case of the Antichrist (”he”) signing a peace treaty with the Jews, and then halfway through the Tribulation period putting a stop to re-established Jewish sacrifices. But this interpretation works its way by applying the pronoun “he” back to the “prince” of the people who will come. “Prince” is of course the most obvious antecedent, if placement is all that is to be considered, but the object of the phrase is the people, not the prince.
The week here may or may not be identical with the 70th week. Whatever the case, we have two possible interpretations: 1) it was in the midst of the 7-year war — in 70 — that “he”, meaning not the prince of the people, but rather, the Messiah in verse 26 — confirmed (which is to say, verified — the word here means to strengthen or prevail, not merely make or create) the covenant with “many” (if the Jews are in mind, why not say the “your people”? — on the other hand, cf. Matthew 26:28, “For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.”) by delivering the promised judgment against Jerusalem, predicted in more detail in the Olivet Discourse. In the middle of this week — in 70 — this God-ordained judgment “cause[d] the sacrifice and the oblation to cease”. Ice [338] calls upon Hebrew lexicologists who note that by the rules of Hebrew, the closest antecedent is the one that is referred to, and here, that cannot be the “Messiah” but the prince, in his view, the Antichrist. For what it is worth, liberal commentators who make the “Messiah” out to be Onias III or another Maccabbean-era priest see the “Messiah” as the one who confirmed the covenant; see Hartman and DiLella, 251, and Lacocque, 993, who presumably are not dunderheads when it comes to Hebrew. Ice lets the cat out of the bag though when he admits that a sound “contextual reason” overrules that rule. Knowing that this traps him, he alleges that only “theological bias” will make the move, and in a sense he is right — just as “bias” compels him to reject it, and also compels him to on the one hand admit that the “people” of the prince to come were indeed the Romans under Titus, but the “prince” himself is not Titus, but a future Antichrist! In this light, let it be asked who is doing the less tortuous gymnastics to satisfy their “bias”!
There is one final point that shows Jesus to be the one who “confirms the covenant”: The NT thought so! Compare:
“And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week...” (Dan. 9:27)
“Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Matt. 20:28; cf. Matt. 26:28, Mark 10:45, 14:24)
Ice misses this because he again vets preterist thought through a dispensational lens, thinking that we believe that Christ here makes a covenant with the Jews! He also clearly does not recognize Matthew’s adaptation of Daniel’s “many” to Christians [340]. It is also amazing that Ice can quote Wood as saying that Christ cannot be the one referenced because Christ did not “make” a covenant; God did. Daniel says that the person will confirm (not make) the covenant, which is exactly what Christ did in his role as broker of the covenant, and would also be what he did in calling down judgment on Jerusalem in 70.

On the side now, what of claims that Daniel 9:24-27 was fulfilled in the time of Antiochus? Attempts to prove this are rather labored and overstated. A typical example tells us:

That the “anointed one” who is “cut off” is one of many of Anticohus’ rivals whom he killed;
That Antiochus’ invasion of Israel amounts to the “destruction” of Jerusalem and the Temple, when in fact he was let into Jerusalem by his own supporters without a fight (Jos. Ant. 12.5.3) and only plundered money from it, and later also plundered the Temple and profaned it, but did not destroy it;
Thereby also read into these events a “desolation”
In short, to meld Daniel 9:24-27 into the Maccabbean era requires making a rose garden out of a weed and vastly overstating the events of 167-164 BC.
This leaves Daniel 12:1-3:

And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.

The last resurrection? No, for what is referred to is many being raised — and this matches Matthew’s resurrected saints. Indeed Matthew’s use of “many” implies a hearkening back to Daniel (though he does not mention those resurrected to shame and contempt, who would probably not be eligible to walk around anyway).

HERE: http://www.tektonics.org/esch/danman.html

The Authenticity of Daniel: A Defense
http://www.tektonics.org/af/danieldefense.html