p. 84 | THE SANCTUARY

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 16, 1876

THE SANCTUARY.

Eleventh Paper.—Messianic Dates.

We have now found the event, and the date, from which the seventy weeks of Dan. 9, are to be reckoned; namely, the decree of Artaxerxes Longimanus to Ezra, which he issued in the 7th year of his reign, B. C. 457.

We have applied the first measuring line given in the prophecy, namely the 49 years which were to cover the building of the street and wall, even in troublous times, and found it to fall exactly upon the events specified. The work was finished in the 15th year of Darius Nothus B. C. 408; and there the 49 years terminated, reckoned from B. C. 457.

Three other events remain by which to test the application of this prophecy: 1. Sixty-nine weeks, or 483 years were to extend to the Messiah the Prince. 2. Sixty-nine and one-half weeks, or 486½ years were to extend to the cutting off of the Messiah; and 3. The seventy weeks, 490 years, were to extend to that point when the Jews should no longer be the peculiar people of God. If, reckoning from B. C. 457, we find the measurements to reach the events specified, the correctness of the application will be assured beyond the least shadow of uncertainty.

The word Messiah means “the anointed;” and the expression “to the Messiah the Prince,” must point to the time when Christ was manifested to the world as the anointed of God. This was not at his birth, as some have imagined, but at his baptism, as is proved by Acts 10:38; 4:27; Luke 4:18, &c.

We have therefore to inquire (1) at what point, according to the foregoing dates the baptism of Christ should have occurred; (2) at what point it did occur: (3) to ascertain the length of Christ’s ministry; (4) the date of the crucifixion; and (5) the time when the blessings of the gospel ceased to be especially offered to the Jews.

1. From some point in the year B. C. 457, the period of sixty-nine weeks or 483 years to the Messiah the Prince, would carry us to a corresponding point in the year A. D. 27. This is the answer to the first point of inquiry; and if the first date is correct, here we should find the baptism of the Saviour.

2. When Christ entered upon his mission, immediately after his baptism, he came into Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled.” Mark 1:14, 15. This must mark the fulfillment of some definite period, or it would not be asserted that “the time is fulfilled.” The time here fulfilled can be none other than that given in Dan. 9:25: “Unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks and threescore and two weeks,” 483 years. We are therefore correct in saying that this is the period that reaches to his baptism. Can we now ascertain in what year his baptism occurred?

Christ was six months younger than John the Baptist, and is generally considered to have entered upon his ministry six months later; both of them commencing their work, according to the law of the priesthood, when they were thirty years of age. Of Christ, Luke says expressly that at the time of his baptism he began to be about thirty years of age. Luke 3:23. Now John entered upon his ministry as Luke informs us (3:1) in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Cæsar. Tiberius was the successor of Augustus who reigned to A. D. 14. The date of Augustus’ death is indisputably fixed by means of the great lunar eclipse soon after, Sept. 27, which served to quell the mutiny of the Pannonian legions, and to induce them to swear fidelity to Tiberius, as recorded by Tacitus, Anal. 1:28, and Dio. lib. 57, p. 604. But the reign of Tiberius is to be reckoned, according to Prideaux, Dr. Hales, Lardner, and others, from his elevation to the throne to reign jointly with Augustus his step-father, in August A. D. 12, two years before the death of the latter. The fifteenth year of Tiberius would therefore be from August A. D. 26 to August A. D. 27. If John commenced in the spring in the latter portion of the 15th year of Tiberius, it would bring the commencement of Christ’s ministry in the autumn of A. D. 27, the very point where the 483 years of Dan. 9, expire.

3. The length of Christ’s ministry. This may be quite accurately determined by enumerating the passovers which he attended. There were but four of these as recorded in John 2:13; 5:1; 6:4; and 13:1. At the last of these he was crucified. This would make the duration of his ministry three years and a half. Thus, if he commenced in the autumn of A. D. 27, he would preach six months before his first passover in the spring of 28. His second passover would be in the spring of 29, his third in the spring of 30, and his fourth in the spring of 31, when he was crucified.

This would correspond exactly to the prophecy; for he was to confirm the covenant with many for one week, seven years, and in the midst, or middle of the week, he was to be cut off, and cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease. This he did when he expired upon the cross, three and one half years from the commencement of his ministry; and during the remainder of the week he confirmed the covenant through his apostles. Heb. 2:3. Dr. Hales, vol. 1, p. 94, quotes Eusebius, A. D. 300, as saying: “It is recorded in history, that the whole time of our Saviour’s teaching and working miracles was three years and a half, which is the half of a week [of years]. This John the evangelist will represent to those who critically attend to his gospel.”

4. The date which this gives us for the crucifixion, A. D. 31, is confirmed by abundance of testimony. The crucifixion was attended by a preternatural darkening of the sun, for the space of three hours. Matt. 27:45. “A total eclipse of the moon may occasion a privation of her light for an hour and half, during her total immersion in the shadow; whereas a total eclipse of the sun can never last in any particular place above four minutes, when the moon is nearest to the earth and her shadow thickest.”—Hales, Vol. i. p. 69.

This darkness was observed at Heliopolis in Egypt, by Dionysius the Areopagite, afterward the illustrious convert of Paul at Athens, Acts 17:34, who in a letter to the martyr Polycarp describes his own astonishment at the phenomenon, and that of his companion, the sophist Apollophanes. “These, O good Dionysius,” exclaimed Apollophanes, “are the vicissitudes of divine events.” To which Dionysius answered, “Either the Deity suffers or he sympathizes with the sufferer.” And that sufferer, according to tradition, recorded by Michael Syncellus of Jerusalem, he declared to be, “The unknown God, for whose sufferings all nature was darkened and convulsed.” Id. Vol. iii. p. 230.

“Hence it appears that the darkness which ‘overspread the whole land of Judea’ at the time of our Lord’s crucifixion was preternatural, ‘from the sixth until the ninth hour,’ or from noon till three in the afternoon, in its duration, as also in its time, about full moon, when the moon could not possibly eclipse the sun. The time it happened, and the fact itself, are recorded in a curious and valuable passage of a Roman Consul, Aurelius Cassiodorius Senator, about A. D. 514: ‘In the consulate of Tiberius Cæsar Aug. v. and Ælius Sejanus (U. C. 784, A. D. 31), our Lord Jesus Christ suffered, on the 8th of the Calends of April (25th of March): when there happened such an eclipse of the sun as was never before nor since.’ In this year, and in this day agree also the Council of Cæsarea, A. D. 196 or 198; the Alexandrian Chronicle, Maximus Monachus, Nicephorus Constantinus, Cedrenus; and in this year, but on different days, concur Eusebius, Epiphanius followed by Kepler, Bucher, Patinus and Petavius, some reckoning it the 10th of the Calends of April, others the 13th.”—Id. Vol. i. pp. 69, 70.

The common Bible chronology placing the crucifixion in A. D. 33, was, according to Dr. Hales, assumed on no earlier authority than that of Roger Bacon, in the 13th century, who, finding by computation that the paschal full moon fell on Friday in the year 33, was led by that circumstance to suppose that that must have been the year of the crucifixion. But this very circumstance Dr. H. claims as proof that that was not the year; for the true paschal full moon should come not on the day of the crucifixion, but the day before when Christ ate the passover with his disciples. Id. p. 100.

We have thus thirteen creditable authorities locating the crucifixion in the spring of A. D. 31. And all the evidence on this point tends also to establish the date of Christ’s baptism in the autumn of A. D. 27; for according to the prophecy the Messiah was to be cut off after three years and a half from the time of his manifestation; and, according to the evangelists, his ministry continued just that length of time, three years and a half. If, therefore, he was crucified in the spring of A. D. 31, he was baptized and commenced to preach three and a half years before, in the autumn of A. D. 27.

And right at that point the sixty-nine weeks ended, reckoned from B. C. 457, and in A. D. 31 we reached the middle of the last or seventieth week, where the Messiah was to be cut off, and cause the sacrifice and oblation (the Jewish sacrifices and offerings) to cease by the offering of himself as the great antitype of them all, upon the cross.

So far we find the most striking and indisputable harmony. We now go forward three and a half years to the terminal point of this grand prophetic period of seventy weeks, and inquire what then occurred. On this point we quote again from the learned Dr. Hales:—

“Eusebius dates the first half of the passion week of years as beginning with our Lord’s baptism, and ending with his crucifixion. The same period precisely is recorded by Peter, as including the duration of our Lord’s personal ministry: ‘All the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of [or by] John, until the day that he was taken up from us,’ at his ascension, which was only 43 days after the crucifixion. Acts 1:21, 22. And the remaining half of the passion week ended with the martyrdom of Stephen, in the seventh or last year of the week. For it is remarkable that the year after, A. D. 35, began a new era in the church, namely, the conversion of Saul, or Paul, the apostle, by the personal appearance of Christ to him on the road to Damascus, when he received his mission to the Gentiles, after the Jewish Sanhedrin had formally rejected Christ by persecuting his disciples. Acts 9:1–18.” Vol. 1. p. 100.

Thus at precisely the right point we find events which fitly mark the termination of that period which was allotted to Jerusalem and the Jews: Stephen is martyred, Paul is raised up an apostle to the Gentiles, the Jews formally reject Christ and the gospel in the persons of the first disciples, and the apostles turn from the Jews to other nations. Surely a fulfillment of prophecy so plain cannot be questioned.

And with these facts all established by the clearest evidence, and the dates of the prophecy all thus harmonized, we have in our hands the key which will draw every bolt, and give us free entrance into all departments of the larger prophecy and longer period of the 2300 days.