If You Think Daniel's 70 Weeks Have Passed...
So for my friends who say all Daniel's 70 weeks have been fulfilled, explain to me when this happened: Dan.9:27 And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator."
Chapter 12, I would note, says these events take place at the "end of days": 11 And from the time that the regular burnt offering is taken away and the abomination that makes desolate is set up, there shall be 1,290 days. 12 Blessed is he who waits and arrives at the 1,335 days. 13 But go your way till the end. And you shall rest and shall stand in your allotted place at the end of the days.”
So the burnt offering is not recognized here as being taken away by Messiah on the cross, and then the abomination of desolation does not happen until 70 A.D.? Or another view is that the Abomination of Desolation is the desolator who ends the sacrifices and this happens in 70 A.D? Then how does that 3.5 years plus 3.5 years work? And how is that the "end of days?"
That "desolator" Jesus spoke of in Matthew 24:15 when he said: "So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand)" So as of this it was yet future. Paul mentioned him in 2 Thes. 2 when he wrote:
Now concerning
THE COMING OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST
and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers,
2 not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. 3 Let no one deceive you in any way. For
THAT DAY WILL NOT COME, unless the rebellion comes first, and
THE MAN OF LAWLESSNESS IS REVEALED, the son of destruction.
We read here that, in conjunction with the desolator, the man of destruction, being revealed, in Daniel 12 it is at "the end of days." This passage too ties this event as end of days, in fact near the Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, as Paul wrote here. How does THAT fit in with Daniel's 70th Week in the PAST? The answer is, it does not! Daniel 12, Matthew 24 and here in 2 Thessalonians 2 say it all happens in the end! Not a couple thousand years ago! We are not done with 2 Thessalonians though. Paul confirms still more for us that this desolator was not an emperor in the past:
4 who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.
No one can show you historically when emperor Titus nor anyone else did the above. He had the second temple burned to the ground, but he never did as described for "the end of days" right before "the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."
And if someone still wants to tell you this was Titus, ask him or her when this happened concerning that or any emperor:
8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming. 9 The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, 10 and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.
We can further bolster these events with what is described for instance in Revelation 13, etc. The amillennial person will undergo great exegetical gymnastics to demonstrate how Revelation was NOT written by John over 20 years AFTER the 2nd Temple was destroyed and will labor mightily to place these events in past history, but it is my hope that the former verses and simple logic from plain text demonstrates Daniel's 70th Week is yet future.