But Gabriel’s response to Daniel isn’t all good news.
God uses the occasion to reveal not just what Daniel had inquired about (the immediate future), but God’s complete plan for the city and the sanctuary. This has to do with Jerusalem’s more distant future. Cyrus issued his decree in 538 BC and the people returned immediately and began rebuilding. The temple was completed ~515 BC. The second part of the vision (the part Daniel had inquired about) would be fulfilled ~AD 30 when, “The Anointed One” would “be put to death” (v. 26). This is a reference to Jesus. Gabriel goes on to talk about what will happen to the city and temple as a consequence of Jesus’ rejection by the Jewish people.
“The people of the ruler will come and destroy the city and the sanctuary.” That’s pretty plain, isn’t it? Since we know from chapter 2 that God would set up the kingdom in the days of the Roman Empire—the “people of the ruler” refers to the Roman army. This meshes with what Jesus taught in Luke 21:20 when he said, “When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, you will know that its desolation is near.” He went on to say that this would happen within His generation (v. 32) and it did when Titus and the Romans destroyed the temple and the city in AD 70.
Gabriel goes on to tell Daniel in v. 27 about an “abomination that causes desolation” coming to the temple. This not only shakes hands with the desolation Luke tells us about, but listen to Jesus’ words in Matthew’s parallel account in 24:15-16:
“So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand— then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.
Putting what we’re told by Jesus in Matthew and Luke, the “abomination that causes desolation” is the Roman army and Daniel talked spoke of it in 9:27. As soon as you saw them, you needed to get out of Judea.
Why does this happen to Jerusalem? Read Matthew 23 in its entirety and you’ll find out. At the end of that chapter Jesus says this:
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”
After Jesus’ words here we go immediately into Matthew 24 where he talks about the destruction of Jerusalem. Jim McGuiggan has suggested that if we want to understand Jesus’ prayer in the garden—we look at it not in light of Jesus’ reluctance to die (He came for that purpose), but His understanding of how His rejection and death on the cross would set into motion God’s judgment upon His people. It also explains why when He is heading to Calvary to be crucified, He says to the women who were mourning and crying for Him,
“Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the childless women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then “‘they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!”’ (23:28-30).
What have we seen in Gabriel’s response to Daniel’s prayer? After assuring him that the city and temple would be rebuilt and restored (539-515 BC), he goes on to speak of Jesus’s death, Jerusalem’s desolation, and the judgment of God (AD 30 & AD 70). It’s a sad ending for those attached to the Jewish system more than they were to God. But it is an ending–God was finished working through the Jewish nation.
For the rest of humanity (including Jewish people), it is the beginning of the age of the Messiah. Neither His own physical death nor the death of the Jewish commonwealth could keep Jesus from establishing His kingdom. Unlike the Jewish kingdom, His is a kingdom that cannot be shaken. It is a kingdom that is open to all nation on the basis of faith in Him.
A Taste of Grace with Bruce Green 