Far from being mere coincidence, the day Jesus Christ came into Jerusalem riding upon a donkey and presented Himself to the Jews as their Messiah, was precisely 173,880 days, or 483 Biblical years, after the decree issued by the Persian king, Artaxerxes Longimanus on March 14, 445 BC to rebuild the city of Jerusalem, just as the prophets of old predicted many hundreds of years before. History records that in those days, they used a lunar calendar which calculated 360 days in a year. Genesis 7:11 and 24 show how Noah used the lunar year for his calculations.
For many years the Lord had been warning the Jews through His prophet Jeremiah that seventy years of discipline would follow their disobedience if they did not turn back to Him. (there are 5 cycles of discipline listed in Leviticus 26:14-38 and also in Deuteronomy 28:15-20. In 606 BC, the Lord brought King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon to conquer and destroy Jerusalem.
When Nebuchadnezzar returned to Babylon, he took a group of royal captives with him and trained them to be his personal ad visors … one of those young men was Daniel. After the destruction of Jerusalem, the prophet Jeremiah remained in the land and ministered to a remnant of Jews who had been left by Nebuchadnezzar to farm the land. At the end of the 70 years, the Lord raised up Cyrus the Mede, who issued a decree in writing to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. (Ezra 1:1, 2) The prophet Isaiah tells that the Lord called Cyrus “His shepherd” (Isaiah 44:28) and declared him to be the one chosen to perform the Lord’s will to rebuild the temple.
The writings of the prophets were widely circulated and read in those days. Daniel was contemporary with Jeremiah, and in the first year of Darius the Mede, Daniel was reading the prophecy of Jeremiah concerning the Jews’ Babylonian captivity. (Jeremiah 25:11,12) Daniel understood that their captivity would end within two years, or in 536 BC (606 minus 536 equals 70 years), and that God would punish the king of Babylon and all the land of the Chaldeans and make their land a desolation, so Daniel prayed to the Lord, asking Him to reveal the Jews’ future to him, and God answered his prayer by sending the angel Gabriel to give him “skill and insight about the future course of history … especially that which concerned the Jews.” (Daniel 9:1-22).
In the vision given to Daniel (Daniel 9:24-27) we see that there are 49 weeks, or 70 weeks of years, totaling 490 Biblical years. In one instance it was used in reference to a ‘Sabbath for the land’. The weeks are divided into three parts: The first seven weeks are the 49 years during which the temple and the city of Jerusalem were rebuilt during very troublesome times. (the books of Ezra and Nehemiah tell us about the many problems the Jews encountered while building). Then there are 62 weeks, totaling 434 years (62 x 7= 434), pointing to the time when their Messiah would present Himself as their king on the exact day foretold by their prophets. One more week still remains, and it will be the 7-year period known as the Tribulation Period. That week will follow the Church Age in which we are now living. This age will terminate at ‘the rapture’ or resurrection of all Church Age believers at an unspecified moment known only by God the Father.
(1 Thessalonians 4:13-18), and after that takes place, the 70Th week of Daniel, known in theology as ‘the Tribulation’, will begin. At the end of those seven years, the Lord Jesus Christ will return to the earth to set up his 1,000 year kingdom … the Millennium.
After the death of Cyrus the Great, a Persian king called Artaxerxes Longimanus issued a decree on March 14, 445 BC and sent some Jews back to their homeland to rebuild the city of Jerusalem (Nehemiah 2:1-8) In fulfillment of these prophecies, it was exactly 173,880 days from the issuing of the decree to rebuild Jerusalem to the very day when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a colt and presented Himself to the Jews as their Messiah. (Matthew 21:1-11; Mark 11:1; Luke 19:29-38; and John 12:12-19)
All of this amazing scriptural information should be ample proof that the Bible is truly a supernatural book, and that its pages contain information that cannot be disputed.
Written by Lois DelnayFallbrook Ranch Productions 4/08
loisdelnay@hotmail.com
Books for sale by L. Delnay
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links to Lois Delnays Children Bible Study
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Lois Delnay's writings on Helium
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