Tomorrow is Palm Sunday. An appropriate time, perhaps, to point out that words spoken to the prophet Daniel by the angel Gabriel and recorded in Dan 9:24 - 27 form perhaps the most amazing prophecy in the Bible. The first three of those verses say:Seventy weeks are determined
For your people and for your holy city,
To finish the transgression,
To make an end of sins,
To make reconciliation for iniquity,
To bring in everlasting righteousness,
To seal up vision and prophecy,
And to anoint the Most Holy.
Know therefore and understand,
That from the going forth of the command
To restore and build Jerusalem
Until Messiah the Prince,
There shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks;
The street shall be built again, and the wall,
Even in troublesome times.
And after the sixty-two weeks
Messiah shall be cut off, but not for himself;
And the people of the prince who is to come
Shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.
The end of it shall be with a flood,
And till the end of the war desolations are determined.
Some English translations of the Bible say "weeks" and some say "sevens." (In Hebrew, the word for "week" and the word for "seven" are similar.) These sevens are in fact sevens of years. So there were to be 69 sevens, or 483 years, between the command to rebuild Jerusalem and the death of the Messiah.
Neh 2:1 - 8 says that King Artaxerxes gave the command to rebuild Jerusalem in the month of Nisan in his 20th year. Counting 483 years from that date brings you to the time of Christ.
Nineteenth century Bible scholar Sir Robert Anderson worked it out to the day. He says a year in Jewish calculation at the time of Daniel was 360 days, so 483 years becomes 173,880 days.
He assumes the decree was made on the first day of Nisan in Artaxerxes' 20th year, which he says was March 14, 445 BC. Assuming Jesus began His ministry in the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar (Luke 3:1) and continued for three years, Jesus' Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem would be in AD 32, and seeing that Passover is always on 14 Nisan, Palm Sunday would be the 10th day of Nisan, or April 6.
The period from March 14, 445 BC to April 6, AD 32, allowing for leap years, is - 173,880 days.
You might think there are a few too many assumptions there to be able to accept such an exact calculation as fact - but there is no doubt that the period is right. You will notice too that according to the prophecy, Messiah had to come before the temple was destroyed. The temple was destroyed in AD 70.
So the Bible prophesied not only that Messiah would come from the line of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, from the tribe of Judah and from the house of David and that He would be born in Bethlehem, but the time that He would come.
There's something else here too that is interesting. Jesus died, of course, at Passover. That is no coincidence: 1 Cor 5:7 says that He is our Passover, sacrificed for us. Passover commemorated the Jews' deliverance from the last of the plagues on Egypt, when the firstborn in every Egyptian household died. God had said the Jews were to put the blood of a lamb on the lintel and the doorposts of their houses; when the Lord saw the blood, He would pass over them.
Exodus 12, which records the instructions for that original Passover, says the Jews were to choose a lamb for each household on the 10th day of the month and keep it for four days before killing it, making sure that it was without blemish.
Jesus presented Himself to the Jews on the 10th day of the month, it appears, as He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. A few days later, He hung lifeless on the cross. Jesus was not only the Son of God, He was the Lamb of God: a last and perfect sacrifice.
