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In This Day; Daniel's 70 Weeks Prophecy and the Triumphal Entry Luke 19:39 - 44

March 28, 2021 Speaker: Jim Galli Series: The Gospel According to Luke

Topic: Sunday AM Passage: Luke 19:39–44

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39 And some of the Pharisees in the multitude said to Him, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples.” 40 And He answered and said, “I tell you, if these become silent, the stones will cry out!” 41 And when He approached, He saw the city and wept over it, 42 saying, “If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes. 43 “For the days shall come upon you when your enemies will throw up a bank before you, and surround you, and hem you in on every side, 44 and will level you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.”

We looked at vss. 39 and 40 last week together but it's important in order to keep the next verses in context to tie the things Jesus says and does here together with the triumphal entry of last week.  It's all part of the same event, even though we've broken it down into two studies.

Jesus is in the final days of His life before the crucifixion.  He has entered Jerusalem and has fulfilled Zechariah's prophecy, entering on a foal of a donkey to the shouts of praise and adoration and worship of those who desire for Him to be some sort of a King.

The multitude longs for a revolution that would displace Rome, drive Rome out, and also drive out the self-righteous corrupt religious leaders, and bring in some of the promises of greatness for Israel.  A return to David's greatness.  Israel an important soveriegn nation in the center of the known world.  

But Zechariah was distinct in his prophecy.  When the King arrives on the foal of a donkey in humility, He comes endowed with salvation.  The people want a revolution.  The King offers salvation from sin.  Reconciliation with God.  The removal of the offense of sin that separates us from our Creator God.

Ultimately the multitude has no interest in a spiritual reconciliation with God.  They want physical power over their enemies.  They want national sovereignty.  They want Rome vanquished.  They want good times physically, but have no interest in spiritual restoration.

They have locked onto someone who they know has the power to accomplish what they're after.  This miracle worker who speaks . . . and it happens.  He could give them what they want but He's been reluctant to allow them to make Him a king on their limited shallow terms.  Now He is at least allowing them to present Him as a messiah of some sort.

What do you do when you're doing your best to have a victory celebration, and the victor to whom you are shouting hosanna's in the highest about breaks down and sobs over the coming destruction of the very place that you have imagined as being restored to supremacy.

Awkward.  What a strange dichotomy all happening at the same time.  The multitude is experiencing a thrill of victory.  The Victor bursts into sobbing over the agony of the defeat of Jerusalem.  What a strange scene this must have been.  Victorious celebrants over their chosen King.  But the King isn't celebrating at all.  The King is sobbing convulsively over the city that He's expected to reign supreme over.  

Last week we considered Jesus response to the current powers that be, the pharisee's who were chastising Him for allowing the multitude to sing adoration and worship that everyone knows is reserved for the Messiah.

39 And some of the Pharisees in the multitude said to Him, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples.”

You're NOT the Messiah so make these ignorant followers stop shouting the adoration and worship that is reserved for the Messiah who you clearly are not.  You're allowing these ignorant losers to blaspheme by worshipping you as THE Messiah.  Stop the blasphemy Jesus.  Teacher, rebuke your disciples!

And Jesus tells them that if those who are woshipping were silenced some how, the stones would cry out in worship to Him.  The stones would cry out.  Hold that thought of inanimate objects having a voice to shout God's truths.

40 And He answered and said, “I tell you, if these become silent, the stones will cry out!”

My mind went immediately to the blood of Abel which cried out to God from the ground that swallowed it up.  Gen. 4:9 Then the LORD said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” And he said, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” 10 And He said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground.

We only hear audible sounds that have waves that our ears can receive.  God hears the inanimate objects that cry out to Him of the evil that is done.  In Job 31, Job claims that his fields are not crying out because of injustice by him.  He's innocent and his fields will testify to that.  

In the James 5 warning to the rich the opposite is true.  James says the furrows in the field that have been harvested by those whom the rich have withheld their wages will cry out to God.  

How often have we heard someone say, "If only these walls could talk, the stories they could tell."  They may not speak to you audibly, but they do speak to God.

In Habakkuk 2 we have the walls crying out to the beams they hold up of the sins committed by those they contained.  vs. 11  “For the stone will cry out from the wall, And the rafter will answer it from the framework.  You commit wretchedness inside your four walls but be aware that your walls will cry out to God.

When Jesus told the pharisees that if His worshippers were silenced the stones would cry out, I believe there is a dual meaning.  We'll see stones again in the next sentences from Jesus mouth.  I believe there is a connection.  The very stones of the Temple will cry with a loud voice of judgement on this evil people who will reject and murder their Messiah.

It was in the plan of God Almighty that His Messiah would be entering Jerusalem with adoration and worship, and if somehow the crowd  had been silenced the stones would have literally cried out to complete the loud worship that God had planned for His only Son as He enters Jerusalem to die.

That's why Jesus said, if these are silenced the stones would cry out.  He meant it quite literally.

41 And when He approached, He saw the city and wept over it,

In John 11:35 it says that Jesus wept.  He wept at the grave of His friend, Lazarus.  That word is the usual word that would be used for ordinary weeping.  That isn't the word used here in vs. 41 over Jerusalem.  This word means to weep convulsively.  It's a much stronger word for tears that accompany a broken heart.

Jesus weeps because He loves Jerusalem, and judgement is coming upon the place and the people that He loves.  He knows very well what Jerusalem will do to Him in 6 more days.  His heart is breaking over the judgement that will envelop Jerusalem because they will murder and reject their messiah.

The multitude is rejoicing over how fabulous things are going to be with Jesus as their King.  A welfare state.  He makes food out of nothing.  He heals every disease.  He has miraculous powers that they hope will cast out Rome.  This will be like when David was king.  Better than David.  They're on an emotional high, casting their coats and palm branches before the donkey to make a highway for the entering King.

Their King is weeping over Jerusalem.  What a strange scene.  The shallow worship of the multitude that wants immediate gratification.  The weeping of the King of Kings who can see Jerusalem torn asunder, not many days from that day.  

42 saying, “If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes.

If you had known in this day.  In this day.  This day, the exact day. What day?

I believe this is a not so veiled reference to Daniels 70 weeks prophecy in Daniel chapter 9.  I urge you to go and read the full account from verse one of Daniel 9.  

Daniel is praying and confessing his sins and the sins of his people against their God when he remembers that the prophet Jeremiah had said that the captivity and punishment of Israel in Babylon would last 70 years and then they would be restored to their land.  And Daniel figures that 70 years has elapsed, and so he beseeches God about the matter of His people going back home to Jerusalem.

Read chapter 9 of Daniel.  It is a model of humble worshipful prayer unlike any other.  So much can be learned about the humble approach to the throne of God from Daniel.  And when Gabriel comes with the decree he tells Daniel that he, Daniel, is highly esteemed.  Daniel is precious and valuable to God.  

If you pick out someone in the Bible to try to pattern your life after, Daniel would be a superb choice.  I don't know of anyone else that God sends an angel to answer his prayer and the angel tells him, O Daniel, you are highly esteemed.  Daniel you are precious to God.  Valuable to God!  I want to be like Daniel.

We'll pick up the narrative from Daniel 9 beginning at verse 20 because it is so beautiful in it's context.

20 Now while I was speaking and praying, and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before the LORD my God in behalf of the holy mountain of my God, (Stop there.  The holy mountain of Daniels God and our God is Jerusalem.  The temple mount.  Mount Moriah.  Daniel is specifically praying about a return to prescribed worship to God by the people of God's possession, the Jews, on God's holy mountain. Jerusalem)

21 while I was still speaking in prayer, then the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision previously, came to me in my extreme weariness about the time of the evening offering. 22 And he gave me instruction and talked with me, and said, “O Daniel, I have now come forth to give you insight with understanding. 23 “At the beginning of your supplications the command was issued, and I have come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed; so give heed to the message and gain understanding of the vision.

What follows is to me at least, perhaps the most spectacular prophecy in all of the Bible.  We won't consider all of it in detail this morning, but I believe the timeline given here is the reason Jesus wept over Jerusalem and said the words;  “If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes.

If you had known IN THIS DAY. . .   What day?  Gabriel is about to tell Daniel about an exact day that is calculable.  No excuse not to know when this day would be.

24 “Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy place.

Seventy periods of 7.  Seventy weeks of years.  If you're math challenged, that's 490 years.  Sin will be finished.  Rebellion will be finished.  Evil will be finished.  Sin will be atoned for.  Everlasting righteousness will begin.  The most holy place will be anointed.

Listen again to what Jesus said as He wept;  “If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace!

The things which make for peace.  What exactly are the things which make for peace.  The world has never had peace for a minute since Satan usurped the throne of authority to reign here.  Continual war and strife since Adam's sin until this day.  Non-stop strife.  Non-stop murder.  Wars continually.  What are the things which make for peace.

Gabriel tells Daniel exactly what the things that make for peace are.  And we will never have one minutes peace until this prophecy is completed.  Listen again to Gabriel;

Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy place.

There are six distinct things listed in Daniel's prophecy by Gabriel that make for peace.  These are the things that will bring in world peace at last;

⦁    to finish the transgression,
⦁    to make an end of sin
⦁    to make atonement for iniquity
⦁    to bring in everlasting righteousness,
⦁    to seal up vision and prophecy,
⦁    and to anoint the most holy place

The things that make for peace that Jesus spoke of in His heartbraking sobs over Jerusalem are these things that Gabriel outlined distinctly for Daniel.  Peace will never come to this world until this list happens.  And that list will not happen until a Stronger than Satan comes and deposes and displaces Satan as ruler of this world.

Everything that the book of Revelation expands on about Jesus coming and deposing Satan and reigning on this earth, at Jerusalem, for a thousand years, is here in this prophecy and we have a time line.  490 years.

Do we know when the times begin?  Yes.

25 “So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress.

Do we know when such a decree was issued?  Yes, we do.  It was in 445 BC that Artaxerxes issued the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem.

From that decree there will be 62 weeks and 7 weeks.  69 weeks of years.  483 years from the issuing of the decree to Messiah the prince.  Those are 360 day years.  Lots of math involved, but trust me when I tell you that much smarter men than myself have added and subtracted all the variances and come up with 33 AD.  The very day that Jesus entered Jerusalem.  They had no excuse to not have known.  On that day.

When Jesus says;  If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace!  I believe He is referring to the very day Daniel prophesied about, the exact day that He entered Jerusalem, and I also believe that when Jesus speaks of the things that make for peace it is a direct reference to the list of requirements given by Gabriel to Daniel that only Messiah can ever complete.

Jesus walks up to Jerusalem and weeps because the exact moment when Daniels prophecy speaks of in weaks, years, days, has come, and the people who should have been waiting for a peace only their Messiah can bring, don't want their Messiah or His righteousness.

But, back to Daniel's prophecy, it had to be this way, because of what the angel Gabriel says next;

26 “Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing,

Not only is the day known when Messiah the prince will enter Jerusalem, His death is foretold.  Cut off.  That means murdered.

What we didn't see in this prophecy, and there's no way to calculate it, is the church age.  After Messiah is cut off an age that isn't foretold in this prophecy begins.  The church age.  We're still in that era.  But what IS in the prophecy is the final week of years, 7 years of Jewish history still remain on the clock, and we believe when the church is called home, that clock will begin ticking off the final 7 years of Jewish history.  The tribulation period.

There is much more to learn about Daniel's prophecy, but that isn't our task this morning.  But the end of vs. 26 serves our purpose this morning because Jesus is going to refer to what Gabriel told Daniel here.

and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined.

Jerusalem will be rebuilt, and after Messiah is cut off, a people will come and destroy the city and the temple.  The Romans did that in 70 AD.

Jesus enters Jerusalem, fulfil's Zechariah's prophecy, and weeps over the city who kills all of the prophets and who will kill Him.  

41 And when He approached, He saw the city and wept over it, 42 saying, “If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes.

If you had known in this day, even you,  Even someone as wicked as Jerusalem should have known the day Messiah was coming.  Daniel knew when 70 years would be up and Daniel was banking on a literal 70 years when he began asking God about His people and His city.

The people of Israel should have known that they were in the promised year when Messiah the Prince would come.  It's so obvious.  Pretty simple math.  How could they miss their Messiah!  Jesus tells us that too.  “If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes.

These people are judicially blinded by God.  The math is simple, but God hid it from their eyes.  

43 “For the days shall come upon you when your enemies will throw up a bank before you, and surround you, and hem you in on every side, 44 and will level you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave in you one stone upon another,

Josephus tells us exactly what Rome did when they besieged Jerusalem in 70AD.  They built a temporary wall around Jerusalem in order to trap everyone inside the city.  Cut off supply.  Cut off the water supply.  Wait for starvation and death.

When the inhabitants inside were weakened by starvation and no water, it doesn't take that long, then the Romans came in and they had orders from the emporer to eliminate Jerusalem.  Dismantle Jerusalem until someone passing through would not be able to tell there was ever a city there.

The Romans did that.  Stone by stone.  After the inhabitants were captured for slavery or slaughtered wholesale, they dismantled Jerusalem stone by stone.  They wiped the place of Jerusalem clean like the top of a rock.  Decimated.  The jewish records were gone to the four winds.  Not one stone was left upon
another.

In modern Jerusalem, a single wall has been dug up complete.  That wall was a foundation retaining wall for the temple mount structure.  That's all that remained after Rome dismantled Jerusalem.  The wailing wall.

Jerusalem was obliterated.  The jews that survived were scattered to the four winds all over the earth and they have wandered in someone else's land, hated, for centuries until 1948 when a Jewish homeland was created.

Why?  Why have God's chosen nation been homeless, hated, persecuted wanderers for 2000 years.  Pogroms.  Hitler.  Over and over they are targeted and tormented by this evil world.  Jesus offers a single reason for this phenomenon that continues unabated into our 21st century.

43 “For the days shall come upon you when your enemies will throw up a bank before you, and surround you, and hem you in on every side, 44 and will level you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.”

Let's talk for a moment about hatred.  It's a big topic these days.  Why was it that in a land where your neighbor looked exactly like you, no melanin issues in this case, the people looked exactly like what you looked like, so much so that the government had to put tattoo's on the jews so they could distinguish who to hate, and who to not hate.

It was far more irrational than even our current race problem.  The jews were hated simply because they were jews.  Period.  No rational reasons.  At all.  And yet one mad man convinced an entire nation that people next door who look just like you, should be eradicated from the earth.  Why?

The jews are a noble race.  Do you realize that 1/2 of the Nobel prizes that have ever been given were given to jews for the massive good that race has done for the benefit of all the people types of the earth.  Wherever they land, they flourish, unless they are persecuted out of existence.

Have you ever asked yourself why?  Does it not seem that there are forces in all of this irrationality that are beyond the surface.  Why the hatred.  Why the jews.  No rational reasons.  Why would anyone hate someone because their skin is a different color?  Irrational.

What if?  What if this cosmos is ruled by an intelligent being who has captured the place because of sin and that being hates God who is rightful owner and hates anyone who in any way belongs to God.  

We could dig even deeper.  All humans are image bearers.  Made in God's image to give Him glory.  Created to reflect glory back onto the Creator who created them in His image for His glory.  That single aspect, image bearer, is enough to cause Satan to hate you and want to see you destroyed.

Are we surprised that millions upon millions of image bearers never got to bear God's image because they were destroyed in the womb.  Are we then surprised at non stop wars from Adam to this day.  Are we surprised when people obey voices "in their heads" and go out and commit mass murder?

That's just the general population of mankind.  Image bearers.  But now add to that a separation of those whom God has chosen out of this world in order to belong to Him.  The jewish nation.  A people for God's own possession . . . who He had designated as the instruments with which God gave His revelation of His truth, the very words of God, given to mankind, by the vehicle of a nation that God chose to be His own.

The jews have been marked out for special hatred in this world where Satan is the current landlord.  Read your history books and find out if what I'm saying is some kind of bizarre wive's tale.  It makes sense.  Satan hates every image bearer but he distinctly hates image bearers whom God chose to be His own special family of people.  The jews.

And finally there is another group from every tribe and every color and every ethnicity on earth who have become a distinct ethnic group set apart from all the other ethnic groups and Satan hates this group above and beyond any of the other groups.  Let me introduce you to who I'm speaking of.  Peter says;

But you are A CHOSEN FAMILY, (ethnos) A royal PRIESTHOOD, A HOLY NATION, A PEOPLE FOR God’s OWN POSSESSION, SO THAT YOU MAY PROCLAIM THE EXCELLENCIES OF HIM WHO HAS CALLED YOU OUT OF DARKNESS INTO HIS MARVELOUS LIGHT;”
“for you once were NOT A PEOPLE, but now you are THE PEOPLE OF GOD; you had NOT RECEIVED MERCY, but now you have RECEIVED MERCY.”  Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul.   1 Peter 2:9 - 11 LSB

Beloved, we are aliens and strangers in this world under Satan's rule.  We are an ethnicity created by God.  We are all together one family.  Though we are every color, every tongue, every nationality, from every nation, God has combined us together as a family, set apart from all the families of the earth, to be His possession.

Christians, there is no family on earth that Satan is more enraged with than the family I just described to you.  If you are a christian, you are enemy number one to the serpent of old.  He is furious with us, and if he were not restrained by God who owns us, he would bring every kind of destruction he is capable of upon us.

I get in trouble because I try to bring current events into the application of these scriptures to us.  I'm watching closely as things develop in our nation and our world that have a direct link to where we are at in prophecy and in the unfolding story of the war between God and Satan.  Little mile markers for you to ponder.

This one is from the Sports page of USA Today.  The author is a woman named Hemal Jhaverl and she writes for the opinion page of USA Today Sports which is called;  For The Win  She has an interesting opinion to share about the basketball team from Oral Roberts University who have made it into the March Madness games.  She writes, and I quote;
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March Madness loves a Cinderella story, and this year it’s Oral Roberts University.

Oral Roberts, a mere 15 seed, destroyed brackets by toppling No. 2 Ohio State in the first round of the NCAA tournament and now enters the Sweet Sixteen after defeating No. 7 seed Florida 81-78 on Sunday.

Part of the joy of March Madness has always been watching smaller schools upset powerhouse programs, as kids from regional, unknown colleges and universities get their moment in the sun. Because everyone loves an underdog, Oral Roberts has become a fan favorite as people take their improbable run to heart and celebrate the tiny, evangelical university in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

And yet, as the spotlight grows on Oral Roberts and it reaps the good will, publicity and revenue of a national title run, the university’s deeply bigoted anti-LGBTQ+ polices can’t and shouldn’t be ignored.

Founded by televangelist Oral Roberts in 1963, the Christian school upholds the values and beliefs of its fundamentalist namesake, making it not just a relic of the past, but wholly incompatible with the NCAA’s own stated values of equality and inclusion.

While the school has been soundly mocked on social media for its archaic standards of behavior and code of conduct that bans profanity, “social dancing,” and shorts in classrooms, it is the school’s discriminatory and hateful anti-LGBTQ+ policy that fans should protest as the Golden Eagles advance in the tournament.

Twice in their student handbook, Oral Roberts specifically prohibits homosexuality. In their student conduct section, under the heading of Personal Behavior, the school expressly condemns homosexuality, mentioning it in the same breath as “occult practices.”

    Students are expected to maintain the highest standards of integrity, honesty, modesty and morality…Certain behaviors are expressly prohibited in Scripture and therefore should be avoided by members of the University community. They include theft, lying, dishonesty, gossip, slander, backbiting, profanity, vulgarity (including crude language), sexual promiscuity (including adultery, any homosexual behavior, premarital sex), drunkenness, immodesty of dress and occult practices.

Also, as part of their honor code, the university requires students to abide by a pledge saying that they will not engage in “homosexual activity,” and that they will not be united in marriage other “than the marriage between one man and one woman.”  Oral Roberts Pledge

As a private university and under the banner of fundamentalist Christian beliefs, the school is free to impose whatever standards of behavior they see fit, even if those standards are wildly out of line with modern society and the basic values of human decency. Now, as Oral Roberts gains national attention, the focus shouldn’t just be on their very good men’s basketball team, but on their prejudiced teachings and moral regressiveness.

That Oral Roberts wants to keep its students tied to toxic notions of fundamentalism that fetishize chastity, abstinence and absurd hemlines is a larger cultural issue that can be debated. What is not up for debate however is their anti-LGBTQ+ stance, which is nothing short of discriminatory and should expressly be condemned by the NCAA.

The NCAA has always been more about paying lip service to ideals of equality and inclusion than action, but Oral Roberts inclusion in the men’s tournament proves how little they actually care about those words, which are emblazoned on their basketball courts.

Yet, Oral Roberts, with its decrees banning homosexual conduct, stating that marriage is only between a man and a woman, and specifically banning male students from wearing makeup, earned a ticket to the Big Dance even though the university’s foundations expressly go against the very things the NCAA say they value. The fact is, any and all anti-LGBTQ+ language in any school’s polices should ban them from NCAA competition.

Now, Oral Roberts is primed to reap the rewards of the work from their unpaid student athletes. On the backs of those hard working kids, the university will seek to rewrite the narrative of their school into one of athletic victory when in fact, it’s steeped in bigotry and an exclusionary fundamentalism. The NCAA gave Oral Roberts that opportunity by allowing them into the tournament. Fans and media, eager to embrace a Cinderella story, helped push that narrative along either without knowing all the facts or willingly burying them as irrelevant.

However accomplished its young student athletes are, the school is a hotbed of institutional transphobia, homophobia with regressive, sexist policies. There is no way to separate their men’s basketball team from the dangers of their religious dogma, no matter how many top seeds they defeat.

Often, athletic accomplishments and victories on the court make up for moral failings all the time. In this case though, whatever the Oral Roberts men’s basketball team manages to do on the court can’t obscure the dangerous and hateful ideology of its core institution. It’s always nice to root for the underdog, but in this case, there’s very little to actually cheer about.

 

 
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Beloved, Satan and his domain hate us.  This opinion piece was the most shockingly straight forward hatred for christians I've seen published in a national newspaper or magazine so far.

Let me re-cap some of the language this  author is directing at YOU in a national publication 2 days ago;  

You are deeply bigoted, anti LGBTQ+, relics of the past, wholly incompatible values, soundly mockable, archaic standards of behaviour, discriminatory and hateful, people should protest us, prohibitors of homosexuality, only believe marriage between a man and a woman, fundamentalists, values wildly out of line with modern society, indecent, teachers of prejudice, morally regressive, toxic beliefs, fetishize chaste behaviour, abstinance, discriminators who should be expressly condemned, steeped in bigotry, exclusionary, transphobic, homophobic, repressive sexists, dangerous because of our religious dogma, dangerous because of hateful ideology.

I'll finish by quoting again from Daniel's prophecy describing what Jesus termed, the things that make for peace.

There are six distinct things listed in Daniel's prophecy by Gabriel that make for peace.

⦁    to finish the transgression,
⦁    to make an end of sin
⦁    to make atonement for iniquity
⦁    to bring in everlasting righteousness,
⦁    to seal up vision and prophecy,
⦁    and to anoint the most holy place

When Jesus returns at the end of Daniel's 70th week He will accomplish all of the things in that list.  The things that make for peace.  Satan will be deposed as ruler of this world.  Evil will be eliminated world wide.  When Jesus comes.  

Meanwhile, don't be alarmed or surprised as the world cranks up it's rhetoric against the people of God.  We're right on schedule.  These are exciting times to live!