THE MOST ASTOUNDING BIBLE PROPHESY OF ALL: JESUS FIRST ADVENT WAS EXACTLY ON TIME AND SCHEDULE! Daniels prophecy of the 70 weeks While the prophet Daniel was captive in Babylon in about 538 BC, God revealed the prophecy of Israels 70 weeks to him in Daniel 9:24-26. Seventy weeks (Hebrew word: shabuwa) are determined upon thy people (Israel) and upon thy holy city (Jerusalem), 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. Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off (killed), but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city (Jerusalem) and the sanctuary (the temple) .... In this prophecy, the following sequence of events are revealed. A. There would one day be a commandment to rebuild the city of Jerusalem, which the Babylonians had destroyed years earlier. This was fulfilled in 445 BC by Artaxerxes, king of the Medo-Persian Empire (465-424 BC), nearly a century after the prophecy of Daniel 9 was given. See Nehemiah 2:1-8 for the account of how Nehemiah asked Artaxerxes for the permission and the means to rebuild the ruins of the city of Jerusalem. In Nehemiah 2:1, we see that this took place ... in the month Nisan (the first month of the Hebrew calendar which occurs in early spring), in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes the king (445 BC) .... B. From the giving of this commandment to the Messiah would be 69 (seven plus threescore and two) weeks (shabuwa) after which the Messiah would be cut off (killed). This was fulfilled when Jesus Christ was crucified on the 14th day of Nisan (the passover) of 32 AD, right on schedule. In order to calculate the lengths of time mentioned in this prophecy, we first need to understand what a shabuwa is (translated into English in Daniel 9 as weeks or week). The Hebrew word shabuwa means a period of seven. It could be seven days or seven years. In scripture, it is used both ways, and we have to tell by the context which one it is. Often, shabuwa is used in scripture to describe the length of a feast or some other event that obviously is only a matter of days in length. But sometimes a shabuwa clearly means seven years, such as in Genesis 29:27-28. After Jacob was given Leah, in place of Rachel, for a wife after serving Laban for seven years, Laban told him. 27 Fulfil her week (shabuwa), and we will give thee this also for the service which thou shalt serve with me yet seven other years. 28 And Jacob did so, and fulfilled her week (shabuwa): and he gave him Rachel his daughter to wife also. Like in Genesis 29, shabuwa is used in Daniel 9 to refer to periods of seven years (not days). Some Bible teachers refer to these as weeks of years. When calculating the 69 seven year periods, a shabuwa is a period of seven years, and seven times 69 is 483 years. But we know from the detail of the seventieth week provided in the book of Revelation, that these years are 360 days rather than the years on our present calendar which, figuring in leap years, are approximately 365.25 days. Revelation 12:14 describes the second half of the tribulation as a time, times, and half a time (1 + 2 + 1/2 = 3 1/2 years). Revelation 12:6 says this is a thousand two hundred and threescore (1260) days, and Revelation 13:5 says it is forty and two months. Since 1260 / 42 = 30 and 1260 / 3.5 = 360, we know that in this prophecy, God is counting months as 30 days each and years as 360 days each. Since the tribulation is a part of the 70 weeks of Daniels prophecy, we know that the 360-day years must be used. So to see how many of our years this is, we calculate 483 * (360 / 365.25) = 476 years, 0 months, and a few days. Moving forward from the 445 BC date, this brings us to the early spring of 32 AD (476 - 445 + 1 = 32), when Jesus Christ was crucified. The one must be added to account for the fact that there is no year 0. The year after 1 BC was 1 AD. The calculation here is somewhat simplified and shows that at a minimum, the prophecy was accurate to within a very few days. Some scholars have used additional evidence for the difficult task of calculating this prophecy to the exact day. To do this, they have to know the day of the month that the commandment of Artaxerxes was given plus the astrological history of moon phases as viewed from Jerusalem, since the months of the Hebrew calendar are based upon observance of the moon phases. As for me, I am more than satisfied to know that the prophecy in Daniel 9, given several hundred years in advance, was accurate to the very month, but readers who are inclined to pursue the more detailed calculation to the exact day are welcome to do so. Now one might wonder why God didnt use our 365.25-day years in His prophecy? We cannot be certain, but perhaps He was using the same number of days per year that the earth had when He created it. We know from Genesis 7:11 and 8:3-4 that a calendar with 30 day months was used before the great flood. It may be that in the catastrophe of the flood, the earths rotational speed was increased slightly. One way this could happen would be if the earths density were increased due to the tremendous seismic activity and the collapse of the water canopy which God used to trigger the flood. Genesis 7:11-12 says, ... all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. This increase of density would have increased the earths rotational speed by reducing its moment of inertia in the same way that spinning ice skaters spin faster when they pull their out-stretched arms in closer to their bodies. If the period of the earths revolution around the sun did not change, then there would be more days per year after the great flood than there were before the flood. Now lets continue to the next event in the sequence of the Daniel 9 prophecy. C. The people of the prince which is to come will destroy Jerusalem and the temple. This was fulfilled by Titus and the Roman Empire in 70 AD. In the war with the Jews, the Roman army besieged and destroyed Jerusalem, burned the temple, and killed more than one million Jews. It is interesting to note that when this destruction was prophesied in 538 BC, Jerusalem and temple had not even been rebuilt yet. The part of this prophecy regarding the prince which is to come concerns the AntiChrist who must come from the revived Roman Empire in the future tribulation which will be the seventieth week of the prophecy (Daniel 9:27). There are several amazing things about this prophecy: It accurately predicted the time of Jesus Christs crucifixion, more than 500 years before it happened. It sandwiched His death between two future events (A and C) which have both been very well documented in history. Both of the events came true even though they were prophesied hundreds of years in advance. When one considers that this prophecy amazingly predicted events A and C above, then believing that this prophecy was also correct on event B does not exactly require a leap of faith.
Posted on: Sun, 09 Nov 2014 00:35:07 +0000
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