Easter Prophecy Unsurpassed
From Iraq’s Ancient Babylon
Many of us enjoy prophecy. We want to know what futurists say will happen in 20 years. We want to know what Edgar Cayce or Nostrodamus said about earthquakes. We want to hear what the stock market or housing industry will do five years from now. But, all of the so-called experts are just giving their best guesses.
Are they ever accurate? Rarely – and only vaguely.
Miraculous Prophecy from Iraq’s Ancient Babylon
Yet, the Jewish prophet Daniel who lived and wrote in Babylon (Iraq) in about 536 B.C. gave the most specific prophecy known to mankind. It was a vision of the future exactly to the day – 490 years from a specific point in time.
Specific Date Prophesied 490 Years in Advance!
It was a prophecy forecasting the Palm Sunday arrival of the Jewish Messiah exactly 173,880 days from the time a legal decree would be given to rebuild Jerusalem. History records that this specific decree was actually declared by Artaxerxes Longimanus on March 14, 445 B.C. (Sir Robt. Anderson [1895] 1957, 121).
The Exact Date & Event
Daniel’s famous prophecy is found in the book of Daniel, chapter nine, verses 24-26. In it he spells out that from a decree to rebuild Jerusalem to the Anointed One’s coming would be exactly 490 years – written in a Hebrew idiom as “weeks of years.”
When we carefully examine the time between March 14, 445 B.C. and A.D. 32 and remember to include 360-day Jewish years and leap years, we discover that it is exactly 173,880 days. The Messiah came at this time just as Daniel foretold.
Astonishing! No other prophecy in history matches this one.
Written 125 B.C. or Earlier
But, how do we know the book of Daniel was really written before Christ?
Beginning in 1947 scholars examined the Dead Sea Scrolls containing all of the Old Testament (minus Esther only). The Daniel scroll and the other Old Testament books from the LXX (Greek Septuagint) were dated to at least 125 B.C. and possibly a century earlier – long before Christ lived! Then, don’t forget that the Hebrew and Aramaic version predated the Septuagint. Either way, the prophecy stands unparalleled by any other in world history.
He Lived Among Us
Who else do we know who could fulfill Daniel’s specific prophecy forecast precisely 490 years before A.D. 32? None except the God who entered a womb to grow into a man who lived among us – Messiah the King!
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References:
Anderson, Sir Robert. 1954. The Coming Prince. 10th. ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel. [Orig. pub. 1895].
Missler, Chuck. 2002. Learn the Bible in 24 Hours. Nashville, TN: Nelson.
Rose Book of Charts, Maps, and Time Lines. 2005. “Then and Now Bible Maps.” Torrance, CA: Rose Publishing.