Daniel 9:24
Daniel 9:2424Seventy weeks are decreed for your people and your holy city to stop their transgression, to put an end to 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 Watchtower applies within its own chronological system, but the organisation's eschatology depends primarily on Daniel 4 (the "seven times" calculation yielding 1914). Daniel 9 is acknowledged as messianic but is not emphasised because its natural timeline points to Jesus without requiring the 607 BCE start date or the day-year conversion the 1914 framework depends on.
provides a 490-year countdown from the decree to restore Jerusalem until the Messiah comes and is "cut off" (killed), after which the city and sanctuary are destroyed. The Messiah had to arrive and die before the second temple's destruction in AD 70 — a hard deadline built into the prophecy itself. lists six purposes: finish transgression, end sin, atone for iniquity, bring in everlasting righteousness, seal up vision and prophecy, and anoint the most holy. All six are unmistakably Christological — and no organisation accomplished them. The Watchtower picked the wrong Daniel passage for its eschatological framework: Daniel 4 is about Nebuchadnezzar's personal humiliation, requiring extraordinary hermeneutical leaps to reach 1914. Daniel 9 is the Bible's actual messianic timeline, and it points directly to Jesus without any organisational intermediary.