Making a Firm Covenant, or ConFIRMing The Covenant

And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering – Dan. 9:27 (NASB)

He will confirm a covenant with many for one ’seven.’ In the middle of the ’seven’ he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. – Dan. 9:27 (NIV)

And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. – Dan. 9:27 (ESV)

And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease – Dan. 9:27 (KJV)

The word for ‘make a strong’, ‘confirm’, and ‘make a firm’ in the Hebrew is ‘gabar’, and means ‘to strengthen’ or ‘to confirm’. There are other Hebrew words that mean ‘to make’ – asah, suwm, nathan, etc. – and gabar is not one of them.

Is there a difference in making a firm covenant and confirming a covenant? I think there is, and I think this lends further support to the consistent interpretation that the ‘he’ in verse 27 of Daniel 9 is not the anti-Christ, but is rather Christ Himself who, according to Gabriel’s words, confirms/strengthens an already existing covenant, the covenant of grace.

Those who believe the tribulation is still yet future must have this verse mean that some powerful figure will one day make a treaty with Israel and then break that agreement 3 1/2 years later. However, an honest examination of the text ends with only one interpretation – Christ is the one who confirms the covenant, who, by His death on the cross, caused sacrifice and grain offering to cease, because He is the once-for-all sacrifice.

Futurists must also separate the last seven years of Gabriel’s prophecy to Daniel from the first 483 years, thereby making the total time not 490 years, but 2400 plus years and counting.

More on that soon.

Lurking in the Shadows, Waiting for Controversy

Let’s be real honest here. Man is fallen. Controversy sells. I am drawn to it, and if you are honest with yourself, so are you. But I think there is a difference in having one’s interest peeked because of some disagreement verses being a watch-dog ready to pounce when something pops up that touches on some controversial subject in which one believes he has an apparent dog in the fight.

This reality really struck home with me last week on this blog when, after doing more than a solid week of discussing/debating the topic of baptism (during which my hits soared to around 700 a day and comment threads racked up dens of dozens of entries), I posted a very serious and important and eternally vital question which went to the heart of salvation – hope and trust in the person and work of Christ rather than in our own deeds and actions – which barely even registered as far as getting noticed, and received not even one comment.

The post was titled, Can Someone Truly Be Saved and Also Believe They Can Lose Their Salvation, and was the result of a question I received in a private email from someone who was really struggling with this in light of how those whom he loved in his church believed that they could lose their salvation. He asked me, “Are these dear people whom I love saved?”

That, my readers, is a question that deserves much attention and discussion and pondering. It goes to the heart of justification by faith alone in Christ alone. And so I posted the above entry in the hopes of getting some input from those who had come here frequently and commented on other issues. It was a topic that I was truly interested in and was looking forward to some good discussion about. Well, two days went by and the article barely even got noticed, and it was then that I decided to try something. So I took the exact same content, word for word, and published a new post with a title that asked the same question about being saved, but in the context of baptism. Almost immediately, the hits to that entry started climbing, and then the rebukes and admonishments started pouring in (many of which you never saw because they were never approved for display).

From some of the remarks it was clear that those commenting had not even read the content, because it had absolutely nothing to do with baptism. And IF those commenting had really been visiting this site regularly and reading my entries and not just lurking, waiting for the next article from me that would attack their position on baptism, then they surely would have easily recognized that the post which got so much attention was no different in content than the one before it. I would like to acknowledge that D. Stanfield was the only one who obviously read the post and responded to it based upon its content. Thank you, D., for paying attention.

Just to give you some quick numbers for comparison, here are the number of views over the last 7 days for the first post, and also for the second one:

-Can Someone Truly Be Saved and Also Believe They Can Lose Their Salvation – 23 views
-Can a Person Truly Be Saved and Also Believe in Paedo or Credo Baptism? – 191 views

I pray that we would become as interested in the gospel as we are in controversy. And I am including myself in that prayer as well.