Abstract
Dispensationalism is built on a future, postponed “70th week” of Daniel 9 as the backbone of a seven-year tribulation scheme. Yet Daniel 9:24–27 sets forth a continuous, Christ-centered 70-week program with no textual gap, culminating in the Messiah who confirms the covenant and ends sacrifice, not an Antichrist who breaks a treaty. The supposed link to Revelation collapses as well: John’s repeated 3½-year motifs (42 months, 1,260 days, “time, times, and half a time”) echo Daniel 7 and 12, not Daniel 9. Once the gap theory is demonstrated false, the dispensational timeline has no exegetical foundation, leaving its future tribulation construct without support.
Why It Matters
Hardly any other doctrine in modern eschatology has influenced evangelical imagination as much as the familiar timeline: a secret rapture of the church, followed by a seven-year tribulation dominated by Antichrist, culminating in Christ’s glorious return. This arrangement seems airtight, yet it rests extremely on a single key text: Daniel’s prophecy of the seventy weeks (Dan. 9:24–27).
According to dispensationalism, the final “week” of seven years was postponed after Christ’s first coming and awaits fulfillment as the future tribulation period. This interpretation not only sets the chronology for the rise of the Antichrist, covenant-breaking, and persecution of “Israel”, but also provides the framework into which Revelation’s judgments are placed.
The implications are huge: if Daniel 9 does not actually predict a postponed seven-year tribulation, then the dispensational system falls apart. Revelation itself never mentions a seven-year period, only recurring 3½-year motifs. Without the supposed “gap” in Daniel’s prophecy, the entire dispensational/futurist chart loses its meaning.
Reading Daniel 9:24–27 in Full
24 "Seventy weeks are determined for your people and for your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy.
25 Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, there shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublesome times.
26 And after the sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself; and the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end of it shall be with a flood, and till the end of the war desolations are determined.
27 Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week; but in the middle of the week he shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate, even until the consummation, which is determined, is poured out on the desolate."
Any responsible study of the topic must begin by looking carefully at what Daniel actually wrote. The prophecy of the seventy weeks is given in answer to Daniel’s prayer of confession and intercession for Jerusalem, which had been desolate for seventy years according to Jeremiah’s prophecy (Jer. 25:11). The angel’s reply expands further: not seventy years, but seventy “weeks” of years, a symbolic 490-year timeline are now decreed for Daniel’s people and the holy city.
Verse 24 outlines the program’s goal: six redemptive purposes are set forth: To finish transgression, make an end of sins, atone for iniquity, bring in everlasting righteousness, seal up vision and prophecy, and anoint the most holy. These are clearly covenantal and redemptive, pointing toward the climactic work of Messiah.
Verse 25 then provides a clear timeline: From the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the coming of “Messiah the Prince” there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks, sixty-nine in total, or 483 years. The city will be rebuilt, but in troubled times.
Verse 26 now points to the culmination: after the sixty-two weeks (i.e., after the 69 in total), Messiah will be “cut off, but not for Himself,” a striking anticipation of His sacrificial death. In the same horizon, “the people of the prince who is to come” will destroy the city and the sanctuary, a prophecy fulfilled in the Roman sack of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Notice carefully: it is the people, not the prince himself, who carry out the destruction. The wording naturally refers to the then-future Roman ruler under whom this devastation would occur, namely Titus, son of the emperor Vespasian, rather than to a distant eschatological Antichrist. The title “prince” (nāgîd) in Hebrew is a flexible term used throughout the Old Testament for rulers of varying kinds, from Israel’s own leaders (1 Sam. 9:16; Ezek. 34:24) to foreign rulers. Its use here does not warrant assuming it’s a futuristic eschatological figure; it fits the Roman commander who would soon lay waste to the city.
Verse 27 ties the strands together: “He shall confirm a covenant with many for one week; but in the middle of the week he shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering.” The “he” here is best read as Messiah, who ratified the New Covenant in His blood (Matt. 26:28; Isa. 53:11–12), and whose death rendered temple sacrifices obsolete (Heb. 10:12–14). The verse concludes with a description of continuing desolations until the decreed end, the historical judgment falling on Jerusalem.
For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. (Matthew 26:28, NKJV)
Taken together, the flow of the passage is seamless: seventy weeks are decreed as one unified timeline, directly answering Daniel’s concern about the seventy years of exile. Just as the seventy years were continuous, so the seventy weeks are presented as continuous. The baseline assumption is continuity, no gaps. To insert a two thousand year gap between the sixty ninth and seventieth week is to empty the prophecy of its context.
The Dispensational Foundation
To see why Daniel 9 is so crucial, it helps to outline exactly how dispensationalism builds its end-times scheme on this passage.
First, dispensational interpreters affirm that the sixty-nine weeks (483 years) run up to Christ’s first coming. But when Messiah is “cut off” (v.26), they argue the prophetic clock stops. The “Church Age”, now nearly two thousand years long, is inserted as a parenthesis not mentioned by Daniel. The seventieth week, they say, remains unfulfilled and awaits a future generation.
Second, the “prince who is to come” (v.26) is identified not with the Roman commander Titus but with a still-future Antichrist. This figure, they claim, will “confirm a covenant” with Israel at the start of the seven-year period, only to betray it midway, setting up the “abomination of desolation” and unleashing tribulation.
Third, Revelation’s references to 42 months, 1,260 days, and “time, times, and half a time” are read as parallel halves of Daniel’s seventieth week. The Beast’s 42 months (Rev. 13:5), the trampling of the holy city for 42 months (Rev. 11:2), and the woman’s flight for 1,260 days (Rev. 12:6) are all placed on this seven-year chart: the first half marked by deceptive peace, the second by great wrath.
This construction may look nice on a prophecy chart, but it stands entirely on a gap in Daniel 9 that the text itself never warrants, and on importing Revelation’s 3½-year motifs into a prophecy that says nothing about them. The result is a fragile interpretive foundation: remove the gap and the entire system loses coherence.
Four Fatal Flaws in the Gap Theory
Dispensationalism’s entire foundation stands or falls on the claim that between the sixty-ninth and seventieth week of Daniel 9 there is a vast, unmentioned gap of time into which the whole Church Age must be inserted. Yet the text itself resists this construction at every turn. Here are five fatal flaws showing why the gap theory cannot stand.
1. No textual gap
Daniel’s prophecy presents the seventy weeks as a unified whole: “Seventy weeks are determined for your people and for your holy city” (v.24). There is no suggestion that the clock pauses after at the end of the sixty-nine weeks and resumes thousands of years later. The prophecy is one sequence, seven weeks, sixty two weeks, one week, making a total of seventy. There are no grounds to insert a a thousand year parenthesis.
2. Grammar and sentence
Verse 26 starts with “After the sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off” In other words, the death of Messiah occurs within the flow of the seventy weeks, not after an undefined pause. The subsequent destruction of city and sanctuary also follows naturally in the same horizon. Dispensational charts remove this verse out of the sequence, as if Daniel jumped over two thousand years without indicating it. But the Hebrew text offers no such break and the sentence assumes continuity.
3. Christocentric prophecy
Every instance of the prophecy carries theological weight points to the completed work of Christ, not to a future Antichrist. It is Messiah who finishes transgression and makes atonement (v.24), who is cut off (v.26), who confirms a covenant and ends sacrifice by His death (v.27). This matches the testimony of Isaiah 53, Jeremiah 31, and Hebrews 8–10. By shifting the spotlight onto an Antichrist, dispensationalism relocates the center of Daniel’s prophecy from Christ’s saving work to the schemes of an evil ruler.
4. Historical fulfillment
The prophecy’s culminated destruction is clear: “The people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary”. This was fulfilled with incredible precision when the Romans under Titus destroyed Jerusalem and its temple in A.D. 70. The destruction is not postponed to a distant future; it is part of the first-century outworking of the prophecy. The historical fulfillment confirms the continuity of the seventy weeks, leaving no room for a hidden gap.
Who Is the “He” in verse 27?
The key question in verse 27 is the identity of the pronoun he: “Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week; but in the middle of the week he shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering.” Dispensationalists argue this refers to Antichrist making and breaking a treaty with Israel, but the natural reading points to Messiah.
Grammatically, the nearest antecedent is Messiah of verse 26, not the more distant “people of the prince who is to come.” It would be unnatural for the text to leap backward past Messiah to pick up a secondary figure. The language of “confirming a covenant with many” also aligns with Isaiah 53, where the Servant justifies “many,” and with Jesus’ own words at the Last Supper: “This is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins” (Matt. 26:28). The resonance is covenantal and redemptive, not deceptive.
The second clause makes the point clear: “in the middle of the week he shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering.” The New Testament repeatedly testifies that Christ’s death rendered temple sacrifices obsolete (Heb. 10:18). The cross, not a future desecration, is what brought the sacrificial system to its end.
In short, the “he” of Daniel 9:27 is Messiah, who ratifies the New Covenant in His blood and ends sacrifice by His once-for-all offering. Reading Antichrist into the text requires reversing the grammar, distorting the covenantal reading, and missing the cross at the center of the prophecy.
"Now where there is remission of these, there is no longer an offering for sin." (Hebrews 10:18 NKJV)
Abomination, Desolations, and 70 AD
Daniel closes with a dark warning: “On the wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate, even until the consummation“(v.27). Jesus Himself identified this “abomination of desolation” as the sign for His disciples to flee: “When you see the ‘abomination of desolation,’ spoken of by Daniel… then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains” (Matt. 24:15–16). Luke clarifies what this meant: “When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation is near” (Luke 21:20). The abomination, then, was the Roman encirclement and desecration of the holy city, the visible signal that God’s decreed judgment had arrived. The prophecy’s culmination is thus historically anchored in A.D. 70, not projected into a distant tribulation.
So What About Revelation?
Dispensationalism imports Daniel 9’s supposed seven years into Revelation as a framework for the tribulation. But Revelation never mentions a seven-year period. Instead, it repeats 3½-year motifs in different forms: forty-two months (Rev. 11:2; 13:5), 1,260 days (Rev. 11:3; 12:6), and “time, times, and half a time” (Rev. 12:14).
These time spans come straight from Daniel 7:25 and 12:7, where the saints are oppressed for “a time, times, and half a time.” John is echoing that tradition of a limited, symbolic period of persecution. He is not reworking Daniel 9’s covenantal timeline into a future tribulation chart.
Revelation also never pairs its 3½-year references into a neat seven-year program. That stitching belongs to the gap theory, not the text itself. In apocalyptic symbolism, “half-seven” represents curtailed, bounded suffering, oppression cut short by divine decree, rather than a precise calendar scaffold.
Jesus said, “Unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened” (Matt. 24:22). This matches the symbolic 3½-year pattern in Daniel and Revelation, a broken seven, persecution cut short before it runs its full course. The imagery underscores the same point: tribulation is real but limited by God’s decree for the preservation of His people.
Read in context, Revelation’s time spans align naturally with the first-century crisis: the trampling of Jerusalem (Rev. 11), the church’s preservation in the wilderness (Rev. 12), and Rome’s blasphemous persecution under Nero (Rev. 13). Each fits the Daniel-7/12 pattern of a limited oppression, not a re-run of Daniel 9’s final week.
To summarize quickly: Revelation never equates two halves into a seven-year period, never signals that John is interpreting Daniel 9, and never mentions an Antichrist “treaty.” Those assumptions are imported from dispensational impositions, not drawn from the text.
The result is clear is thus clear, remove the artificial gap in Daniel 9, and Revelation offers no seven-year tribulation. Its time statements stand independently as symbols of limited persecution, fulfilled in the first-century judgment on Jerusalem and Rome.
Conclusion
This study restores the focus where it belongs. Daniel 9 centers on Messiah’s work, covenant confirmed, atonement accomplished, sacrifice ended. Revelation calls the church to be patient under trial, not to speculate over timelines. The New Testament holds out not a future tribulation chart, but the assurance of Christ’s victory and the church’s mission in history.
