Appendix A:
Sir Robert Anderson's
Messiah Arrival Date

Reading the scriptures literally, Sir Robert Anderson postulates that Jesus rode into Jerusalem the 10th of Nisan, of April 6, 32 AD (Julian Calendar). Sir Robert Anderson (1841-1918) worked for Scotland Yard, was knighted by Queen Victoria, and has authored many highly detailed and extremely informative Christian books. In his book, "The Coming Prince," Sir Robert Anderson meticulously reveals how he arrives at this specific date for the Messiah’s arrival in Jerusalem.

Basically, Sir Robert Anderson uses one of Daniels prophetic visions to help determine the Messiah’s day of arrival:

While I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel and making my request to the LORD my God for his holy hill- while I was still in prayer, Gabriel, the man I had seen in the earlier vision, came to me in swift flight about the time of the evening sacrifice. He instructed me and said to me, "Daniel, I have now come to give you insight and understanding. As soon as you began to pray, an answer was given, which I have come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed. Therefore, consider the message and understand the vision:
"Seventy 'sevens' are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy.
"Know and understand this: From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven 'sevens,' and sixty-two 'sevens.' It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble.” (Dan 9:1-3, 20-25)

This vision of Daniel occurs in about 539 BC, which coincides with “In the first year of Darius son of Xerxes (a Mede by descent), who was made ruler over the Babylonian kingdom- in the first year of his reign.” (Daniel 9:1)

Sir Robert Anderson determines that “seven 'sevens,' and sixty-two 'sevens’” equates to 69 weeks of years, or 69 X 7 years, which equals 483 years. Using many time/date related scriptures, he also determines (like most Bible expositors) that a prophetic biblical year is 12 months of 30 days each, or 360 days. The Biblical books of both Daniel and Revelation also speak of 3 ½ years, or 42 months equaling 1260 days, which equate to 360 day years. Sir Robert Anderson then concludes that the time interval between the “issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One” is 483 years of 360 days each, or exactly 173,880 days to the very day.

For the starting date, ‘the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem’, Sir Robert Anderson uses Nehemiah chapter 2:

In the month of Nisan in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was brought for him, I took the wine and gave it to the king. I had not been sad in his presence before; so the king asked me, "Why does your face look so sad when you are not ill? This can be nothing but sadness of heart."
I was very much afraid, but I said to the king, "May the king live forever! Why should my face not look sad when the city where my fathers are buried lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?"
The king said to me, "What is it you want?"
Then I prayed to the God of heaven, and I answered the king, "If it pleases the king and if your servant has found favor in his sight, let him send me to the city in Judah where my fathers are buried so that I can rebuild it."
Then the king, with the queen sitting beside him, asked me, "How long will your journey take, and when will you get back?" It pleased the king to send me; so I set a time.
I also said to him, "If it pleases the king, may I have letters to the governors of Trans-Euphrates, so that they will provide me safe-conduct until I arrive in Judah? And may I have a letter to Asaph, keeper of the king's forest, so he will give me timber to make beams for the gates of the citadel by the temple and for the city wall and for the residence I will occupy?" And because the gracious hand of my God was upon me, the king granted my requests. So I went to the governors of Trans-Euphrates and gave them the king's letters. The king had also sent army officers and cavalry with me. (Neh 2:1-9)

The New Scofield Study Bible (NIV) (1967) footnote for Nehemiah 2:5 confirms this: “This is the only decree actually recorded in Scripture which relates to the restoring and building of the city of Jerusalem. And since Nehemiah is careful to date the royal decree “in the month of Nisan in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes,” it is quite certain that here is the starting point of the period of the seventy weeks foretold by Daniel (Dan 9:24-27). According to competent authorities the year was 445 B.C.” his is 94 years after Daniel’s prophetic vision which points to it.

Now having the starting point, the ending point and the time between, Sir Robert Anderson uses Julian Calendars, Gregorian Calendars, Lunar Calendars and other correlating and overlapping historical data to establish the exact dates. Again, all of the details are painstakingly laid out in "The Coming Prince". For the dates, Sir Robert Anderson writes: "The Julian date of that 10th Nisan was Sunday the 6th April, A.D. 32. What then was the length of the period intervening between the issuing of the decree to rebuild Jerusalem and the public advent of 'Messiah the Prince,' -- between the 14th March, B.C. 445, and the 6th April, A.D. 32? THE INTERVAL CONTAINED EXACTLY AND TO THE VERY DAY 173,880 DAYS, OR SEVEN TIMES SIXTY-NINE PROPHETIC YEARS OF 360 DAYS, the first sixty-nine weeks of Gabriel's prophecy."

Determining these dates is not an easy task in that historical information is incomplete, at best. At some point, our original 360 day Biblical year grew to 365¼ days. Perhaps a change was caused by the astronomical event that we refer to as the Long Day of Joshua (Joshua 10:12-14), which is also mentioned in dozens of folk tales from around the world telling of a long day in some cases and a long night in other cases. Or perhaps the story related to in Isaiah (38:7-8) where a shadow goes back up ten steps of the stairs it had just gone down.  The flood in the times of Noah may also have had an affect on the earth's spin espepecially if the flood waters were stripped from the planet Mars on a Mars flyby, where, as Chuck Missler speculates that the 360  day Earth year and the 720 day Mars year also underwent an energy exchange to our current 365 1/4 day Earth year and 687 day Mars year. Or, perhaps it is another astronomical event similar to what may shorten our 24 hour earth day to 16 hours, as mentioned in the Fourth Trump of Revelation (Rev 8:12) and also prophetically alluded to in Amos (8:8-10). Then again and more than likely, it's a combination of the above speculations. For sure though, something did happen to change earth's orbit around the sun and add 5¼ days to our calendar year.

Some question his methods, but right or wrong, Sir Robert Anderson, taking Scripture literally and using his particular method, was able to determine that Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, April 6th, A.D. 32. Jesus expected the Religious Leaders of Israel to "literally" understand the know the Scriptures and He held them accountable to know this “exact day” as well. But for whatever reason, the Jewish religious leaders failed to recognize their Messiah on Palm Sunday, choosing instead follow Satan's agenda and nail him to a cross the following week.

Jesus' Triumphal entry into Jerusalem and rejection by religious leaders:

Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?"

They replied, "The Lord needs it." They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road.

When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:

    "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!"

    "Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!"

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, rebuke your disciples!"

"I tell you," he replied, "if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out."

As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, "If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace — but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you." (Luke 19:32-44)

The Jewish leaders, and subsequently all Jews, were held accountable, paying a tremendously high price, that generation about forty years later with the slaughter of the Jewish people and the destruction of their temple and Jerusalem by the Romans; and many generations since, through the centuries follwing, and including the Nazi Holocost. However, the next Jewish Holocost, during the Tribulation, will be far greater!

In Matthew (Mt 23:1-39) Jesus rebukes the Jewish religious leaders and announces seven woes upon them. He ends this rebuke of them with the following prophecy:

 "...For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'" (Mt 23:37-39)

Many of us believe that this is, literally, the last prophecy to be fulfilled before the Lord returns to the Earth to save the Jewish remnant at the Battle Of Armageddon. The coming Jewish genocide will almost be complete. Satan knows that if the Jewish people can be completely annihilated before they confess, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,' then Jesus can't come back to redeem the Jewish people. Jesus recognizes the coming annihilation and intervenes with some Godly intervention:

 "So when you see standing in the holy place 'the abomination that causes desolation,' spoken of through the prophet Daniel — let the reader understand —  then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one on the roof of his house go down to take anything out of the house. Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now — and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened." (Mt 24:15-22)

It seems that one of the purposes of the Great Tribulation is to get the Jewish population to finally  recognize Jesus as their Messiah. And apparently, just prior to their annihilation the Jewish eyes,  hearts, spirits and minds will recognize Jesus for who he is - their Messiah! Then Jesus will shorten the days or come early to ensure the salvation of the Jewish remnant and upset Satan's plan of Jewish annihilation.

It is imperative that we believers be like the Bereans and search the scriptures, literally, to ensure that we know what we believe and why: “Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” (Acts 17:11)

JESUS’ EXAMPLE HERE IS TO TAKE THE BIBLE, AND PROPHECY, LITERALLY, AS HE DID -  JESUS EXPECTS OTHERS TO DO THE SAME!

By the way, an online edited version of the The Coming Prince is available at http://philologos.org/__eb-tcp/default.htm

 

Go to Next Section:  Appendix B - Signs & Wonders

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