Episode 104: Why is 'Seven Years' Not Mentioned in the NT?

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 104

Gary does a deep dive on the absence of a seven-year period discussed in the New Testament, which is crucial for many end-time theories.

Could God have placed a “gap” between the sixty-ninth and seventieth years of Israel’s captivity, adding, say, a hundred years and still maintain that He had kept His word? There is no way He could have done it and remained a God of truth. But what if God came back and said, “I didn’t actually add any years; I just postponed the final year by means of a ‘gap’ of 100 years. The ‘gap’ consisting of 100 years, which you assume to be additional years, should not be calculated in the overall accounting.” This would mean that 170 years would have passed. Using “gap logic” the Bible could still maintain that Israel was in captivity for only seventy years. Let’s call this what it is: nonsense.

What would we think of such a deal? Could God ever delay keeping His promise in such a way and still be called a covenant-keeping God? No! And yet this is exactly what dispensationalists do with the “seventy weeks of years” (490 years) of Daniel’s prophecy. A “gap” of nearly two thousand years supposedly does nothing to change the integrity of a prophecy specifying the passage of only 490 years.

If we can find no gaps in the sequence of years in these examples, then how can a single exception be made with the “seventy weeks” in Daniel 9:24-27? Some maintain that the passage in Daniel lends itself to inserting a gap because of the division of weeks: seven weeks, sixty- two weeks, and one week. Since there is no gap between the seven and sixty-two weeks, what justification is there in inserting a gap between the sixty-ninth week (seven weeks + sixty-two weeks = sixty-nine weeks) and the seventieth week? Moses’ life is divided up into three forty-year periods (Acts 7:23; 7:30; Deut. 8:2). Should we look for and expect gaps in the 120 years of Moses’ life? No.

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Gary does a deep dive on the absence of a seven-year period discussed in the New Testament, which is crucial for many end-time theories. He asks why, if this timeframe is so pivotal, it is not explicitly mentioned in the NT. Although “three and a half years” are mentioned in Revelation, the concept of a definitive seven-year tribulation is not.

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