Daniel

By Richard Govier

"It is my purpose in this study to prove the reliability of Gabriel's statement to Daniel that states, "Seventy weeks of years are decreed concerning your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophecy and to anoint a most holy place" (Daniel 9:24 RSV). These are things that I hope to deal with in this study, and it is my hope that readers, whether Jew or Gentile, will approach the subject with an open mind. I have only one desire, and that is to exalt the Messiah, the Christ, to whom the prophecy belongs."

Richard O. Govier (1928-2018) was a Protestant pastor and missionary and travelled the world in that capacity. He planted a number of churches as well as training pastors who served in Brazil, Chile, Argentina and across the United States.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Govier
• Release date: Jul 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463238271

Richard Govier

Richard O. Govier (1928-2018) was a Protestant pastor and missionary and travelled the world in that capacity. He planted a number of churches as well as training pastors who served in Brazil, Chile, Argentina and across the United States.After his marriage to his lifetime sweetheart, Christine Ann Golfis, at the Bethesda Missionary College in Portland, Oregon, he attended extension classes at Pierce College and the Portland State college. Touched by the Latter Rain revival that began in the Northwest, the call of God rested continually on their hearts and they were forever seeking means of preaching the Gospel to their generation. They bought a small trailer and began an evangelistic trek across the United States, preaching in small churches that were open to the work and moving of the Holy Spirit. They criss-crossed the United States from Los Angeles to New York and finally settled down in Los Angeles where they both got jobs and attended a church in Long Beach, California. While serving in that church their son, Jeffrey Lee, was born on November 4, 1963.God had spoken through prophetic words that they would be going to a land whose language they would not understand. Going through a dry period in their lives, Richard loaded up a small tent and made a trip to Mount Palomar, to wait on God. After a week of prayer and fasting, the Holy Spirit spoke to his heart that it was time to fulfill the call to a foreign land. Richard, Christine, and Jeff, set out for Brazil. They had no financial support for this until the night they boarded the ship. God sent a local Christian businessman who committed himself to their support for two years, just enough time to attend language school.It was while attending the Brazilian language school that a missionary visited and introduced Richard to one of Brazil's most notable guitar players, who had recently converted to Christianity. Richard played with him on the banjo and the two began a ministry together that took them to Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. Richard taught pastors in afternoon meetings, while accompanying his Brazilian friend in large city-wide evangelistic campaigns in the evenings.After serving for ten years in South America, Richard and Christine returned to the United States, primarily to get Jeff into an English-speaking school. Richard pastored churches in York, Pennsylvania, and later in Brooksville, New Jersey. The family eventually moved to Florida where Richard went to work for Piper Aircraft and Page Avjet.Richard loved studying the word of God and, in his retirement years, wrote over thirty books about the unfolding revelations of God in human history. His son, Jeff, published these books one year after his father passed away.

Book preview

DANIEL

The Calendar Of Weeks

and

The Seventy Weeks Prophecy

Richard O. Govier

Copyright © 2019 by Jeff Govier

Bible quotations unless otherwise identified are taken from

the King James Version with emendations by the author.

Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible®,

Copyright © 1960,1962,1963,1968,1971,1972,1973,1975,1977,1995

by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

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After reading this book and finding it of value to you, please consider sending a small donation for the the costs of advertising my father's work. Send all donations either by Paypal account name [e-mail] or by mail to:

Jeff Govier, 5511 Lorraine St., Lakeland, FL 33810.

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter I: The Calendar of Weeks

Chapter II: The Seventy Weeks in Prospectus

Chapter III: The Seventy Weeks Prophecy

About the Author

Introduction

An anonymous Catholic Monk is credited with saying, Chronology is a surly cur and has bitten the hand of many a man. When it comes to the subject of Chronology, there are as many points of view as there are days in a year. This is especially true of the Seventy Weeks prophecy found in the Book of Daniel.

When God set the Moon and the Sun in the heavens it was …for signs and for seasons and for days and years (Genesis 1:14). They, along with the tilt and spin of the earth, became the basis for all chronology. From the very beginning the idea of a sabbatical week seemed to dominate. The idea of a 7 day week probably originated with the Genesis story of creation and was later incorporated into the calendar system.

The ancient practice of tracking time in units of seven (or by sevens) can be especially recognized from writings, left by a Hebrew astronomer and philosopher named Aristobolus: All things were made by sevens in the starry heaven; and go round in circles in all the years succeeding one another.[1] A modern observer says, It seems that the spin and orbital rates of the Earth, Moon, and Sun literally do interface with cycles of sevens.[2] The interpretation of 7 years, in sets of 7 years, is as very simple as to perhaps be overlooked or unnoticed in the regard of being relative to astronomy. The cited interpretation of sets of 7 years appears to have been built around the use of a repeating common time unit: which is 7 rotations of the earth, or 7 days. Through the continuous (cyclical) count of 7 days, it is rather clear that an extremely accurate time track of specific 7 year segments could have been achieved.[3]

Enoch – Prophet/Cosmetologist

The celestial bodies were one of the great mysteries that confronted ancient man - hence the worship of them as gods. Perhaps the oldest record that we have of them being used as a measure of time and seasons is found in an ancient record that supposedly came down from Enoch. The Bible has but a very brief statement about Enoch (Genesis 5:21-25). The rest we have to get from Apocryphal literature. The Apostle Jude does have a reference to him - the seventh from Adam that prophesied of the judgment to come (Jude 1:14, 15).

Enoch's considerable prowess (or ability) as a cosmological interpreter is well reflected from pages of ancient literature. For example, the book of Jubilees relates that Enoch was the first who 'recounted the weeks of the Jubilees, and …set in order the months….[4] And Bar-Hebraeus, a medieval author who wrote about the life and times of Enoch, said that Enoch was the first to have discovered the knowledge of the Zodiac.

Pages of history thus portray Enoch to have been both an accomplished astronomer, as well as a ranking cleric. It here seems of some certain significance that this respective priest-astronomer is unilaterally shown to have been the very first to interpret a funicular system on the basis of a set of laws pertaining to the spin and orbit rates.[5]

The Book of Jasher says: And the Spirit of God was upon Enoch, and taught all his men the wisdom of God and his ways, and the sons of men served the Lord all the days of Enoch, and they came to hear his wisdom. And all the kings of the sons of men, both first and last, together with their princes and judges, came to Enoch when they heard of his wisdom, and they bowed down to him, and they also required of Enoch to reign over them, to which he consented. And Enoch reigned over the sons of men two hundred and forty-three years, and he did justice and righteousness with all his people, and he led them in the ways of the Lord.[6] Here we see Enoch not only as an astronomer but as a great monarch, reigning over the Pre-Flood civilization.

Pre-Flood Chronology

A careful study of pre-flood chronology reveals that a two-fold system of chronology was being used - one of 30 days, and another of 40 days. We know this from the time segments that were used in the text of the pre-flood story. A time interval of 30 days would give you a 12 month year of 360 days - which is the hexadecimal system used by ancient astrologers. On the other hand we see evidence that there was a 40 day count figured on the basis of 9 segments, which also equaled 360 days. This is a separate study all of its own which I will deal with later.

Extant at the same period of time was the calendar of 52 weeks developed by Enoch. As far as the text