The Seventy; the Bishopric; the General Presidencies of the Relief Society, the Young Women, and the Primary; and other auxiliary leaders have added tremendous inspiration to this conference, as have the beautiful music and the thoughtful prayers.
17 Regarding the life span of imperfect humans, the psalmist says: “In themselves the days of our years are seventy years; and if because of special mightiness they are eighty years, yet their insistence is on trouble and hurtful things; for it must quickly pass by, and away we fly.”
Gabriel said that the period of “seventy weeks” had been determined “in order to terminate the transgression, and to finish off sin, and to make atonement for error, and to bring in righteousness for times indefinite, and to imprint a seal upon vision and prophet, and to anoint the Holy of Holies.”
(2 Kings 25:1-4, 8, 9, 22-26; Zechariah 8:19) After the Jews were released from captivity in Babylon, Jehovah said through the prophet Zechariah: “When you fasted . . . , and this for seventy years, did you really fast to me, even me?”
Jeremiah prophesied: “This is what Jehovah has said, ‘In accord with the fulfilling of seventy years at Babylon I shall turn my attention to you people, and I will establish toward you my good word in bringing you back to this place.’”
But at the end of the “seventy weeks” of years, in 36 C.E., the apostle Peter preached to the devout Italian man Cornelius, his household, and other Gentiles.
THE Bible says that the Jewish captives were to be exiled in Babylon “until the seventy years were completed in fulfillment of the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah.”
(Luke 3:15) The French Manuel Biblique states: “People knew that the seventy weeks of years fixed by Daniel were drawing to a close; nobody was surprised to hear John the Baptist announce that the kingdom of God had drawn near.”
For example, when speaking with men from Cyrene, Alexandria, Cilicia, and Asia, the disciple Stephen said: “Joseph sent out and called Jacob his father and all his relatives from that place [Canaan], to the number of seventy-five souls.”