Prologue

 

Why document the number of years from Adam to Christ?  Some years ago, while I was doing a study on the temple of God, it occurred to me that the three courts of the temple represent the three distinct periods of time, and the relationship God has had or will have with the human race during those time periods.

 

Essentially the temple is made up of three courts.

• The Outer court
   

• The Inner court
   

• The Holy of holies  

 

The Outer court of the temple represents the relationship between God and the human race during the Old Testament age.  The Inner court represents the relationship between God and the human race during the Church age, and the Holy of holies represents the relationship between God and man during the millennium.

 

The modern church has spent a good portion of the last two decades expecting Christ to return in the year 2000, but the year 2000 came and went, as yet there has not been any sign of the Son of Man returning to receive his people.  Did God lie, or did the Church get it wrong?

 

The Church was expecting Christ to return in our age because, many of the signs that the Bible describes would happen just before the return of Christ seem to be happening in our time.  Some have proposed a theory that God has allocated 7000 years to the human race, 1000 years during the millennium, 4000 years to the Old Testament age, therefore this leaves 2000 years for the Church age.  The Church was expecting Christ to return in the year 2000 because according to our calendar there are approximately 4000 years before the birth of Christ, and the year 2000 should have been 2000 years after the birth of Christ.

 

Some years ago when I was at Bible College, I was sitting on the edge of my bed reading the Bible, the passage of scripture I was reading spoke of Christ’s return.  My mind pondered the mysteries surrounding His return, when the Holy Spirit said to me “What is more important, the Lord’s birth, or the Lord’s death”.  I thought on this for a moment and my thoughts went like this.  “If you were not born you could not have died, if you hadn’t died, there would have been no resurrection and therefore no salvation, if you hadn’t risen from the dead, there would still be no salvation and the Church could not have been born”.   At that point I realised that the Church age was born when Christ rose from the dead, and not when He was born.

 

History usually dates the death of Christ to be around 33AD, I have dated it as a result of my calculations and research to be around 32AD.  This would mean that if the Church age is 2000 years, then it would not end until 2032AD.   As I know that the millennium is going to be 1000 years, then I needed to demonstrate that there are 4000 years from the fall of the human race in the Garden of Eden to the resurrection of Jesus in 32AD.

 

I searched the internet looking for material, perhaps someone else had already done this and the answer was already out there.  I searched for “Adam to Christ”, using a web search engine.  To my surprise there was a wealth of information on this subject, I began to wade through the information, site by site.  I found several web sites that claimed they had already done this, the authors of some web sites had produced their work in a file form that could be downloaded.

 

As I studied these, I found an emerging pattern; somewhere in their timelines they had all adjusted the facts to fit history.  In one of the timelines I downloaded, the author’s timeline showed 4000 years from Adam to the birth of Christ, but to achieve this he had omitted four kings of Judah!  Another timeline adjusted the time span of various persons to fit the historical timeline.

 

I decided that the only way to satisfy my curiosity was to try and map a timeline of my own.  When I started, my objective was to make it as accurate as I could to the Bible.  In fact I was not even sure that it would be possible to map a timeline from Adam to Christ using the Bible and / or history, maybe this is why the others ran into difficulties.  Perhaps there was no longer enough information, biblical or historical, to accurately complete a timeline.

 

So I set out on my task, this book is the result of the research that went into generating the timeline.  I have documented why I have made the calculations I have made.  I am sure there will be some who will disagree with some of my calculations, but I do believe that I have achieved my goal with enough accuracy to satisfy the curious.

 

There two dates used throughout this document, the first one is the number of years from creation the person or event is dated at.  The second is the number of years before Christ the person or event is dated at.  The timeline was created using the number of years from creation, and then the BC dates were overlaid on to the timeline.  It is easy to prove from the Bible that the Great flood occurs 1656 years after creation; it is not so easy to prove that the Great flood occurs 2355 years before Christ.

 

I would like to take this opportunity to dedicate this book to my father, James Smith, may God always bless you and keep you.

During the research of the book, the author found some variation in the way different versions of the Bible translated some of the scripture quotations used in this book.  As a result of this, the scripture quotations used in this book have been checked and compared in the following versions of the Bible.

 

New American Standard Version (NASV)

King James Version (KJ)

New International Version (NIV)

Revised Standard Version (RSV)

Living Bible (LB)

Modern Language Bible

 

With respect to the Kings of Judah in Chapters 5 and 6, I have placed a coloured dot next to there name. 

● The king served God throughout his life time.

● The king started out ok, but as time went on turned from serving God during his reign over Judah.

● The King did not server god, and did evil in the eyes of God throughout his reign over Judah.

 

Go To Chapter 1