There is no such thing as a seven year tribulation! It does not exist.
RE: Daniel's 70th week from Daniel 9:27
But in the middle of the week He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering.
The week is a seven year time period. The patterns were set down in the Torah in the form of shemita cycles.
Leviticus 25:4 But in the seventh year the land is to have a sabbath of rest, a sabbath to the LORD. Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards.
Two witnesses, every matter must be established by at least two witnesses.
John 8:17 In your own Law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is true. 18 I am one who testifies for myself; my other witness is the Father, who sent me.
Now two witnesses from Revelation
Revelation 1:19 Write the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which will take place after this. (Yeshua)
Revelation 4:4 After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven. And the first voice which I heard was like a trumpet speaking with me, saying, Come up here, and I will show you things which must take place after this.
After Jochanan's (Johns) vision, after the crucifixion, after the resurrection and after the ascension!
Notice there are no references to a seven year time period in Revelation, you'll find time, times and half a time, three and a half days (years actually) and 42 months, all equal three and a half years. So what happened to the other half?
Back to Daniel...
Daniel 9:7 He will confirm a covenant with many for one seven. In the middle of the seven he will put an end to sacrifice and offering.
In the middle of the 'seven' He (Yeshua) will put an end to sacrifice and offering. (It is finished John 19:30).
Now for some fun, that is determining the 'middle of this week'.
This current year on the Hebrew calendar is 5773. The next shemita year is 5775. How do you determine a shemita year? Multiply (or divide) by seven. 7 x 825 = 5775. Now get yourself a Hebrew calendar.
http://www.hebcal.com/hebcal/
The Hebrew year begins on Rosh Hashanah (1 Tishri) so to go to the middle of a week (shemita cycle) count three and a half years and come to Pesach, 15 Nisan (Passover) to arrive at the middle of a week.
Lets start off with the year of the crucifixion, 3790 (30 C.E.).
15 Nisan 3790 is the middle of a/the week here.
3787 is a shemita year, 541 x 7 = 3787, that's 1 Tishri. Add three and a half Hebrew years and you arrive at 15 Nisan 3790. Here's more evidence for you.
From:
http://www.outreachjudaism.org/articles/red-ribbon.html
Why Didnt the Red Ribbon on the Head of the Scapegoat Turn White in 30 C.E.?
Question:
I was wondering about a story that a Hebrew-Christian told me recently. He said that there was a scarlet cloth which would turn white every year when the high priest atoned for the sins of the people. When Jesus died, around 30 A.D., the cloth would no longer turn white when the priest atoned for sins because Jesus was the final atonement. Ive read this story in other sources, and I wondered what you have to say about it.
Answer:
This assertion with which you were confronted has, in the last decade, attracted wide interest in the evangelical world. In fact, I am somewhat surprised that it has taken this long for one of our website visitors to write in with this question.
Despite the popularity this issue has gained in the Christian world in recent years, this contention stands out as one of the most bizarre arguments used by Christian apologists.
What makes this line of reasoning so strange is that it seeks to use the Talmud to prove that Jesus is the messiah. While most are simply surprised to learn that missionaries would depend on the Talmud in order to prove the validity of the Christian religion, in reality, this misuse of rabbinic literature is widespread...
Anyway here's the meat of this article.
Nevertheless, it is essential that we examine this well-worn argument with which you were confronted. In Tractate Yoma 39b, the Talmud quotes a Baraisa1 that discusses numerous remarkable phenomena that occurred in the Temple during the Yom Kippur service. More specifically, the Talmud states that there was a strip of scarlet-dyed wool tied to the head of the scapegoat2 which at times would turn white in the presence of the large crowd gathered at the Temple on the Day of Atonement. When this phenomenon occurred, the Jewish people perceived this miraculous transformation as a heavenly sign that their sins were forgiven. The Talmud relates, however, that 40 years before the destruction of the Second Temple the scarlet colored strip of wool did not turn white. The text of the Talmud which missionaries quote states,
The Rabbis taught that forty years prior to the destruction of the Temple the lot did not come up in the [high priests] right hand nor did the tongue of scarlet wool become white... (Talmud, Tractate Yoma 39b).
Citing the above statement, missionaries contend that the year the scarlet ribbon ceased to turn white coincides with the time that Jesus was crucified. After all, they argue, 40 years prior to the destruction of the Second Temple corresponds to the year 30 C.E,3 which is approximately the time of Jesus crucifixion. They conclude, therefore, that the cessation of the whitening of the scarlet ribbon clearly indicates that God was no longer accepting animal sacrifices, and the Jewish people, therefore, needed to turn to Jesus as their only avenue for atonement. Ultimately, this argument asserts that the reason why the scarlet strip of wool did not turn white in the year 30 C.E. was due to the fact that the sins of the Jews were not forgiven because they did not accept Jesus as their messiah...
End:
Or you could just go to The Encyclopedia Judaica to see the reference Jesus died 30 C.E. Your main library should have a copy.
Now, this makes finding the identity of the ruler (anti-Christ) that much easier.
Next!
What is the end times tribulation?
THE SEVEN-YEAR TRIBULATION PERIOD
The Seven Year Tribulation Exists!
Remember, if Scripture has to be denied or discarded for the doctrine to work, then the doctrine is a doctrine of demons.
Actually Revelation explains the period of seven years. Here goes...
As you probably know, Revelation is a timeline of a series of events punctuated by parenthetical explanations of the events and characters being portrayed. The books time sequence of things is emphasized by the sequential opening of the seals, one after the other, the blowing of the seven trumpets, one after the other, and the pouring out of the vials in order. Probably need to explain all seven years to get the context of the last 3½ years.
1st 3½ years
The beast that ascends out of the bottomless pit is first mentioned in Revelation 11:7 when he kills the two witnesses after their 3½ year testimony.
And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days [=3½ years], clothed in sackcloth... And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascends out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. Revelation 11:3,7.
The killing of the two witnesses takes place near the end of the trumpet sound of the sixth angel (the second woe) and just before the sound of the seventh angel (the third woe) in Rev. 11:14. This marks the end of the first 3½ years (what Jesus in Matthew 24:8 called the beginning of sorrows). So the first 3½ years are from Rev 6:1 through 11:14.
Second 3½ years
From that point on, after the sounding of the seventh angel (the third woe), this beast is allowed to have power to continue 3½ years (Rev 13:5).
And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him? And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months. Rev 13:4-5.
The beast first appears at the end of the first 3½ years but is given "power to continue" during the second 3½ years (Rev 13:5).
The verses just preceding Revelation 11:14 map to the midst of the week when he takes away the temple sacrifice (Dan 9:27). God calls this former political world ruler (who conquers Rev 6:2) the beast beginning with Rev 11:7 because in the second 3½ years, he as God sits in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God (2 Thess 2:4) and is therefore worshiped. (Rev 13:4).
The second 3½ years are from Rev 11:15 through 19:21.
Too bad you took so much of your time chasing rabbits when it might have been put to work advancing the interests of The Kingdom of The God.
The problem is that your argument (rebate-style, that is) is deeply flawed in that it rests on other ephemeral suppositions not in agreement with Holy Scripture.
(1) The seven-year tribulation begins when: (a) The God absolutely determines to initiate His thlipsis on them that trouble those whom He has save (2 Thes. 1:6); (b) the last person to be saved under the New Covenant is saved according to His Own Will (Eph. 2:8); (c) He removes the bodies and souls of all His regenerated believer-disciple-priests from the wrath and corruption to come, as He promised (1 Thess. 2: ), those whom Christ has confessed before The Father and all His angels (Mt. 10:32, Lk. 12:8); (c) The Holy Ghost, the last restraining influential Person left on the Earth removes Himself out of this kosmos back to The Heaven (2 Thes. 2:6,7); (d) the second person of the unholy trinity, no longer hindered, assumes power and is revealed as the man of sin the anti-christ (anti meaning in place of)(Rev. 13:11) proclaiming himself as deity, invests himself as The God in the (reconstructed) Temple of The God (2 Thes. 2:4,8,); and (e) this impostor declares that peace on the earth has been instituted when as in fact the whole kosmos is now at war with The True God, with His Anointed One, and with the Holy Ghost (Jer. 6:14, 1 Thes. 5:3).
Thus begins the Tribulation, the vengeance of The God against the sin-brimmed earth and people, of which the last approximately three and a half years is termed "The Great Tribulation."
(2) The crucifixion took place in 33 AD, not 30 AD, or CE if you prefer that style and cannot bear that Jesus Christ is LORD of all.
(3) You might also take note that The God's progressively revealed Word (not wholly available to Daniel, nor understood by him though he was a diviner)(Dan. 12:9,13). Through the eyes of the Apostles illuminated by the Holy Ghost, we see, sometimes more so than they, as we read, exegete, watch, pray, and experience The God'smessage to us.>p> As studiers and practitioners of The God's dealing with mankind throughout the ages, we do not take counsel with the Talmud (the annals of a now-dead religion) or the Judaic Encyclopedia, the writings of Patristic Fathers (they are also thoughts of dead men, not of the Living Word), nor the Great Catechism of a tradition based on it (an accumulation of some 1700+ years of doctrinal error), and certainly not the musings and mysteries recounted in old wives' tales; for none of those are verbally inspired, inerrant, infallible, plenarily given and complete, providentially preserved, and magnified in The (3rd) Heaven by Him above His Own Name. And it is that that we trust alone in this end of the age time, as ever. And though even our best volume of the English language is widely received, broadly distributed, faithful in translation, marvellous in style and form, yet we do not completely trust in any man's explanation of it without comparison of it with careful exegesis of the original languages with a literal/historical/grammatical interpretation of literal and figurative-literal language; because even the KJV is not inspired. but simply a good translationof the more precise original tongues in which The Holy Ghost elected to express himself to us for the record.
(4) It takes too much effort to reargue all the errors of your propositions, than to move forward with others. in this dedicated and defined dispensational caucus to examine and discuss Biblical truths more deeply and lovingly than discussions such as you have presented.
Perhaps considering moving your disputation to another arena more tolerant of your presuppositions would be more accepting? That would be nice of you.
Or else stay and learn with us without trying to undercut the basic premises, or perhaps come to understand salvational truths?
Respectfully --
Next!