Introduction to the Daniel 9 Prophecy and its Four Interpretations
Daniel received the prophecy at a time when Israel was in captivity and Jerusalem in ruins. The prophecy gave Israel seventy weeks of years (490 years) to fulfill six goals, including to solve the sin problem for the whole human race. Particularly, the crisis of the final seven years is interpreted very differently by the different schools of thought, including as:
Antiochus IV, 168 years before Christ (liberal),
Jesus Christ in the first century AD (traditional), or
An end-time Antichrist (Dispensationalism).