“… and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary;” (Daniel 9:26b).

Much debate surrounds the identity of this prince. We have previously noted destructive behavior by the he-goat, representing Satan the persecutor. Then the little horn (the papacy) followed, an agent of Satan, casting down God’s dwelling place, the sanctuary, and persecuting God’s people. This power stood up against the “Prince of princes” (8:25). Later we observe the “prince of Persia” was Satan (10:13-14).

But is the “prince” here Satan or the Messiah? The “prince” should be Prince. In verse 25 He was “Messiah the Prince.” In the first part of that verse He is Messiah and now Prince. This represents a breakup of a word pair – Messiah the Prince.

Here, we are introduced to a “prince” whose people destroy the city and its sanctuary. Nebuchadnezzar had done just that 70 years before. When this encounter from Gabriel occurred, that temple and city were still in a desolate state. If this follows the death of the Messiah, however, which is the sequence in this verse, the city and temple would have to be rebuilt and destroyed once again. Who then represents this “prince” that will bring about another destruction? Who are the people?

The main theme within this prophecy has been spiritual restoration of God’s people (Jerusalem) and His church (temple–sanctuary). Is a literal message suddenly being sandwiched between profound redemptive symbols?

Six hundred years later, just before Calvary, the Messiah Jesus said that the temple would be destroyed (Matthew 24:2 – it had been rebuilt). He also noted that “Jerusalem’s house” would become desolate (Matthew 23:37, 24:15 – it would have had to have been restored). This history of Jerusalem’s fall and destruction of the temple is well known to historians in the attack by Titus, the Roman general in 70 A.D.

Within one generation from the time of Jesus this occurred, fulfilling another prediction (Matthew 24:34). In another interesting application long before Jesus’ death, He told sneering Jews that a sign of His Messiahship would be to destroy the temple, and in three days He would raise it up. But He spake of the temple of His body (John 2:19, 21). That “destruction” had a greater spiritual implication. The resurrection of the “Temple” had a future message of hope for spiritual Israel.

Daniel’s people were given a probation of 490 years. In this part of that prophecy Gabriel is portraying through the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple that something terrible would occur to that people associated with that probation. Daniel would soon understand this from the 2300 evening–morning prophecy that Israel would fail. Daniel 9:26b is directly associated with the “cutting off” or death of the Messiah.

As Nebuchadnezzar fulfilled prophecy by taking into captivity the rebellious Israelites, here the Roman armies are the “people of the prince” who now destroy a nation that had passed their probation. God had warned them in many ways that the end would be desolation – destruction.

This verse reveals that Israel would have a spiritual fall, resulting in a literal prophetic destructive act.

Jesus Envisions Prophetic Fulfillment

Jerusalem (His chosen people) and the temple (His church) were annihilated. Jesus said, “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate” (Matthew 23:38). “Therefore say I unto you, the kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof” (Matthew 21:43). Christ’s words warned Israel that Daniel’s prophecies (9:26b) were just about to be fulfilled.

“The history of more than a thousand years of God’s special favor and guardian care, manifested to the chosen people, was open to the eye of Jesus. There was Mount Moriah, where the son of promise, an unresisting victim, had been bound to the altar – emblem of the offering of the Son of God. There the covenant of blessing, the glorious Messianic promise, had been confirmed to the father of the faithful (Genesis 22:9, 16-18). There the flames of the sacrifice ascending to heaven from the threshing floor of Ornan had turned aside the sword of the destroying angel (1 Chronicles 21) – fitting symbol of the Saviour’s sacrifice and mediation for guilty men. Jerusalem had been honored of God above all the earth. The Lord had ‘chosen Zion,’ He had ‘desired it for His habitation.’ Psalm 132:13. There, for ages, holy prophets had uttered their messages of warning. There priests had waved their censers, and the cloud of incense, with the prayers of the worshipers, had ascended before God. There daily the blood of slain lambs had been offered, pointing forward to the Lamb of God. There Jehovah had revealed His presence in the cloud of glory above the mercy seat. There rested the base of that mystic ladder connecting earth with heaven (Genesis 28:12; John 1:51) – that ladder upon which angels of God descended and ascended, and which opened to the world the way into the holiest of all. Had Israel as a nation preserved her allegiance to Heaven, Jerusalem would have stood forever, the elect of God. Jeremiah 17:21-25. But the history of that favored people was a record of backsliding and rebellion. They had resisted Heaven’s grace, abused their privileges, and slighted their opportunities.

“Although Israel had ‘mocked the messengers of God, and despised His words, and misused His prophets’ (2 Chronicles 36:16), He had still manifested Himself to them, as ‘the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth’ (Exodus 34:6); notwithstanding repeated rejections, His mercy had continued its pleadings. With more than a father’s pitying love for the son of his care, God had ‘sent to them by His messengers, rising up betimes, and sending; because He had compassion on His people, and on His dwelling place.’ 2 Chronicles 36:15. When remonstrance, entreaty, and rebuke had failed, He sent to them the best gift of heaven; nay, He poured out all heaven in that one Gift.

“The Son of God Himself was sent to plead with the impenitent city. It was Christ that had brought Israel as a goodly vine out of Egypt. Psalm 80:8. His own hand had cast out the heathen before it. He had planted it ‘in a very fruitful hill.’ His guardian care had hedged it about. His servants had been sent to nurture it. ‘What could have been done more to My vineyard,’ He exclaims, ‘that I have not done in it?’ Isaiah 5:1-4. Though when He looked that it should bring forth grapes, it brought forth wild grapes, yet with a still yearning hope of fruitfulness He came in person to His vineyard, if haply it might be saved from destruction. He dug about His vine; He pruned and cherished it. He was unwearied in His efforts to save this vine of His own planting.

“For three years the Lord of light and glory had gone in and out among His people. He ‘went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil,’ binding up the brokenhearted, setting at liberty them that were bound, restoring sight to the blind, causing the lame to walk and the deaf to hear, cleansing the lepers, raising the dead, and preaching the gospel to the poor. Acts 10:38; Luke 4:18; Matthew 11:5. To all classes alike was addressed the gracious call: ‘Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.’ Matthew 11:28.

“Though rewarded with evil for good, and hatred for His love (Psalm 109:5), He had steadfastly pursued His mission of mercy. Never were those repelled that sought His grace. A homeless wanderer, reproach and penury His daily lot, He lived to minister to the needs and lighten the woes of men, to plead with them to accept the gift of life. The waves of mercy, beaten back by those stubborn hearts, returned in a stronger tide of pitying, inexpressible love. But Israel had turned from her best Friend and only Helper. The pleadings of His love had been despised, His counsels spurned, His warnings ridiculed.

“The hour of hope and pardon was fast passing; the cup of God’s long-deferred wrath was almost full. The cloud that had been gathering through ages of apostasy and rebellion, now black with woe, was about to burst upon a guilty people; and He who alone could save them from their impending fate had been slighted, abused, rejected, and was soon to be crucified. When Christ should hang upon the cross of Calvary, Israel’s day as a nation favored and blessed of God would be ended.”[1]

Deeper Spiritual Issues

Israel, as a nation, symbolized by Jerusalem, His people, ceased to be a favored people at Calvary – 31 A.D. Jesus told them that “favor” would be given to another people – another “nation.”

Who were they? That wouldn’t be clear until after the 2300 evenings and mornings! This whole message is part of the mareh vision. Daniel’s literal people as the “chosen” would be destroyed. But Jesus has already given the very first bit of information about a beautiful restoration of another people. After 2300 atonement evenings and mornings a holy people will emerge that are forever legally right with the center of all – God’s throne. The record in the sanctuary, the heavenly court, would be pure and holy.

The fulfillment to that covenant people is remarkably depicted in Revelation as the 144,000 – “the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb.” “They are without fault before the throne of God” (Revelation 14:4-5). They meet the requirements of Daniel 9:24. They “were redeemed from the earth” (Revelation 14:3) and entered into everlasting righteousness.

Warning

The prophecy of Jerusalem’s fall and the destruction of the temple is a metaphor for the time of the end when Babylon falls.

In Revelation, Jerusalem (God’s people) is depicted as Babylon (apostate people). That’s why there is a NEW Jerusalem. Babylon is destroyed (Revelation 16:19).

God calls Babylon a “destroying mountain … which destroyest all the earth” (Jeremiah 51:25). That imagery is one that goes beyond killing to corruption. Babylon is like a huge mountain (beyond human resistance) that corrupts the earth. This is clarified further in Isaiah 21:9 where Babylon falls, and with her demise goes the “graven images of her gods.” The transgression and abominations that Daniel 8–12 allude to are false doctrines and idolatrous standards that corrupt the world. The same symbol holds for the wine in the harlot’s cup in Revelation 17.

A remnant, the 144,000, triumph at the end. But the Christian church, so pure at its inception (Revelation 12:1) becomes corrupt. The same fate awaits those people, just as the Jews.

“The Saviour’s prophecy concerning the visitation of judgments upon Jerusalem is to have another fulfillment, of which that terrible desolation was but a faint shadow. In the fate of the chosen city we may behold the doom of a world that has rejected God’s mercy and trampled upon His law. Dark are the records of human misery that earth has witnessed during its long centuries of crime. The heart sickens, and the mind grows faint in contemplation. Terrible have been the results of rejecting the authority of Heaven. But a scene yet darker is presented in the revelations of the future. The records of the past,–the long procession of tumults, conflicts, and revolutions, the ‘battle of the warrior … with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood’ (Isaiah 9:5),–what are these, in contrast with the terrors of that day when the restraining Spirit of God shall be wholly withdrawn from the wicked, no longer to hold in check the outburst of human passion and satanic wrath! The world will then behold, as never before, the results of Satan’s rule.

“But in that day, as in the time of Jerusalem’s destruction, God’s people will be delivered, everyone that shall be found written among the living. Isaiah 4:3. Christ has declared that He will come the second time to gather His faithful ones to Himself: ‘Then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He shall send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.’ Matthew 24:30, 31.”[2]