Blaising’s Understanding of Daniel’s Seventieth Week   (#2)

Charles Cooper

In the new book, Three Views on The Rapture: Pretribulation, Prewrath, or Posttribulation, Craig Blaising, et al, he asks the question:

Should we understand the day of the Lord here to be coextensive with or identical to the seventieth week of Daniel, which pretribulationists understand by the term tribulation?

Before we deal with the essence of Blaising’s question, we must first speak to the matter concerning the pretribulationist’s labeling of Daniel’s final week as “tribulation.” Sadly, Blaising missed an excellent opportunity to correct what clearly is prejudicial, inappropriate, and completely lacking in biblical authority – the misnaming of Daniel’s final week. Nowhere in Scripture is there an explicit biblical basis for labeling Daniel’s final week as “tribulation.” It unnecessarily implies that the entire seven-year period is one of “tribulation,” when in reality that is not the case.

The Lord Jesus told his disciples in Matthew 24:6, “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. Make sure that you are not alarmed, for this must happen, but the end is still to come.” It is difficult to understand the Lord’s command at this point if his people are undergoing “tribulation” in any way whatsoever. Daniel 9:24-27 also indicates that the covenant is not broken until the midpoint of the week. In light of these two facts, labeling the final week “tribulation” is not helpful, but confuses the issue.

So Blaising’s question (above) must be answered in the negative. The day of the Lord is not coextensive with the seventieth week of Daniel. In plain English, the day of the Lord is not the same thing as the final week of Daniel’s prophecy – that is, it does not continue during those seven years.

There are meaningful scriptural inconsistencies that relate to Blaising’s question. For example, the signal that the day of the Lord is imminent is the unparalleled cataclysmic disturbance in the sky. Joel 2:31 explains: “The sunlight will be turned to darkness and the moon to the color of blood, before the day of the Lord comes – that great and terrible day!” This awesome event appears in two critical New Testament passages and immediately precedes the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven.

After detailing the activity of the adversary of God’s elect in Matthew 24, the Lord Jesus indicates that the Glorious One himself will be seen coming down from heaven after Joel’s unparalleled cataclysmic disturbance in the sky occurs. It should not escape the reader’s attention that there is no indication of God’s direct or indirect involvement in the events related in Matthew 24:4-28 and, of course, that absolutely precludes the employment of His wrath in this context. It is only at the occurrence of the darkening of the sun, moon and stars that the nations fear and God appears. Considering how Matthew 24 is detailed, one is hard pressed to explain why the Lord displays these celestial disturbances – which announce and immediately precede the day of the Lord – near the end of the final week. We would expect this important sign to have occurred at the very beginning of Matthew 24 if in fact Daniel’s final week and the day of the Lord are equivalent.

In Revelation 6, again we see Joel’s sign appearing after death and destruction among God’s people just prior to God’s physical appearance on earth. The reaction of the wicked and the fact that God’s wrath immediately follows Revelation 6 in chapter 7 argues strongly that the day of the Lord follows the great persecution of God’s elect.

Dr. Richard Mayhue, a leading exponent of the pretrib rapture and Professor of Bible at The Master’s Seminary, says in connection with the beginning of the eschatological day of the Lord,

I would also suggest that DOL [day of the Lord] will occur only at the end of the tribulation period, not throughout its duration, and that DOL will occur at the end of the millennium, not throughout its duration…In my view, the traditional dispensational definition of DOL beginning at the pretribulational rapture and extending throughout the millennium…or beginning with Christ’s second coming and extending through the millennium…needs to be modified.

By these comments Dr. Mayhue is in no way suggesting any position other than the pretrib rapture, but being the outstanding scholar that he is, he recognizes that the day of the Lord is not equivalent to Daniel’s final week. That “day” covers only a very short segment of the final week. Unfortunately, Blaising did not get the memo. Blaising spends a considerable amount of time detailing the patterns and typologies found in Daniel 8-12 that supposedly form the basis of his claim that the day of the Lord is equal to the final week of Daniel. Yet, curiously, he does not speak of passages which explicitly refer to the day of the Lord, like Joel 2:31, for instance. Consequently, he adds nothing new to the defense of the pretrib position and only continues a poor exegetical argument for it.