A visitor to this website recently wrote me to ask, “If the restoration of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount to the Jewish people during the Six-Day War in 1967 was really the fulfillment of the prophecy in Daniel about the restoration of the sanctuary, as you say in your books, why are you the only one to see it? Why do you think you of all people were chosen to understand the prophecy?”
Here’s the prophecy he was referring to … “Then I heard a holy one speaking; and another holy one said to that certain one who spoke, How long shall be the vision concerning the continual burnt-offering, and the disobedience that makes desolate, to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden under foot? He said to me, To two thousand and three hundred evenings and mornings, then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.” (Daniel 8:13-14)
When I first understood the fulfillment of that prophecy in 1974, seven years after it happened in 1967 (read about how it happened ), that is precisely the same question I asked myself, “Why me, and why has no one else seen it?” I still don’t have a good answer other than to accept that it was a demonstration of the way the Apostle explained the origin of such understanding in the Bible: “But God chose the foolish things of the world that he might put to shame those who are wise. God chose the weak things of the world, that he might put to shame the things that are strong;.” (1 Corinthians 1:27)
After all, the evidence of the fulfillment was available for everyone to see. Millions, including hundreds of respected Bible expositors and scholars teaching theology in seminaries, and thousands of preachers expounding the Bible from pulpits, watched the 1967 fulfillment event—the liberation of Old City Jerusalem and the Temple Mount—unfold on television, and that event was widely reported and celebrated in newspapers and magazines all around the world for years afterwards. Perhaps I was just one of the first to look at everything after the 1967 fulfillment without looking through the lens of the outdated pre-1967 interpretations still being taught in seminaries and featured in all modern commentaries and study Bibles.
For the record, it is worth stating that, once God had unsealed the prophecies, my understanding of Daniel 8:14 (and eventually the other prophecies in Daniel) came solely from Bible research, enhanced by prayer for understanding the prophecies and days of meditation on them. Most of all it came by relying on God’s promise to reward those who diligently seek Him, the reward being more understanding of the Bible in a way that gives greater knowledge of Himself. The point being, no special spiritual talent or gift (i.e., nothing that isn’t available to you or every other believer for gaining knowledge about God) was employed in achieving the Danielic interpretations presented in my books, and none is needed today. No claim of personal spiritual superiority over past expositors of Daniel is implied, either, although I think you will agree, once you have read them, that the interpretations themselves are superior.
Some years later, after vast amounts of information had become available on the internet, I found that several other people had published the idea that the 1967 event was a fulfillment of the Daniel 8 prophecy, but none of them were Bible scholars, so no one of any importance in “official” religious circles took notice. I’ve run into the same reaction myself. And, not even those few individuals who had connected the liberation of the Temple Mount to the Daniel 8:13-14 prophecy had ventured anything more than an opinion without exegesis (i .e., none had fully explained the chronology associated with the “2,300 evening-mornings” time period revealed in the prophecy using specific starting and ending events defined in the text of Daniel that can be documented in recorded history, as I do in my book Daniel Unsealed.)
However, the knowledge that the prophecy in Daniel 8:13-14 had been fulfilled in 1967 by God working through the Jewish people (i.e., those Jews regathered to the Land of Israel despite their lack of understanding and belief as a nation that Jesus is their Jewish Messiah in fulfillment of the prophecies in the Tanakh) allowed me to assume that all of the prophecies in Daniel were at last unsealed as God had promised would happen in the last days. Using that knowledge, I could then begin figuring out the interpretations of the other chrono-specific predictive prophecies in Daniel. Understanding the correct interpretation of Daniel 8 was the key that unlocked everything.
I realize that for those of you who have been trained in the traditional interpretations (i.e., trained in the interpretations of Scofield, Gabalein, Walvoord, Wood, and other expository giants in conservative religious circles who have published Daniel expositions), it will be hard, perhaps impossible, for you to see the post-1967 interpretations that I have introduced. I readily admit that the interpretations of the Danielic prophecies in my book are different from anything you have read. On the other hand, though, you will find that my interpretations are totally faithful to both the text of Scripture and documented history. And, after all, that is the true test of an interpretation of the Bible’s predictive prophecy: The interpretation must agree with the biblical text and documented history, both at the same time. The traditional pre-1967 interpretations of the Danielis prophecies in your commentaries and study Bibles do not. The post-1967 interpretations in my book do.
My prayer is that you will read the interpretations of the Danielic prophecies set forth in my books and consider them carefully for their accuracy with respect to the text of the Bible and the documents of recorded history. But, be forewarned. My interpretations of the prophecies in Daniel are not just a better re-wording of interpretations that you will have read elsewhere. They are totally new, some based on recent events in Israel that were foretold in Daniel and that have now happened, and all are based on documented history, not guesswork or approximations of history. That’s why they will contradict and make obsolete the pre-1967 interpretation in the commentaries and study Bibles you have been using for understanding the prophecies in Daniel.
The prophecies in Daniel outline the history of the Jewish people from the days of King Solomon down to the present day. When properly interpreted, they specify the exact time for the appearance of the modern nation of Israel on the world stage. They can also be seen to have foretold the exact time of the first advent of Jesus two-thousand years ago as the Redeemer Messiah of Israel, and they show that no other person in history has a legitimate claim to be the Jewish Messiah that can be documented by the words of the Tanakh. It’s all there in Daniel if you know how to read it! — Dan Bruce