Daniel's "week" and Revelation's "hour"

I want to look at the relationship between two periods of time in Biblical prophecy.
One is the “week” which appears in Daniel ch9 v27 as the period when “the prince who is to come” will “make a strong covenant with many”. Strictly speaking, this will be “a week of years”, the last in the sequence of “seventy weeks of years”
The other is the “one hour”, which appears in Revelation ch17 v12 as the period when the Beast and the ten kings hold authority.

Are they supposed to be measurements on the same scale? In that case we would have to understand the “hour” as a fragment of the “week”, in proportion, and I’ve seen calculations made on that basis. However, I don’t think that’s the right way to treat them.

My own approach has a different starting-point.
In Daniel, the power of the great hostile king lasts for one week.
In Revelation, the power of the great hostile king lasts for one hour.
In studying the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation, we take it for granted that they’re both talking about the same ruler.
It seems to me, then, that “one week” and “one hour” must be understood as two alternative labels for the same period of time.

In support of this claim, I hope to demonstrate that both periods have the same structure.

Daniel’s “week” is clearly divided into two portions. The king’s attack on the sacrifice and offerings occupies half a week. Presumably the first half of the week has been more peaceful, because the king has been holding back

Is there any evidence that Revelation’s “hour” is divided into two portions? Indeed there is. We are told in ch8 v1 that there was silence in heaven for “half an hour”.
To me, it seems glaringly obvious that if Revelation speaks of “half an hour” in one place, and “one hour” in another place, the first period is meant to be understood as half the second period.

There’s a clue to the character of this “half an hour” in the phrase “silence in heaven”. It is noticeable, in Revelation, that when God’s wrath is intervening upon the earth, it tends to be accompanied by things like “peals of thunder, voices, flashes of lighting and earthquakes”, which is what we find when the “silence” is brought to an end in v5 of the same chapter. In short, God’s wrath on earth is accompanied by noise in heaven. So I take the “silence” to be an oblique way of indicating that this is a period when God is not intervening in wrath upon the earth. This implies that the “half an hour” corresponds with the more peaceful first half of the “week”. And therefore represents the first half of the “hour”.

So there are signs of a similarity of structure, which can now be examined more closely.

What do we know of the first half of the “week”?
We do know of one important feature which covers the whole of the” week” (and therefore goes back to the beginning of it).
We are told that the king “shall make a strong covenant with many”.
Now covenants in the Old Testament, and in the secular history of the same period, are normally about the sealing of a one-to-one relationship between two parties, whether they are equals, as in the case of. Abraham and Abimelech, or whether one is subordinate to another, as when a great king covenants with a client king, or the Biblical God covenants with the people Israel. So I am convinced that the phrase in Daniel does not mean the king makes a single covenant with a large number of people (such as the “peace treaty” proposed by some theorists). I think it means, rather, that he makes a large number of one-to-one covenants, thus building up a network of friends.

We find in Revelation ch17 v13 that the ten kings “give over their power and authority to the Beast”. I believe this is describing the same event as “makes a strong covenant with many”; it is the Revelation equivalent of that phrase. In other words, the Beast does not rule the whole world directly, but dominates much of it through a network of client rulers.
Meanwhile the half-hour of “silence in heaven” also seems to cover the period when the servants of God are being “sealed”. God is making his own preparations and building up his own network.

If the period has two halves, there must be a time of transition between them. In Daniel, this appears to be marked by the moment when the king stops the sacrifice and offerings, setting in motion the “war” phase which occupies the second half-week. We’re not told about the equivalent moment in Revelation, although it’s implied by the introduction of the persecution theme. However, we are certainly told what God does to mark the transition. Responding to the prayers of the saints, he sends out the angels with trumpets, representing his reaction to what the Beast is doing.

Finally, the second half-week in Daniel is the period when the sacrifice has ceased, and “upon the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate”. This is the time when God’s people, as described in ch11 vv31-35, are falling “by sword and flame, by captivity and plunder”, and are also being tempted to fall away from their God. This period is described by the angel in ch12 as “a time, two times, and half a time”.

Revelation has various references to different versions of that same “half-week”.
Thus the Beast is allowed to exercise authority for forty-two months (three and a half years). The nations are “trampling over the holy city” for the same period.
The “two witnesses” are giving their testimony for one thousand, two hundred and sixty days, which is forty-two months, taken at thirty days a month.
Their dead bodies are left in the open for three and a half days. I make that half a week.
Finally the “woman” who represents God’s people is nourished in the wilderness for a period which is described both as one thousand, two hundred and sixty days, and also as “a time, two times, and half a time”.
Thus all these events in Revelation are correlated with the half-week in Daniel.

So Daniel and Revelation give similar descriptions of the reign of the hostile ruler.
On the one hand, the prince rules for “one week”, divided into a peaceful first half and a war-troubled second half.
On the other hand, the Beast rules for “one hour”, divided into a peaceful first half and a war-troubled second half.
The obvious conclusion is that the “one week” and the “one hour” are two different labels for the same thing.

N.B. This thread draws together conclusions from two earler threads, viz.;

Daniel; "He makes covenant with many"

Revelation; "A time, two times, and half a time"

yes, and the safety of the people in Jerusalem when the second period comes.....I wonder if many will fall before they escape to the mountains....

also... should we see the temple going up any minute now....that's the first half-hour...

then we have the possibility of further meaning for the use of two time denotations.....somewhere really hidden well in the Scriptures...that would expound on why "the believers will know when" ,...found in daniel 9 or 12...

reply to post by GBP/JPY

Thank you for those comments.
In my own understanding, the church is the temple of God (see 1 Corinthians ch3), which means that it's up already.

reply to post by DISRAELI


If that is true....How do you explain the man of perdition setting himself up in the holy place.

I agree with you on this matter....And just wanted your take on this matter!!

reply to post by radpetey

He takes control of the external structures, ie the organisation of the church.
That should be easy enough if he's controlling the state.
Then he's in a position to remodel the public worship around himself (which would be the Abomination), and the remaining Biblical believers would have to go underground.

Originally posted by DISRAELI
reply to post by radpetey

 

He takes control of the external structures, ie the organisation of the church.
That should be easy enough if he's controlling the state.
Then he's in a position to remodel the public worship around himself (which would be the Abomination), and the remaining Biblical believers would have to go underground.

Ok.......And what do you think it means when it says, "He brings an end to the daily sacrifice"..........sorry about the gross paraphrase!

reply to post by radpetey


hey rad....my mind is heavy into that detail...the Temple....the Temple this could go either way...huh!!
they don't have to build it just because they're ready......we think He'll come then, but He alluded to be ready early.....be watching early because He "will come at a time we do not expect"

Originally posted by GBP/JPY
reply to post by radpetey

 

hey rad....my mind is heavy into that detail...the Temple....the Temple this could go either way...huh!!

they don't have to build it just because they're ready......we think He'll come then, but He alluded to be ready early.....be watching early because He "will come at a time we do not expect"

The implications of this being true is very sobering, as it would bring a whole new light on the scripture that says, "even the elect would be deceived if it were possible."

And furthermore, I feel this time around, God would not be in the details. As the first coming of Jesus Christ was the actual fulfillment of the dwelling place of the living God; That is, after the resurrection of Jesus.

The old testament temple was a type of much greater things to come........Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the mediator between God and man!!

reply to post by radpetey

The nearest thing to a "daily sacrifice" in the Christian faith is the Lord's supper.
(This is NOT endorsing the Catholic "sacrifice of the Mass" theory)
As Paul says, the Supper commemorates the Lord's death "until he comes again".
If the "lawless one" was an antichrist, claiming to be the returned Christ, then he would be logically bound to object to the Lord's Supper in its present form.
"This is supposed to be happening until the Lord returns. But I've already returned".
By logical necessity, he would want the church to abolish it altogether or give it a new format celebrating himself.
He would have the political power to enforce the change, as far as public worship was concerned.
This would be almost the exact equivalent of abolishing the traditional sacrifices in the Temple of Solomon and replacing them with sacrifices to the image of Jupiter.
So in one stroke we would get idolatry at the centre of worship (Abomination) and the abolition of the true worship (Desolation).

reply to post by DISRAELI


Interesting......thanks!

2nd.

good new wrinkles for my brain....we're plowin' deep, huh..!!!
I learned two new ideas from the two of ya!.....very sobering, yes