The 70 Week Prophecy as its understood by various SDA Groups

[Gustave]

The SDA Church has what I understand to be a "big tent" - essentially a wide spectrum of beliefs. The question I have is the significance of the Seventy Week Prophecy and how it is used to calculate time by the various Groups within the Church that maintain Ellen White's status as a prophet and of course the Sabbath. How does this group of SDA's interpretation of the 70 week prophecy depart from the mainline SDA Church or is it the same and the only difference is that this independent ministry believes the Catholic Church messed with the Calendar and thereby fiddled with the Sabbath - albeit in a different manner than what generally is asserted by SDA's? 

 

 

[JoeMo]

3 hours ago, Gustave said:

How does this group of SDA's interpretation of the 70 week prophecy depart from the mainline SDA Church or is it the same and the only difference is that this independent ministry believes the Catholic Church messed with the Calendar and thereby fiddled with the Sabbath - albeit in a different manner than what generally is asserted by SDA's? 

I guess I need some clarification. Who is "this group" or "this independent ministry"?  I've never heard of an SDA group who associates the RCC's messing around with the calendar and fiddling with the Sabbath as having anything to do with the 70 week prophecy.

That being said, the 70-week prophecy is quite an interesting prophecy; and there is more than one way to read it. Most SDA's begin the 70 weeks of years (490 years) with the issuance of the decree to rebuild Jerusalem, and end it with the stoning of Stephen in a continuous stream of 490 years..  They assume that the Anointed one mentioned in Dan. 9:25 to be Christ.

I question (without totally rejecting) that idea. First of all, "anointed one" doesn't necessarily point to Christ.  An anointed one can be anyone anointed for leadership.  Kings and princes are anointed. I have a hard time believing this when Dan. 9:27 says : "In the middle of the ‘seven’ he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And at the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him."  Sure - Christ put an end to the Jewish Temple sacrifice, but I doubt that he set up an abomination.  So I doubt this passage about the last seven yeats.is taking about Christ - more like the antichrist. A hint of this is the sacrifice being cut off in the middle of the "seven", or after 3-1/2 years - or 1,260 days.  Could the subject of the last seven years be the antichrist?

Secondly, it appears that the 70 weeks are split into 7 weeks and 62 weeks, and  week 70 is some how broken off from the first 69 weeks.

" “Know and understand this: From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble.  After the sixty-two ‘sevens, ...

What is the meaning of the "seven 'sevens'" or the "62 sevens"?  Why the breakout?

As I said above, the 70th week appears to be broken out from the previous 69.

[Gustave]

Isaac Newton's reasoning as to why AD 31 would be incompatible with Jesus' death and Resurrection is my understanding as well. In the primary SDA prophecy of 2300 years (did I say that wrong?) the prophecy REQUIRES an AD 31 Passover / 6th day Death for Christ. This is why I asked that question.

[JoeMo]

11 hours ago, Gustave said:

Isaac Newton's reasoning as to why AD 31 would be incompatible with Jesus' death and Resurrection is my understanding as well. In the primary SDA prophecy of 2300 years (did I say that wrong?) the prophecy REQUIRES an AD 31 Passover / 6th day Death for Christ. This is why I asked that question.

I agree that AD 31 is incompatible with a Friday crucifixion.  However, it is compatible with a Wednesday crucifixion. Some people insist on a Wednesday crucifixion to fulfill Christ being in the grave 3 days and 3 nights.  I'm indifferent to it.  To me, the salvational part of the truth is that Christ was crucified, died, and was buried; and was resurrected to everlasting life as the first fruit and a guarantee of everlasting life for those who believe.

I'm a fan of an AD 30 crucifixion - a year when Passover was on a Friday.

[Gustave]

1 hour ago, JoeMo said:

I agree that AD 31 is incompatible with a Friday crucifixion.  However, it is compatible with a Wednesday crucifixion. Some people insist on a Wednesday crucifixion to fulfill Christ being in the grave 3 days and 3 nights.  I'm indifferent to it.  To me, the salvational part of the truth is that Christ was crucified, died, and was buried; and was resurrected to everlasting life as the first fruit and a guarantee of everlasting life for those who believe.

I'm a fan of an AD 30 crucifixion - a year when Passover was on a Friday.

If I'm understanding what these folks on the video are doing is - they are;

•  holding on in a fundamentalist way to the prophecy  which requires a 31 A.D. date for Christ's death .
•  To be compatible with the Bible Jesus had to die on a Passover that coincided with a 6th day of a Gregorian week.
•  Ellen White doubled down on the 31 A.D. date and these folks are absolute that she was right. 

I agree with you - the biggest deal in all of this was the Resurrection because if that didn't happen we're all gonners and its all for nothing.

 

[Gustave]

19 hours ago, JoeMo said:

I guess I need some clarification. Who is "this group" or "this independent ministry"?  I've never heard of an SDA group who associates the RCC's messing around with the calendar and fiddling with the Sabbath as having anything to do with the 70 week prophecy.

 

They call it the Saturday swindle.  They seem to be ultra fundamentalist - believe that there are Jesuits inside the SDA Church, etc. 

 

[8thdaypriest]

Are they Shepherd's Rod?  That group believes absolutely in Ellen White's "prophetic gift".  They also believe Jesuits have infiltrated the SDA church.  They also believe the church has fallen away, and seriously needs reform.  They believe that only reformed SDAs will be the 144,000. 

[8thdaypriest]

I like 33AD.  Friday Passover, blood moon, massive Jerusalem earthquake - all recorded by Josephus. 

[Gustave]

18 minutes ago, 8thdaypriest said:

I like 33AD.  Friday Passover, blood moon, massive Jerusalem earthquake - all recorded by Josephus. 

 I agree with you here.

[Gustave]

21 minutes ago, 8thdaypriest said:

Are they Shepherd's Rod?  That group believes absolutely in Ellen White's "prophetic gift".  They also believe Jesuits have infiltrated the SDA church.  They also believe the church has fallen away, and seriously needs reform.  They believe that only reformed SDAs will be the 144,000. 

They may be - they think the Jesuits were able to sneak Trinitarian songs into the SDA hymnal and various other things. They appear to spend most of their efforts on "prophecy" - specifically how the Catholic Church was able to "change times and laws". Where they differ is that they claim Saturday isn't the Sabbath and Sunday wasn't the day Jesus rose from the Dead. 

[JoeMo]

5 hours ago, 8thdaypriest said:

I like 33AD.  Friday Passover, blood moon, massive Jerusalem earthquake - all recorded by Josephus. 

That works as well as AD 30; depending on which day the Passover sadir was supposed to be celebrated.

[JoeMo]

6 hours ago, 8thdaypriest said:

Are they Shepherd's Rod?

I don't think so.  I surfed their website and found nothing that mentioned EGW.  They had posted stuff by Charles Spurgeon, though.  That doubly makes me think they aren't Shepherd's Rod (aka Davidian Adventist Church). 

[Gustave]

1 hour ago, JoeMo said:

I don't think so.  I surfed their website and found nothing that mentioned EGW.  They had posted stuff by Charles Spurgeon, though.  That doubly makes me think they aren't Shepherd's Rod (aka Davidian Adventist Church). 

I just checked and found out the group recently announced they no longer accept that Ellen White had divine credentials. I also did an internet search and discovered the hits to materials they had previously posted supportive of Ellen White are now dead and have been removed from their website (which is extensive).  They certainly used to be very supportive of Ellen White.

I've linked the "news" section of their website which shows the progression (or better said regression) of their doctrines. It appears that also adopted "the flat earth". OMG! 

 

https://www.worldslastchance.com/about-us/wlc-news.html

[Gustave]

1 hour ago, JoeMo said:

I don't think so.  I surfed their website and found nothing that mentioned EGW.  They had posted stuff by Charles Spurgeon, though.  That doubly makes me think they aren't Shepherd's Rod (aka Davidian Adventist Church). 

I'm seeing other folks on the net identifying them as a breakaway group from the SDA Church that had some graphic designers that belonged to it. It's difficult to understand how people who use technology to that degree would subscribe to "flat earth" or some of the other things the group advocates but oh well. 

[JoeMo]

The "flat earth" thing really threw me.  At first I thought it was a joke; but when I opened the link; it wasn't that funny. 

Do you think they also might believe that the universe orbits the earth? 

[Kevin H]

Not being a fundamentalist I can live with the passion being on one of the middle years. And looking at the evidence in John we have John the Baptist announcing " behold the lamb of God who scapegoats the sins of the world." which indicated that Jesus started his ministry on Yom Kippur. We then have 6 "I AM" sayings. These sayings were tied to a temple feast and focused on portions of the feast. We have three of them connected to the feast of Tabernacles, three connected to Passover and one connected to Hanukkah. 

The three connected to Passover were in widely diverse places indicating that they cover three different Passovers or three different years. The three connected to the Feast of Tabernacles were all in Jerusalem and written where they appear to have all been the same Feast of Tabernacles; however since they all happened in Jerusalem they could have happened over two or three different years and been telescoped together. 

I am wondering what is being used to determine the day of Passover as different Jewish groups had different dates. The evidence is that the year Jesus died the Essenes would have had their Passover meal on Tuesday night (and that would have been Jesus' last supper in an upper room in an Essene monastery). The arrest early Wednesday, Jesus have his hearings Wednesday morning then to spend the rest of Wednesday and Wednesday night in a prison at Caiaphas' house. Then Thursday giving plenty of time for the more formal hearings before the Sanhedrin*, Pilate, Herod, Pilate again, and prison where Pilate was and the soldiers playing the "King's game" and Pilate's wife to sleep and have the nightmare to have nothing to do with this man, and Jesus on the cross by 9:00 Friday morning, with the temple celebrating the Passover mean on Friday evening and Jesus dying when the Passover lamb at the temple would die, resting in the grave on Sabbath and raising on the feast of first fruits early Sunday morning. 

* as for the inquiries before the Sanhedrin,  while the Sanhedrin consisted of 70 elders both Pharisees and Sadducees, often 23 Sadducee priests would meet with the high priest to make 24 elders and form a quorum. This would often happen with leaders who were becoming popular with the people. While only Rome could crucify the Sanhedrin was allowed to stone people to death. The Sadducees were corrupt puppets of Rome who got to keep their job as long as they bribed the Roman governor and kept the peace.  The Sadducees raised money for the bribes through the money changers at the temple. (Jesus appeared to have cleansed the temple twice, once at the start and once at the end of his ministry. The temple was cleaned a third time by a Pharisee who declared that instead of giving offerings for every child born, to just give one offering at menopause. This caused the prices of the sacrificial animals to drop to the same price they were in the general population.) 

Anyway, with Jesus cleaning the temple it was the Sadducees and Pilate who were affected by it. The Sadducees would purposely have witnesses that contradicted each other then usually take their victim out to be stoned. They could stone people for religious reasons, Rome could crucify for political reasons. If there was someone popular with the people and it looked like it was better to bring them up on religious reasons Pilate would turn them over to Caiaphas to stone. However due to the understanding of Deuteronomy 21:23 they would sometimes want to find political reasons so that the person could be crucified. 

In Jesus' day Deuteronomy 21:23 was understood that God would protect all his people from being hung on a tree. That the only people who would hang were those who were enemies of God, people cursed by God. Thus if Pilate and Caiaphas could hang someone from a tree it would ruin their reputation just like if they were caught in adultery or stealing the church funds, or anything else a pastor could do to convince you that they were wrong and to cause you to distance yourself from them. (Sometimes we can have what superficially appears to be a perfect proof text for something and end up being wrong.)

The Pharisees on the Sanhedrin were not notified of the trials because they would try to be fair and they held different views so what some Pharisees would see as wrong others would see as fine. So Jesus' trial was probably just a Sadduceeian court with Pilate and Caiaphas upset at the bribe money lost when Jesus cleaned the temple, and wanting to ruin his reputation.

[JoeMo]

10 hours ago, Kevin H said:

The arrest early Wednesday, Jesus have his hearings Wednesday morning then to spend the rest of Wednesday and Wednesday night in a prison at Caiaphas' house. Then Thursday giving plenty of time for the more formal hearings before the Sanhedrin*, Pilate, Herod, Pilate again, and prison where Pilate was and the soldiers playing the "King's game" and Pilate's wife to sleep and have the nightmare to have nothing to do with this man, and Jesus on the cross by 9:00 Friday morning,

Another view - 

Jesus was arrested late Thursday night and rushed through a "kangaroo court" style of trial secretly scheduled by the Sadducees to take place overnight to ensure that Jesus would be on His way to execution as early as possible Friday morning.  They could plan all this in advance once they had Judas in their pocket.  I believe they would have wanted to have Jesus' execution over and done with before His followers in Jerusalem - and there were many at the time of the Passover - could find out about it through the rumor mill and cause trouble for them.

[Kevin H]

1 hour ago, JoeMo said:

Another view - 

Jesus was arrested late Thursday night and rushed through a "kangaroo court" style of trial secretly scheduled by the Sadducees to take place overnight to ensure that Jesus would be on His way to execution as early as possible Friday morning.  They could plan all this in advance once they had Judas in their pocket.  I believe they would have wanted to have Jesus' execution over and done with before His followers in Jerusalem - and there were many at the time of the Passover - could find out about it through the rumor mill and cause trouble for them.

This is the popular view and modern Christian tradition, however earlier Christian tradition was what wrote. Also, having been studied by archaeologists and modern scholars they support the early tradition rather than the later tradition. See for example: http://www.biblicalresources.net/product.cfm?product=69 ,  http://www.biblicalresources.net/product.cfm?product=54 ,  http://www.biblicalresources.net/product.cfm?product=52 , 

Some of the issues with the modern tradition that the ancient tradition did not have includes:
What about the contradiction between the synoptics and John? The Synoptics has the last  supper be passover, John does not have the last supper to be Passover but the crucifixion on Passover. Different ways of figuring out when Passover was to be held would have more than just the one day different. But if the last supper was the Essene Passover (the alternative date)   and crucifixion on the Temple Passover both fit. 

Passover meals lasted until well past midnight. Let's say that you had it end right at midnight: Then you have only 8 hours for: Jesus to pray, be arrested, inquirery before the Sanhedrin,  taken across Caiaphas courtyard have the 3 denials of Peter, Jesus spend time in the prison at the Sanhedrin, taken out of prison for more inquireies with the Sanhedrin, taken to Pilate, the questioning by Pilate, be taken to Herod, questionings by Herod and return to Pilate for more questioning and the flogging, put in the prison at Pilate's where the Roman Soldiers played the "king's game" and beaten by the Romans, Game over and taken out of the prison and carrying the cross to be hanging by 9:00 AM. Talk about having to do everything in fast forward. 

Now I do agree with your statement " I believe they would have wanted to have Jesus' execution over and done with before His followers in Jerusalem - and there were many at the time of the Passover - could find out about it through the rumor mill and cause trouble for them." But to make the inquireries and proceedings look legal and by getting him on the cross by 9:00 AM Friday would still serve the same purpose.

[8thdaypriest]

There are several reasons why I believe the late Thursday arrest scenario carries more weight. 

I believe the "clock" for the "three days and 3 nights" began when Jesus said, "This is your hour and the power of darkness" to the guards who came to arrest Him.  "In the heart of the earth" = "in the heart of Jerusalem" - not just in the grave.  He was "thrown overboard" at that moment, just like Jonah was thrown off the boat into the dark deep. 

It's not as if the characters in this drama lived far from each other, and they were in a hurry.  Night trials were illegal.  They had planned it. 

Passover was on a Friday, in 33AD.  The Feast of Unleavened Bread would have been eaten on Friday nite (which began the 7th Day Sabbath).   Jesus "rested" over the Sabbath, and was awakened by His Father at dawn of Sunday (the third day). 

3 hours ago, Kevin H said:

Then you have only 8 hours for: Jesus to pray, be arrested, inquirery before the Sanhedrin,  taken across Caiaphas courtyard have the 3 denials of Peter, Jesus spend time in the prison at the Sanhedrin, taken out of prison for more inquireies with the Sanhedrin, taken to Pilate, the questioning by Pilate, be taken to Herod, questionings by Herod and return to Pilate for more questioning and the flogging, put in the prison at Pilate's where the Roman Soldiers played the "king's game" and beaten by the Romans, Game over and taken out of the prison and carrying the cross to be hanging by 9:00 AM.

When you describe it this way, it seems like a lot, but things can move very fast when evil men are very motivated.  Political things had changed for Pilate, and he was seeking to please the Jews.   When the leaders yelled "no friend of Caesar" that tipped the scale very quickly.  I don't know how long the flogging usually took - 40 lashes  - perhaps half hour at most. 

I think weight must be given to the things He did during the week preceding His death.  For instance, staying at Zacchaeus' house over the Sabbath, rather than walk 12 miles uphill to Bethany on the Sabbath day.  Walking up to Bethany on Sunday, the feast that nite, then riding into Jerusalem on Monday.   Each day has events given. 

Here is link to my study on this:  https://www.prophecyviewpoint.com/htdocs/45-Three-Days-Nights.htm

[Gustave]

On 9/16/2019 at 8:04 AM, JoeMo said:

The "flat earth" thing really threw me.  At first I thought it was a joke; but when I opened the link; it wasn't that funny. 

Do you think they also might believe that the universe orbits the earth? 

I thought it was a joke as well, maybe sort of a test and if you agreed you couldn't get into the cult. There were a bunch of people passing out pamphlets in Seattle less than a year ago claiming that ones eternal salvation would be determined on whether you accepted "the creator God" or the false God of the round earth!