As I said in Chapter 7, Artaxerxes I the King of Persia in 445BC gave his cupbearer Nehemiah letters or decrees that allowed him access to the Kings forests, and materials to rebuild the city of Jerusalem. The letters or decrees given to Nehemiah also empowered him to start the rebuilding of the city.

Nehemiah 2:7-8
“(v7) And I said to the king, ‘If it please the king, let letters be given me for governors of the provinces beyond the river, that they may allow me to pass through until I come to Judah, (v8) and a letter to Asaph the keeper of the king’s forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the fortress which is by the temple, for the wall of the city, and for the house to which I will go.’ And the king granted them to me because the good hand of my God was on me.”

In Daniel 9:25 we find part of a prophecy or prediction given to the prophet Daniel over one hundred years earlier. /there are four verses to this prophecy (Daniel 9:24-27), but for our purposes we only need verse 25.

Daniel 9:25
“So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress.”

The book of Daniel tells us that the trigger for this prophecy is from the time the decree is given to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. The book of Nehemiah gives us the exact time that this happened. Nehemiah 2:1 tells us exactly when Nehemiah asked the King for letters to give to the governors of Judah, so the rebuilding can start. That year is the twentieth year in the reign of Artaxerxes King of Persia, and it is the month of Nisan. Nisan is the first month is the Jewish year and equates to March / April on the Gregorian calendar: our Easter falls in the month of Nisan, as does the Jewish Passover remembrance.

Nehemiah 2:1
“And it came about in the month Nisan, in the twentieth year of king Artaxerxes, that wine was before him, and I took up the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had not been sad in his presence.”

Daniel 9:25 also tells us when this prophecy will end, the prophecy will end when the Messiah comes, the prophecy goes on to tell us how long this will be. The Messiah will come after 7 weeks plus 62 weeks; this was common terminology in the days that Daniel lived. The Hebrew word used here for the English word “weeks” is the Hebrew word “shabuwa” (Strong's 07620), which means seven, or a period of seven i.e. seven days is one week. In the Jewish culture you can have a week of days (7 days or 1 week), a week of weeks (7 weeks, as in the Feast of weeks), a week of months (7 months), and a week of years (7 years).

Which one of these was the angel Gabriel referring to? In our day and age 2000 years after the birth of Christ, we have the advantage of hindsight, we know they are not 7 days, or 7 weeks, or 7 months, but they could be 7 years. If the prophecy in Daniel 9:25 is referring to years, then Daniels prophecy would calculate as follows.

7* 7 years, equals 49 years

7*62 years, equals 434 years

49 years, plus 434 years, or 49 + 434 = 483 years.

The angle Gabriel, gave Daniel a mathematical prophecy, which foretold the arrival of the Messiah. For those readers interested in researching Daniels 70 week prophecy in greater detail, Chuck Missler has a free MP3 download on his website that contains in depth teaching on this prophecy, where Chuck demonstrates that this prophecy was fulfilled to the very day. You can find Chuck Missler’s website at www.khouse.org.

At first glance it would seem that we have completed the calculation. When the angle Gabriel gave Daniel this prophecy, the calendar of the day only had 360 days in a calendar year. In modern times we have 365 days in a calendar year, and 366 days if it is a leap year. This means that for every year in our calculation we will accumulate an extra 5 days, per year. Over the 483 years in our calculation there are just over 6 extra years. Therefore we need to convert the 483 years we have calculated, into years that have 365 days.

We can do this by multiplying the number of years we want to convert, by the number of days in one of those years.
Thus, 483 years * 360 days per year = 173880 days in total.

If we divide the total number of days by the number of days in one year on the Gregorian calendar, then we are left with the number of years for this period of time.
Thus, 173880 days / 365 days = 476.38 years

Those of you who are good at maths will realise that this calculation does not take into account leap years which occur every 4 years, but every 400 years we leave the leap year out again. I redid the calculation using 365.25 days per year; this would give an approximate calculation for the leap years which occur every 4 years, but does not account for the 400 year adjustment. Thus 173880 / 365.25 = 476.05 years, as there is only one block of 400 years over this period of time, the difference would be very small. (For those of you who are not computer whizzes, the / (slash) symbol on a computer is used as the divide symbol).

For our purposes, we can safely use a round figure of 476 years; this will be close enough for our purposes.

From our earlier calculations we know that it was 3566 years after creation or 445BC when Artaxerxes I the King of Persia issues the decree allowing the restoration and rebuilding of Jerusalem, if we add the 476 years calculated from Daniels seventy week prophecy we can calculate the year this prophecy was fulfilled.

Thus, 3566 years after creation + 476 years = 4042 years after creation, or 32AD.
We now know that there are 4042 years from creation to the death of Christ in 32AD.

As I commented in chapter 1, how long did Adam live in the Garden of Eden before he sinned or fell from God’s grace? How long did Adam live in the Garden of Eden before God created Eve to be his partner? Did Adam and Eve fall from Gods grace immediately or had they lived in the Garden of Eden for several weeks, months, or even years before they succumbed to the serpent’s temptation? Could it have been 42 years?

Note: History dates the death of Christ at around 32 to 33AD. History dates Artaxerxes I’s decree to rebuild Jerusalem at around 445BC, and history dates the fall of Babylon around 338BC to 339BC.