Yesterday I listened to a sermon delivered by Dr. Al Mohler Jr., President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, that he preached several years ago at The Shepherd’s Conference sponsored by Grace Community Church in California.
In that sermon, he said: “Misidentifying the Messiah is not just a massive theological mistake. It would be blasphemy. It would be slander against God to misidentify the Messiah or to attribute messianic identity clearly to one who is not the Messiah.”
However, his seminary and even Bible-believing churches all over the world are doing just that with their interpretation of Daniel 9:27a, which says “he shall confirm the covenant with many.”
By teaching that that verse should be interpreted as the Antichrist making a covenant with modern Israel, as traditional exegesis based on bad chronology coming out of 19th-century England has dictated for more than a century, blasphemy against Jesus and slander against God is being committed.
In my book The Messiah Prophecy, an exposition of Daniel 9:24-27 (the “seventy weeks”), I show from Scripture that verse 27a is talking about the New Covenant prophesied in Jeremiah 31:31-34 and confirmed by Jesus in the year 30 CE, not about the Antichrist and end-time Israel.
I know with certainty that the Congregation you lead would never intentionally blaspheme our Lord or slander God. As a brother in Messiah, however, I am compelled to point out that you have been inadvertently doing just that by teaching an eschatology based on an outdated exegesis of Daniel, chapter 9, that has, for far too long, been in error.
See The Messiah Prophecy in the bookstore.