SRR # 71 Jeremiah and The Fig Baskets.

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Justification by Faith Alone and Polemical Ministry

The anathema of God was for those who denied justification by faith alone. When that is at stake, we need to be on the battlefield, exposing the air and combating the air.

We are unabashedly, unashamedly Clarkian. And so the next few statements that I'm going to make, I'm probably going to step on all of the Vantillium toes at the same time. And this is what we do at Simple Riff around the radio, you know.

We are polemical and polarizing Jesus style.

I would first say that to characterize what we do as bashing is itself bashing. It's not hate. It's history. It's not bashing. It's the Bible. Jesus said, Woe to you when men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way, as opposed to blessed are you when you have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness.

It is on. We're taking the gloves off. It's time to battle.

Jeremiah's Fig Baskets and the Meaning of the Exile

Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, like these good figs. So I will regard as good the exiles from Judah, whom I have sent away from this place, the land of the Chaldeans. I will set my eyes on them for good and I will bring them back to this land.

I will build them up and not tear them down. I will plant them and not pluck them up. I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.

Jeremiah chapter 24 verses 5 through 7.

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Introduction to the Daniel Series and Historic Premillennialism

Alright, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Tim Shaughnessy and you are listening to Semper Reformanda Radio. So I hope that some people out there are going to be able to take advantage and go see that movie, Alien Intrusion Unmasking a Deception.

Creation Ministries International is the one who is putting it out. It comes out today, which is why I'm playing the commercial. I have a couple of friends who are going to go see it. I thought it was really, really good.

I'll probably be purchasing the video when it comes out. I also got to interview Gary Bates. He is from Creation Ministries International. I interviewed him a couple of episodes back. Check that out if you haven't heard it already.

We are going to continue today with our series in Daniel. Today's message is called Jeremiah and the Fig Baskets. Of course, this message is going to be brought to you by Timothy Kaufman, who is our expert in Roman Catholicism.

He is our expert in eschatology. We are plowing through the book of Daniel and plowing through eschatology because this is something that Tim has been studying for 20 years. A lot of the stuff that he is seeing in the scriptures really is not stuff that you probably would have heard before.

He is connecting dots and he is making sense of things. We would both hold to a historic pre-mill view. I'd like to talk a little bit about this in the future and talk a little bit more about what brought me to this view.

I went from dispensationalism to all-millennialism. Now, I'm at a historic pre-mill, but it's probably a little bit different than what people are used to. This series is just going to get better and better and better.

Let me just do this. I am just going to hand it over to Tim because he is the expert. I'm learning a lot of this stuff for the first time with you guys. With that, Tim, I'm just going to give you the floor.

Why don't you just take it away?

Thank you, Tim. I appreciate that introduction. I appreciate the emails we've been receiving from some of the listeners. I'm glad there are some folks out there listening to it and find it encouraging.

Even for those who are listening that don't agree with the eschatology that we are espousing, I hope that they are enjoying the study. We're trying to turn people back to a detailed and focused investigation of Daniel's prophecies, what he wrote down and what he described, and helping us to understand what it was that he meant, not only by what he recorded, but the questions he asked and the answers he got, and the questions that angels asked and the answers that they got when they were inquiring about the contents of Daniel's visions and dreams.

When we left off last week, we concluded with the observation that there are two kinds of end times visions in Daniel. One kind is about end times that terminate abruptly with the end of the indignation and focused on the sins of God's people.

There is the other kind of end times visions that Daniel has that transport him into the distant future and focus largely on the righteousness of God's people and depict the saints ruling together with Christ in an earthly kingdom.

Being able to distinguish between those two kinds of end times is extremely important because, as it turns out, Daniel 9 is about the kind of end times that terminate abruptly with the end of the indignation and focus on the sins of God's people.

Daniel's visions about the end of the indignation all terminate in the period of the Greek Empire under the oppression of Antiochus IV of the Seleucid line from one of the four successor kingdoms after Alexander the Great, that is, in the Greek period of Daniel's visions.

It would be the bronze period of Daniel 2, the he-goat period of Daniel 8, the leopard period of Daniel 7, and the cardinal vision, as I called it last week, of Daniel chapter 11 that depicts the division of Alexander's empire, north, south, east, and west.

So, as we noted last week, this idea of there being two kinds of end times visions in the book of Daniel is one of the most important points in the whole series on the Danielic timeline because when we turn to Daniel 9 and find that the main focus of the entire chapter is the sins of the Jews as well as the end of the indignation, we realize that the prophecy of the 70 weeks of Daniel concludes under the reign of Antiochus IV in the same period as depicted in Daniel 8, 23 -25, Daniel 11, 21 -39, and Daniel 12, 5 -13, all of which depict the time period in the 2nd century BC.

As we also noted last week, we gave advance notice that I do not consider Daniel 9 to be a messianic prophecy and I will just say up front that this is the extreme minority opinion since the vast majority of Christians in the history of the Church have interpreted Daniel 9 as a prophecy of the coming of the Messiah.

We understand that we may very well be alone on this, but we will show from the Scriptures that the prophecy is not messianic and we're going to stand on the Scriptures, even if we stand alone on this chapter.

That said, it is hard to overturn 2 ,000 years of tradition and we do not attempt this very lightly. Very early in my Christian walk, I read through the volumes 1 and 2 of Josh McDowell's Evidence That Demands a Verdict and the messianic fulfillments factored heavily into his assessment of the prophetic accuracy of the Old Testament.

It also factored heavily into the eschatological Sunday School lessons of my early days as a Christian, so I had some idea of what I was going against when I started researching this myself and finding that it was not a messianic prophecy.

And again, I respect those who believe it is a messianic prophecy, but I don't believe that it is, so it's going to be a long, hard slog through Daniel, Jeremiah, Zechariah, Isaiah, and the Pentateuch, as well as the New Testament, to prove what I'm saying, and that's going to take a while.

I'll probably spend three or four episodes just on Daniel 9, so for those who are not put off by the proposition that the prophecy is not messianic but is rather mosaic, we can all buckle up. It's going to be a lot of information.

We hope we can do it justice. So, does that sound like a good plan to you, Tim?

Yeah, that sounds like a good plan. I'm all buckled up. Let's do it.

Okay. Well, let's take it away, then. When approaching the prophecy of the 70 weeks in Daniel 9, the ancient and frequent temptation has been immediately to rush forward to the last four verses of the chapter and read about Messiah the Prince, who will come, and then shall the Messiah be cut off but not for himself, and he will confirm the covenant to make an end of sins, make reconciliation for iniquity, and bring about everlasting righteousness.

Those are all quotes from Daniel 9, 24 -27. Once we've concluded from this immediate assessment of the messianic implications, and that the prophecy itself is a messianic one, even the obscure references like, to anoint the most holy in Daniel 9, 24, become subtle references to Christ.

In other words, the temptation is to read the chapter in a messianic context, and the temptation is almost irresistible. Once it is assumed that Daniel 9 is a messianic prophecy, all that remains is somehow to make the numbers of the prophecy work out, to be fulfilled in Christ's birth, or his baptism, or his crucifixion.

This has been the temptation since the earliest days of Christianity. One lamentable example, I think, is Origen, and he lived from 185 to 254 AD, and he provided an example of just this approach. He identifies the prophecy as messianic, and then tries to figure out how to make it fit Jesus.

This is from Origen's Stromata, Volume 10, as cited in Jerome's Commentary on Daniel, Chapter 9. And this is Origen's assessment. We must quite carefully ascertain the amount of time between the first year of Darius, the son of Ahasuerus, and the advent of Christ, and discover how many years were involved, and what events are said to have occurred during them.

Then we must see whether we can fit these data in with the time of the Lord's coming. While Origen counted the 70 weeks from Darius to Christ, Julius Africanus, who lived from 160 to 240 AD, was a contemporary of Origen, and he insisted that we must instead start the calculation from Artaxerxes, for it is, quote, evident that the passage speaks then of the advent of Christ, who was to manifest himself after the 70 weeks.

If we start at any other point than Artaxerxes, Africanus wrote, the period will not correspond, and very many odd results will meet us. That's from Julius Africanus, Fragment 16. Other such attempts abound in the early church.

As for the Reformers, they interpreted the passage as a prophecy of Christ as well. Calvin wrote in his Commentary on Daniel, 925,. And yet I confess the impossibility of finding any other exposition of what the angel says, that is, until Christ the leader, unless by referring to the baptism of Christ.

These two points, then, in my judgment, must be held as fixed. First, the 70 weeks begin with the Persian monarchy, because a free return was then granted to the people, and secondly, they did not terminate till the baptism of Christ, when he openly commenced his work of satisfying the requirements of the office assigned to him by his father.

So you can see that he read it and said, there's just simply no other interpretation. It's got to be Messianic. Luther, for his part, thought that Daniel 9 spoke of the end of Judaism, brought about by the arrival of Christ.

That's from Martin Luther's Sermon for the 25th Sunday after Trinity, on Matthew 24, verses 15 to 28. He wrote in his Preface to the Book of Daniel, that to Daniel is revealed the number of years until Christ should come and begin his eternal kingdom.

Now this is a remarkable and great revelation of Christ, which sets the time so surely and accurately. 70 weeks of years total 490 years. This is how long men were still supposed to wait for Christ, then his kingdom was to begin.

That's from Martin Luther's works, Volume 35, Word and Sacrament, the Preface to the Prophet Daniel. So we can see that both Luther and Calvin, and other Reformers, by the way, interpreted Daniel chapter 9 as a Messianic prophecy, and they spent a lot of time trying to figure out the dates between the beginning period of the 70 weeks and the arrival of Christ.

Now, we acknowledge that when the text of Daniel 9 includes such language as Messiah the Prince, reconciliation, confirming the covenant, making an end of sins, and bringing in everlasting righteousness, it is hard not to superimpose a Messianic construct upon it.

And that is very much what the Church has done from its earliest post-apostolic days. And it is what the Reformers believed, and it is what occupies quite nearly all Danielic eschatological literature today.

The vision is presumed at the outset to be Messianic, and all that remains is to make the date fit the prophecy. Now, such an approach is a violation of even the most basic hermeneutical standards. And what is more, not one New Testament writer or speaker identified Christ as the fulfillment of the 70-week prophecy.

For example, when Jesus was born, there were a lot of Old Testament prophecies about His birth, but not a mention of Daniel chapter 9 and the prophecy of the 70 weeks. When Jesus was baptized, there were references in the New Testament to Old Testament prophecies being fulfilled, but nothing about Daniel 9 and the 70 weeks.

When Jesus was crucified, there was a lot of discussion in the New Testament text about the prophecies that were being fulfilled by Christ's death, but not a mention of Daniel chapter 9 and the 70-week prophecy.

What is missing in the entire New Testament is any writer or speaker identifying Christ as the fulfillment of the 70-week prophecy of Daniel chapter 9. And for that reason, the temptation to make Daniel 9 a messianic prophecy, for all of its attractions, must be resisted.

We are not to come to the text presuming already to know what it means. Listeners who heard our podcast years ago on Tim Keller and his series on preaching Christ from every text will recall that I objected strenuously to the practice of preaching Christ from every text for the very simple reason that not every text in Scripture is about Christ.

It is therefore possible, and I will add dangerous, to preach Christ from every text and by so doing to miss or ignore what the text is actually saying. Consider, for example, Augustine's attempt to expound Psalm 34 1, trying to make it about Christ.

Psalm 34 1 says, A psalm of David, when he changed his behavior before Abimelech, who drove him away and he departed. The reference in the psalm is to 1 Samuel 21 13 where it says of David,. And he changed his behavior before them, and feigned himself mad in their hands, and drummed on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down upon his beard.

Here is Augustine's interpretation from Augustine's exposition of Psalm 34 verse 1. Because a drum is not made except when skin is extended on wood, and David drummed to signify that Christ should be crucified, but he drummed upon the doors of the city.

What are the doors of the city but our hearts, which we had closed against Christ, who by the drum of his cross has opened the hearts of mortal men? Well, I'm just going to go ahead and say what needs to be said, and that is, it is absolute nonsense.

And it is an example of why we must be careful not to try to read Christ into every text and every prophecy. Some prophecies are about Christ, some are about Alexander the Great, some are about Antichrist, and some are about King Tigranus of Syria, and some are about Isaac the son of Abraham, and some scripture passages are about David drumming on the doors of the gate.

It is the context and the rest of the scriptures that will help us understand the meaning of Daniel 9. And Daniel has provided us with all the contextual cues we need to understand Gabriel's message. But if we start by assuming that the prophecy must be about Christ, we will miss what the message actually is.

We will miss what Gabriel came to tell Daniel. I should also, for a moment, spend some time addressing Revelation 19 .10, which says, for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. This is part of the answer the angel gives to the apostle John, and has been taken to mean that all prophecy must be about Christ.

I was once told by a critic, a critic of mine, that Daniel 9 must be a prophecy of Christ because the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. So I asked him about the large horn between the eyes of the he-goat in Daniel 8, which is clearly a prophecy about Alexander the Great and not about Christ.

He answered, well, the large horn of the goat reminds me of the oppression of the saints and that God is going to rescue us in Christ. Well, I'll just say that the large horn may remind us of Christ's ministry, but nevertheless the prophecy is not a prophecy of the coming of Christ.

It is a prophecy of Alexander the Great, and it would be just as erroneous to make Daniel 8 .5 about Christ without considering the context as it would be for us to make Daniel 9 about Christ without considering the context.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, I know my position on Daniel 9 is a long, arduous upstream swim, especially since the chapter has been interpreted as a messianic prophecy for almost 2 ,000 years. The traditional interpretation of Daniel chapter 9 has made it a cherished and even comforting narrative.

But an inspection of the text will show that neither Daniel nor Gabriel had Jesus in mind in the vision of chapter 9. What we shall find this week and in the coming weeks in our examination of the chapter is that the context of Daniel 9 is not messianic but mosaic.

The chapter is not about Jesus at all. And what we will show in this and the coming episodes is that the popular historical practice of imposing Christ upon the text, rather than revealing Christ to us, instead has served only to cloak the identity of antichrist because it makes us look for the antichrist of the Preterist school, which has the abomination of desolation set up in the 1st century AD, or it makes us look for the antichrist of the Futurist school, which has the abomination of desolation set up in a rebuilt temple in the distant future, and prevents us from seeing the antichrist of prophecy that has already come.

We'll have much more to say on that particular issue going forward. But for now, let us examine the context of Daniel 9 and show how it leads us to a mosaic fulfillment rather than a messianic fulfillment of the prophecy.

To do that, let us first address Calvin's rejection of the Jewish interpretation of the passage. According to Calvin, the Jews incorrectly believed that Gabriel had come to extend the period of the 70 year exile and missed the fact that God was completely satisfied with the punishment of those 70 years that the Jews spent in Babylon.

This, again, is Calvin's commentary on Daniel 9 .25. The rabbis expounded this prophecy of Daniel's and that of continual punishment which God was about to inflict upon his people after their return from captivity.

Thus, they entirely exclude the grace of God and blame the prophet as if he had committed an error in thinking that God would be propitious to these miserable exiles. By restoring them to their homes and rebuilding their temple.

They say, as I've already hinted, the continual calamities which oppress the people are hereby predicted. The prophet hoped the end of their troubles was fast approaching as God had testified by Jeremiah his perfect satisfaction with the 70 years of captivity.

That's Calvin contrasting his view of God's gracious words in the prophecy of Daniel 9 with the Jews who interpreted Gabriel's words to mean that there were yet more calamities to come. Calvin thought the Jews were in error to think that Gabriel had revealed even more punishment upon the Jews because he could only see the prophecy as a promise of the coming Christ.

So, he assumed the meaning of the text and used that meaning to interpret it. That passage could only be about God's grace in Calvin's mind. He believed that Jeremiah had testified of God's perfect satisfaction with the 70 years of captivity when in fact the scriptures actually testify that God was not satisfied in the least.

Calvin's error was to assume the text was about Jesus and then reject any interpretation that did not start with God's grace and assume God's perfect satisfaction. When we examine the actual words of Daniel and great Gabriel we will find that God had sent Gabriel to warn of even greater punishment.

For the very reason Calvin ruled out, the Jews had not repented of the errors that led to their 70 year punishment. This fact is discovered simply by reading what Daniel and Gabriel had said as well as by a brief visit with Zechariah.

For example, in the first chapter of Zechariah there is a conversation that takes place between an angel and the Lord and the angel asks the Lord why he has continued to not have mercy on Jerusalem even after the 70 years were over.

This is Zechariah 1 .12. Then the angel of the Lord answered and said, O Lord of hosts, how long wilt thou not have mercy on Jerusalem and on the cities of Judah against which thou hast had indignation these threescore and ten years?

Now this passage is after the vision of Daniel 9 and after the 70 years had expired and the angel is asking how long the Lord will continue to not have mercy on Jerusalem and on the cities of Judah. Now we just ask the listeners to notice that the Lord had had indignation against the Jews all those 70 years.

We'll come back to that fact and why the indignation had not ended after the 70 years and why the Jews would have to wait so long until the end of the indignation that Daniel had prophesied in several of his visions in Daniel.

As we noted in last week's podcast, Daniel has two kinds of end times visions in the book of Daniel. One kind that has to do with saints ruling with Christ in glory and another kind about the end of the indignation.

We have noted that Daniel 8, Daniel 12 verses 5 to 13 are about the end of the indignation and we will find that Daniel 9 is also about the end of the indignation. The Lord had indignation against the Jews before the 70 years exile.

He had indignation against the Jews during the 70 years exile. And here we are after the 70 years are over and the Lord's indignation had not ended. We will come back to the Lord's answer to the question posed in Zechariah 12 as well as the final end of the indignation.

But for now it is important to understand that the Lord's indignation was the cause of the 70 year exile and here we are even after the 70 year exile and the Lord's indignation was still not satisfying.

Let's just keep in mind that the indignation was still not over and would not be over for a long time. That's why Daniel was receiving prophecies about a distant future end of the indignation. Now let us look at Zechariah 7 verses 4 to 7 in which the Lord tells us through Zechariah that he was not pleased with the behavior of the people or the priests throughout those 70 years of captivity.

This is Zechariah 7 verses 4 to 7. Should ye not hear the words which the Lord hath cried by the former prophets when Jerusalem was inhabited and in prosperity and the cities thereof round about her when men inhabited the south and the plain?

That's Zechariah 7 verses 4 to 7. This too is after the 70 year exile and throughout those 70 years the people and the priests had not fasted and mourned unto the Lord and importantly had not heard the words which the Lord had cried by the former prophets when Jerusalem was inhabited and in prosperity.

Now let's listen to Daniel's assessment of the spiritual condition of the people of Israel even as the 70 years were about to end. This is Daniel 9 verses 5 to 7 and verse 13. We have sinned and have committed iniquity and have done wickedly and have rebelled even by departing from thy precepts and from thy judgments.

Neither have we hearkened unto thy servants the prophets which spake in thy name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers and to all the people of the land. O Lord, righteousness belongeth unto thee and unto us, confusion of faces, as at this day.

As it is written in the law of Moses, all this evil has come upon us yet we made not our prayers before the Lord our God that we might turn from our iniquities and understand thy truth. Now keep in mind this is Daniel supplicating before the Lord and confessing that even in the midst of the exile they still have not repented.

This is the spiritual condition of Daniel's own people at this day that is even after the punishments were almost over. Which is to say even when the 70 years of exile were almost complete they had not fully repented and they were still not obeying.

Now the reason we want to dwell on these evidences against the Jews during the 70 years and about God continuing in indignation against them even after the 70 years were over is to address and counter Calvin's claim that Jeremiah testified of God's perfect satisfaction with the 70 years.

Remember Calvin said that God had testified by Jeremiah his perfect satisfaction with the 70 years of captivity. Yet we can read the words of Zechariah and Daniel and see plainly that God's indignation was not over.

And as we will read from Gabriel his indignation would not be over for a long time because the Jews would not reach the end of the indignation until the period of the Greeks as we saw in Daniel 8, Daniel 11, and Daniel 12 verses 5 to 13.

And as we will show in Daniel 9 the chapter is about the end of the indignation too. So we are going to have to spend a lot of time understanding the Lord's indignation against the Jews why they were sent to Babylon for 70 years in the first place why those 70 years did not satisfy his indignation and all of this is so that we can understand why his indignation was finally ended when the 70 weeks were over and that will help us understand what Daniel 8 and 11 mean when they speak about the end of the indignation.

So let's open up Daniel chapter 9 and we are going to read the first words in the chapter which say that he was studying the books of Jeremiah about the 70 year captivity. This is what Daniel wrote in Daniel 9 verses 1 to 3.

In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus of the seed of the Medes which was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans in the first year of his reign I Daniel understood by books the number of years whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet that he would accomplish 70 years in the desolations of Jerusalem and I set my face unto the Lord God to seek by prayer and supplications with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.

Now because Daniel was studying Jeremiah when he sought understanding from the Lord he was not just studying Jeremiah but was asking the Lord to help him understand what Jeremiah had said. Our inquiry into Daniel 9 will first lead us to Jeremiah because we will find that Gabriel's answer to Daniel is based on the book that Daniel had been studying.

What we will find is that both Daniel and Jeremiah together will lead us to Moses and Moses will lead us to why the 70 year exile was necessary in the first place why it didn't work and why Gabriel answered with a prophecy about 70 times 7.

Daniel only asked about 70 and Gabriel came with an answer but talked instead about 70 times 7. Our point is that we plan to show that the end of the indignation is plainly tied to the 70 years captivity and we will show from the law of Moses that the law required that the indignation be extended beyond the 70 years and that the end of the indignation was a mosaic satisfaction not a messianic one.

We understand that this is hard to swallow and we don't blame people for their shock at the suggestion. We are nearly at 2 ,000 years of patristic medieval and reformed interpretations that assume the prophecy of Daniel 9 is messianic.

But the interpretation of the 70 weeks has to be based on what Daniel was studying what he asked about when he was studying and what Gabriel answered about when Daniel was asking. And what we will find is that both of them were referring to the law of Moses as the cause of the indignation and both recognized that the law of Moses was the final solution for this particular indignation.

Now for those who are tempted to raise an initial objection that the blood of goats and bulls and Old Testament sacrifices cannot satisfy God's wrath. I agree, that's what Hebrews tells us about Jesus in Hebrews 10 4.

For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins. That is absolutely true. But we are not to read Daniel 9 through the lens of Hebrews but through the lens of Jeremiah and the law of Moses because that is the context in which Daniel's question is asked and it is the context in which Gabriel answers it recall the story of Phineas in Numbers 25 the Lord had brought a plague upon the people because of their fornication and when Phineas killed one of the offenders and the woman he was with the Lord took his wrath away from the people.

This is Numbers 25 11. Phineas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest hath turned my wrath away from the children of Israel while he was zealous for my sake among them that I consumed not the children of Israel in my jealousy.

Again, that's Numbers 25 11 we cannot look at a situation like this and then bring in Hebrews and say that God's wrath was not really taken away because only Jesus could have done that all the while ignoring the fact that this all occurred under a Mosaic construct.

Likewise, if the Lord's indignation in Daniel was also under a Mosaic construct there's nothing wrong with identifying the Mosaic instrument to removing the Lord's wrath so long as we understand that the people of God were still under the law their tutor in the time before Christ as we are instructed in Galatians 3 24.

Our point is that if the indignation of the Lord occurred under a Mosaic construct and the Lord prescribes a Mosaic solution and the Jews attempted that solution under a Mosaic covenant we simply have to recognize that what happened was under the old covenant.

There's nothing wrong with that just as there was nothing wrong with the Lord saying that Phinehas' valor had stayed his wrath. So again, before we rush forward into a Messianic era and the new covenant let us first examine the context of the indignation of the Lord against the Jews.

What we will discover from the scriptures is, in a word, fascinating. And to get us going in the right direction we will discover why Calvin was so convinced that the Lord's purposes after the exile were only merciful and why the Jews were so convinced that the Lord's purposes after the exile were only punitive.

As it turns out, we'll find from the scriptures that they were both right and we'll discover that from Jeremiah's prelude to the 70-year exile. So let us begin in Jeremiah before any mention is made of the 70-year exile and let's consider the Lord's love and wrath toward his own people in the vision of the figs.

This is from chapter 24 of Jeremiah the chapter immediately preceding Jeremiah's prophecy of the 70-year exile. In that vision of the figs, we will not only see God's plan for his people under the exile but also his plan for his people after the 70 years have expired.

So let us turn to Jeremiah 24. Jeremiah has been shown two baskets of figs one full of naughty figs and one full of nice figs. Here is the vision and the Lord's interpretation of the vision for Jeremiah and keep in mind that the Lord has two plans for the two kinds of figs for one basket to build them up and for the other basket to tear them down and both of these would be accomplished by the exile.

So here's Jeremiah, it's only 10 verses and so we'll just simply read the entire chapter. The Lord showed me and behold two baskets of figs were set before the temple of the Lord after that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had carried away captive Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah and the princes of Judah with the carpenters and smiths from Jerusalem and had brought them to Babylon.