What would you say if scripture pointed to a very specific future event, then to a second more distant future event and then it told the exact number of days in between? Scripture does make this incredible prediction and the details are specified below. This is it!
Below you will see how Daniel predicts the exact number of days from the time the conquering King allows the Jews to rebuild the temple and streets of Jerusalem until the Messiah (Jesus) dies and exactly how many days are between these two incidents.
Setting:
Daniel's amazing prediction is recorded in Daniel 9:24,25,26. Here he proclaims 3 things.
1. First event - There will be a time when a decree will go out to rebuild the temple and the 'streets' of Jerusalem.
2. Second event - The Messiah will be cut off (Jesus will die)
3. How much time will elapse between these two events: 69 "sevens" often called "weeks"
First Event (#1 above)
There are four decrees that went out for the rebuilding of the temple. They are:
1. Cyrus in 539 B.C. (Ezra 1:1,2,3,4)
3. Artaxerxes to Ezra in 457 B.C. (Ezra 7:11,12,13,14,15,16)
4. Artaxerxes to Nehemiahin 445 B.C. (Nehemiah 2:1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
All of the four options above are interested in rebuilding the temple. But only in the fourth option are they rebuilding the city (streets) as well. Therefore Option #4 Artaxerxes to Nehemiah, marks our starting point. The verses give the Hebrew month of Nisan as the starting month. While the exact day is unknown, tradition dictates that if the day was not included, we assume the first of the month. Therefore, our starting time is Nissan 1, 445 B.C. which translates in our calendar as March 14-15, 445 B.C.
Second Event
Dan 9:25 talks about the coming of the anointing one. The Anointing one means Jesus, the Messiah. When did He come? The answer, when He was publicly recognized as Messiah by the crowds. That happened when He rode triumphantly into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, less than a week before He was crucified.
Number of days
A week is 2520 days . How do we get this? Thus 69 sevens (weeks) are 69 times 2520 or 173,880 days. Calling a year 365.2422 days we calculate that 173,880 days is 476 years 24.7 days, or round to 25 days. Starting on March 14-15, 445 B.C. and adding 476 years 25 days we get April 9, 32 A.D. Remember, there was no year zero.
Summary
This prophecy has been well known for a long time. Skeptics tried to defeat it by saying that it was post-dated. However, that argument suffered a setback when the book of Daniel was found as part of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Carbon-14 dated to over 100 B.C., well before Jesus dies.