Amos 8:11 Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord:

The intertestamental period is that time between Malachi and John the Baptist. The bible is silent on what happened during those years. Historians provide a record of what happened during that period but it is a secular view. God was silent in scripture but that does not mean He was not present.

During this time there was the end of the reign of Alexander the Great. His kingdom was divided up into four parts. Jerusalem fell under other rulers and their history can be researched. At this time there arose a sect called the Maccabees. Their activities are found in the Apocrypha, the books of the Maccabees. Those are a set of historical artifacts that God did not author. They have been removed from most bible versions.

Out of the Maccabean revolt sprang up a sect call the Pharisees. The Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes did not have a place in the Old Testament economy but arose out of lack of understanding of God’s will. God had remained silent for too long. There is much to learn about this period of time, so much so that we do not have time to go into it here with any great detail.

The essential truth here is that without God’s leadership man reverts back into a place of taking authority for himself, his self-interests and divisions arise within the community. If you had not guessed one of the tactics of war is divide and conquer. The enemy of God was having his way with Israel. Elitism, ambition, greed, zealous piety, and confusion were rampant during this time.

Then the Romans came.

70 Weeks by Larry Perry

Daniel 9:24 Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.

If we multiply 70 times 7 we end up with 490 days. This is a difficult time frame to recognize anything of significance. Perhaps our understanding of seventy weeks is wrong. A search in the ESV resulted in this passage.

Leviticus 25:8 (ESV)You shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall give you forty-nine years.

If seven times seven weeks equals forty-nine years then seventy times seven weeks equals four hundred and ninety years. What of significance happened prophetically during those 490 years? Nothing! The prophets were quiet from a point in time within this prophetic utterance for 490 years. So who was the first prophet of God to break the silence?

Matthew 17:12-13 But I say unto you, That Elias (Elijah) is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them. Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist.

Isaiah 40:3 The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

The prophetic ministries were ended as proclaimed by Daniel and restored in the prophetic proclamations of John the Baptist who prepared the way of the Lord by preaching repentance.

God put an end to Israel’s displeasure with God’s prophets by not delivering prophetic words to complain about.

So what did Israel do during those leaderless 490 years?