(LifeSiteNews) — The Angel Gabriel appeared twice in the Old Testament—once to reveal Christ’s coming, and once to unveil the type of Antichrist. 

The big picture   

Jewish tradition once expected the Messias when Christ came—but later “reinterpreted” the meaning of this prophecy. 

Why it is important   

It provides a striking proof of the claims of Jesus of Nazareth and the Christian Gospel. 

Flashpoint   

Curses in the Talmud forbid calculations like that of Daniel’s timeline—lest Jews become Christians (according to one Rabbi) 

Takeaway   

Gabriel is not only the herald of the Redeemer—but also the prophet of the Church’s final trial. 

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The Angel Gabriel’s prophecy of the Incarnation 

Before his Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Angel Gabriel appeared to the Prophet Daniel to foretell the coming of the Messias.  

His message revealed not only the time and nature of Christ’s sacrificial mission, but also cast a shadow forward even further—towards the rejection of Christ by the Jews, and the rise of the Antichrist. 

Daniel recounts that, whilst praying to God for the forgiveness of his people and their deliverance from the Babylonian exile, Gabriel appeared to him and delivered a very precise prophecy. 

As I was yet speaking in prayer, behold the man, Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, flying swiftly, touched me at the time of the evening sacrifice. And he instructed me, and spoke to me, and said: 

O Daniel, I am now come forth to teach thee, and that thou mightest understand. From the beginning of thy prayers the word came forth: and I am come to shew it to thee, because thou art a man of desires: therefore, do thou mark the word, and understand the vision. 

Seventy weeks are shortened upon thy people, and upon thy holy city, that transgression may be finished, and sin may have an end, and iniquity may be abolished; and everlasting justice may be brought; and vision and prophecy may be fulfilled; and the Saint of saints may be anointed. 

Know thou, therefore, and take notice: that from the going forth of the word, to build up Jerusalem again, unto Christ, the prince, there shall be seven weeks, and sixty-two weeks: and the street shall be built again, and the walls, in straitness of times. 

And after sixty-two weeks Christ shall be slain: and the people that shall deny him shall not be his. And a people, with their leader, that shall come, shall destroy the city, and the sanctuary: and the end thereof shall be waste, and after the end of the war the appointed desolation. 

And he shall confirm the covenant with many, in one week: and in the half of the week the victim and the sacrifice shall fail: and there shall be in the temple the abomination of desolation: and the desolation shall continue even to the consummation, and to the end. (Daniel IX) 

The “weeks” signify weeks of years—sets of seven years—amounting to 490 years from the command to rebuild Jerusalem. Gabriel thus not only delivered a timeline and a prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem, but also revealed the Messias’ destiny: to be rejected by his own people, to be slain, to end the sacrifices of the Law, and to inaugurate everlasting justice. 

Jewish expectations for the Messias’ arrival 

St. Gabriel’s prophecy gave rise to widespread expectation, not just among the Jews, but throughout the East. In his commentary on Holy Scripture, Fr George Haydock relates: 

All the East was persuaded that a great king should arise about the time; when our Saviour actually appeared, and fulfilled all that had been spoken of the Messias. […] 

Ferguson says, ‘We have an astronomical demonstration of the truth of this ancient prophecy, seeing that the prophetic year of the Messias being cut off was the very same with the astronomical.’^[1] 

It is no surprise, then, that Jewish tradition preserved this anticipation—even if later rationalizations sought to explain away its apparent fulfilment in Christ. 

One striking tradition, recorded in the Talmud and attributed to the oral teachings of “the school of Eliyahu” (not to be confused with the later tenth-century text of the same name) preserved this anticipation with precision: 

The school of Eliyahu taught: Six thousand years is the duration of the world. Two thousand of the six thousand years are characterized by chaos; two thousand years are characterized by Torah, from the era of the Patriarchs until the end of the mishnaic period; and two thousand years are the period of the coming of the Messiah.^[2] 

This appears to be a statement that the Messias would come precisely when Christ did. 

However, The Talmud follows with a remarkable “explanation”: 

That is the course that history was to take, but due to our sins that time frame increased. The Messiah did not come after four thousand years passed, and furthermore, the years that elapsed since then, which were to have been the messianic era, have elapsed.^[3] 

Thus, St. Gabriel’s prophecy is negated and rewritten. 

The curses 

Fr. Henry James Coleridge discusses the clarity of Gabriel’s prophecy: 

They [the Jews] must have been able to see also that the time defined by Daniel had come. These facts were used afterwards by the Christian writers against the Jews with unanswerable effect, and if that was the case, it must have been evident to the pious and thoughtful souls who were living at the time of our Lord’s Advent, that the time was come.^[4]

Haydock gives some specific examples: 

In a dispute between a Jew and a Christian, at Venice, the Rabbi who presided… put an end to the business by saying, ‘Let us shut up our Bibles; for if we proceed in the examination of this prophecy, it will make us all become Christians.’ Watson, let. 6. 

Hence probably the Jews denounce a curse on those who calculate the times, (H.) and they have purposely curtailed their chronology.^[5]

Indeed, rabbinic texts contain curses on those who attempt such calculations. The Talmud says: 

One who sets a definite time for the redemption of Israel through Messiah will have no share in the world to come. And the same applies to one who hates the scholars and their disciples. The same applies to a false prophet and a slanderer.^[6] 

Elsewhere, the Talmud recounts: 

Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥmani says that Rabbi Yonatan says: May those who calculate the end of days be cursed [tippaḥ], as they would say once the end of days that they calculated arrived and the Messiah did not come, that he will no longer come at all.^[7] 

In spite of these curses, the rabbis continued to offer predictions of when they thought the Moshiach^[8] would come—explaining this apparent contradiction through a variety of technical distinctions, exceptions, and retrospective interpretations. 

Nonetheless, these curses serve to suppress further investigation into prophecies like Gabriel’s—lest at least the common people conclude, as that Venetian rabbi feared, that they must all become Christians. 

Other Jewish expectations 

The Talmud also contains predictions which reflect the state of the world at the time of Christ. For example: 

It is taught in a baraita that Rabbi Yehuda says: During the generation that the son of David comes, the hall of the assembly of the Sages will be designated for prostitution, and the Galilee will be destroyed, and the Gavlan, i.e., Bashan, will be desolate, and the residents of the border who flee the neighboring gentiles will circulate from city to city and will receive no sympathy. 

The wisdom of scholars will diminish, and sin-fearing people will be despised. And the face of the generation will be like the face of a dog in its impudence and shamelessness. 

And the truth will be lacking, as it is stated: ‘And the truth is lacking [ne’ederet], and he who departs from evil is negated’ (Isaiah 59:15).^[9] 

This is remarkably close to Christ’s own descriptions of the corruption of the Temple, the hardness of heart, and the coming desolation of Jerusalem. Another passage aligns with Our Lord’s description of his effect upon society: 

It is taught in a baraita that Rabbi Nehorai says: During the generation in which the son of David comes, youths will humiliate elders and elders will stand in deference before youths, and a daughter will rebel against her mother, and a bride against her mother-in-law, and the face of the generation will be like the face of a dog, and a son will not be ashamed before his father.^[10]

These prophecies—and even confusion behind some of the reinterpretations—come together to provide a striking proof of the claims of Jesus of Nazareth and the Christian Gospel.^[11]

And yet this reinterpretation of Gabriel’s prophecy is not the end of the matter, but rather the prelude to a more terrible and tragic fulfilment.  

The naturalist Moshiach and the Antichrist 

It not always clear whether these opinions pre- or post-date Our Lord (or whether they are a mix of different texts): in some cases, the texts seem to suggest a coming defeat of Christianity, after a period of ascendancy. For example: 

It is taught in a baraita that Rabbi Neḥemya says: During the generation that the son of David comes, arrogance will proliferate and the cost of living will corrupt people so they will engage in deceit. The vine will produce its fruit, and nevertheless, the wine will be costly. And the entire gentile monarchy will be converted to the heresy of Christianity, and there will be no inclination among the people to accept rebuke. 

This baraita supports the opinion of Rabbi Yitzḥak, as Rabbi Yitzḥak says: The son of David will not come until the entire kingdom will be converted to heresy.^[12]

For many Church Fathers and theologians, the Jewish expectation of a worldly redeemer, arising in a time of chaos and offering national deliverance, is pointing directly towards the Antichrist. Maimonides himself links the coming of the Moshiach with the unrest discussed above, and symbolized by the war of “Gog and Magog.” The Moshiach is expected as the one who will bring peace out of this conflict, and who will do away with the “idolatry” of the world—including Christianity.^[13] 

And indeed, many rabbinic sources speak of wars, persecution, moral collapse and apparent religious decline—conditions which the Christian tradition recognizes in two senses, both different to that of the Jewish authorities: 

1. The state of the Jewish religion at the time of Christ’s coming, which was marred by the corruption of the Pharisees and the worldliness of the Sadducees 
2. The state of the world at the time of the Antichrist’s coming, which will be marred by naturalism, persecution, conflict, apostasy and the decline of virtue. 

This brings us back to the Angel Gabriel, who was not only sent to Daniel as the herald of Christ’s coming. 

Gabriel and the Antichrist 

The Angel Gabriel first appears in Chapter 8, in which Daniel is granted a confusing vision of horns and goats.^[14]

Gabriel is sent to Daniel to interpret the vision with clarity—and exposing the coming tyranny of Antiochus Epiphanes, the great “type” and image of the Antichrist.^[15] 

This prophecy contains vivid language, describing a desolating figure who removes sacrifice, persecutes the saints, and exalts himself even against heaven. Antiochus IV has long been considered a type and forerunner of the Antichrist, and his tyrannical reign a foreshadowing of what will occur in those last days. Fr John Laux gives the following account of his reign, against which the Maccabees rebelled: 

In the year 198 B.C., Antiochus III, the Seleucid king of Syria conquered Palestine and incorporated it with his own kingdom. The conqueror himself did not interfere with the religious life of the Jews, but his son and successor, Antiochus IV (Epiphanes), who ruled from 175 to 164 B. C., tried to force paganism upon all his subjects. 

In 170 he plundered the Temple and slew many of the inhabitants of Jerusalem. Two years later he threw a garrison into the citadel and ordered all the Jews under pain of death to adopt pagan rites and customs. A statue of Zeus was placed above the great altar of burnt-offerings, and an edict was issued ordaining the erection of heathen altars in every town of Palestine. Many apostatized; but many also preferred to suffer torture and death rather than transgress the law of God.^[16] 

This persecutor—unveiled by Gabriel—becomes the archetype through which Christians have long discerned the final enemy of the Church. Referring to a later prophecy from Daniel himself, Theodoret (d. 457) makes the link between Antiochus and the Antichrist clear: 

After these remarks in reference to Antiochus Epiphanes, [Daniel] then moves from the image to the archetype, the archetype in the case of Antiochus being the antichrist, and the antichrist’s image Antiochus. 

In other words, just as he forced Jews to commit impiety and live a lawless life, so the sinful one, the son of destruction, the one lifted up and exalted above every so-called god or object of worship, as blessed Paul says, so that he enters and takes his seat in God’s temple, presenting himself as God, with all signs and false portents—in this way he will do everything to deceive the godly, at one time endeavoring to delude and cheat by deceptive wonder-working, at another by the use of force and application of every kind of punishment to the devotees of piety.^[17]

In a similar way, the Antichrist is expected to undertake a ferocious persecution of the Church, impeding the offering of Holy Mass, outlawing Christianity, enforcing apostasy and commanding idolatry (ultimately to himself as divine). In unveiling this dark figure, Gabriel’s mission was to reveal what must come before the triumph of the Incarnate Word whose coming he announced to Our Lady. 

Conclusion: Herald of the Redeemer, and of the Final Conflict 

Gabriel appears at two decisive moments in the Old Testament. 

• First, in Daniel 8, he reveals a shadow of the future: a tyrant who will persecute the saints and exalt himself above God—a foreshadowing of the Antichrist par excellence 

• Second, in Daniel 9, he delivers a message of hope, foretelling the coming of the Redeemer and the timeline of salvation. 

In both missions, Gabriel is the herald of divine intervention—first to reveal the shadow of the tyrannical persecutor and Man of Sin, and then to unveil the timeline and suffering of the Redeemer. His role is not only angelic but apocalyptic: the messenger who opens the drama of salvation and foretells its ultimate conflict. 

The Jewish expectations (and the “reinterpretations”) prompted by Gabriel’s prophecies serve as a powerful confirmation of the Christian Gospel. They show us that Jesus of Nazareth is indeed the Messias foretold, and that every soul must recognize him as Lord and submit to the Church he founded. 

It is fitting, then, that this same angel was later sent to Nazareth—to announce to the Blessed Virgin that the time had come, and that the Redeemer he had once foretold would now take flesh in her womb.