Appendix Information Chapters 1 to 12

By the end of the first-century the conveyers of theocratic knowledge were all dead. The first 'presence' period of Jesus Christ had come to its end, the specially assisted period of revealing knowledge was over. Manmade theories and doctrines were now systematically stamping out any remaining influence left by these first-century disciples, true spiritual knowledge was dying from the earth with them. A safe deposit of knowledge had been created in the records of the Greek scriptures.

The possibility for humans to continue theocratic conditions beyond the years 36 to 70 with out the powers of the spirit would not be possible, at least, not until the same 'helping spirit' became reactivated. Bible evidence indicates this does not take place until much later some 2,000 years later, when God's allocated time of non-intervention with the nations would come to its end. Then, active involvement effecting the earth's affairs would start again; the spirit communication link renewed, promoting once again accurate theocratic knowledge.

Many disagree, claiming that the Christian religion started by the apostles continued on and is still doing so. According to the apostles themselves, this certainly not what they expected to happen after they died. These apostles wrote under spirit direction privileged information on how the situation would develop. Let's examine what they anticipated.

Jesus made a promise to his apostles in the year 33 that he would maintain a direct link with them until the then functioning Jewish age came to its end. He said: "Look! I am with you all the days until the conclusion of the system of things (age)" (Matthew 28:20). Even though Jesus transferred back to the spirit realm, he maintained a direct personal link with each ransom purchased individual, by means of a spirit powered communicator.

The Jewish age or system ended in complete destruction under the hands of the Romans, just as Jesus had predicted it would (Luke 21:5-6, 20). The historical records confirm that this occurred in the year 70 when the Roman armies under Titus completely destroyed the temple and the capital city of Jerusalem, removing Jewish inhabitants from the land of Israel.

Jesus' promise to maintain special spiritual communication with his apostles continued for a further 37 1/2 years, from 33 to 70. The apostles fully understood they were working within a limited time frame that would last only 37 1/2 years. This is why Paul in the year 56 speaking about how his contemporary Christian brothers should conduct themselves, said they should bear in mind that "the appointed time has grown short" (1 Corinthians 7:29). The time left to them was reduced, only 14 years left remaining, so they should arrange their affairs taking this into account.

The direct communication bonding through the spirit power not only strengthened them, but educated them on matters Jesus had previously said they were unable to grasp, but would when they were connected into this power source. To facilitate this they required their own personal spirit 'communicator and receiver'. The apostles received this exclusive piece of equipment when it was presented to them first at Pentecost in 33. The scriptures tell us that when they received this spiritual equipment, it was like a tongue (symbol of speech) of fire that sat on each one, (Acts 2:). Immediately it worked on their minds, giving them instantaneously the ability to speak in new languages. It also elevated them mentally, enabling them to receive knowledge and understandingon many important issues and developments that previously they had been unable to grasp (John 16:12-15).

This spirit communicator and educating mechanism would only be provided to specially selected individuals and for a limited time. When they died, the mechanism would die with them. Along with the information they received in connection with the Kingdom came warnings of a situation that would develop following their deaths and the ending of this special power arrangement. The apostle Paul explained that a full-blown apostasy would later take over. He said the very warning he was giving them, was acting as a restraint, holding back the main apostasy until the generation period ended. Although Paul informed them that it was partly in evidence then, it would not be fully out in the open until the restraining influence of the apostles, and the spirit working through them, were out of the way in death (2 Thessalonians 2:3-12).

The apostle John, right at the end of his life around 98, confirmed what Paul had already said about this antichrist, but by then the antichrist was taking over fast, as the restraints were all but died off, proof that they were already then at the end of the Kingdom recruiting period (1 John 2:18-19, 4:1-3). The term 'apostasy' carries the original Greek meaning of separating, deserting or abandoning. The apostasy would desert or abandon the true knowledge in favour of its own perverted teachings. In this way the apostasy would be directly opposing what Christ had taught and revealed; it would be an antichrist organisation.

Once the restraining apostles had been removed through death, the antichrist apostasy, took over completely, it was foretold that it would last for a set period of time. Paul said: "There will be a period of time when they will not put up with the healthful teaching, but in accord with their own desires, they will accumulate teachers for them-selves to have their ears tickled, and they will turn their ears away from the truth, whereas they will be turned aside to false stories" (2 Timothy 4:3-4).

The apostles fully anticipated the antichrist apostasy taking over after they died, and that it would last for a period of time, during which this apostasy condition and antichrist organisation would rule. According to 2 Thessalonians 2:8, after the permitted time period for the apostasy ended it would be exposed by Christ himself when he again turns his attentions to the earth and Kingdom affairs, some 1,900 years later at the time of the 'manifestation of his presence', ( 2 Thess 2:1-12).

The apostles warned of the many false teachings or doctrines that the corporate apostasy would bring in and establish through their own appointed teachers.

As soon as the final apostle died, this is precisely what happened! Once the resistance against it by the spirit empowered apostles was no longer there, the truth abandoning apostasy rapidly spread and gained ground. The second-century saw much confusion, contradiction and conflict. The prevalent opposition apostate religions were vying for predominance including the Greek and Roman pagan forms of worship.

These religions evolved numerous religious doctrines and ideas that were becoming inter-mixed with the apostles' teachings. When major conflicting differences in doctrines occurred, gradually the weight of the pagan concepts won out. There were no power assisted apostles left to resist it. This progressive mixing and polluting with pagan doctrines diluted out any strength of true Christian knowledge.

The doctrines central to the Greek and Roman religions were multiple God deities, particularly triad deities. Greek philosophers such as Plato had developed beliefs in multiple gods and man's relationship with them. These concepts derived from more ancient civilisations such as Egypt. From these hand-me down ideas the Greeks and thereby the Romans cultivated their ancient religious beliefs, including the immortality of the human soul, an underworld concept of purgatory tormenting with fire, and family deities of Gods; all incorporated into their pseudo Christian/pagan religions.

Through mixing such potent pagan ideas the pure truth was dissolved out. One of the major foretold apostasy doctrines to appear was the one that would contradict Christ's position as being the only begotten son of God (1 John 4:3,5,6,9). By tracing the history of the apostasy and how this denial doctrine on the origin of Jesus Christ developed we shall see how the spirit induced truth of the apostles was indeed slowly rubbed out.

With the restraints removed, a melting pot of religious ideologies, and doctrines developed. Various conflicting thoughts and pagan concepts from the Roman, Greek, Hebrew and Christian religions were stirred into a simmering broth. As time passed the friction and confusion often brought the pot to the boil, resulting in many heated clashes. Under various leaders, groups of dissenters gathered, following their own particular teachings. By the year 325 about 225 years after the last apostle had died, this whole divisive situation was causing great concern to the pagan Roman Emperor Constantine. He was getting much trouble in his empire from the unrest and conflict caused between these pseudo Christian and pagan groups, so to settle things down he set up a council in the city of Nicaea to sort the mess out and agree a unified state religion that all could live with and he could back.

The position of Christ as always was the focal issue: was he God, angel, or man? As far as Constantine was concerned he didn't much care which was agreed, so long as it was agreed by all, and the wrangling stopped. From the cauldron of this confusion evolved a primitive statement of belief: a simple creed or written statement it was hoped all could agree too. Crystallised at this first council, the creed slowly, as conflicts could so easily be re-ignited, but bit by bit, and through various written stages by stealth became fashioned into a full written statement of belief. The final creed as it was laid out stated:

This written statement of belief that God and Jesus Christ were one person became the cornerstone doctrine of this new creed religion, which had evolved over a period of some 350 years. It was a composite religion forged from base pagan religious doctrines and scripture. It had evolved through the years of wrangling, compromises and just plain bludgeoning; becoming the official Roman state religion, the only approved religion operating hand in glove with the ruling authorities. It was a truly creed-based statement religion, with a basic foundation of pagan doctrines, incorporating a facade of so-called Christian ideas.

With this foundation of pagan doctrines, the new creed religion cherry picked the scriptures for bits it could use that fitted with the evolved creed-based beliefs, while ignoring references in the apostles' teachings that repudiated these creed doctrines.

The apostles would not have recognised the creed religion and certainly would have had no part of it. The fundamental truth had died off with them; that Jesus was equivalent in nature to pre-rebellion Adam, a perfectly created loyal Son of God, and could therefore re-balance the scales of justice. He could not be equal with the creator God as stated in the creeds, no more than Adam was equal to God, (Romans 5:18). The creed doctrines invalidated the legal balancing arrangement of the ransom and therefore totally devalued the significance of the ransom death of Jesus Christ.

This trinity doctrine, as it became known, with the Father, the Son and the Holy spirit all subdivisions of a single spirit-being Godhead, was never believed or taught by the apostles. They had always taught that Jesus Christ was subordinate to his God and father, regarding him as a created being. This 'phoney' idea was embellished bit by bit into the full-blown trinity doctrine. The apostasy had through its creed development created the established acceptance of the erroneous statement, that Jesus Christ was God in man's form. The inspired expression of error had emerged and established itself as doctrine (1 John 4:6).

The scriptures were now more or less completely under the control of this evolved antichrist creed religion, acting in confederation with the Roman state administration. Now that the trinity doctrine established by creed was becoming inculcated into the masses it was hardly in its interest to publish too much of the information that the apostles had written down. The last thing they wanted was to stir up the old arguments, particularly as to that the evidence in the scriptures proved the Son of God to be. Censorship of the writings of the first-century disciples was tight. Available bible copies were controlled, and only those teachers approved and appointed by the creed religion were allowed to expound the now fully developed apostasy doctrines (2 Pet 2:1-3, 1Tim 4:1-3).

These creed statements were used for the indoctrination of the masses through oral inculcation. The creeds were taught and memorised parrot fashion, by repetitious use. The old adage 'repeat a lie often enough and it will be believed' formed a major part of the indoctrination process of these creeds.

Apart from the trinity doctrine, other erroPlatonisedneous pagan doctrines, were similarly consolidated in this way through creed development. Hellfire and immortality of the soul were both adopted from the pagan religions. Again, these creed doctrines ran directly contrary to the scriptural information, that when a person dies that is the end. The hope generated by the scriptures was for a later resurrection; until then they 'sleep' in the grave. How can a being with an immortal soul also have a resurrection?? There can only be one or the other. The Bible advocates resurrection; the pagan advocates immortal soul. Resurrection is referred to over 40 times in the Greek scriptures, whereas, immortal soul not once.

It is all too apparent that these creed introduced doctrines are still held today as the most important central doctrines by nearly every Christian denomination that exists in the world. What a massive indoctrination has been achieved by these creed religions. Of the world's five billion population, approximately 25% call themselves Christian; of this approximately 99% belong to organisations that teach the trinity and other originally pagan ideas in one form or another. Of the remaining 1%, approximately half are not sure what they believe, leaving only a handful of religions in Christendom that reject this trinity teaching.

Returning to the firstcentury. The spiritual lights were out; little if any spiritual knowledge about the Kingdom was available. Darkness had truly set in, the so-called Dark Ages had arrived. God's Kingdom plan was on hold, as the apostles had said it would be. The church state religions had managed to bury God's word. This is an all-too-often repeated failing of men, when in a position of controlling knowledge. Jesus had warned the religious clergy of his day of the same fault at Matthew 23:13: "You lock people out of the Kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them" .

Through these Dark Ages, much blood-letting was done in the name of religion, with very little truth from God's word was allowed to shine. The first real threat to the censorship control of the Bible by the churches came with a mechanical invention. In 1439 Gutenberg developed the printing press in Germany. By 1455 about 150 copies of the Bible had been printed; quickly, printing presses appeared everywhere. The mechanism was now available to allow lay people access to the Christian Greek scriptures, bypassing the control and censorship of the all dominating Church.

Lay people could now read and study these early printed translations. Although they were full of scribal errors through multi-generation copies of the then available manuscripts, they still allowed a partial comparison between scripture and Church doctrine with a certain amount of exposure. Once the Church had lost its binding censorship control, it moved to the next best position; it backed and authorised only the roughest and most doctrinally corrupted translations.

This situation continued for over 1,000 years. So inculcated did the central Trinitarian doctrine become within the Church that when the Bible was first printed in the Textus Receptus form, the words were deliberately tampered with and changed to make it read and appear that the scriptures taught this spurious doctrine. To illustrate this point, the King James Bible of 1611 translates 1 John 5:7-8: "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one."

The words in bold were added to the manuscript to support the trinity teaching. Later, more accurate translations corrected this deliberate act of fraud, leaving out the spuriously added words, although even today many Bibles are still sold with this commonly recognised error included. Nevertheless, back there a dirty translation was better than what was previously available: virtually nothing! As time passed, scholars often working against negative church pressure, researched the ancient manuscripts to rake out the errors that had crept in. The inevitable eventually happened: more and more individuals through Bible study began to protest at the obvious non-biblical doctrines and falsified errors that they had been taught by the Church. Thus the Protestant Reformation started only 50 odd years after the invention of the printing press and the release of the censorship stranglehold. The first man-motivated 'Age of Awakening', as some referred to it, had started.

The censorship hold by the established Church over available scriptural manuscripts, was not the only barrier to access of the Bible. Even presuming permission could be obtained from the Church; the price for commissioning a scribe written copy made it completely prohibitive for the ordinary person. Depending on the number of accuracy checks made by the scribes; a decent copy could have cost the equivalent of anything from $50,000. These two factors, Church censorship and cost, virtually cut off the scriptures from the ordinary man.

Until after some 1,300 years of censorship, and the coming of the printing process in 1453. In one stroke the censorship stranglehold was released and the cost reduced dramatically. Although the first printed Bibles were extremely 'dirty' copies, full of errors; accidental and deliberate through continual chain copying, as far as lay people were concerned at that time any Bible was better than none. At last, after more than 1,300 years, the opportunity to read, study and verify the word of God had arrived. Inevitably with this study came the thirst of discerning scholars for more accurate translations.

What was available to them then was a very degenerated copy, which had arrived through so many copies of copies of copies. It is possible that the final manuscript material as first printed had passed through as many as one hundred generations of copies. The final copy would be similar to, say a detailed hand written business letter, passed to another to be rewritten by hand; this copy is passed to the next, who again copies it and passes on his copy to the next, who copies it and again passes his copy on, and so on until it has passed through a hundred different copiers' hands. Each copy carries forward the conglomerate rolled-over errors inherited from all the previous copiers. Imagine how the original letter would compare to its hundredth generation copy. This would be similar to the condition of the first multi-generation copy manuscripts printed and circulated.

The Dark Ages had taken their toll on manuscripts throughout this 1,300 year period great gaps appeared in the copy chain. The newly created appetite to read and understand the Bible more accurately through cleaner translations would have to wait a further 350 years. For now, the printing press could only mechanically copy the inferior translation material available at the time. The first printed Bibles were made from a copy of a manuscript that was in the common Roman language, Latin. This manuscript was of a late generation copy of a text prepared by Jerome, which he translated into the Latin from earlier Greek copies available to him from around the year 400. The first Bibles came off the press in 1455, and by 1610 the Catholic Douay Bible was printed; which was also based on Jerome's Latin translation, using a copy dating back to around 450, and is still used to this day.

Sixty years after the first edition of the Bible was printed, a Dutch scholar Erasmus in 1516 printed a Greek language version of the New Testament. This translation had now gone through countless copies and had been converted from Greek to Latin and back to Greek. This mishmash brought about a self originating, concocted Greek text producing a unique reading never to be found in any other known Greek manuscript.

Unfortunately this artificially perverted text became the basis for the received text, the Textus Receptus, which was later used as the base text of the King James Bible. The unjustified reverence for this Textus Receptus promoted by the church held back more accurate translations for many years. The text, developed from the Erasmus Text, was commonly received and accepted as the Church 'approved' version. In 1611, King James of England had the Textus Receptus adopted into the King James Bible, including all the errors in the Erasmus Text. This became the basis for most Protestant translations in Europe until the end of the nineteenth century.

To criticise this Church 'approved' text was akin to sacrilege. It was regarded as the Holy Word direct from God's mouth; to tamper with this translation was regarded as blasphemous. Within some religions, this attitude is still held today, although it has since been proved that it contains over 2,000 errors. It is interesting to note that upholders of the old 'hot potato' doctrine, the Trinity, generally hang on with dear life to this far-from-accurate translation. Could it have anything to do with the errors it contains, deliberate or otherwise clouding Bible information and understanding on this erroneous doctrine? Just try and get them to use a more accurately translated Bible and watch their reaction.

Once the Bible was out in the open through printed copies, the drive for accuracy was on, and although the ascribed sanctified attitude toward the received text contained in the King James Bible held it back, the pressure was building. Discerning individuals even reading this 'dirty' corrupted text could see how the church doctrines and information in it contradicted.

Although often split in their allegiances between loyalty to the institutionalised churches with their control over the financing of these 'clean-up' projects, "the one who pays the piper calls the tune", and their conscious desire for accuracy above all, some courageous scholars pressed on for as clean and accurate a translation as they could get. This required getting as far back in time and as close to the original writings in the copy chain as possible, to the very earliest available copies. It was an almost impossible task, yet it has more or less been achieved, although taken some 500 years. Thousands of dedicated scholars have devoted millions of man-hours to this task.

As the original writings are all missing, a massive dragnet went out through the world collecting whatever copies could be found. It was truly amazing what came out of the woodwork! Over the years more and more came to light. People like Griesback, Tischendorf, and Tregelles between 1775 and 1875 collected these manuscripts, researched and investigated them using their skills to make corrections to the then-in-use received text Bibles.

It was becoming so great a job this correction work of the King James text, that it eventually became necessary to drop trying to correct such an erroneous translation and restart from scratch. In 1881 a most notable attempt at this was made by Wescott and Hort from the masses of manuscripts that had been raked out and made available to them.

Once cleaner translations finally become available from the start of the 1800s, the old creed adopted doctrines started to be exposed and took a bashing. Using these cleaner translations, and cross-referencing all scripture statements on any one subject using Bible concordances, a clearer pattern emerged as to the true Bible understanding on these various subjects. When the old creed doctrines were held up to the light of this examination they failed the test. They were shown up for what they were: doctrines not Bible based. The more important exposures included the immortality of the human soul, exposed as scripturally fake. Hellfire after-death torment and punishment by fire in purgatory exposed as scripturally false. The Trinity; God, Christ, and spirit as one person exposed as lies.

Although the information was being recovered from the scriptures by means of these cleaner translations, it made very little difference to the major Church religions. These religions were firmly entrenched in the world's systems; their creed doctrines had been established for over 1,000 years and the leopard was not about to change his spots. It would take new individuals in new organisations to promote this retrieval of knowledge. New wine needed to ferment in new wine skins (Matthew 9:17).

Following the 1880s, numerous examples of even earlier manuscript evidence closer to the originals have come to light. With these earlier manuscripts available the whole critical process needed to be redone taking this more recently recovered evidence into account.

It is the authors opinion that since the Westcott and Hort text, the following steps have been more a case of one step forwards, two steps back. In 1900 Bernhard Weiss translated the Greek text by applying his own theological views to it. He selected the variant texts according to what he believed to be the most appropriate according to his theological understanding. Then in 1901 Eberhard Nestle produced a version of the Greek text based on the comparison of three earlier texts, Tischendorf, Westcott and Hort and the Weiss text. He simply took the consensus of these three and made this his text. This resulted in the cleanest of the texts the Westcott and Hort text being diluted again by the inferior earlier Tischendorf text and the personally theological weighted text of Weiss. Further developments have been done using this hybrid Nestle text, introducing additional evaluation with numerous newly discovered papyri manuscripts dating back to about 200.

For discerning individuals the window into Bible information has undergone a rigorous cleaning; it is now possible to seek out these 'cleaner' translations. Bearing in mind that all Bibles are only individual versions of the original. Each version is affected by the source of the material translated; each translator is affected by his or her own personal views in the selection of words to translate what they consider to be the original meaning in the modern language. This makes selective multiple Bible translation comparisons essential in perceptive study.

Since 1455 the printing press had weakened the Churches' censorship control of the scriptures, making mass copies available to people at a vastly cheaper price than that charged by a scribe for a hand- written copy. Although the copied material was poor and full of errors, these early printed Bibles were clean enough to see the glaringly obvious discrepancies in Church teachings.

This inevitably brought protests against the all powerful established Church system, giving birth to the Protestant Reformation. It was the so-called 'first awakening', or more accurately the first stage in a retrieval process of lost scriptural knowledge. Unfortunately, due to the almost exclusive use of the erroneous Textus Receptus translation, held all authoritative through the next 350 years, the protests produced using these early Bible translations were of a surface nature only, mainly against the patently obvious contradictory practices of the Church.

Until the appearance of these first printed Bibles; for a period of over 1,000 years the old church system held complete control through its power and authority, its corruption had mounted up. The expression 'power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely', proved accurate in this case. The old church system had held absolute power, and inevitably became absolutely corrupt. It had buried the Bible and thereby any restraints that could have been brought to bear on its practices by referral to the scriptural directives.

So powerful and corrupt had the old church system become, that even protests exposing obvious malpractice's, brought instant reprisals. Some individuals, although armed only with their blurred copies of the Bible, became so affronted by these obvious wrongs practised by the church they separated themselves. Forming their own church religions. Among these were Moravians, Lutherans, Anabaptists, Calvinists, Presbyterians, Mennonites, Pilgrims, Puritans, Baptists, Methodists and Quakers. I leave out the Church of England's protest and separation, as Anglicanism had little to do with Bible protests and all to do with a king's desire to pick and choose wives and grab back wealth held by the Roman Catholic Church.

While the Church ruled supreme through its appointed vassal kings, the clergy had become corrupt in nearly every way imaginable. They 'conned' their congregations into believing that nobody could get even near God and salvation without buying it through the Church in one form or another. To this end they readily sold indulgences to their congregational prey. Failure to do it their way, according to them, meant damnation, torture in the 'after-life' and sometimes a quick exit from this one.

Although the doctrinal changes made by these Protestants were small, it still took great courage for the average man then to discard the old Church system and its imposed machinery for salvation. Standing up against its power to administer life and death, often by the human hand, needed a courageous heart. Any act or belief contrary to the authorised teachings of the Church was labelled heretic, and as often as not carried the death penalty.

The Textus Receptus Bible translation (King James Bible) was blurred and ambiguous and hence of limited help at this time to these individuals. They were endeavouring to look for accuracy in the Scriptures through a dirty window; although a dirty window was better than no window. Nevertheless, from 1500 on they were able to discern from their printed Bible copies some of the more obvious truths, and predictably protested for changes.

To an intelligent student of the Bible today, these are all seemingly elementary and obvious points, but they were new and revolutionary to them. Many ideas were advocated; changes were made, only to be changed back again under pressure from the church. Often the persecuted became the persecutors. The melting pot of protest was bubbling vigorously, although with limited ingredients.

Was an associate lecturer in mathematics and astronomy at Cambridge University and fearless in speaking out against the established Church and in particular the doctrine of the Trinity. In 1710 Whiston was charged with promoting doctrines opposing the Church of England, found guilty and stripped of his Cambridge professorship.

Whiston translated from Greek into English the Historical writings of Flavous Josephus an eye witness historian of the events at Jerusalem between 66 and 73. Whiston also wrote four volumes on 'Primitive Christianity Revived' and worked at developing the maritime chronometer.

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Another remarkable individual of this time was John Napier, the mathematical genius and inventor of logarithms, advancing the sciences of cosmology and physics. He also wrote a book on the prophecies in the Bible book of Revelation. These great thinking minds had their studies in the science fields greatly amplified but their studies on Bible information and prophecies were more or less completely muffled.

In 1820 John Darby formed a Bible study group in England. Examining the contemporary variety of thought that had emerged throughout the previous 350 year period, he formulated the conclusion that as the apostles of the Scriptures practised true worship, they should try to get back to that. He appreciated that the first-century apostles were united in knowledge and understanding of God's plan through the controlling effect of the spirit power.

Led by these thoughts his group endeavoured to re-energise this spirit power, they separated from all formalised religious activities and civil involvement, endeavouring to return to this primitive Christianity as practised by the apostles. It was a rare flash of understanding. Unfortunately for them the 'spirit' was missing; this was dependent on God and his time schedule, not theirs. It was not to be re-energised again until some 175 years later. So with the best will in the world they went it alone.

The inevitable happened; their efforts collapsed, doctrinal differences broke out. Many of Darby's followers could not cope and returned to the formal Church system with its old creed doctrines and rituals. Others went to the other extreme isolated themselves in exclusive brotherhoods. Darby, followed information passed down from his predecessors of a developing phased creative time plan of God. A concept that God was in the process of developing his creative plan and purpose. Darby sectioned this plan into seven time divisions, he believed he was living within the division when God would separate a small group of faithful ones from the large established Christian religions for the Kingdom. He of course considered he was among them.

Other concepts were derived from the book of Revelation. Among these, that Christ would return at his second presence and gather all his selected saints by resurrecting those already dead; those living at the time he would call in termed 'The Rapture' (an expression still used extensively by Evangelists today). Following this, God would reject all token Christians. Instead he would convert the Jews to preach Christianity to the world for seven years (whether they liked it or not).

Once this had been accomplished, the tribulations referred to in the book of Revelation would be unleashed on the world, with Satan at its centre. Jesus with his army would then battle with the opposing earth's inhabitants, defeating them and Satan. This would mark the start of the 1,000 year reign of Christ over the Earth. At the end of this reign, Satan would be released from his prison abyss, the unjustified dead would be resurrected and judged along with Satan and destroyed in the lake of fire. Interestingly, for all Darby's perception he still swallowed the doctrines of the trinity and the immortality of the soul!

Most of these received ideas were collected from others; he merely examined, refined and developed them further. Some ideas being put forward in England around this time included the thought that the first part of Christ's return would be unseen for seven years in a 'parousia' following this Israel was to be restored to the Holy Land and the Millennium start from Jerusalem. Once Darby's group had crystallised their ideas they stopped progressing. Presuming they possessed complete truth, they 'time capsulated' themselves into the Plymouth Brethren organisation. Many ideas, particularly Darby's dispensation theories, were later picked up by various divisions of the Fundamentalist movement in America, and formed the basis for the Evangelical Grace Movement in England.

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Appendix 6.

About 1829 William Miller, like Darby, studied various ideas that were being bandied around and from these consolidated his beliefs. One, that Man had lost immortality through Adam's crime. The correction for the condition of inherited death on mankind induced by Adam's crime was the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. Miller's research led him to believe that he was living near the end of the world system and that soon the 1,000 year reign of Christ would start. He believed that Christ would return in the flesh to the earth, when he would judge the world's population, and then burn it along with all the wicked (all except them that is). The saints would be saved (them), who would then begin ruling for 1,000 years.

Miller also adopted some earlier Bible scholars' time calculations, and on the basis of these he predicted that Jesus Christ would return to earth in 1843/44. This would trigger the second advent or presence of Christ, which would then be followed by the 1,000 year millennial reign. This date had been calculated using a scripture time prophecy in Daniel 8:14 "Until two thousand three hundred evenings and mornings have gone by: then the sanctuary will have its rights restored".

Miller arrived at his time calculation by applying a common Bible time rule conversion of Numbers 14:34, "a day for a year"; so 2,300 days became a length of 2,300 years. He started this 2,300 years from the year 457 BC, the then assumed date of the twentieth year of Artaxerxes when he gave a decree to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem (Nehemiah 2:1-8). Thus according to his calculation 2,300 years would end in 1843/44. Miller's chronological plan concluded that 6,000 years of human history would end in 1843 the rest of his calculation were all pegged around this main Daniel time prophecy.

On the expectation of this calculation, Miller built up a following of some 50,000. They watched and waited; the year came and went, with no second advent, no return of Christ and no start of the 1,000 year reign. This miscalculation splintered his movement into smaller groups developing versions of his ideas. This non-appearance was later referred to as "The Great Disappointment". Many continued to accept Miller's date as correct, but that the event of Christ's return occurred in heaven, and that at a later date he would visibly return to the earth.

One of these fragmented groups developed a belief that the 1843 date was wrong and that Christ would return in 1853. When the 1853 date passed with no evidence of the return of Jesus Christ, another group split from it. Later some formed Evangelical Adventist groups; later some took the name 'Seventh Day Adventists'.

With all this resurgence in the study of Bible chronology and prophecy there emerged individuals who took up an earlier chronological calculation worked out by an English Bible scholar Bowen. He had calculated that human history started with Adam's creation in 4127 BC. From this they worked out that 6,000 years of human history would end in 1874. In fact there were many other versions of Bible dating chronology in circulation at this time. Probably the best known of these was Archbishop Ussher's. He dated back the creation of Adam to 4004 BC with 6,000 years running out in 1997.

These applied this chronology of Bowen in calculating the second coming of Christ in the flesh to be concurrent with the 6,000 year date, 1874. They based this reasoning that God's seventh rest day, following the end of the sixth last working creative day, was 7,000 years long, as were the previous six. They then reckoned that the scriptural evidence supported the conclusion that the last 1,000 years of this 7,000 year day would be the Bible 1,000 year reign of Christ. Subtracting 1,000 years from 7,000 would mean that the 1,000 year reign would start after 6,000 years had lapsed, which according to Bowen's chronology worked out as 1874. On this piece of evidence they expected the date 1874 would see the return of Christ, and focused the rest of their beliefs around this date.

When it came and went with nothing visible happening some fell back to claiming the return was invisible in the heavens. At this point the fragmented Adventist and Millerite groups stopped searching further and so stopped progressing. They had had their hands bitten with the failure of their year date predictions and so rolled themselves into religious time capsules, taking the organisational form of Adventism and its various churches, and licked their wounds. They have remained more or less at the same position down to today, having become wary of prophetic time calculations.

Appendix 7.

The next person to build on his predecessors' accumulated retrieved knowledge was Charles Russell. Brought up a Presbyterian he become fascinated with, and later influenced by, the Millerites' teachings and understanding of Bible time prophecies, particularly relating to the second coming of Christ. In 1870 he joined one of these numerous groups. Russell applied a rational mind to Bible examination, developing the received information available to him, and made further independent Bible research. He formed a separate study group in Pennsylvania, who became known as Millennial Dawners or Russellites.

As Russell formulated his understandings he openly opposed the following creed based church doctrines. The trinity doctrine he rejected (at last!) in favour of the Bible evidence that God was the Creator, Jesus Christ was his first spiritkind created son, and that the 'holy spirit' was God's activating energy. He advocated that the doctrine of eternal hell fire punishment was adopted from pagan sources, and scripturally unsound. He rejected the immortality of the soul doctrine, in favour of the scripturally supported 'soul sleep', the condition of all the dead awaiting resurrection. Russell promoted the retrieved scriptural information that Sir Isaac Newton some 180 years earlier had advocated and later by certain fundamentalist groups that the second coming of Christ would not be in a visible material state.

Russell expanded this understanding verifying that Christ's 'presence' from the Greek word 'parousia' could be used, not only in a physical presence sense, but also in an implied sense, in that Christ's second presence would be invisible and not physical. Christ's second coming had generally been thought up until that time in America to be a visible one in the flesh. Renewed study on the subject using cleaner Bibles showed that the earlier understanding; that it would be an invisible 'parousia' or presence period was correct. This, Russell maintained, would be in a similar fashion to Jesus Christ when he continued his invisible 'parousia' with his first-century disciples from 33 up until the end of the Jewish system in 70, (Matthew 28:20). Russell argued, that Jesus had indicated that this same type of presence would be renewed in his second 'parousia' period: in Matthew 24:37 "As even for the days of Noah, thus will be the presence (parousia) of the Son of the man" .

This 'second presence', Russell claimed, would be similar to Yahweh's 'presence' with Israel, indicated by the shechinah light and cloud over the ark in the most holy of the tabernacle: "There I shall come to meet you (come into presence [parousia] with you) from above the mercy seat..I shall give you all my orders" (Exodus 25:22). Russell came to appreciate that the scriptural evidence supported the understanding that the 'parousia' presence was a specific period of time when Christ would once again reactivate his attentive association with his selected appointed representatives on earth as he had done with his disciples between 33 and 70.

This retrieved understanding had been made possible by making use of cleaner translations of the Christian Greek scriptures, particularly as in this case, for establishing the meaning of the word 'parousia'. Russell also made a concerted effort to reintroduce the proper name of God, which had superstitiously been neglected. He favoured using the popular medieval rendering of the 'Tetragrammaton' YHWH as Jehovah rather than Yahweh. Like Miller, Russell accepted that Adam had received a just punishment of death for his crime, but his human race offspring had unjustifiably inherited his death sentence also. To address this problem Jesus Christ sacrificed himself as a counter-balancing ransom, to counteract this inherited death penalty on mankind. Russell concluded that on the basis of this legal provision of the ransom sacrifice, the Bible advocated that humans, worthy or not, would be granted a second chance of life by the mechanism of resurrection, which he understood would take place during the 1,000 year reign of Christ.

He also adopted a idea poached from others that the Great Pyramid of Gizeh in Egypt was a statement from God sculptured in stone, possibly built by Melchizedek, with the measurements of its passages providing time calculations in God's plans. The descending passage from the point were it entered the Grand Gallery was pegged to signify the birth date of Christ. From there it was measured as it sloped downward to the junction of its intersection with the entrance passage. At this junction one passage went up to the entrance; the other continued down to the pit. The first part down to the junction was measured as 1,542 inches, (although the builders never used this unit of measurement).

This process was believed to set the date 1542 BC, which they considered to be the date of the Abrahamic covenant. The next part leading down the passage to the 'pit' measured 3,416 inches *. When 3,416 years were added to 1542 BC they arrived at the year 1874, which they considered set the date for the start of Christ's returned presence. When the 1874 date passed, it was reworked by adding a further 41 inches (37 1/2+31/2) to the 3416 measurement making it 3457 years *, bringing it to 1914.
(Millennial Dawn Vol 3; Thy Kingdom Come, page 342, by Charles Russell: published 1890 with the 3416 calculation. Later entitled Studies in the Scriptures with subsequent editions carrying the reworked 3457 calculation).

This was a none too clever set of thinking by Russell, and no further comment on this piece of nonsense needs to be made, save to say again that one must take care not to throw out the baby with the bath water.

He did adopt the 7,000 year seventh day calculation, with its last 1,000 years running concurrently with the 1,000 year reign of Christ. Like earlier Millerites he accepted the Bowen calculation of 4127 BC for the start of human history (for refuting evidence see chapter 11). This as already stated gave the end of 6,000 years of human history as 1873, later revised to 1874 (when it was realised that there was no year zero, so an extra year needed to be added). This calculation was used to fix the start date for the invisible spiritual presence of Jesus Christ (Millennial Dawn Vol 2, The Time is at Hand, page 39, published 1889).

A further calculation Russell made in his book 'Millennial Dawn Vol 3, Thy Kingdom Come, pages 23-94, was the application of the three 'day periods' of Daniel Chapter 12, the 1,260 days, the 1,290 days and the 1,335 days. These periods were converted to years and applied as follows:

Russell developed this 1874 date further by the application of a discerning time parallel. He took the period from 29 when Jesus' activity started with his baptism, until 33 when he presented himself at Jerusalem as king, a period of 3 1/2 years. This 3 1/2 years Russell applied as a parallel time pattern from the considered arrival date in 1874 for Christ's second presence, 3 1/2 years later brought it to 1877 when he calculated Jesus was to be crowned king in heaven.

Continuing this first-century time parallel Russell then took the period from 33 to 70, the time between Christ presenting himself as king at Jerusalem in 33 until the Jewish system ended in 70, a period of 37 1/2 years. Russell then applied this to run from 1877, the coronation date of Jesus, ending 37 1/2 years later at 1914. By applying this parallel time line up he calculated the end of the world system, and the start of the 1,000 year reign, to be in the year 1914. This was a very astute calculation formula on the part of Russell, although as events proved, it was completely out of time synch (Millennial Dawn Vol 2, The Time is at Hand, page 218).

Russell, had adopted many of his date ideas from Miller and others, following a time calculation held by these related to the date 1874 when they believed Christ had started his 'perousia'. This 1874 date was arrived at by the following calculations. Daniel's 'disgusting thing' was they believed set up in 539 when the power of the Roman Catholic church was established after the fall of the Ostrogothic Kingdom. Then Daniel's 3 1/2 times converted to 1,260 years started (Dan 7:26 12:7, 3 1/2 times = 1260 days to years). This brought the calculation to 1799 when they maintained Papal power was brought to its end by Napoleon.

The 1,290 years (Dan 12:11) were also applied to start in 539 and ended in 1829 (1799+30) with Millers preaching work. Last the 1,335 years (Dan 12:12) were applied again starting in 539 and ended in 1874 the supposed date for the start of Christ's 'perousia'. Three and a half years later in 1877/78 they believed the King, Jesus took power in heaven. From this date they reckoned the great tribulation would start exactly 37 1/2 years later in 1914/15.

The basis for this was a clever parallel comparison of time events. The period of time between Jesus presenting himself at the temple in Jerusalem as king in 33 (Mat 21:4-9) until the Jewish system of things was destroyed by the Roman armies, 37 1/2 years later in 70 (Mat 24:3,15). This period was applied in parallel, starting from the date Russell believed Christ had been crowned King in the heavens in 1877. The 37 1/2 year period he reckoned would end with the world system being destroyed in the great Armageddon tribulation in 1914. So from the 539 date, Russell had mapped out the 1914 date as the end of the Gentile times. A 2,520 year calculation came later and was engineered to fit these dates.

In order to fit the 2,520 years to also end in 1914, it would mean it had to start in 606 BC (see section below outlining his 2,520 year period). As 70 years back from 539 BC took it to 609 BC, 2520 years would have run out in 1912, this was no good, it had to run out in 1914. The two extra years were found by adding two years to 539 bringing it to 537 BC, the explanation used was, it took the Jews two years to get back to Jerusalem from Babylon after their release in 539 BC. They now added back the 70 years from this 537 date bringing them to 607, then calculating 2520 years forward brought them nicely to 1914.

This is an example where a erronous calculation was applied to a manipulated date. This was not done in a deliberate attempt to change times and prophecy, but out of an over zealous desire to see the fulfilment of these prophecies in their own times. This unfortunately has been one of the failings in human nature no matter how well meaning the attempts.

In October 1876 Russell picked up on the Bible time period known as the 'Gentile times'. A Bible period of time during which a non-aggression or non-intervention policy by God in the conducting of earth's affairs by the world's nations would run. Russell identified this non-intervention period would run out in the year 1915, later revised to 1914. At this time he expected God's king to destroy all the earthly nations, and then rule the earth from the literal city of Jerusalem for a period of 1,000 years.

To arrive at this 1914 date he remade a study of a 'tree' dream prophecy given by God to Nebuchadnezzar recorded at Daniel 4: 10-17, which describes a gigantic symbolic tree at the centre of the earth, visible to the entire world. The tree represented world rulership. A holy 'watcher' from God commands the tree to be chopped down, leaving its stump and roots in the ground. The tree's symbolic heart is changed from a man's to a beast's, and a period of seven times is to lapse while retaining the stump and roots, until people living at that particular time were made aware that the Most High God had started to rule over all human governments, and that God would confer this world rulership on one he approved of, "the most unassuming one of mankind,".

Russell deduced that the 'seven times' referred to a period of world rulership following the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar's Babylonian world power. A chain of world rulers would then follow for a pre-set period of time ending when God commenced ruling by means of Jesus Christ, the King whom he sets up at his appointed time. The 'seven times' was translated into a period of 2,520 years through the following calculation, seven times = seven prophetic years or 2520 days, applying the Bible conversion rule of a day for a year for periods of time prophecy; it resulted in a total period of 2,520 years.

Russell deduced this to be an uninterrupted period of rule over the earth by subsequent manmade world-controlling powers. This ongoing period is also referred to by Jesus Christ as the 'Gentile times' at Luke 21:24: "and Jerusalem will be trampled on by the nations until the appointed times of the nations are fulfilled". Russell believed that the world powers had been granted a 2,520 year lease of rulership over the Earth by God, (Millennial Dawn Vol 2, The Time is at Hand, study 4, page 73, published 1889).

This 2,520 years lease period, he applied to a commencing date of 606 BC, later revised to 607, when he reckoned the Temple and Jerusalem had been destroyed by the Babylonians. When 2,520 years are calculated from 606 BC they end in 1914. Russell believed he had 4 independent yet complementing strands of evidence pointing to 1914 as the time for the Armageddon tribulation.

2nd The 6,000 years of human history from 4127 BC to AD 1874 plus the 41 year parallel periods (371/2+31/2) bringing it to 1914.

3rd Application of Daniel's 3 day periods from 539, to 1799, and 1829, and later 1873 followed by the 41 year parallel period to 1914.

1914 came and went with no Armageddon occurring; Russell died in 1916 and his Bible students organisation splintered. The largest of these groups, now rethought the whole thing. When revising their thinking in 1925 they dropped all dates prior to 1914, and pulled forward the calculations that had been applied to 1878; the previously considered date for Jesus' coronation and reapplied them to 1914.

Essentially what they did was to slide the whole pattern forward. These now concluded that Jesus was crowned king in 1914 at the start of his invisible presence, (The Watch Tower, March 1, 1925). The parallel time calculations were dropped in favour of a more general period of time, 'a generation'. These previous followers of Russell's now reckoned the generation living in 1914 who recognised the significance of the events occurring in that year, would not come to its end before Armageddon and the start of the 1,000 year reign of Christ.

This generation concept was based on Matthew 24:34, where Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place". All previous time calculations were re-vamped and corrected to this realignment, including a re-calculation of the creation date for Adam and the start of human history, now calculated as 4026 BC.

The 6,000 year point of human history was applied to the new starting 4026 BC, and ended in 1975. This was put forward in mooted form as a very close date for the Armageddon war . This too came and went with no Armageddon. These Russellites or Millennial Dawners had fragmented into numerous Bible study groups. Most continued to hold fast to Russell's 1914 date. The largest of these groups is the Jehovah's Witnesses, with some five million followers. These groups have yet again fallen into the trap of presumptuousness, concluding that because they have some correct understandings, the rest must also be right. Serving the interests of their respective organisations, and promoting their crystallised concepts, they have unfortunately trapped themselves in a 1914 time warp, sealing themselves into their own time capsule, unable to progress any further chained to a 1914 time anchor.

Appendix 8

THREE REDUCTIONS IN HUMAN LIFE SPAN

According to the bible the longest record of any individual ever having lived after being evicted from the initial perfect environment was 969 years. A massive length of time compared to our miserable short life expectancy today. In fact, for about the first 1,500 years of human history, the general life expectancy was much higher, amounting to many hundreds of years. A quick look at life spans of the earth's first inhabitants' confirms this. Adam lived 930 years, Seth 912 years, Enosh 905 years, Kenan 910 years, Mahalalel 895 years, Jarad 962 years, Methuselah 969 years and Lamach 777 years (Genesis chapter 5).

Their years were the same as ours, and their calculating life spans was accurate. One of the reasons for their exceptional longevity was they were closer to the original human 'mint' condition; their inherited DNA carried far less contamination from accumulated inherited disease. They also lived in a comparatively healthier environment so it took much longer for their life balances to be overweighed by slow decay breaking down their cells. Their physical condition and environment could hold it back for much longer. God had informed the first humans that if they went it alone rejecting his created system of ecologically balanced environments, they would eventually wear out and die.

In fact He calculated they would die within one thousand years, or within a 'day' as reckoned from God's standpoint; the Bible manual informs us that a 'day' to God is as a 1,000 years (2 Pet 3:8). No human has ever lived longer than this predicted 1,000 year maximum, got Methuselah nearest to it 969 years but still died within the 'day'. This first disendingin life expectancy was from ongoing unending life to less than 1000 years.

The second descending step took place when another great reduction in life span occurred accompanied by a world disaster, a time when almost all life was wiped out. This world catastrophe came 1,656 years after the appearance of the first human. The earth's human and animal life was virtually wiped out by a world destruction, a water deluge, when this world came to its end. Following this deluge, human life span dropped dramatically to a maximum of 120 years the world in which we now live. What caused this?

Return to Appendix List

Appendix 8A

Prior to this water deluge the earth's climate was very different. Where did all the water come from to flood the entire earth and the highest mountain to a depth of 7 meters. Much evidence supports the theory that the earth once had a water vapour layer suspended high in the atmosphere possible as ice crystals held by balancing centrifugal forces and gravitation (2 Peter 3:5-6 and Genesis 1:6-8). This earth's layer much wider than Saturn's rings would have formed an efficient climate controlling mechanism, providing evenly dispersed heat over the planet, protecting the equator regions from high temperatures and overheating as today while dispersing heat out to the polar regions, giving a far more even temperate climate throughout the entire earth's surface.

This screen would have protected life from harmful exposure to direct cosmic radiation from the sun. Under this climate regulator, the rain cycle as we know it today would not have operated; instead a more efficient system of dew watering and irrigating plant life took place. The vapour shield explains many of the mysteries still not understood by scientists today, such as why warm climate animals were found living in arctic areas suddenly destroyed and preserved in ice. Why evidence of forests once covered the worlds major deserts. Why much land under today's oceans was once covered with temperate vegetation and populated with animals and man.

The flood waters came from the breaking-up of his suspended canopy. Possibly the original constructor of this suspended shield and heat defuser, re-adjusted the balancing forces holding it in position. Billions and billions of tons of ice crystals could have been drawn down mainly toward the poles by gravitational forces, turning the crystals into water and then into glaciers caused by the sudden dramatic changes in temperature caused by this phenomenon.

The water and ice would have spread out over the surfaces of the globe toward the equators, flooding everything in its path until sheer weight of water ice and glaciers cracked the fragile earth's mantle forcing up new mountain ranges and pushing down great ocean depressions allowing the water to eventually settle into the oceans basins we have today. The removal of this canopy had the effect of allowing for the first time direct bombardment of the earth by detrimental radioactive cosmic rays, seriously affecting the life span of all living creatures. It also changed the earth's climate, drastically raising the temperature at the equator regions and lowering it at the polar regions, thus dramatically reduced the type and amount of food production. This newly restricted food supply affected Man's diet, which in turn reduced further his life expectancy. Interestingly, Man first received approval to start eating meat following the deluge in order to supplement this restricted diet (Genesis 9:2-4). After 1,656 years of human history the life span expectancy dropped from a maximum of 1,000 years to 120 years.

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Another contributing factor to our reducing life expectancy, apart from the original death infection, has been the effect of acquiring accumulated genetic defects on our DNA blue print and passed on with increased snow-balling effect, generation to generation. All these factors have taken their toll, dragging down the human life span. The conglomerate effect has been to greatly reduced the length and quality of human life down to approximately 70 to 80 years Ps 90:10.

Life expectancy has degenerated from, unending life to less than 1,000 years, then to 120 years, and then to 70 to 80 years which we have ended up with today.

Appendix 9

At Daniel 9:24-27 the 70 weeks time prophecy is set out;

"There are 70 weeks that have been determined upon your people and upon the holy city, in order to terminate the transgression and to finish of sin (Adamic) and to make atonement for error and to bring in righteousness for times indefinite and to imprint a seal upon vision and prophet and to anoint the Holy of Holies. And you should know and have insight that from the going forth of the word to restore and to rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the leader, there will be seven weeks also sixty-two weeks. She will return and be actually rebuilt, with a public square and moat but in the straights of the times. And after the sixty-two weeks Messiah will be cut off with nothing for himself . And the city and the holy place the people of a leader that is coming will bring to their ruin. And the end of it will be by the flood. and until the end there will be war: what is decided upon is desolation's. And he must keep the covenant in force for the many for one week and at the half of the week he will cause sacrifice and gift offering to cease."

This time prophecy establishes the dates of Christ's birth, baptism and death. It was a time calculation leading to events connected with the coming Messiah, starting in the 20th year of Artaxerxes, the year 455 BC (Nehemiah 2:1). The Christ would appear at the end 7 plus 62 or 69 weeks of years, 69 x 7 = 483 years. From 455 BC, 483 years brings us to 29 when the Christ first appears on the world stage in October. The 70th last week of years, 7 years then commences. Halfway through this last seven year period, after 3 1/2 years Christ died in April 33 when he caused the Jewish sacrifices under the Mosaic law covenant to become obsolete, superseded by his better perfect human sacrifice.

Three and a half years after Christ's death (+1/2 a week), there was a further three and a half year period of special favour extended to the Jews enabling them to take advantage of God's promises to Abraham and be first in line for the new Kingdom covenant when the first non-Jews were invited to enter into the New Kingdom covenant in 36. From 29 when Jesus was baptised until 36 was a full seven year week of special favour to the Jews exclusively applying the benefits of the Abrahamic covenant to them. At the end of this last seven year period the covenant was completed non Jews the first of which was Cornelius and his household in October 36 were invited to enter the Kingdom contract (Acts chapter 10). Daniel's sixty-nine weeks of years plus one week of years time prophecy set the dates for this last seven year period 29 to 36.

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Appendix 9A

At Luke 3:1 we are informed that in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, John the Baptist started his active ministry. The prophecy at Malachi 3:1 and 4:5 foretold that a preparation messenger similar to Elijah would prepare the scene ahead of the coming Messiah. John undertook this preparation assignment, when the appointed time arrived. This involved preparing people by baptism, an active punctuation point in their lives, it impressed on the receivers regret of their present situation and wish to receive a cure for their personal and Adamic sin, it marked a turning point in their lives. They were being tuned into God's plans, and prepared for what was about to happen.

John was a Levite the son of Zechariah a priest who officiated at the temple (Luke 1:5-9). Levites started their ministerial work at the age of 30. This 30 year old qualifying age requirement was laid down as part of God's law regarding the Levite priests. These laws set out what age their priestly careers were to start and finished. At Numbers 4:1-3 it states they could not start their priestly activities until they were 30 years old and had to retire when they reached 50. An example of this is Ezekiel the son of a priest, he started serving God in his 30th year, after having spent five years in exile at Babylon (Ezekiel 1:1-2). John was a Levite of the family of Aaron the son of the priest Zechariah and so was qualified to carry out special priestly duties on behalf of God. Jehovah would certainly not have broken his own laws by calling John to start this work before reaching the legal age of 30.

John started his Ministry in the fifteenth year of Tiberius when he was thirty years old (Luke 3:1). According to historians Tiberius Caesar commenced his reign on September the 15th in the year 14. Using the Roman way to calculate years, the 15th year of Tiberius started on the 16th of September 28 and run through to the 15th of September 29. This leads to the conclusion that John reached the age of 30 sometime between the 16th of September 28 and the 15th of September 29. Born 30 years earlier, his birth must have occurred sometime between the 16th of September 3 BC and the 15th of September 2 BC.

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Arranged by God, Jesus was exactly six months younger than John the Baptist. In Luke 1:24-36 the record shows John's aged mother Elizabeth was already miraculously six months pregnant when Mary first became pregnant with Jesus. Mary visited Elizabeth who was then a full six months further along in her pregnancy. When the two mothers-to-be met, John while in the womb of Elizabeth, reacted physically to the presence of the newly conceived foetus of Jesus in Mary's womb (Luke 1:39-45).

Jesus during his ministry carried out the work of a 'Melchizedek priest' on behalf of his God (Hebrews 3:1 and 5:1-6). If we apply the same reasoning as applied to John, Jesus would have been called by Jehovah to start his schedule of priestly activities also at the age of 30. This proves to be the case, for at Luke 3:23 it says; Jesus was about 30 years old when he commenced his work, six months after John started his priestly preparation ministry. Sometime between the 16th of March 29 and the 15th of March 30. It follows that Jesus born six months after John, would have been born sometime between March 2 BC and March 1 BC.

Can we pinpoint the month and day? In Daniel's 70th week of years (Appendix 9) we examined how the Bible lays a three and a half year pattern for Jesus' ministry between the Messiah appearing when Jesus was Baptised and his sacrificial death. If we can fix either one of these two points in the year then we will be able to fix the rest from it. We can do this! The Bible tells us exactly when Jesus died, on the Jewish Passover festival day, the 14th day of the month of Nisan, which corresponds to our parallel date the 6th of April.

If Jesus died on the 6th of April (14th Nisan) then three and a half years earlier brings us to the beginning of October 29. Jesus must have started his ministry at the beginning of the month of October in 29, when he was baptised by John, and John must have commenced his preparation work six months earlier at the beginning of April 29. As John and Jesus were both 30 years old when they commenced their respective ministries then John would have been born 30 years earlier at the beginning of April 2 BC and Jesus at the beginning of October 2 BC six months after John.

Chart 1c JESUS AND JOHN'S INTERRELATED LIVES AND DATES



     Birth of                        Jesus                        Jesus
      Jesus                         Baptised                      Death
   5th October 2 BC                5th Oct 29                 6th April 33
       |<---------30 years ----------->|<-------- 3 1/2 Years ------->|
       |                               |  1st Passover  3rd Passover  |
       |                               |  April 30           April 32 |
    ___|_______________________________|_____|_______________|________|
     |                             |                 |                |
     |<--------- 30 years -------->|                 |                |
    Birth of                   John starts         2nd               4th
    John                      his ministry       Passover       Passover
   April 2 BC                   April 29         April 31       April 33

Return to Appendix List

In chapter two of Matthew's book references are made to King Herod. He was King of Judea when Jesus was born, and tried to kill him soon after his birth. He died soon after Jesus' family went on the run from him to Egypt. Herod was succeeded at his death by his son Archelaus as king of Judea. Because Joseph was in fear of him also; the fugitive family ended up in Mary's home town of Nazareth Galilee, steering clear of Joseph's ancestral town of Bethlehem in Judea.

Confusion over the date of the death of King Herod has resulted in major errors being made in dating the birth of Jesus, in spite of the mass of sound dating evidence. Lets have a closer look at this evidence. Josephus the major historian on this subject, provides us with the following pieces of information in his Antiquities of the Jews volumes 14,15 and 17.

According to Josephus, Herod dies soon after an Eclipse of the moon and before a Passover between April 2 BC and April 1 BC. Jewish tradition places Herod's death as the 18th of January. Astronomers inform us that the best Eclipse of the moon around this time was one that occurred on the 8th of January 1 BC. It was a total Eclipse of the moon that occurred at night and so easily observed, lasting nearly two hours. Herod dies soon after this eclipse, which would make the Jewish traditional date for the death of Herod the 18th of January very appropriate. It would leave some eleven weeks to go before Passover. With the help of this historian we can pinpoint Herod's death as occurring around the 18th of January of the year 1 BC.

If Jesus was born early in October of the year 2 BC and Herod died in January of the year 1 BC, do all the Bible details and events that were supposed to have happened fit into this period? Many people believe the Bible account tells of three kings arriving on the night of Jesus' birth at a stable led by a star which directed them there. Those familiar with the Bible accounts will tell you this is not so, the events were much different. King Herod first gets involved with the birth of Jesus when pagan astrologers arrive in Jerusalem making inquiries as to where they might find a new born Jewish King. The Bible nowhere says there were three Magi, only "Wise men" in the plural, any number more than one, there could have been a small group of them.

They had travelled from the East according to Matthew 2:1, that must mean east of Jerusalem probably the Babylonian area. Isaiah 47:13 describes the Chaldeans (Babylonian's) as stargazers. Star worship was rampant in this part of the world throughout these ancient nations. In fact 'Yahweh' strictly outlawed any involvement with stargazing or astrology. It was a type of divination worship used by those endeavouring to gain knowledge of the unknown (Deu 18:10-12). In view of their religious practices, these 'Wise men' were very unlikely to have been worshippers of Yahweh but very likely to have been worshippers of a god who the Bible describes as a 'star' himself at Isaiah 14:12.

These 'Merlin' type learned men Magi, were cleverly educated in the arts of the occult, divination's and astrology. If this is the case, what was the reason for this 'star'? According to the account in Matthew Chapter two, it was to draw attention to this birth at a vulnerable time. The birth of a potential mortal enemy of Herod. This advertising, intended to highlight the birth, connived by the spiritual enemy of the Messiah the leader of the rebellion (2 Thes 2:9). Through star-signs provided to his own dedicated occult worshippers. This star alerted them to the birth of the seed (Genesis 3:15) and the first attempted heel bruising.

Turning to the scriptural account what do we find? At Matthew 2:1-2 a "star is seen in the east" an astrological divination star-sign probably first seen in Babylonia. According to the stargazers, the divination sign of a king to be born to the Jews. Note the account does not say the star guided them to Jerusalem it only alerted them in Babylon. Logically, for these Magi find out more about this sign and of a possible new-born king of the Jews the place to go was Jerusalem, which they duly did, a journey of some 500 odd miles, a months travelling by camel.

When they arrive at Jerusalem they start inquiring around, most probably in the temple courtyards where most activities were carried on. Their inquiries had the effect of causing a great deal of speculation and agitation among the Jewish attendants, upsetting many of the people so much that verse three says 'all Jerusalem became troubled'. The news of this eventually reaches the sick 70 year old Herod, he is very upset by the possibility of a new king being born, why? Because being old and sick he would soon die and his sons would then inherit his kingdom, he does not want any new pretender king robbing him and his heirs of their kingdom inheritance. This greatly 'troubles him,' the Magi had rung the intended alarm bells in his head.

Herod to tried to out who and where this king is so that he can sort out his problem and remove the possible usurper. He calls the chief priests and scribes and demands to know where and who this possible usurper is? This forces the scribes and priests to study the scriptures for the answers. They find the prophecy of Micah 5:2 referring to Bethlehem as the possible birth place of a king. Herod secretly summons the Magi, asks them when they saw this 'star', unfortunately we have no record of their reply, which would have been interesting (Matthew 2:7). It is Herod that has to tell the Magi where to go to search for the child, as there was no star to follow, it had disappeared weeks earlier.

Herod wants information on where the child is, why? So he can pay his respects? No! So he can destroy him! The Magi now with their travelling directions from Herod as to where to go and how to get there, set off to Bethlehem. The 'star' which they had only seen in the east, 'now' miraculously reappears! Apparently the pagan Magi are the only ones who can see this star?? Its reappearance makes them very happy (Matthew 2:9-11). The star stops over a 'house' not a stable. When the Magi arrive they go into this house which by now would have been many weeks after the birth based on the listed Bible chronology of events below.

Jesus said, at Matthew 24:34 by no means would this 'generation' come to its end until 'all' these things occur. So how long is a bible 'generation'? Fortunately the Bible does this for us so we do not have to speculate on the length of a bible defined generation. Speaking about the rebellious attitude of the nation of Israel who had came out of Egypt under Moses it says at Numbers 14:29 'All your registered ones. from 20 years old upward who complained (vs30) will not enter into the promised land (vs33) they will become shepherds in the wilderness forty years to answer for your acts'. Then at Numbers 32:13 it says 'God made them wonder in the desert for forty years until all that generation that offended God came to their end.' So all that generation from a minimum age limit of 20 years came to its end from God's stand point, 40 years later. Yahweh held responsible for their actions all registered males 20 years and above (Num 14:29), God referred to the full time limit of one generation as being 40 years (Num 32:13).

When Jesus at Matthew 24:34 used the expression by no means would this 'generation' come to its end until 'all' these things occur. It would indicate, according to God's definition that a 40 year generation of time would definitely not some to its end before 'all' these things occur. (If as some believe the last generation started in 1914, then we should expect God to have brought about all the things that were to happen within this last generation before 40 years lapsed, or by 1954 at the very latest).

The generation Jesus spoke to in April of the year 33 saw the predicted end of the Jewish system which occurred 37 years later in the year 70, all within a 40 year generation period. It could truly be said that, it by no means came to its end before all the predicted events for that generation came about. Would not the second application be just as accurate?

Some students of the bible have used a period of 2,520 prophetic years and applied it to a starting date of 607 BC and thereby ending it in 1914. It is advocated by some that in 607 BC Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, destroyed Jerusalem and imprisoned Zedekiah and that by so doing extinguished rulership by God from the earth. Applying this calculation of 2,520 years starting from 607 BC and end it in 1914.

The date 607 BC is calculated back from an assumed date of 539 BC set by secular historians as the date of the destruction of Babylon by Cyrus. They calculate that after the Jews were released from Babylon by Cyrus' decree in 539 BC, they arrived back at Jerusalem 2 years later in 537 BC. The 70 years of predicted servitude to Babylon they maintain must have ended in 537 BC (Jer 25:12-13 29:1-10). Therefore they calculate 70 years back from 537 to start in 607 BC implying that the end of God's rulership, represented on the Earth by Zedekiah at Jerusalem occurred at this time, illustrated by the tree in Daniel chapter 4 being chopped down. They maintain Nebuchadnezzar in his 19th year of being king (607 BC, 2 Kings 25:8) destroyed the temple at Jerusalem, blinded and imprisoned Zedekiah for his rebelling.

This 19th year of Nebuchadnezzar as 607 BC is at odds with historians who put the first year of his ruleship between 604 and 605 BC so his 19th year would be between 586 and 587 BC giving a 21 year time discrepancy. The ones who propose this time application also calculate the 70 years of Jer 25:12, to be contained within this same period from the 19th year of Nebuchadnezzar 607 to 537 BC (70 years).

They accept the historians date of 539 as the fall of Babylon but reject their date 605/4 as the 1st year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign which would give 587 BC for his 19th year. Why? Because you cannot fit 70 years into the historians allocated time, 587 to 537 it is only 50 years long! Either the Bible is wrong on the 70 years or the historians have miscalculated one or other or even both the dates 605 and 539 BC. But why did Russell and other early fundamentalists manipulate forward their date 2 years to end the 70 years at 537 and not use the 539 BC when they believed the Babylonian World Power came to its end? Lets have a look!

6a) The tree vision was given to Nebuchadnezzar not Zedekiah, it related to a period starting when the Babylonian dynasty was chopped down, not God's. Yahweh sets the date for this chopping down, having an angel write on the wall the proclamation to cut down the Babylonian dynasty on the wall during the very day the dynasty is brought to its end (Daniel Chapters 4 & 5).

6b) Daniel's prophecy of 'seven times' following the cutting down of the tree could not be applied to Zedekiah in Jerusalem as Daniel explicitly says at 4:22 the tree symbolises the king of Babylon and his Dynasty.

6c) The previous vision to Nebuchadnezzar of a symbolic statue was a parallel vision of the same time period, in no way would anyone argue that the head of Gold represented Zedekiah's rulership. Both visions related to the same things.

6d) Zedekiah could hardly be reckoned as God's king, God had already arranged that the previous king Jehoiachin was removed by Nebuchadnezzar as punishment to the nation he would hardly have replaced him with another king in contradiction of his expressed warnings (Jer 27:6,12-14,17,20-22).

6e) Zedekiah was not anointed by God to reign as king in Jerusalem he was appointed to the job of vassal representative by Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 24:17). Later he rebelled against his master Nebuchadnezzar, despite God warning him against carrying out this totally unnecessary self-destructive action. In no way can it be construed his rule was on behalf of Yahweh.

6f) The seat of God's rulership continued at Jerusalem with or without an anointed king being present. Some 600 years later, Jesus in 33 recognised that God's symbolic seat of rulership was still the temple at Jerusalem without any anointed king representing him at the time. Just before his death he presented himself at this seat of rulership as its appointed king (Luke 19:34-44). Although the covenants changed in 33 and special favour to the Jews was extended to 36, along with the temple and city of Jerusalem, God not tearing them down until the year 70. Jesus in his signs foretold that after the temples destruction in 70 the nations would trampled on literal Jerusalem, and continue to do so until the Gentile times ended, when the new temple and City would be constructed in the heavens (Luke 21:24). Jerusalem's being trodden on, according to Jesus, did not start in 607 BC but in 70.

This 430 year period referred to at Exodus 12:41 reads: "And on the very day the four hundred and thirty years ended, all Yahweh's armies left Egypt". Galatians 3:17 adds a little more saying: "As to the covenant previously validated by God, the law that has come into being four hundred and thirty years later does not invalidate it". This period started when the Abrahamic covenant was validated by circumcision in 1944 BC; between God and Abraham when he was 99 years old. Abraham circumcised his penis through which his seed would pass to Sarah who God miraculously arranged at the age of 90 years to become pregnant. From this start date 1944 BC the 430 years ran out when the offspring of Abraham, now grown to nation sized, left Egypt under the leadership of Moses, in 1514 BC.

The 400 year period referred to at Genesis 15:13 when God warned Abraham "You may know for sure, that your seed will become an alien resident in a land not theirs, and they will have to serve them, and these will certainly afflict them for four hundred years". At Acts 7:6-7 it says: "God spoke to this affect, that his seed would be alien residents in a foreign land and they will afflict them for four hundred years, that nation for which they will slave I shall judge.. after these things they will come out and render sacred service to me in this place (the promised land)" .

It is self-evident, that this 400 years, ends with the exodus of the nation of Israel from Egypt in 1514 BC. Then the affliction must start 400 years earlier in 1914 BC. But what event happened in the year 1914 BC? Abraham's seed, Isaac, would have been thirty years old in 1914. Some Bible students have said the affliction started when Isaac was five years old when his half brother the 19 year old Ishmael 'poked fun' at him (Genesis 21:9). Far more reasonable is a much more significant event a God instigated and time controlled event. The clue is in the word 'afflict' or 'oppress' used in both references to this event. This more significant event was the time when God tested Abraham by requesting him to sacrifice his miraculously born, only begotten son from Sarah (Genesis chapter 22).

Students familiar with the evidence in the Bible will know that this was a small scale model illustration of God's willingness to sacrifice his only begotten son Jesus Christ. Abraham acted the part of God and Isaac the part of Jesus Christ. In support of this comparison Hebrews 11:17 says: "Abraham when he was tested as good as offered up Isaac his only begotten son.., he reckoned that God was able to raise him up even from the dead and from there he did receive him also in an illustrative way" .

When Abraham took Isaac to be sacrificed he would have been 130 years old and Isaac 30 years old; it is interesting that the ancient historian Josephus in his book Antiquities of the Jews (Vol 1, XIII:2) states by Jewish tradition, indicates that Isaac was a much older 25 years' old when Abraham prepared to sacrifice him. Isaac at 30 years of age would have been the same age as Jesus when he started his ministry. Just as Jesus chose to submit himself to doing God's will which included being sacrificed, so too did Isaac. A 30 year old man could have easily resisted a 130 year old father trying to tie him up and kill him! It is therefore reasonable to conclude that Isaac was a willing party to this, and allowed himself to be prepared as a sacrifice. Making a credible comparison to Jesus, Isaac would have had to have decided freely and rationally to co-operate in order to correspond with the free choice made by Jesus Christ in volunteering himself to be sacrificed. In this manner Isaac have become a fitting illustration of Jesus.

This event is far more significant than the 'poking fun' of Isaac when he was five. So what is the affliction? Well just as Jesus Christ was afflicted so Isaac was, he was nearly sacrificed! Isaiah Chapter 53 is prophetic; prophesying the suffering that would lead to Jesus' death, this whole Chapter is well worth studying. In verse 7 we find expressions that could equally be applied to Isaac as Jesus: "He was hard pressed, and he was letting himself be afflicted yet he would not open his mouth, he was being brought just like a sheep to the slaughtering and like a ewe that before her shearers has become mute, he also would not open his mouth".

The 450 years referred to in Acts 13:17-20 says; "The God of this people Israel chose our forefathers and he exalted the people during their alien residence in the land of Egypt and brought them out of it with an uplifted arm, and for a period of about forty years he put up with their manner of action in the wilderness. After destroying seven nations in the land of Canaan he distributed the land to them by lot, all that during about four hundred and fifty years". This period runs from the same starting date as the 400 years and finishes 10 years after they enter the promised land under Joshua, after having completed the 40 years punishment in the wilderness. (see chart 2c)

     THE 450 YEARS FROM THE SACRIFICE OF ISAAC
               TO THE DIVISION OF THE LAND BY LOT

Abrahamic                Exodus         Enter        Divided 
Covenant                   from        Promised        Land 
Validated                 Egypt         Land          by Lot 
1944 BC                   1514 BC      1474BC         1464 BC
  |<------ 430 years ------>|<---40years-->|<----10y--->|
__|_________________________|______________|____________|__
      |                     |              |            |
      |<---400 years------->|< wilderness >|<   Land   >| 
      |                     |< punishment >|<  Divided  |
      |                     |              |<  By Lots  | 
      |<------------------450 years --------------------| 
    1914 BC                                           1464BC 
The sacrificial offering of                        Distribute 
Isaac when 30 years old                          The Land by Lot

Working back in time from the date of the Abrahamic covenant made when Abraham was 75 years old in 1968 BC to the Flood, can be calculated by a fairly simple addition of generation spans recorded in the book of Genesis 11:10 to 12:4.

This next stepping stone of time, back to the creation of Adam, is again a composite period of generations listed in Genesis 5:3-31.

During this 83 years, Adam was subject to a period of adjustment and settling in, during which he was educated. The area in which Adam was located was called Eden, a part of which had been specially prepared for him to live in. It had been cultivated up to a higher standard than the rest of Eden. Upgraded by God to a highly fertile region where the more decorative and sensitive plants could thrive, supporting a vast variety of sophisticated food plants designed in a perfect ecological balance for man and animals, it was called the Garden of Eden. Some bible scholars have estimated this Garden area to have been about the size of Switzerland.

The trees would have been specially planted and prepared in order to supply the special food diet mankind needed to support continual life (Gen 2:9). It would seem that Adam was a fruitarian (Gen 1:29-30) hence mans need for a seemingly redundant appendix. Few of the unique variety of fruits that Adam could choose from are available to us today. The land was irrigated and watered through a water vaporising and condensing cycle (Gen 2:6) similar to our heavy morning dews but much more affective.


   Chart 11:4  ADAM'S YEARS IN EDEN

   Adam's creation          The end of the 6th day 
     4051 BC                              3968 BC 
       |                                       | 
       |<--- 83 years in Garden of Eden ------>|
    ___|_______________________________________|__

We do not know exactly how long Adam was given to settle in, but long enough to tour and become familiar with the entire area of the Garden and develop a home-base for himself. His education covered aspects of horticulture in order to qualify him to take care of the 'Garden' and develop it. How long it took Adam to learn these skills and become competent to cultivate and develop it to the standards set, we are not told, some reasonable number of years would have been needed (Gen 2:15).

Another task God involved Adam in was in connection with the animals and birds. Adam was invited to make his contribution to developing the earth's ecology in connection with these living creatures. The record says God brought a specimen of each of the species of domestic animals, birds and wild beast to him, so that after becoming familiar with each species he could create an appropriate title name for them (Gen 2:19). This familiarising would have involved much more than just thinking up a name and placing a label on each. He was to care for these creatures placed in his controlling trust. This required education in biology, animal husbandry and earth sciences. For us to gain such a full working knowledge in these subjects would take many years attending universities, how long it took God to complete Adam's education we are not told, but whatever it was he would have been given sufficient time to master these arts and sciences.

Throughout his settling and education period, God was in communication with him. Obviously Yahweh never walked the earth literally or talked to him directly, as the closeness of so much energy and power would have destroyed him. God being of such immense power no man could see him and live (Ex 32:20). God instructed his human creation through the spirit creature side of the family, primarily his chief spokesman, the 'Word of God' (John 1:1-4). Over the years these spiritkind brothers of Adam would have built up and developed a working relationship with him. It is conceivable that these spiritkind associates of Adam may have materialised physical bodies during his education. The chief spokesman or word was very much in evidence and association with the human race throughout all its stages (Prov 8:30,4:31).

We do know that the power exists with angels to materialise, later some were to use it in connection with other assignments in developing God's plan. A few examples of the many where spirit creatures materialised under God's approval can be found at Gen 18:1-8, 19:1, 32:1, Joshua 5:13-15 and Judges 13:3,9,18,21. There was however another time when spirit creatures materialised and abused this power (Gen 6:1-4 compared to 2 Peter 2:4-5 and 1 Peter 3:19-20).

'MAN' A COMPOSITE UNIT

After Adam had been educated taking the best part of 80 odd years, he was considered mentally mature enough to become involved in finalising the second part of his creative makeup. God had designed 'Man' as a composite unit: made up of two complementing parts male and female; when united they made a single complete, reproducing family unit, it was this unit that was given the name 'Man' (Gen 5:2). The 'Man' pair incorporated a new concept for expanding the human division of God's family; it does not exist within the spirit populations.

Through a surgical transplant cloneing procedure far more advanced than any man is capable of, one of Adam's bones was used to construct the first 'Woman' the womb (wombman) carrying part of the 'Man' pair, Gen 2:20-24. God then brought them together into the Man pair under a uniting marriage contract so making them one flesh Gen 2:24.

Adam was responsible for his wife's education including relating to her God's instructions. He was expected to care for and love his wife as he would himself. God gave 'Man' two assignments, they were told to have relations together and rear a family who would eventually fill the earth. They were also to care for the animal life and organise the cultivating of the rest of the planet, bringing it slowly up to the standard of the rest of the Garden area. By this time the 7,000 year period of the sixth creative day had come to its end. God concluded it by acknowledging that everything up to that point was 'very good', Gen 1:31. It is quite possible that Eve had been in existence for only a relatively short time before the creative 6th day ended.

This time section is the 2,000 year second quarter of the over all 8,000 year period. Again we can connect Bible time pieces linking them together through to the year 33. To span this entire period we will can join together the following 5 linking time divisions.

Evidence has been presented that the Abrahamic covenant commenced in 1968 BC when Abram was 75 years old and was validated 24 years later by circumcision when Abram also received the new name Abraham. He would then be 99 years old in the year 1944 BC.

Our first link in the chain is a period of 430 years referred to at Exodus 12:41 and Galatians 3:17. The Exodus reference tells us that "At the end of four hundred and thirty years, on that very day, all the companies of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt". At Galatians it adds a little more saying "As to the covenant previously validated by God, the law that has come into being four hundred and thirty years later, does not invalidate it". According to Exodus 12:41 after a 430 year period the Exodus of the nation of Israel from Egypt takes place under Moses. It was at this time that God gave the newly freed Israelites his written national law constitution. According to Galatians 3:17, the previous covenant, the Abrahamic one, was validated 430 years before this law code was laid down. This Abrahamic covenant was validated by circumcision in 1944 BC, so 430 years later brings us to 1514 BC; the Exodus from Egypt and the setting up of the law code.

The next link in the time chain is a two part period of 516 years that links to the Exodus date 1514 BC finishing when the ten tribes split away after the death of Solomon. The first reference is found at 1 Kings 6:1 "In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites came out of Egypt in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel he began building the Temple of Yahweh" .

Calculating 479 complete years after the Exodus in 1514 BC brings us to the year 1035 BC making 1034 to 1035 the fourth year of Solomon's reign. Solomon reigned over Israel for forty years, according to 1 Kings 11:42 when death brought Solomon's reign to an end; the twelve tribes of Israel split into two parts. The northern ten tribes split off under Jeroboam. It is therefore a comparatively simple job to work out the length of time between the Exodus and the splitting of the twelve tribes of Israel. It was 479 years until Solomon had completed 3 years of his 40 year reign, as the split occurred after he had reigned forty years we must add a further 37 years to the 479 making a total length of 516 years between the Exodus and the ten tribe split. 516 years after the exodus from Egypt in 1514 BC brings us to the year 998 BC the date when the ten tribes of Israel split away from the rest of the nation.

The third link in our time chain is a period of 390 years. This period of time starts with the splitting away of the ten tribes and ends with the start of a 70 year punishment on the nation of Israel. The punishment because Israel had divided into two separate nations and consequentially failed to keep the special Sabbath year laws and so compromised the entire 50 year Jubilee cycle.

The punishment started with a siege on Jerusalem by the Babylonians, following which 10,000 'cream of the Israelite nation' were deported for a 70 years punishment exile into Babylon. The reference to this 390 year period is found in Ezekiel 4:1-5:4. Ezekiel had been one of those taken into Babylonian exile with this 'cream' of the nation. After four years in exile he is instructed by God to act out by pantomime events leading up to this exile and the siege of Jerusalem. This was done as a warning to the bulk of the nation still living in Judea and Jerusalem.

Ezekiel was instructed to sleep only on his left side for 390 days looking towards a model of Jerusalem under siege. This represented a 390 year period of the errors of Israel, both the northern and southern divisions. The error of dividing the nation in 998 BC and failing to keep the national Sabbath year laws. The punishment came 390 years later when God's servant Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem in 608 BC, and took the cream of the nation and Ezekiel into exile (2 King 24:10-16).

In the first year that Nebuchadnezzar became king of the Babylonian world power, Yahweh used Jeremiah to sound the warning prediction: "I am going to send King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon my servant, and I will bring them against this land. This whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. After seventy years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation" (Jeremiah 25:9-12 ).

The record at 2 Kings 24:10-16 confirms Jeremiah's words "The troops of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon advanced on Jerusalem and the city was besieged. Jehoiachin, king of Judah surrendered to the king of Babylon in the eighth year of his reign, and the king of Babylon took them prisoner. He carried all Jerusalem off into exile, 10,000 of these were exiled men of distinction 7,000 of them blacksmiths and metalworkers 1,000 of them, all the men capable of bearing arms were led off into exile in Babylon by the king of Babylon". So seven years after Jeremiah recorded his prophecy, it came about in the eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar 608 BC, 390 years after the nation split in 998 BC.

Ezekiel was told to cut off all the hair on his head and beard with a sharp sword, this hair was to represent the people of Israel and Judah. First he was to take a 'few' hairs from the pile and burn them, then to take a 'few' more hairs and wrap them in his clothing for preserving. The 'few hairs burnt' represented the small number who were killed in the relatively short siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 608 BC, the 'few hairs' preserved by being wrapped up in Ezekiel's robe represented the comparatively few; some 10,000 of the learned and skilled inhabitants who were taken at that time captive to Babylon to start the 70 years exile. Jeremiah likened these to the good figs to be preserved in Babylon and after 70 years would be restored to Israel (Jeremiah 24:1-7).

Following this, Ezekiel is told to sleep on his right side for 40 days more, representing a further 40 years of error of the house of Judah from 608 to 568 BC for refusing to subject themselves to God's orders for submission to the Babylonian world power while the exiles were serving out their 70 years (Jeremiah 24:8-10, 27:6-8,12,13,17). We are only dealing with the 390 year period here which forms the time link we need, for those who are interested the details of the additional 40 year period and the remaining three divisions of Ezekiel's hair are discussed in Appendix 20.

Our forth link in this time chain is the 70 years exile. Within the 10,000 Israelites deposed into Babylonian exile in the year 608 BC, were the royal families and nobles of Israel including the prophets Ezekiel and Daniel. For most the exile was not too bad, they were comfortable, had their own houses and some of them became quite wealthy. In fact they counted off the 70 year duration of this exile from the year 608 BC. Ezekiel dates his writings from the start of his exile year 608 BC; examples are:

It is interesting that Ezekiel 40:1 says: "In the twenty-fifth year of our exile in the fourteenth year after the city had been struck down" showing that the exile had been running for 11 years before the city of Jerusalem was finally destroyed when Zedekiah unreasonably rebelled in the the year 597 BC against Nebuchadnezzar and God's instructions (2 Chronicles 36:11-14).

The exile ended in 538 BC exactly 70 years after they had began. What is interesting is how it came to an end. Jeremiah you may remember, along with foretelling the 70 years exile, also foretold that after 70 years Yahweh would call the Babylonian nation to account (Jeremiah 25:12) promising to bring these exiles back to Jerusalem (Jeremiah 29:10). Daniel tells us "In the first year of Darius the Son of Ahasuerus who became king over the realm of the Chaldeans, in the first year of his reign, I Daniel perceived in the books, the number of the years according to the word of the Lord to the prophet Jeremiah must be fulfilled for the devastation's of Jerusalem ..seventy years" (Daniel 9:1-2).

Once Cyrus had captured Babylon in 538 BC the Dynasty of Babylonian world rulers came to its end. In this year, Cyrus appointed Darius as king over that part of his Empire known as the Chaldeans. During this first year of Darius' reign Daniel discerned that the 70 years of exile that began in 608 were now ended: in 538 BC when Babylon fell to Cyrus.

This last of the five time links covers the period from 538 BC the fall of Babylon through to the all important date; the death of Jesus Christ, a span of 559 1/2 years. The final king in the Babylonian Dynasty was Belshazzar. On the day Babylon fell, this king was holding a feast for a thousand of his lords, nobles and chiefs when a 'holy watcher' from God materialised a human shaped hand and wrote the words, "Mene, Mene, Tekel and Parsin" on the wall, which translated read; "A Mina, a Mina, a Shekel and Half a Shekel". Understandably this put the wind up Belshazzar, he wanted to know what it meant. Eventually he called the aged Daniel, the only one who could explain what it meant. Daniel connected the explanation of these words on the wall with an interpretation of a dream God had given years earlier to Nebuchadnezzar.

Daniel explained this dream's meaning; of a tree that was cut down for a period of seven times. This dream, involved Nebuchadnezzar having to recognise that God ruled the world of mankind, something Daniel said; Belshazzar, unlike Nebuchadnezzar, had failed to appreciate. Because of this situation the words now applied to Belshazzar and the Babylonian power. Daniel explained the significance's of the writing on the wall to him saying God had allocated the length of time for the Babylonian kingdom and it had come to its end, it had been weighed and found deficient; because of this, his kingdom was to be divided and given to the Medes and the Persians. That very night, Belshazzar was killed and his kingdom fell to Cyrus the Persian (Daniel 5:1-31).

Cyrus immediately decreed that the Jews in exile should be allowed to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple taking back with them the temple treasures that Nebuchadnezzar had taken to Babylon (Ezra 5:12 to 6:5). Darius' the Mede was placed over Babylon as its regional king. In this first year of Darius rulership, Daniel having access to a copy of Jeremiah's writings containing the prophecies he made some 77 years earlier; made a study of these scrolls and came to understand that the prophecy of the 70 year exile had now ended in this first year of Darius: 538 BC. (Jeremiah 25:1.11-12, Daniel 9:1-2).

Understandably Daniel now became very anxious about the future of the ruined temple building in Jerusalem. So he takes up the matter with God. His inquiries made of Yahweh are recorded at Daniel 9:3-19. Firstly he at some length enumerates the just reasons why God had allowed this ruined condition of the temple to come about. He then makes a plea to God not to delay in restoring the temple and Jerusalem.

Daniel was probably expecting some communication to come back to him on the subject. What he got was a whole lot more than that. While he was talking to God, a powerful angel travelled a great distance to reach him and answer his questions. It must have been really important for this important representative of Yahweh to make such a special rushed trip. Angels were only dispatched to communicate directly with humans over matters of the highest priority. Not only that but Gabriel was a high ranking angel, entrusted with some of the most important assignments in God's plan. This was a very important meeting!

At this summit meeting, the angel gives the unsuspecting Daniel one of the most important time explanations in the Bible. Daniel is expecting information on sorting out the pile of rubble in Jerusalem as that is what he had been praying about. Gabriel spoke to him about a time schedule of events in connection with a 'temple' that went far beyond the rebuilding of this ruined one and way into the future. This is how Gabriel related it for Daniel which he then recorded in Chapter 9 of his book. References on Gabriel's comments are made after each quote, marked *.

"From the time of a proclamation, to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, are 7 weeks plus 62 weeks of years" (Dan 9:25).
* 7 plus 62 gives 69 weeks of years, 69 x 7 = 483 years. The proclamation came in the 20th year of Artaxerxes, which was 455 BC (Nehemiah 2:1-8). Calculating 483 years from 455 BC brings it to 29, for the year of Jesus' baptism.

"After the 62 weeks of years end Messiah will be cut off, later the city and its temple will see war its desolation is decreed" (Daniel 9:26).
* After 29, Jesus was cut off, by execution, later the Temple and city of Jerusalem were destroyed in a war with the Romans, decreed in God's plan to occur in 70.

"However before this, the Messiah will keep the covenant in force for many for one week of years" (Daniel 9:27).
* One week of years is 7 years, from his baptism in 29 until 36; for 7 years Jesus continued to deal exclusively with the Jews, because of the Abrahamic covenant obligations.

"Halfway through this week the Messiah will bring an end to sacrificial offerings" (Daniel 9:27).
* Halfway through this last week, or 3 1/2 years after the Messiah's baptism in October of the year 29 brought it to April 33, when Jesus died and provided the ransom sacrifice. This then superseded and replaced the need for any future animal sacrifices.

"After this, it had been decided that the 'disgusting thing' would desolate the city until it is exterminated" (Daniel 9:27).
* It had been determined by God that the disgusting thing would be the Roman armies who would finally destroy the temple and city of Jerusalem, exterminating the Jewish system in the year 70.

Calculating back from the Messiah's arrival time at his baptism in the year 29, 69 weeks of years or 483 years, brings us back to the year 455 BC when Artaxerxes would have been in his twentieth year of ruling. He gave to Nehemiah the command to rebuild Jerusalem (Nehemiah 2:1-8). The last remaining period from 455 BC back to 538 BC our hook up date, works out to 83 years. Gabriel had visited and explained to Daniel this time prophecy in the same year that Babylon fell to Cyrus at the end of the 70 years exile in 539 BC (Daniel 9:1-2).

This 2,000 year section of time from the Abrahamic covenant in 1968 BC to the death of Christ on the great pivot date 33 fits together with five inter linking time pieces covering the first half of the 8000 year time plan.

Throughout the first 3,500 years of the restoration plan, at times God manipulated the earth's inhabitants and their ruling nations, often to their detriment when they opposed the development of his restoration plan. Nations who at various stages opposed God's plans by their actions, often suffered heavy losses because of it. There are five major incidents where nations came into collision with God throughout the first 3,500 years of human history.

1) Some 1,573 years after the plan commenced, by the year 2395 BC, the earth's population had become so corrupt that God was forced to step in. This intervention was necessary to stabilise the world situation and allow the needed time to develop the various stages of the plan. To clean up this situation, God induced a global flood, preserving alive only one family with which to develop the plan. This flood probably destroyed hundreds of thousands of people.

2) Three generations after Noah, when the population had built up again on the earth, the man Nimrod endeavoured to set up the first post-flood nation. He built cities, marshalling the workforce into organised efforts enabling them to make great advancements. They were pushing forward too fast, attaining advancements that would bring mankind to the brink of self-destruction far too soon for God's plan to develop through its designated time schedule. God put the breaks on, he disrupted their collective efforts by putting barriers in the way. One of these was to divide them into numerous language speaking groups, the other was to force them to separate into different locations. These fences and barriers of language and territory divisions slowed things down considerably. If God had not done this, man would have advanced technologically earlier and it is possible that nuclear weapons would have been available by the time of the first world war if not earlier (Genesis 10:9-12,11:1-9).

3) The first world influencing power to rise after these slowing down language barriers had been introduced was the Egyptian. In 1514 BC the Egyptians directly opposed God in His executing and developing one of the phases of the restoration plan. Because of the contract he had made with Abraham, He needed to work through the tribal nation of Israel his descendant offspring They were then held in slavery by Egypt. Because the Egyptian Pharaoh refused to co-operate with Yahweh in releasing the Israelites when required, He persuaded Pharaoh in 10 stages each increasing in severity, by bringing 10 plagues on the Egyptians. By the time of the most severe, the last plague which killed all the first born males of each family in the nation of Egypt could have amounted to one fifth or more of the entire nation, resulting in hundreds of thousands of Egyptians dying. Yahweh twisted Pharaoh's arm sufficiently to achieve the desired result.

4) Some 800 years later, the next power to gain world dominance had arrived, the Assyrian dynasty, who under Sennacherib, made war against Jerusalem and its king Hezekiah. This conquering objective of his did not fit in with God's plans so he assigned an angel to destroy in just one night, 185,000 of his Assyrian troops who were camped in siege around Jerusalem, this was enough for Sennacherib he sensibly pulled out (2 Kings 19:35).

5) This nation whose affairs God intervened in was the Babylonian. They took over from the Assyrians under Nebuchadnezzar. At this time the nation of Israel were out of favour with God and in need of some corrective discipline. He had determined to use the Babylonians as his instrument for this and at the same time develop his plan further; they were to be used in a very unique way.

In the first year, the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar took over world domination. God had warned the nation of Israel to become servants of this king for a specific period of 70 years; after which, God would call Babylon to account (Jeremiah 25:1-12, 27-29). At this time, the nation of Israel were under the 'cosh' of God because they had divided and were no longer fulfilling their legal obligations to him. God gave them and all the other nations in the area, as subjects to this new Babylonian King that he was now working out his plan through.

God used Nebuchadnezzar as his world 'servant' to regulate the nation of Israel during this 70 year period. The punishment and subjugation to Babylon began when Nebuchadnezzar took the 'cream' of the nation captive and into exile in 608 BC ending 70 years later with the prescribed overthrow of the Babylonians by Cyrus in 538 BC.

Eleven years into the seventy year exile period; Zedekiah was serving as a vassal king to Nebuchadnezzar in Jerusalem. He had been warned by God through Jeremiah to continue serving the Babylonian king throughout the seventy year exile period and save himself any unnecessary grief.

Yahweh had stated through Jeremiah 27:11-12 his position on this matter, "Nations that bring their neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon and serve him, I will leave on their own land said Yahweh, to cultivate it and live there. I told king Zedekiah of Judah the same thing: Bring your neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon and serve him and his people and live. Why should you and your people die by the sword, (v17) serve the king of Babylon and live, why should this city become wasted?" .

However a false prophet Hananiah had told Zedekiah that the domination of the Babylonians would end and the exiles would return in two years. He believe him, so God again puts him straight, telling him in no uncertain terms through Jeremiah that these are lies and if they will not serve Babylon under the present light domination then they would serve under a heavy handed one, he also predicted the false prophet Hananiah would die within the year which he did (see Jeremiah chapter 28).

To reassure the 10,000 exiles living in Babylon who were hearing all these conflicting stories, Jeremiah writes them an open letter saying: "Accordingly with the fulfilling of seventy years at Babylon I shall turn my attention to you people and I will establish toward you my good word in bringing you back to this place" (vs 14) "I will bring you back to the place from which I caused you to go into exile" (Jeremiah 29:10, 14). Yet again Jeremiah stated God's position, removing all possible doubt raised by these false prophets, confirming that the exiles that went into Babylon with Jehoiachin in 608 BC would continue there 70 years and then return!

Zedekiah ignored Yahweh's spokesman and rebelled against Babylon, probably withholding his tax payments believing the false prophet's statements that the Babylonians would only last another two years. How wrong and stupid he was, he would now pay the price. To stamp out this rebellion Nebuchadnezzar marched back to Jerusalem again, this time he destroyed everything, enough was enough! Zedekiah was blinded and imprisoned at Babylon where he died. How stupid and unnecessary, the exiles in Babylon with Jehoiachin were not fairing too badly in their captivity. Zedekiah, if he had listened to God, could have had a fairly comfortable life as a representative king of Nebuchadnezzar which could have carried on peacefully until the 70 years lapsed, then as God had promised he would return the exiles to Jerusalem and reconstitute the nation.

Yahweh established a unique relationship with Babylon, not only was Nebuchadnezzar his servant, but it was God who backed his authority as a world ruler. A truly unique situation, something God had not done with any previous national power outside of Israel. The exiled Daniel, reminded Nebuchadnezzar of this "You O king of kings (Nebuchadnezzar) to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the might, and the glory, into whose hand he has given human beings, wherever they live, the wild animals of the field and the birds of the air, and whom he has established as ruler over them all" (Daniel 2:37).

At the start of the 70 years exile Daniel was one of the 'skilled class' that had been taken into Babylon with 10,000 others. God enhanced Daniel's wisdom, knowledge, and understanding so that he could be used in connection with some of the greatest prophetic visions to do with God's Kingdom, and its planned construction.

Most of the prophecies Daniel dealt with were concerned with the subject of rulership over the world of mankind. Or more correctly the progression of various world rulerships through human history until God commences to rule the Earth by means of his Kingdom administration. In two major prophetic visions, God teams up Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel in order to lay down the information. Nebuchadnezzar received the visions and Daniel explains and records them, the first is found in Daniel chapter 2.

This first vision given to Nebuchadnezzar was of an immense shining statue of a man. He sees the head part of the statue made of gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of copper, its legs of iron and its feet a mixture of iron and clay. He then sees a boulder cut out of a mountain, not by human hands, it hurtles toward the statue and crashes into its feet destroying the whole thing. The statue is then pulverised and its dust blows away so that nothing remains. This stone then Nebuchadnezzar watches grow into the size of a mountain, filling the entire earth.

Daniel explains its meaning to Nebuchadnezzar, and records it for us. He says the golden head represented the king's Babylonian world power, the lower parts made of various metals represented world powers that would follow after Babylon.

The next down is the chest of silver it represented the world power following the Babylonian, considered to apply to the Mede & Persian alliance.

Following after the Roman its feet were part iron and part clay indicating the coming into existence of two types of rulers one Iron totalitarian (like the Roman) the other Clay like, a softer more flexible type possible democratic type governments.

The boulder stone cut from a mountain represented God's Kingdom government, which at God's set time would destroy the world powers then existing, by then represented by the statues feet, and at the same time destroy all vestiges of the proceeding world powers, removing any effects of previous human contrived rulerships. This stone, representing God's Kingdom, after destroying the statue, would then take control over the entire earth.

In this vision, God sketches out a measuring line of world powers starting with Nebuchadnezzar's Babylonian and ending with two future powers represented by the feet made of iron and clay. These final two would be destroyed by God's Kingdom crushing all others. The statue vision provides an outline of world events to follow but not the specific times, this comes in the second vision.

Nebuchadnezzar is very much effected by this vision implanted in his brain by God and physically models his part in the statue. In the next chapter of Daniel (3) we are informed that he erects a giant statue of himself in gold some 30 meters high, the height of a 10 store building .

This second and last dream vision God gave to Nebuchadnezzar was of an immense symbolic tree, visible to the extremity of the whole earth which had a figurative heart of a man, it had good foliage and enough fruit to feed everybody. At a time set, a 'holy watcher' gives the command to chop this tree down but to leave its stump in the earth for a period of 'seven times', during this seven times its symbolic heart of a man would change to that of a beast. After the 'seven times' runs out, God would set up a Kingdom over the Earth and he would present it to the lowliest one of mankind.

Daniel again explains its significance to Nebuchadnezzar. He tells him the tree represented the Babylonian king and world power. At an appointed time a 'holy angel' of God would make a proclamation to chop the tree down. God manipulated world events to see to it that this Babylonian world power was chopped down. The world powers following would not have a man's heart but would act as if they had a beast's heart until a period of time referred to as 'seven times' lapsed and then God would set up his Kingdom over the world of mankind (Daniel chapter 4).

Nebuchadnezzar again undergoes a small scale physical portrayal of this situation by going insane for 7 years acting like a beast (beasts heart given the tree).

These two visions were specifically given by God to Nebuchadnezzar because they both started from him and related to the same subject. The head of gold in the first statue vision and the tree in his second vision were both confirmed as representing Nebuchadnezzar's Babylonian dynasty. The subject was the passing of time from the Babylonian world power until the take over of world rulership by God's Kingdom. Nebuchadnezzar experienced minor illustrative fulfilment's of both of these visions but they were obviously not the main application or meaning of the visions, he was a puppet used to act out greater events. This must be the case, because the vision was not completed with him, the Most high did not become the ruler of mankind when Nebuchadnezzar regained his sanity seven years later (Dan 4:22-37).

This vision dealt with the subject of subsequent world rulerships, ending when God's rulership takes over. The event from the cutting down of the tree spans a period of 'seven times'. So how long is this seven times? When does it start and when does it finish?

First; when does it start? We are told the tree represents Nebuchadnezzar, or more accurately the Babylonian dynasty. So when was it chopped down? According to the vision at a time when a proclamation is given by the 'watcher' or 'holy one'. When did this proclamation occur? The answer is in the very next chapter following the account of the tree vision inserted out of chapter time sequence. If the writer deliberately linked them together is he trying to tell us something?

The following chapter 5 of Daniel records what happened on the very last day of this Babylonian dynasty. Belshazzar the ruling descendant of Nebuchadnezzar, was holding a feast when a holy watcher arrives and marks out a decree, the hand of an angel materialises and writes four words on the wall, Mene, Mene, Tekel, Peres. The kings knees knock in terror at this event, understandable, he eventually summonses Daniel to explain the angel's written proclamation.

Daniel directly links this proclamation written on the wall, back to the tree vision that he had explained many years earlier to his forefather Nebuchadnezzar. He reminded Belshazzar that the most high God gave Nebuchadnezzar his kingdom, greatness, dignity and majesty but he became arrogant needing to be pulled down a peg or two by God (he went crazy for seven years) until he appreciated that it was God who gave him his position (Daniel 5:18-21).

Likewise Belshazzar and his Babylonian dynasty were going to be pulled down because he also did not recognise that Yahweh had been using the Babylonians as his servant, backing their control of the Earth's nations by means of his power. This backing was about to run out, as the prescribed 70 year period had reached its end. Before Daniel explained the meaning of the words written on the wall by the holy watcher, he linked them back to the prophetic tree vision that Nebuchadnezzar had received some 50 odd years earlier (Daniel 4:23-37 with Daniel 5:18-21).

Daniel now proceeds to read and interpret the words on the wall, telling Belshazzar that the number of days God allocated the Babylonian dynasty, had run out. The 70 year period (Jeremiah 25:12) had been measured off and the designated time for its end had arrived, his Babylonian kingdom was about to be given over to the Persians.

God manoeuvred Cyrus the Persian to take over world rulership cutting down the Babylonian dynasty, (Isaiah 44:28, 45:1). That very night, as foretold 77 years earlier by Jeremiah, the Persians captured Babylon and became the next world dynasty. Jeremiah said that when the Jewish exiles had served out their required seventy years punishment sentence under the Babylonian's then God would call an accounting against Babylon and would end their dynasty.

In the year 538 BC, the seventy years of exile ran out, Cyrus captured Babylon and Belshazzar was killed. God's ex-servant, the Babylonian dynasty was now cut down. In 538 BC the tree in Nebuchadnezzar dream, representing this Babylonian dynasty, received its proclamation from the 'holy watcher' to "Chop the tree down" by way of the angels writing on the wall. This command of the watcher to cut the Babylonian Dynasty down was immediately carried out by Cyrus wielding the conquerors sword, the Babylonian tree fell to as foretold.

The next world power had arrived on the scene, the Persians! From now on the descending chain of world powers would take a much more beast like aggressive attitude, the prophecy had said that the heart of man would be taken away and replaced by the heart of a beast (Daniel 4:16) just as the metals in the statue dream diminished in value.

Establishing the date for the chopping down of the tree as 538 BC, we can set the starting date for the seven times. But how long is seven times, and when do they finish? Are they one and the same as the Gentile times referred to by Jesus at Luke 21:24 "Jerusalem will be trampled on by the nations (Gentiles) until the times of the nations (Gentiles) are completed (fulfilled)".

Seven in the scriptures is a number that signifies 'completeness', or 'bringing a period or work to a completion'. In historical sections of the scriptures, seven frequently occurs to denote 'completeness' or 'finishing a work completely' Jos 6: 2-4, 15, 1Ki 18:42-44, 2Ki 5:10, 12 Ps 12:6, Pr 24:16, Ps 119:164.

TIMES is translated in the scriptures ten times from the Aramaic word "iddan" as 'an appointed time period' or 'set season'.

The phrase Seven Times carries the scriptural meaning: 'an appointed time period set for completely finishing some activity'.

If the seven times start to count when the tree is chopped down in 538 BC, (when the gold of the head changed to the silver of the chest in the statue vision) then 'an appointed time period set for completely finishing the activity' would follow ending with the presenting of the Kingdom of God's rulership to the one whom God approves, scriptures identify this one as Jesus Christ. The Great Jubilee time plan indicates this will happen in 2033 when he is crowned King.

Five hundred and seventy years after the 'Seven times' had started Jesus said in the year 33: at Luke 21:24 "Jerusalem will be trampled on by the nations (Gentiles) until the times of the nations (Gentiles) are completed (fulfilled)". He had just finished detailing information on what to look out for identifying when Jerusalem would be destroyed, Luke 21:5-6 when not one stone would remain on top of another (Mat 24:15). To identify the 'disgusting thing that causes this desolation' Jesus referred them to Daniel. Later he describes the same event this time identifying the thing that causes desolation as "Jerusalem surrounded by encamped armies confirming destruction is close" (L21:20).

Following this destruction of Jerusalem Jesus says that the destroyed city would go on being trampled on until the appointed period for the nations is completed. This destruction took place in 70 so the period of time following this would end when the trampling by the nations on Jerusalem now replaced by the new spiritual Jerusalem would be completed.

This period of the nations or Gentile times ends at the same time as the 'Seven times' but they do not start at the same time. The 'Seven times' period started in 538 BC the 'Gentile times' started in 70 they both should end on the same date 2033.

The 'Seven Times' period, deals with a full period of of time when God would have no representative world ruling king enthroned.

The 'Gentile Times' deals with a period of time when Gods heavenly temple arrangement while under construction would be trampled on by the worlds nations.

The date for "the going forth of the word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the leader there will be seven weeks also sixty two weeks" (Dan:9:25) occurred in the 20th year of Artaxerxes (Neh 2:1). There is confusion among historians over the date for this 20th year of the reign of Artaxerxes. Most place the start of king Artaxerxes rule at 465 BC which would make the important 20th year of his reign 446 to 445 BC, ten years too late to match up with the Bible chronological date of 455 BC. Other historians with access to more recent archaeological evidence argue that in the line of rulers preceding Artaxerxes there is evidence of a possible ten year overlap or co-regency with the reigns of Darius and his son Xerxes and that for the first ten years of Xerxes' reign he ruled with his father Darius'. This would have the effect of shortening the overall dynasty lineage by ten years and bring forward the start of Artaxerxes reign to 475 BC and subsequently the 20th year would also come forward 10 years to 455 BC, in line with the Bible chronology.

Whatever historians finally conclude, the fact is that the Messiah appeared after 69 weeks of years (483 years) after 455 BC in 29 and was active for 1/2 a week (3 1/2 years) until 33 when executed. After his death the Greek Scriptures confirm that the covenant continued exclusively with the Jews for another 1/2 a week (3 1/2 years) until 36 when the first non-Jews signed into the Kingdom covenant (Acts chapter 10). The 70 weeks of years prophecy must therefore have started in the year 455 BC, stamped in the Scriptures as the 20th year of Artaxerxes. It is more prudent to stick with Bible chronology and wait for the historians received knowledge to catch up.

In the fifth year of the exile (604 BC), when Ezekiel was with the captives in Babylon, he is given instructions to pantomime God's dealings with Israel and Judah. This pantomime is recorded in Ezekiel Chapters 4 and 5 it centres around a staged siege of Jerusalem. Ezekiel was told to enact this siege situation against Jerusalem, then he was to sleep on his left side for 390 days representing 390 years of error of the house of Israel. Then he was to sleep on his right side for 40 days representing a further 40 years of error of the house of Judah both periods were acted out while on rationed food. He was then to cut off all the hair on his head and beard with a sharp sword, his hair representing all the people of Israel and Judah.

Firstly he was to take a few hairs from the pile and burn them, then another few hairs and wrap them in his clothing for preserving.

The first portion he was to burn in the fire, during this staged siege, representing a third of the people dying by, sword, pestilence, famine, within the city of Jerusalem.

The second portion of his hair he was to hack and chop at with a sword, illustrating a further third falling by the sword all over the land.

The last portion he was to throw to the wind, then God's sword would chase after it finally striking down this last third; after this God's anger would come to its end.

The whole pantomime theme was for punishing errors, first the error of the ten tribe house of Israel for dividing themselves off, second the error of the house of Judah for refusing to obey God's command for all the nations to subject themselves to the Babylonian world power for seventy years (Jeremiah 24:8-10, 27:6-8,12, 13,17).

The first period of 390 years, spanned the time from the error of the splitting of the tribes of Israel into two nations at the death of Solomon in 998 BC, and ended 390 years later when Nebuchadnezzar lay siege to Jerusalem and took the cream of the nation into exile for 70 years in 608 BC (2 King 24:10-16). At this time the 'few hairs' of Ezekiel came into play, a few were burned or killed in this siege, a few were preserved by wrapping up in Ezekiel's robe this represented the comparatively few some 10,000 of the learned and skilled inhabitants including Ezekiel and Daniel who were taken captive to Babylon at the start of the 70 years exile. These were the good figs who were to be preserved in Babylon, and after 70 years would be restored to Israel (Jeremiah 24:1-7).

The next 40 year pantomimed period started after the 390 years ended in 608 BC. Ezekiel now turned over to lying on his right side illustrating 40 years which continues until 568 BC. This 40 year period is for errors made by those of the house of Judah still living in Judea, the bad figs of Jeremiah 24:8-10. God warned them repeatedly to serve the king of Babylon through his two main prophets at the time, Jeremiah in Judea and Ezekiel in Babylon. Constantly they refused to take any notice, listening to false prophets (Jeremiah Chapter 27 & 28). These false prophets lead Zedekiah, Nebuchadnezzar's vassal king in Jerusalem to believe that the Egyptians would within two years bring the Babylonian power to an end, while Yahweh was telling them it would last for 70 years.

Zedekiah unnecessarily rebels against God and Nebuchadnezzar. Incensed by this rebellion Nebuchadnezzar with God's approval again lays siege to Jerusalem and after some 18 months of starvation and bloodshed the city falls in 597 BC. Zedekiah is blinded and taken to Babylon where he dies, the temple it burned, the city walls are pulled down and more slave captives are taken to Babylon 11 years after the 70 year exile had begun. This God inflicted punishment on the rebellious house of Judah was illustrated by the first third of Ezekiel's divided hair which he burnt in the fire; representing the suffering caused by Nebuchadnezzar's sword along with famine and disease brought on by the 18 month siege (Ezekiel 5:2-12).

Gedaliah was now appointed governor over the remaining ones to collect taxes for Babylon from the Jewish escapees that worked the land. Gedaliah encourages this remnant to serve Babylon as it would then go well for them (2 Kings 25: 22-24). Jeremiah also tells them to keep living in the land as God would build them up again (Jeremiah 42:1-12). Yet again they ignore God's warnings and kill Gedaliah. Following this and for some years the people are attacked repeatedly by the many various groups and small nations in the area, it is a time of anarchy and bloodshed for the territory. This was illustrated by the second batch of Ezekiel's hair which he hacked and chopped at with a sword just as the attacking factions continually hacked at this remaining section of the house of Judah.

As time went by, to escape these continued attacks, and fearing reprisals from the king of Babylon, a large group flee down to Egypt to live there as aliens. Jeremiah tells them that if they do go down to Egypt to live then the sword they are running from will catch up with them in Egypt (Jeremiah 42:13-22, 43:4-13). God warned he would use his 'sword' Nebuchadnezzar to chase after them and finish off this last remnant of Judah (Jeremiah 43:10, 44:11-14,27-30, 46:13). Ezekiel illustrated this situation with the third and last batch of his hair which he scattered to the wind and God's sword chased after. According to the time prophecy this should happen at the end of the 40 years in 568 BC, and is exactly what happened.

THE 390 & 40 YEAR PERIODS OF EZEKIEL'S SIEGE

The Ten                   Jerusalem besieged           Last third 
Tribes                     70 years exile              of Jews in 
Split                       Service starts          Egypt punished
998 BC                          608 BC                    568 BC 
 |<--------- 390 years ---------->|<------- 40 years --------->| 
_|________________________________|____________________________|_ 
Few hairs burnt, a few preserved->| 1st  |<----2nd Part hair-->| 
                                  | Part |                 3rd part
                                   of hair                  of hair

Before God dealt with Egypt and the runaway Jews he had an accounting with many local nations who had refused to subject themselves to the king of Babylon as he had instructed. One of these was the mighty city of Tyre, again sending his servant Nebuchadnezzar in the 27th year of the exile in 582 BC to tackle this job (Ezekiel 29:17). This siege took Nebuchadnezzar a long time and cost him so much that God pledged to compensate him with wages for this service by giving him the riches of Egypt, promising him an easy victory over them after he had completed the task against Tyre (Ezekiel 29:18-20).

The Bible record does not say how long the siege on Tyre took, but the historian Josephus who had access to the ancient book of Nehemiah held in the great libraries of the temple in Jerusalem before they were destroyed in 70, says the siege lasted 13 years, (Flavius Josephus Against Apion, Vol 1:21). Provided Josephus is correct, then Tyre fell 13 years after 582 BC in 569 BC. In this year the Babylonian army is free to march down and collect his easy victory and wages from Egypt.

Note: Nebuchadnezzar may have died three years before he got his reward as Jeremiah 52:31 and Kings 25:27 say Evilmerodach became king of Babylon in the 37th year of the exile (572). He either ruled at Babylon while Nebuchadnezzar finished the campaign or Nebuchadnezzar died before he finished dealing with Tyre and receiving the reward of Egypt himself, in which case Evilmerodach finished the job.

At this same time God's sword caught up with the rebellious runaway Jews in Egypt and exacted the punishment God had prescribed on this last remaining third, as illustrated by Ezekiel's third and last batch of weighed hair he throw to the wind and God's sword had chased after (Ezekiel 30:1-5). This brought the 40 day period, representing 40 years, of Ezekiel's lying on his right side for the house of Judah to its end. The whole pantomime commencing in 998 BC with the tribes splitting and finishing when God's anger caught up with the last third of runaway Jews in Egypt in 568 BC.

A second line of evidence is available adding weight in confirming the 390 year period from the tribal split in 998 BC to the siege at the time of Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin by Nebuchadnezzar in 608 BC and the start of the 70 years exile. The evidence is in the form of an addition of the years of each kings rulership at Jerusalem from the time the tribes split until the start of the exile.

Starting with Rehoboam 17 years, Abiajah 3 years, Asa 41 years, Jehosaphat 25 years, Jehoram 8 years, Ahaziah 1 year, Athaliah 6 years, Jehoash 40 years, Amaziah 29 years, Uzziah 52 years, Jotham 16 years, Ahaz 16 years, Hezekiah 29 years, Manasseh 55 years, Amon 2 years, Josiah 31 years, Jehoahaz 0 years 3 months, Jehoiakim 11 years, Jehoiachin 0 years 3 months.

This 7 1/2 year short fall can easily be accounted for, the lengths of each reign is given in completed years of ruling, it is improbable to think all nineteen terminated their reign's exactly on their anniversary date, each would have had some additional months not mentioned, for example if Asa reigned for 41 years 7 months only the 41 completed years are listed, the additional months are lost. If we take an average of 6 months for each of the reigns with one or more years credited leaving out the 3 month reigns of Jehoahaz and Jehoiachin we are left with 17 x 6 months which gives us 8 1/2 years.

So the missing 7 1/2 years could reasonably be covered by these lost months, bringing it up to a total of 390 years.

The following information is put forward as a plausible explanation on how God could have calculated the 70 year exile punishment for non-sabbath year keeping. In 2 Chronicles 36:21 it tells us that the 70 years exile was a punishment period until the land had paid off its deficient sabbaths and that to complete fully the punishment for the delinquent number, would take 70 years. In Leviticus chapter 25 God details the seven year sabbath cycles and the fifty year Jubilee sabbath cycles the Israelites were to keep. In the next chapter Leviticus 26:21 they were warned what would happen if they failed to keep their sabbath obligations. They would receive punishment seven times greater than the transgression (Leviticus 26 18,24,28,34,35).

According to Ezekiel the errors started with the ten tribes splitting away in 998 BC this would have been the last date that the Israelites as an entire nation could fulfil the requirements of the seventh year Sabbaths or the Jubilee, particularly the restoration of titled land inheritances. In this divided situation, two separate nations with two ruling kings, two capitals, two centres for worship and two territories, it was impossible for the nation to administer these Sabbath year requirements over the entire territories. The nation accumulated its error from 998 BC onwards, no longer keeping its obligations due to its divided state. This situation continued until the exiles returned from Babylon to re-inhabit the entire land when it would be possible for them to once again perform these seven year cycle Sabbaths if they had the desire and made the effort.

The 70 year exile ended in 538 BC so the entire period of error covered 460 years (390+70). This 460 year period could contain 10 Jubilee sabbath years (see chart 5). If we assume these 10 Jubilee sabbath years were unkept by the entire nation because of the land division, then God could apply the punishment rule by multiplying it by a factor of seven, resulting in a punishment period of 70 years (10 x 7).

 
        THE POSSIBLE TEN JUBILEE SABBATH YEARS

 985 BC                                           595 BC     525 BC
  |<--------------------- 460 years----------------------------->|
  |<------------------- 390 years ----------------->|<-70 years->|
 _|____________________________________ ____________|____________|_ 
   |     |     |      |     |      |     |      |      |     |    
  J1    J2    J3     J4    J5     J6     J7     J8     J9    J10
   |<----------------------- 450 years --------------------->|
  
    J=Jubilee, each divided by 50 years, i.e. J1 to J2 = 50 years.

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We have no written Bible records detailing these events so we need to turn to the historians for information. The greatest source we have is the Jewish historian Josephus. Although he claimed to be an eye witness, care has to be taken when using external Bible sources for chronological information, as these writers were not governed by spirit control, but rather their own motivations, whatever they may have been.

One example that illustrates Josephus' inclination to inaccuracy is found in Chapter 13 paragraph five of his book 'Wars of The Jews' volume two. We can cross reference Josephus' data here with the Bible. Josephus relates the event of an Egyptian renegade, he says collected a following of about 30,000 who he lead up against Jerusalem with the intent of capturing the city for himself. The Roman governor Felix with a small force soon put this scheme to an end, killing or taking prisoner his followers.

This same event is also referred to in the Bible book of Acts 21:38, Paul is accused of being this Egyptian who stirred up the revolt, this time though the Bible account says there were only 4,000 followers, a lot different to 30,000! The number, 4,000 sounds much more reasonable than 30,000 for an easily put down revolt. This illustrates how Josephus can be prone to errors or exaggeration in numbers. Many historians have expressed similar views, so with our guard up, we will review Josephus' account of The Jewish War, starting in book two of his second volume.

In spring of the year 66 during a time of much discontent by the Jews with their Roman appointed Governor Gessius Florus, who appears was pretty corrupt, money grabbing by misusing his position at the expense of the Jews. The Jews were in default of back taxes they owed to Rome. Florus had his eye on the Jewish temple treasure, the Jews sensing his desire, sealed off the colonnade access from the Roman fortress garrison of Antonia to the temple area. The Jews then exercised complete control over this area, no non-Jews were allowed in these courtyards this way they felt they could protect their treasure.

At this time Zealot Jewish terrorists by trickery had captured the Masada fortress near the dead sea, killing the Roman troops and capturing a large store of arms kept at the fortress. These Zealot terrorists made the Masada garrison their base.

Back in Jerusalem the Roman appointed Jewish King Herod Agrippa tried to persuade the rebels to be sensible and pay the outstanding taxes they owed to the Romans and not bring the might of the Roman Empire down on themselves, restore the access to the temple and put up with their appointed governor Florus until Rome changed him. Paying the tax was not so much a problem for them, but to put up with this hated Florus did not go down well with them at all! They argued that they were not taking arms against Rome but against Florus. For the moment Agrippa had taken the heat out of the situation.

Life under Roman domination was not so bad for the Jewish nation, they had freedom to practice their religion and administer their own system. Rome exercised a type of 'international protection racket' rulership. The subjugated nations within the Empire by and large went along with it. The Romans interfered very little with the day to day affairs of these subject nations so long as they did not revolt and continued to pay their taxes, which were not especially exorbitant, they were protected from interference and attack from other nations and could feel fairly secure. After all, the taxes paid were often far less than the cost of raising and supporting an army of their own. If they failed to pay the tax, the Roman racketeers would pay them a visit and persuade them in no uncertain terms it was in their best interest to do so. By and large the Jews accepted this mutual arrangement but this robbing crook Florus had to go!

According to Josephus's record, in the summer of the year 66 an influential discontented young captain of the temple guard named Eleazar became involved with a revolutionary group of equally disgruntled rebellious priests. In his position as presiding officer over the activities in the temple, he was able to persuade some of the working shifts of priests officiating the sacrifices to occasionally reject the twice daily sacrifice made by the Jews on behalf of the Emperor and the people of Rome. Eleazar used the pretext that it was morally wrong and they should not accept or perform such sacrifices for foreigners.

This special daily sacrifice on behalf of the Emperor and the Nation of Rome the Jews had carried out for the previous 60 years. Eleazar's influence was only sufficient to cause these sacrifices intermittent interruption, his objective was to stop them permanently, knowing full well what this would lead to. Stopping the daily burnt sacrifices on behalf of the Romans would in effect be an open act of rebellion a direct challenge to the authority of Rome. By interfering with this pledge of alliance, the daily sacrificial arrangement they were walking a knife edge. The various Jewish leaders becoming very nervous due to its serious implications and possible consequences, called an assembly in the temple forecourt where this question on the continuance of the daily sacrifices to the Romans was to be discussed, and sorted out.

Being faced with a possible disaster the leaders called the people together to try to convince them to change their rebellious actions and avoid a serious clash with Rome. They argued that their fore-fathers had accepted the gifts and sacrifices of foreigners but now some were trying to alter this arrangement and in so doing provoke Rome. They tried to keep the arguments focussed on the issue of the sacrifices pointing out that once the news reached Rome that they had rejected the token sacrifices, then the Romans would probably stop them making their own national sacrifices. They could also possibly lose the peace they enjoyed being inside the Roman protection system, so they strongly urged the swift restoration of these sacrifices before the insult reached the ears of Rome.

The revolutionaries were unconvinced and made no agreement to restore the sacrifices and wind down their rebellious acts, their hatred of Florus was too great. The Jewish pro-Roman aristocracy group seeing their inability to suppress this rebellion and fearing for their own futures, contacted King Agrippa and Florus for help in quelling the revolutionaries. Florus rubbed his hand in glee at the news of this request, wishing to fan the flame of revolt into full war sat back and did nothing. Agrippa sent 2,000 cavalry, when the cavalry arrived at Jerusalem, the pro-Rome division with the support of this cavalry occupied the Upper City whilst the rebels occupied the temple and the Lower City areas.

The objective of the pro-Roman division was to capture the temple areas. Eleazar's rebels strove to take the Upper City from them. For seven days they fought. On the eighth day it was the feast of 'wood-carrying' about August 66. People were bringing fire wood into the Temple courtyard restocking the supplies to keep the fires of the sacrificial alters burning constantly. Many Sicarii a group of Jewish 'mafia type' terrorists and assassins smuggled their way into the temple area under the guise of wood carriers and joined themselves to the rebels.

With this increase in numbers, the rebels out numbered the pro-Roman division forcing them back and out of the Upper City. They set fire to the house of Ananias the high priest and to the palaces of Agrippa and Bernice. Next they burned the archives and all records of loans from the money lenders. This encouraged the poorer people to join them, being gratefully released from their debts by this burning of the records. Then about the 2nd of August 66, (15th Louis/Ab) Eleazar and his rebels took a bold step and besieged the fortress of Antonia used by the Romans as their garrison. The removing of the the daily sacrifice to Rome coupled with this outright attack on the Roman troops garrisonedin Jerusalem constituted a declaration of war on Rome. Eleazar's nationally fanatic rebels now held control of the temple, they made quite sure the daily sacrifices to Rome were no longer carried out.

A small band of Sicarii, lead by a doctor Menahem, left Jerusalem for Masada where he stocked up with weapons previously captured from the armouries, he also recruited an additional small army of supporters from the Zealots now living at Masada and returned to Jerusalem in the style of a triumphant king. Returning with so much armour and an additional fanatical guerrilla army, he was able to assume leadership of the rebel cause.

Early in August 66, Eleazar and his men who opposed control of the rebels by Menahem planned to get rid of him. When he and his bodyguard visited the temple to worship, Eleazar's men attacked and overpowered them. Eventually after hiding, Menahem was caught, tortured, and put to death. Eleazar again assumed control of the rebel alliance.

The remaining Roman guard was fairly small so the presiding Roman officer Metilius, seeing Eleazar was back in control again, sent envoys, offering, under truce, to pull out. They offered to leave their arms and belongings behind and let the Jewish divisions fight it out, they wanted no part of it. Pledges of security and oaths were taken and written up from both sides. The Romans complied with the contracts and laid down their arms. As the troops were withdrawing, unarmed, the rebel Jews fell on them and massacred the lot, all save Metilius who grovelled for his life, even promising to get circumcised, this occurred on the 26th of August 66 (6th of Gorpieus/Elud). This single act, set events irreversibly in motion down a one way street that was in years to come end in the complete destruction of Jerusalem. They were definitely burning their bridges. By the end of August 66 the whole city lay in the hands of the rebels and was waiting for Rome to make its move.

Rome had been roused to action the past three months of Jewish rebellion was to be severely dealt with. By early October 66, Cestius Gallus, with the 12th legion and auxiliaries, about 18,000 men, marched into Israel by the south route down the coast road to Lydda which he finds deserted because the Jews were all at Jerusalem celebrating their festival of tabernacles from the 3rd to the 9th of October 66 (15th-21st Tishri). Hearing of the approaching Roman army the Jews go out to meet them and fall upon them with such fury that they penetrate and brake their ranks inflicting heavy losses. According to Josephus, they killed 400 infantry and 115 cavalry.

Agrippa on seeing the Romans in all sorts of trouble tries to negotiate with the Jews. He offers a treaty on behalf of Cestius with a pardon for their past actions so long as they lay down their arms and returned to their allegiance with Rome. Disagreement broke out amongst the Jews as to which choice to make. Cestius grabbed this opportunity to advance toward Jerusalem and made his camp some one mile from the city. Four days later, around the 18th of October 66 (30th Hyperberetus, Tishri) Cestius brings his troops up to the city. He sets fire to the timber market area outside the old third wall to the west of the temple and finally camped opposite the palace.

Cestius' camp prefect Tyrannius Priscus and other cavalry commanders were apparently taking bribes from Florus to delay Cestius' attack using numerous excuses. Why Florus is doing this, out of all character, is not stated by Josephus, possibly Florus is receiving even larger bribes from the Jews to do so, then the longer it went on the better for him. He was earning, and the cavalry officers were earning, a situation like this he would have tried to keep going for as long as the money kept coming to him from the temple treasury. Josephus says the war was so long drawn out that the Jews had managed to stall his advance and relieved the inevitable disaster. This drawn out, bribery delaying tactic, probably continued for many weeks. Some have suggested that during this period the wealth in the treasure of the temple may have been smuggled out to other hiding places around the country.

Cestius himself became involved in lengthy negotiations with various Jewish parties, one of which centred round an offer by one of the Jewish groups to open the gates in return for favours and rewards. Eventually the negotiations, like all the rest, broke down when these Jewish profiteer traitors were discovered. Understandably after realising the delaying tactics being employed, Cestius never really trusted them again. These Jews, Cestius Gallus found to his cost, were a devious people to deal with, they negotiated and bribed circles around him, all with the objective to delay! delay! delay!

When Cestius finally had enough, he struck at Jerusalem with a full assault. The Jews fought back, for five days the Romans attacked the walls trying time and time again to scale them. On the sixth day they tried to break into the temple at the northern corner but the Jews fought them off. The Romans now resorted to undermining the wall and setting fire to the gates. Jews were panicking and close to capitulation, then suddenly, Gallus, for no seeming reason, suspends the assault, abandons the siege, and contrary to all expectation retreats. He is then harried on the way by the Jews, who considering God had given them this unexpected victory were able to inflict great casualties on the retreating Roman armies. This final assault and withdrawal allowing for all the delaying bribes and negotiating would have taken place by the end of December 66.

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After the withdrawal of the Roman armies and for the following three years, those listening to 'Jesus voice' by means of his disciples, could separated themselves from the inhabitants of Jerusalem and flee the city. According to Josephus' historical account, during this time, internal anarchy within the city of Jerusalem was churning away. Civil war was continuing without let up within the walls of Jerusalem. The warring factions within the Jewish nation developed into three main opposing divisions, a triangular civil war situation. Jerusalem had become a violent bloody city, these warring factions were tearing the nation apart. The three main warring groups were lead by John of Gischala a Galilean partisan and Zealot leader, Simon Gioras the leader of the priestly party plus an assorted group, and Eleazar son of Simon the main Zealot leader.

Living in the city of Jerusalem had become a nightmare, it was so full of violence and misery, the citizens desperately wanted to get rid of these fanatics. Famine and food shortages had become an everyday problem, there seemed no let up or end to these factions burning hatred for each other. Daily the fighting continued and the casualties mounted. After some three years of this anarchy the Romans return. The Roman general, Titus, marches against the city with four legions. As he is advancing the Jews attack mounting numerous successful guerilla type sorties, attacking and running. Finally Titus is able to secure his camp and fortify it. The 'desolating thing' that causes destruction had now returned, as had been warned.

During a lull in skirmishing with the Romans, the Passover day comes round on the 6th of April 70 (14th of Xanthicus/Nisan, ref' Josephus V-3:1). Whilst Eleazar's rebels were holding the all important temple areas, they were letting people into the courtyards for the Passover festival; although trying to control those admitted. Many of John of Gischala’s warring faction smuggled their way into these temple areas. Fighting broke out between them, John with his men eventually gained control of the key temple area, so Eleazar arranged a truce and successfully unites their two forces, this reduces the three opposing factions to two.

By the 6th of April 70 the Roman armies, under Titus, had returned in full force against Jerusalem to lay siege to it and finish what had been started in 66 (Luke 21:20). On the 10th of April, the legions commence levelling the ground between them and the city walls, this was completed after four days on the 14th of April (22nd of Xanthicus/Nisan, ref' Josephus V-7:2). The Roman attack with a barrage of missiles from their siege towers, then Titus brings up his battering rams which begin pounding the walls. Seeing the common danger now literally bashing on their door, Simon, the leader of the third warring division, joins with the new alliance in defending the city against their common enemy. On the 29th of April (7th of Artemisius-Iyyar, ref' Josephus V-7:2) one of the battering rams breaches the first wall.

Five days later, on the 4th May 70 (12th of Artemisius/Iyyar, ref' Josephus V-8:1) the Romans, again using their battering rams, breach the second wall. Titus orders his engineers to begin raising earth ramps up against the walls of the Antonia fortress. When they reach this strongly fortified inner wall, Titus challenges the fanatics alliance to let the citizens go and he would give them their houses back which were now laying in his control. The citizens were more than willing to this suggestion but the fanatics swiftly put an end to the idea by threatening to kill any that urged surrender. To back up this threat they executed any who even discussed it. The Rebels then mount an attack on the unsuspecting Romans and amazingly pushed them back outside the second wall again.

Four days later on the 8th of May (16th of Artemisius/Iyyar, ref' Josephus V-8:2) Titus recaptures this second wall and his troops are again inside the city. He now decides to take a break; trying to impress the on looking Jews with his army to break down their morale he parades his troops and pays them their wages in front of them. During this time the suffering of the captive citizens became even more acute, famine was taking its toll, the fanatics were confiscating any available food for themselves, any citizens caught concealing food or valuables suffered terrible tortures and deaths. On the other hand, any fleeing citizens caught by the Romans were tortured and crucified in retaliation for the contempt they had for these stupid fanatics causing them so much trouble and pain. The citizens of Jerusalem were truly caught between a rock and a hard place! They were paying the price for ignoring Jesus warning.

By the 21st of May 70 (29th of Artemisius/Iyyar, ref' Josephus V-11:4) the earth ramps against the walls of the Antonia fortress are completed and the Romans bring up their massive battering rams. Two days later, Jewish guerrilla rebels attack the battering rams setting fire to them and demolish their ramps, they pressed their attack right to the Romans' fortified camp. Titus calls a war council to review the strategy and decides to starve the city into surrender by sealing it off entirely with a five mile long siege wall of stakes surrounding the entire city walls. We are told the legions built this surrounding fortification in three days, if this is true, it is a tremendous feat even by Roman standards, all available timber for some ten miles radius of Jerusalem was chopped down and used, the landscape was denuded of trees for miles. No further escapees could flee once this siege wall was set, the period for this was over (Luke 19:43).

Now completely sealed in, the famine soon becomes even more acute and the conditions in the city degenerated further. One group of Simons rebel fighters make plans to surrender to the Romans, but Simon finds out and executes them by mutilation, throwing their bodies over the wall to the Romans. The enormous number of deaths suffered to this point can be illustrated by the number of bodies that had been brought out through just one of the city gates; 115,000 corpses in 2 1/2 months, between the 6th of April and 22nd of June (ref' Josephus V-13:7). Some claimed that as many as 600,000 corpses had been thrown out by this time. The bodies were now piling up in heaps, some mansion houses were being used as body depositories, the stench of decomposing corpses was terrible.

Finally the battering rams breach part of the inner wall but to their dismay they find that John's rebels had been busy building a second inner wall behind it. Titus now has to give his demoralised troops a 'pep talk'. On the 26th of June (5th of Panemus/Tammuz, ref' VI-1-7) the Romans mount an attack and get through the breached wall taking the fight to the temple gates but eventually they are forced to retire to the Antonia castle tower. On the 5th of July (14th of Panemus/Tammuz, ref' Josephus VI-2:7) Titus orders his troops to destroy the foundations of the Antonia in order to make an easy attack route for his legions.

On the 18th of July (27th Panemus/Tammuz) the Jews set a fire trap for the Romans in the colonnade connecting the temple with the Antonia fortress, pretending to retreat, they enticed Romans soldiers to climb over into the colonnade to give chase, the Jews then fire the trap and many Roman troops are burned. To prevent a repetition of this incident, the next day, the 19th of July (28th of Panemus) the Romans fire the north colonnade themselves. By now the famine had become so severe that Josephus relates how a starving woman killed her own baby, roasted and ate it, things could hardly have been worse for these suffering citizens.

By the 29th of July (8th of Lous/Ab) the earthworks are completed. Titus orders the battering rams up to the western side of the temple outer courtyard. Finding the going tough, the Romans try to scale the walls to the Temple with ladders, the Jews repulse this attack. With nothing else working, Titus orders setting fire to the temple gates. Holding a council meeting to discuss the fate of the temple, Titus declares his intentions are to save it from being burnt. Despite this, on the 31st of July (10th of Lous/ Ab, ref' Josephus VI-4:5) the Roman troops probably out of spite and contempt, set fire to the temple buildings. The rebels now flee the temple for the city, to carry on the fight from there. The Romans having now captured the temple areas carry the standards of their legions into these courtyards and make sacrifices to them.

On the 31st of July 70 (10th of Lous/Ab) they finally destroy the temple, the 'desolating thing' the Roman army now stands in the holy place and destroys it. The Jewish religious system centred round the sacrifices and festivals performed at this temple are brought to their end once and for all time.

The war was not yet over, after the temple is burned the Roman troops turn their attention to the rest of the city of Jerusalem. They burn and ravage the lower city, 10,000 Jews are caught and executed, everything was plundered that was worth plundering.

The remaining rebels even at this dire stage, will not concede to the terms of Titus' surrender, taking refuge in the upper city, including Herod's palace which still remained in their control. The Romans now once again have to start building earth ramps to attack the upper city. They start building their assault ramps on the 10th of August (20th of Lous/Ab), after eighteen days these ramps are completed on the 27th of August (7th of Gorpiaeus/Elul).

The Romans breach the upper city walls and burn the houses. By the evening of the 28th of August (8th of Gorpiaeus) the whole city is burning. The remaining rebels cannot hold out for much longer, once the temple had been destroyed they were finally forced to realise that God was not supporting them and the fight went out of these remaining religious fanatics. Over the next couple of weeks prisoners are winkled out and rounded up, 97,000 in all, with according to Josephus; 110,000 dead. If the 115,000 corpses taken out through one of the gates, mentioned earlier, are added to this, we get a total figure of 225,000 dead, (bear in mind these are Josephus figures).

The Roman troops combed the remains of the city for hidden plunder, any remaining rebels hidden in the underground tunnels were ferreted out killed or taken prisoner. They pull down the walls of the city to their foundations as an example and to prevent any possible repeat situations. The city and temple, after burning were both completely demolished. Titus finally holds a three day feast for his troops, commends his most courageous, and promotes any worthy officers.

Just 45 days after the temple is burnt, the rest of Jerusalem has been destroyed and plundered, prisoners taken, rebels ferreted out and executed. The Jewish administration system from their capital city Jerusalem had now also been completely wiped out.

By mid-September, with the war over, cleaning up completed, and peace restored, Titus leaves for Caesarea. The end to the second prophetic time period of Daniel, marking the 'final part of the end' has now come round. The 1,335 days counting from the time when the Roman armies under Cestuis withdrew at the end of December 66 until the city of Jerusalem is destroyed by these same returned Roman armies. Any former inhabitants of Jerusalem who had got out earlier now arrived to see this date free and alive, could be described as 'happy' they had fled and survived these desolation’s avoiding being destroyed with the 225,000 who died in this war of Jerusalem (Daniel 12:12).

Any rebels of the Jewish resistance who had managed to escape from the siege of Jerusalem,* retreated to last pockets of resistance setting up last ditch defences around the Dead Sea areas. One of the very last of these to hold out was the famous hill fortress of Masada overlooking the dead sea. Nearly three years after the Roman armies had returned to lay siege to Jerusalem and destroy it, they now come against Masada and proceed to lay siege to it.

* Note: It is quite possible that when these refugee religious fanatics were fleeing Jerusalem they smuggled out with them many religious scrolls from the Temple library and treasure from the Temple treasury, hiding these scrolls in caves for safe keeping only to be discovered much later, becoming known as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

When it looked like there was no hope for the defenders, the remaining 960 committed suicide. The Roman armies marched into Masada on the 8th of April 73 (16th of Xanthicus/Nisan, ref' Josephus VII-4:1-2) and retook the fortress they had lost to the Jewish Zealots back in 66. After chasing fugitives and refugee bands, either capturing them or driving them from the land, the curtain was finally brought down on the Jewish nation on the world stage.

The territories of Israel were sold off and by mid-May of the year 73 the Jewish homeland and territories had been rubbed out, nothing was left remaining of the entire Jewish system. God had completed what he had warned would happen, he had wiped their existence away, never again would Yahweh back this nation. There was nothing left of the sanctified Jewish religion, its national administration or territories.

The third time period of Daniel marking the 'final part of the end' had come round, 2,300 days after the Roman armies under Cestuis had withdrawn at the end of 66, the complete Jewish system including its territories is wiped out (Daniel 8:14). Using bible reckoning 2,300 days amounts to 76 months (each 30 days long) plus 20 days, or 6 years 4 months 20 days, calculated from the end of 66 it brings us to the 20th of May 73. The old Jewish sanctified arrangement was removed, a new sanctified arrangement was taking its place. Removing all traces of the old, the 'new' could be said to have come into its rightful state, the full transition had taken place.

The stone built temple at Jerusalem, the centre of Jewish worship, is superseded by a new living stone temple, as Paul plainly pointed out some ten years before the temple was destroyed in 70, he said at Ephesians 2:20 speaking to the spirit anointed Christians living in Ephesus "You have been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, while Jesus Christ is the foundation cornerstone. In union with him, the complete building is being harmoniously joined together and is growing into a holy temple for Yahweh. In union with him you too are being built up together into a place for God to inhabit by spirit". This new 'living' temple, constructed with selected people is built in the heavens not on earth.

Jerusalem, the seat of Jewish administration is superseded by a new heavenly city administration, as testified by Paul some nine years before the city of Jerusalem was destroyed. He said to some of the 'adopted Sons' at Hebrews 12:22: "You have approached Mount Zion..a city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem, and myriad's of angels in general assembly, and the congregation of the firstborn who have been enrolled in the heavens, and God the Judge of all". This new heavenly administration city of Jerusalem, will eventually administer over all things in existence.

The Jewish Nation was superseded by a "new" nation, as was pointed out by Peter some ten years before the land of Israel was wiped off of its territories in 73. Peter said to the anointed disciples at 1 Peter 2:9: "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people". This holy nation is to inhabit the heavens. It is for this very reason that the Revelation to John was withheld until 96, further details on these "new things" could not be given until the old ones had been removed (compare Rev 11:1 the new heavenly temple, 21`:2 10-21 the new heavenly Jerusalem, 7:4-8 the new heavenly Israel)..

The old symbols had now been cleared away. In just over three terrible years, the Jewish nation had undergone an entire annihilation, brought about in three stages.

Firstly the Jewish religious system, centred in the Temple was destroyed on 31st July 70.

Secondly its governmental and administrations system was wiped out by the 14th of September 70.

Thirdly and finally, the Jewish nation lost all its land and territories by the 20th of May 73.

The information recorded in the Revelation focus on events in a great final application. It provides many missing clues needed to locate these events in the stream of time it is a unique one application schedule of future events. The new information it contained was not available to the anointed disciples living during the first-century generation period. Deliberately held back by Jesus Christ, under God's instructions, so there would not be any confusion with the time events undergoing their primary application in the first-century generation. The Revelation application was to come much later it is designed to provide key pieces of information to unlock the second application of time templates. This master Revelation template with its name 'apocalypses' means an uncovering, disclosure or revealing.

Jesus, with his brilliant mind, paling into insignificance the Einstein's of this world knew much about the intricacies of this composite template being directly involved in its construction. At least 63 years before he passed the Revelation information to his apostle John, Jesus was manipulating events in connection with its timetable. John had been singled out for this special assignment hand over; he was privileged to receive this template manual at the scheduled time. Jesus informed John of this when he was in his thirties that he would visit him when he was an old man after the other apostles had all died.

This appointment was kept as promised and precisely on time. In the year 96 John was on the Island of Patmos, he must have been in his 90s by the time of the appointment 63 years after the reservation had been made. Jesus kept the appointment when he presented John with revelation visions on future events. By this time all the other apostles and most of the disciples were already sleeping in death. Any remaining disciples including John were now very old and close to death. It was the end of the activities of the Kingdom anointed ones (1 John 2:18).

Evidence supports the conclusion that the final year individuals were adopted and sealed with the gift of spirit power was in 66 when the final tribulations started (Dan 12:1,8,11). In the Jewish law priests were required to be 30 years old before they took up their serious sacrificial priestly duties as in fact Jesus was. So a basic prerequisite to receiving this anointing spirit was a minimum age of 30 years. Mature adults able to undertake the terms of the Kingdom contract which included taking on priestly duties in presenting their lives as a sacrifice alongside Jesus' sacrifice (Rom 12:1, 1 Pet 2:5,9, Rev 1:6, 6:9, & 12:11).

The information contained in the Revelation related to events long after the last disciples had died off. The deliberate delay in providing this new information prevented confusion with the program of events during the first generation period, it was for a future generation not theirs. This Revelation template contains many time keys to be used in conjunction with the re run of the first-century events. It provides the most intricate and composite time pattern possible, ensuring the data only fits together during one possible future period of time.