In a previous post I discussed some things that God's image is not. Namely, His image in us does not mean that God has a physical body and His image in us does not mean that God is both male and female, He's neither. Now we want to address what God's image in man actually is. This list of items that are inherent to human character and attributes is not meant to be comprehensive (and neither was the NOT post), but simply a short list of some of the more important aspects of His image as imprinted in our natures. The items we will take a look at that make up some of what it means to have God's image in us are: freedom; moral perfection/goodness which entails patience, grace, love, holiness, justice, and mercy; rationality.
Freedom
The first item on this list is freedom. What I mean by freedom is the ability to make a decision without coercion. God has this attribute by virtue of the fact that He is the only necessary being. He neither relies on anything outside of Himself for existence or sustainment. As the sovereign Creator of all that exists, He can do whatever He wants. He has chosen to give humanity this same attribute, but, as I tried to explain in the first post, God's communicable attributes, those attributes that are communicated to humanity in some way, are not expressed the same way in human beings as they are in God. Adam and Eve, until they sinned, had the most freedom of any humans the world has ever seen, though they could never have overcome God's own will. Even someone as deterministic as John Calvin believed this. Of course, once they sinned, true freedom was lost. Thus Paul writes in Romans 6:16: "Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?" Adam and Eve became slaves to sin the moment they sinned in the Garden of Eden, and, just like them, we are trapped by our sin with a nature that is dominated by the flesh. Let's look at Paul again. Romans 5:12-14:
"Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come."
Sin came into the world through Adam, and then all men after him sinned and lost their freedom. Paul again in Titus 3:3: "For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another." Paul's explanation of "we ourselves", which of course applies to all of us without Christ, is further bolstered when we look at how our will is bent to evil, and, in turn, our freedom is corrupted because of the coercing effects of sin. Paul explains the works of the flesh that come about from sin in Galatians 5:19-21: "Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God." In the end, humanity has lost the freedom it was granted in the garden to Adam and Eve due to sin. We do however, have the capacity to be free as Adam and Eve were before the fall and that is why this is part of God's image in man.
Goodness
Wayne Grudem defines God's goodness: "God is the final standard of good and all that God is and does is worthy of approval." God's goodness is moral perfection that expresses itself in everything that God does. This can be broken down into the attributes of God that fall under His goodness:
1. Patience: But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. (Psalm 86:15)
2. Grace, mercy, peace: Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father's Son, in truth and love. (2 John 1:3)
3. Love: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)
4. Holiness: Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders? (Exodus 15:11)
5. Justice: O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted; you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed, so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more. (Psalm 10:17-18)
God is all these things in absolute perfection. When He gave His image to man these attributes that make up goodness were included. Adam and Eve did not express them in the absolute perfection that God does, but they had them nonetheless. Of course, the same thing happened to these attributes as their freedom when they, and hence the rest of us, sinned. They are marred with the stain of sin. However, I think they still come out, maybe not in our actions all the time, but certainly in our thought processes. Paul is instructive once again in Romans 2:14-16: "For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus." Paul shows here that the law is written on every persons' heart. In other words, we know right from wrong even if we don't believe in God. In addition, I think most people, Christian or otherwise, would readily admit that there is something wrong with this world. Something wrong with the way people treat each other; something wrong with all the natural danger and destruction, etc. This is a part of God's image that is imprinted on each human being that enables them to recognize goodness and the lack thereof in the world.
Rationality
Aristotle classified man as a rational animal. Human beings are the only creatures that he classified this way. This is really what separates us from the rest of creation. We have the ability to reason and to think existentially. Animals, such as birds, fish, dogs, etc. cannot think rationally or logically. Really what we are talking about when we talk about rationality is the quality or state of being reasonable, based on facts or reason. Who doesn't want to be reasonable? That conjures images of someone who thinks before they act. They are not impulsive. They weigh the available evidence. They think through the positive and negative outcomes based on the choices they might make. I think everyone wants to be reasonable, at least to some degree. This ability to reason or to be rational comes from God. It is part of the image of God that has been given to us. There is a major difference of course. God's rationality, His weighing of evidence and outcomes is perfect and is informed by His perfect knowledge of everything and His perfect power to do anything. Our rationality is, once again, disfigured by sin. The Bible, from front to back, expects us to make decisions rationally. It does this because we have been imbued with this trait as part of the image of God. Here are a few examples:
Proverb 14:15: The simple believes everything, but the prudent gives thought to his steps.
Proverb 19:2: Desire without knowledge is not good, and whoever makes haste with his feet misses his way.
1 Thessalonians 5:20-21: Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good.
Acts 17:2-3: And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.”
Isaiah 1:18: “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool."
James 4:17: But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.
More verses could be given, but the clear message is that reasoning through things and belief that follows evidence is the operating norm of the Bible.
These three things; freedom, goodness, and rationality, are part of what make up the image of God in man. You may have noticed though, that all of these things have been damaged by sin. Sin influences everything we are and everything God made us to be. While God does everything for His own glory, and so should we, but, one of the biggest subsidiary reasons for God to act in order to redeem the elect is to restore His image in man back to the state the image was in when Adam and Eve were innocent in the Garden of Eden. The next post will deal with those issues. What happened to the image of God in man when Adam sinned? How does this all tie in to the salvation of Christ's elect?
Monday, November 28, 2016
Monday, November 21, 2016
God's Image in Man: What it is NOT
God's image is both a complicated and simple idea that can be both easily understood in one sense and deeply thought-provoking in another. The simple idea is that we, as human beings, are bearers of God's image (Gen 1:26-27) and thus have value that no other creature has. The complex idea is that...we'll cover that in the next post. The first part of this series on God's image in man is what that image is not. Next week's post will cover what that image is and the next week we'll discuss how that ties in to the big picture of creation, the fall, and the parts of salvation (justification, sanctification, redemption/glorification).
The negative description of God's image in man is twofold: i) God's image is not physical and ii) God is not male and female due to His image being borne by both men and women.
1. God's image is not physical
a. This is really simple when you look at the Bible and connect some dots. John 4:24 says that "God is spirit...". Luke 24:39 says: "See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” Jesus says in Luke that a spirit does not have a physical body. Since God is spirit, He does not have a physical body either. It follows then, that human beings who bear God's image, are not made to look like God in the physical sense.
Some of you may be thinking about the descriptions of God that assign Him human features at this point. I believe these are anthropomorphism's that merely describe God in ways that make sense to us, because if He truly showed His fullness to us we would be utterly inept at comprehending His infinite vastness of being and character. If you are studious, I think you would find that most of these types of descriptions of God wherein He is described as having human or animal parts of in the poetic and prophetic books which are filled with rich metaphorical imagery. This would be another post in and of itself, so I will direct you to a great explanation of this idea from William Lane Craig.
b. Another problem with the idea that God has a physical body is that everything came into being when God created it. The traditional understanding of Gen 1:1 is that God created ex nihilo which means out of nothing. There was no matter, space, time, or energy before God spoke it into existence. If that is the case, that no material was present before God created it, then by default He cannot be physical. That would lead to the absurd conclusion that God created Himself out of nothing. If, on the other hand, God is a physical being, then the objection; "Who made God?" has some merit because something would have had to have made the material being we call God.
c. Yet another problem with the idea of God having a physical body is His attribute of omnipresence, which means God is at every point of space with His whole being. Psalm 139:7-12 describes His omnipresence well: "Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you." God's omnipresence precludes His being physical. If He was a physical being, He could not be everywhere at once. It would be impossible for a collection of matter forming a body to be everywhere at once. Inferentially, this tells us that God, in order to be omnipresent, must be a non-material being that is not constrained by physical limitations.
2. God is not male and female due to His image being borne by both men and women
a. Gen 1:27 says: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." Both males and females bear God's image. I have recently seen it taught that this means that God is both male and female. This is an absurd concept. God is neither male nor female. Descriptions of Him as a father are His revelation of Himself to us in a way that we can understand Him. Why did He choose to reveal Himself as a father (male)? I have no idea, but that is the way He chose to do it, so it must be correct because He cannot make any mistakes.
b. The image of God is not physical, so this cannot mean that God has both male and female anatomy. It has already been shown that God is not a physical being.
c. This also cannot be talking about the attributes of men and women in terms of temperament and personality. Did God give attributes that He has to man and woman? Yes, however, the communicated form of these attributes that we possess are not the same thing as what God possesses. For instance, do we love the same way that God loves? No. His love is perfect, holy, and unconditional. Ours is imperfect, unholy, and conditional. Is our knowledge the same as God's? No. His knowledge is unlimited, perfect, and immediate. Ours is limited, imperfect, and mediate. This means that our characteristics as both men and women come from God, but are not the same thing. This doesn't mean that God is male and female, it means that God has chosen to accentuate various attributes in the different sexes in order to create a complementary set that can partner for His glory and the advancement of His kingdom. God does not express these attributes the same way as either men or women. To say that God is both male and female for this reason is to say that God is modeled on us. This is clearly false, since it is not our image that God is made in the likeness of, but the other way around.
Now that we have a clear understanding of what God's image in man is not, next time we will take a look at a positive description of what God's image in man entails. Happy Thanksgiving!
The negative description of God's image in man is twofold: i) God's image is not physical and ii) God is not male and female due to His image being borne by both men and women.
1. God's image is not physical
a. This is really simple when you look at the Bible and connect some dots. John 4:24 says that "God is spirit...". Luke 24:39 says: "See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” Jesus says in Luke that a spirit does not have a physical body. Since God is spirit, He does not have a physical body either. It follows then, that human beings who bear God's image, are not made to look like God in the physical sense.
Some of you may be thinking about the descriptions of God that assign Him human features at this point. I believe these are anthropomorphism's that merely describe God in ways that make sense to us, because if He truly showed His fullness to us we would be utterly inept at comprehending His infinite vastness of being and character. If you are studious, I think you would find that most of these types of descriptions of God wherein He is described as having human or animal parts of in the poetic and prophetic books which are filled with rich metaphorical imagery. This would be another post in and of itself, so I will direct you to a great explanation of this idea from William Lane Craig.
b. Another problem with the idea that God has a physical body is that everything came into being when God created it. The traditional understanding of Gen 1:1 is that God created ex nihilo which means out of nothing. There was no matter, space, time, or energy before God spoke it into existence. If that is the case, that no material was present before God created it, then by default He cannot be physical. That would lead to the absurd conclusion that God created Himself out of nothing. If, on the other hand, God is a physical being, then the objection; "Who made God?" has some merit because something would have had to have made the material being we call God.
c. Yet another problem with the idea of God having a physical body is His attribute of omnipresence, which means God is at every point of space with His whole being. Psalm 139:7-12 describes His omnipresence well: "Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you." God's omnipresence precludes His being physical. If He was a physical being, He could not be everywhere at once. It would be impossible for a collection of matter forming a body to be everywhere at once. Inferentially, this tells us that God, in order to be omnipresent, must be a non-material being that is not constrained by physical limitations.
2. God is not male and female due to His image being borne by both men and women
a. Gen 1:27 says: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." Both males and females bear God's image. I have recently seen it taught that this means that God is both male and female. This is an absurd concept. God is neither male nor female. Descriptions of Him as a father are His revelation of Himself to us in a way that we can understand Him. Why did He choose to reveal Himself as a father (male)? I have no idea, but that is the way He chose to do it, so it must be correct because He cannot make any mistakes.
b. The image of God is not physical, so this cannot mean that God has both male and female anatomy. It has already been shown that God is not a physical being.
c. This also cannot be talking about the attributes of men and women in terms of temperament and personality. Did God give attributes that He has to man and woman? Yes, however, the communicated form of these attributes that we possess are not the same thing as what God possesses. For instance, do we love the same way that God loves? No. His love is perfect, holy, and unconditional. Ours is imperfect, unholy, and conditional. Is our knowledge the same as God's? No. His knowledge is unlimited, perfect, and immediate. Ours is limited, imperfect, and mediate. This means that our characteristics as both men and women come from God, but are not the same thing. This doesn't mean that God is male and female, it means that God has chosen to accentuate various attributes in the different sexes in order to create a complementary set that can partner for His glory and the advancement of His kingdom. God does not express these attributes the same way as either men or women. To say that God is both male and female for this reason is to say that God is modeled on us. This is clearly false, since it is not our image that God is made in the likeness of, but the other way around.
Now that we have a clear understanding of what God's image in man is not, next time we will take a look at a positive description of what God's image in man entails. Happy Thanksgiving!
Thursday, November 17, 2016
Thursday is Link Around the Internet Day
I only have one link for you today. It is an hour long forum about persecuted Christians featuring Nancy Guthrie, Mindy Belz, D. A. Carson, Karen Ellis, and Nastaran Farahani.
1. On the Persecuted Church
1. On the Persecuted Church
Monday, November 14, 2016
Daniel 9:24-26a, Part 3
"24 Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy
city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone
for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision
and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. 25 Know therefore
and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build
Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be
seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again, with
squares and a moat, but in a troubled time. 26a And after the
sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have
nothing."
Part 1 and Part 2 can be found here.
So far we have seen that this prophecy concerns Jesus' crucifixion and we have seen that the start date for the prophecy was Nisan 1, 444 BC. In this post we are going to look at the three sources mentioned in the previous post to see how some people have attempted to calculate the prophecy dates. Before we cover those models, some groundwork has to be laid.
1. Most of the people who attempt to calculate the prophecy assume, based on Genesis 7:11, 24 and 8:4 where 150 days passes and exactly 5 months pass, that there is a 360-day year (12, 30-day months) that is God's "prophetic calendar". The timing of prophecies must then be calculated using the 360-day year rather than our modern 365.25 days per year model with leap years. This is highly debatable. Probably the foremost expert on the Ancient Near East and an Old Testmanet commentator, Gleason L. Archer, said that there is no evidence that anyone ever used a 360-day year. But, I am not saying this "prophetic calendar" is correct, I am merely attempting to show the timing of Daniel's 70 weeks is accurate by way of showing how close we can get to calculating it. In the end, you will see that if we just had a bit more data, we could calculate it accurately.
2. This prophecy culminates in Christ's crucifixion, so we are looking for that Friday Passover sometime between 28-33 AD. However, the prophecy says first that the anointed one will come. A lot of commentators agree that this is Jesus' triumphal entry. This is intimately associated with the Passover lamb instructions that God gave the Israelites in Exodus 12:3, 6. Namely, that the lamb has to stay in the house with them for 4 days before they kill and eat it (10th Nisan with the Passover being 14th Nisan). This means Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem had to come on Sunday so he could "stay in house" for 4 days as our Passover lamb: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. The passover supper would have been on Thursday evening, the crucifixion on Friday, and the resurrection on Sunday. Ultimately, we are looking for a Sunday triumphal entry in a year that had Passover on a Friday.
3. For the sake of brevity, I am leaving out a lot of the astonomical data concerning the moon phases. The first book's author used data from the Royal Observatory in England to calculate his dates. It would be time consuming and confusing to include it. I am giving the information you need, not necessarily all the information used.
4. As I have said before, calendar matching from ancient to modern is not something that can be done with high accuracy.
With that in mind, let's get started.
The Coming Prince by Sir Robert Anderson
Anderson's model is wrong, but it is the most robust modern try at it and it forms the basis for a lot of subsequent thought about this prophecy. He starts off by naming the wrong starting date. He thinks Nisan 1 is March 14th, 445 BC. In his defense, he wrote in the late 1800's/early 1900's, scholars didn't know about the dating procedures of ancients. Remember we said that accession year dating was used, so Artaxerxes' first year, 465 BC, was only partial and wasn't counted. His "first year" by their count was 464 BC. That puts the 20th year (Neh 2:1) in 444 BC, not 445 BC. Next, he calculated the days from that date.
69 weeks of years x 7 years per week = 483 years
483 years x 360 days/year = 173,880 days
173,880 days + March 14th, 445 BC = April 6th, 32 AD (a Sunday)
This seems to work. But, Passover in 32 AD was either Sunday or Monday. This does give us a start though.
Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ, Part VI: Daniel's Seventy Weeks and New Testament Chronology by Harold Hoehner
Hoehner took Anderson's model and made some refinements that get us a little further. First, he fixed the start date. Nisan 1, 444 BC is March 5th, 444 BC.
173,880 days + March 5th, 444 BC = March 26th, 33 AD
Hoehner does some finagling with the prophetic calendar and the solar year calendar that I am not showing. I will discuss that below. This also doesn't work because the 26th was a Thursday. This would put the Passover on Monday. We need a triumphal entry on a Sunday.
"An Examination of the Chronological Difficulties of Hoehner and Ice's Calculations of Daniel 9's First 69 Weeks" by Bob Pickle
Pickle points out some problems with Hoehner's model that will be helpful to us. But, Pickle himself comes to the conclusion that Christ's baptism was the end of the prophecy. I am going to ignore that part of it. First, the Jews inserted leap months, 7 every nineteen years, into their calendars. That means they had an extra month 7 times every nineteen years. 444 BC was one of those leap years. That makes the start date April 2nd, 444 BC when the extra month is taken into consideration.
173,880 days / 365.24219 days per year (solar year) = 476 solar years
476 solar years x 365.24219 days per year = 173,855 days
173,855 days + April 2nd, 444 BC = March 29th, 33 AD
March 29th, 33 AD is a Sunday -- Triumphal Entry
March 30th, 33 AD is a Monday -- Nisan 10th
30th, 31st, 1st, 2nd -- lamb kept in house
April 3rd, 33 AD is a Friday -- Nisan 14th (this day would start the evening before according to Jewish reckoning and means the Passover dinner was eaten what we would call Thursday night)
This seems to fix everything, except that there is some serious rounding in the math done. The numbers are actually 476.0676744 solar years and that translates back into 173,880 days. Keeping the numbers accurate would put the triumphal entry on a Friday. Also, the Passover was on Saturday or Sunday in 33 AD. Finally, I am not even going to get into the arguments over what year Jesus' ministry started.
At this point, you can see that every model and set of calculations has some problems, but this still gets us very close to calculating the date of both Christ's triumphal entry and crucifixion. I said previously that this series would be a little bit anticlimactic and I still think it is. However, the fact that we cannot accurately calculate the prophecy in no way means that is isn't true. Jesus held the Jews responsible for not knowing it. In Luke 19:41-44, he says with my highlights:
And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”
It is still readily believable that Jesus orchestrated his death down to the very day. That should give us great comfort. Jesus willingly sacrificed himself for us even though he knew the whole time what was coming and the very hour of his death. It also demonstrates the incredible knowledge and power of God that in 483 years of human history, He effortlessly organized it so that the table was set for the God-man, Jesus Christ, to appear on the day he told Daniel 600 years before hand.
Part 1 and Part 2 can be found here.
So far we have seen that this prophecy concerns Jesus' crucifixion and we have seen that the start date for the prophecy was Nisan 1, 444 BC. In this post we are going to look at the three sources mentioned in the previous post to see how some people have attempted to calculate the prophecy dates. Before we cover those models, some groundwork has to be laid.
1. Most of the people who attempt to calculate the prophecy assume, based on Genesis 7:11, 24 and 8:4 where 150 days passes and exactly 5 months pass, that there is a 360-day year (12, 30-day months) that is God's "prophetic calendar". The timing of prophecies must then be calculated using the 360-day year rather than our modern 365.25 days per year model with leap years. This is highly debatable. Probably the foremost expert on the Ancient Near East and an Old Testmanet commentator, Gleason L. Archer, said that there is no evidence that anyone ever used a 360-day year. But, I am not saying this "prophetic calendar" is correct, I am merely attempting to show the timing of Daniel's 70 weeks is accurate by way of showing how close we can get to calculating it. In the end, you will see that if we just had a bit more data, we could calculate it accurately.
2. This prophecy culminates in Christ's crucifixion, so we are looking for that Friday Passover sometime between 28-33 AD. However, the prophecy says first that the anointed one will come. A lot of commentators agree that this is Jesus' triumphal entry. This is intimately associated with the Passover lamb instructions that God gave the Israelites in Exodus 12:3, 6. Namely, that the lamb has to stay in the house with them for 4 days before they kill and eat it (10th Nisan with the Passover being 14th Nisan). This means Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem had to come on Sunday so he could "stay in house" for 4 days as our Passover lamb: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. The passover supper would have been on Thursday evening, the crucifixion on Friday, and the resurrection on Sunday. Ultimately, we are looking for a Sunday triumphal entry in a year that had Passover on a Friday.
3. For the sake of brevity, I am leaving out a lot of the astonomical data concerning the moon phases. The first book's author used data from the Royal Observatory in England to calculate his dates. It would be time consuming and confusing to include it. I am giving the information you need, not necessarily all the information used.
4. As I have said before, calendar matching from ancient to modern is not something that can be done with high accuracy.
With that in mind, let's get started.
The Coming Prince by Sir Robert Anderson
Anderson's model is wrong, but it is the most robust modern try at it and it forms the basis for a lot of subsequent thought about this prophecy. He starts off by naming the wrong starting date. He thinks Nisan 1 is March 14th, 445 BC. In his defense, he wrote in the late 1800's/early 1900's, scholars didn't know about the dating procedures of ancients. Remember we said that accession year dating was used, so Artaxerxes' first year, 465 BC, was only partial and wasn't counted. His "first year" by their count was 464 BC. That puts the 20th year (Neh 2:1) in 444 BC, not 445 BC. Next, he calculated the days from that date.
69 weeks of years x 7 years per week = 483 years
483 years x 360 days/year = 173,880 days
173,880 days + March 14th, 445 BC = April 6th, 32 AD (a Sunday)
This seems to work. But, Passover in 32 AD was either Sunday or Monday. This does give us a start though.
Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ, Part VI: Daniel's Seventy Weeks and New Testament Chronology by Harold Hoehner
Hoehner took Anderson's model and made some refinements that get us a little further. First, he fixed the start date. Nisan 1, 444 BC is March 5th, 444 BC.
173,880 days + March 5th, 444 BC = March 26th, 33 AD
Hoehner does some finagling with the prophetic calendar and the solar year calendar that I am not showing. I will discuss that below. This also doesn't work because the 26th was a Thursday. This would put the Passover on Monday. We need a triumphal entry on a Sunday.
"An Examination of the Chronological Difficulties of Hoehner and Ice's Calculations of Daniel 9's First 69 Weeks" by Bob Pickle
Pickle points out some problems with Hoehner's model that will be helpful to us. But, Pickle himself comes to the conclusion that Christ's baptism was the end of the prophecy. I am going to ignore that part of it. First, the Jews inserted leap months, 7 every nineteen years, into their calendars. That means they had an extra month 7 times every nineteen years. 444 BC was one of those leap years. That makes the start date April 2nd, 444 BC when the extra month is taken into consideration.
173,880 days / 365.24219 days per year (solar year) = 476 solar years
476 solar years x 365.24219 days per year = 173,855 days
173,855 days + April 2nd, 444 BC = March 29th, 33 AD
March 29th, 33 AD is a Sunday -- Triumphal Entry
March 30th, 33 AD is a Monday -- Nisan 10th
30th, 31st, 1st, 2nd -- lamb kept in house
April 3rd, 33 AD is a Friday -- Nisan 14th (this day would start the evening before according to Jewish reckoning and means the Passover dinner was eaten what we would call Thursday night)
This seems to fix everything, except that there is some serious rounding in the math done. The numbers are actually 476.0676744 solar years and that translates back into 173,880 days. Keeping the numbers accurate would put the triumphal entry on a Friday. Also, the Passover was on Saturday or Sunday in 33 AD. Finally, I am not even going to get into the arguments over what year Jesus' ministry started.
At this point, you can see that every model and set of calculations has some problems, but this still gets us very close to calculating the date of both Christ's triumphal entry and crucifixion. I said previously that this series would be a little bit anticlimactic and I still think it is. However, the fact that we cannot accurately calculate the prophecy in no way means that is isn't true. Jesus held the Jews responsible for not knowing it. In Luke 19:41-44, he says with my highlights:
And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”
It is still readily believable that Jesus orchestrated his death down to the very day. That should give us great comfort. Jesus willingly sacrificed himself for us even though he knew the whole time what was coming and the very hour of his death. It also demonstrates the incredible knowledge and power of God that in 483 years of human history, He effortlessly organized it so that the table was set for the God-man, Jesus Christ, to appear on the day he told Daniel 600 years before hand.
Thursday, November 10, 2016
Monday, November 7, 2016
Daniel 9:24-26a, Part 2
"24 Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy
city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone
for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision
and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. 25 Know therefore
and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build
Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be
seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again, with
squares and a moat, but in a troubled time. 26 And after the
sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have
nothing."
In part 1 we discussed verse 24 wherein we saw that the prophecy related to Daniel in this passage is Messianic. That means it has to do with Jesus Christ as the Messiah. In particular, it has to do with his crucifixion. The reason we can pinpoint that particular aspect of his ministry, his atonement that is, is due to the fact that the removal of transgressions, sins, and iniquity is in view. That only happened on Calvary when Christ was crucified. As mentioned last week, there is a specific timing element to this prophecy and it ends at Christ's crucifixion. In today's post we will look at some theories about where the timing fits in history based on an evaluation of verse 25 and 26a.
Verse 25: The opening phrase of verse 25 is important. It says; "Know therefore and understand...". A lot of people think that prophecy isn't that important, but what we see here is that Gabriel, with a message from God, is telling Daniel to know and understand what he is about to say. Since this is part of the Old Testament canon that God saw fit to give to us, we had also better know and understand it to the best of our ability. The next phrase, "that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem..." is very specific. It points to some kind of word that will allow or order the Jews to rebuild Jerusalem. Remember that in 587/6 BC, Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian armies destroyed Jerusalem and the first temple. Jerusalem has lain in ruins for close to seventy years which is exactly what God told Jeremiah (25:11; 29:10) he was going to do to Israel for their rebellion. At this time, about 538 BC, the Jews were living under Persian rule, so anything they did in their homeland had to be approved by the ruler of the Persian empire. That is exactly what happened. In 538/7 BC, Cyrus the King of Persia allowed, by decree, Jews to return to their homeland and rebuild the temple. This is recorded at the end of 2 Chronicles, verses 22 and 23 and it was prophesied by God through Isaiah in chapter 44, verse 28. This is exactly where Ezra picks up, in chapter 1, verses 1-4; with Cyrus' decree to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. This was the first time that Jews were officially allowed to return to Israel since the Babylonian empire conquered Judah. But, this is not our decree. It says nothing of the city of Jerusalem. It only directs the construction efforts of the temple. The prophecy says specifically that the word is to "restore and build Jerusalem", not the temple.
We have yet another decree concerning the temple in Ezra 6:1-15. It was really just a reinforcement of Cyrus' original decree due to the opposition the Jews were facing in completing the temple. They did get the temple finished, but we still don't have a starting point for the prophecy we are investigating. For that we have to look in Nehemiah 2:1-8.
In Nehemiah chapter 1 it says that Nehemiah got a report that Jerusalem and its gates were still ruined. This causes Nehemiah great consternation. So much so that Artaxerxes, the King of Persia at this time, recognizes his sadness and grants his request to return to Israel. This is how it happens. Nehemiah 2:1-8:
"In the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, I took up the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had not been sad in his presence. And the king said to me, “Why is your face sad, seeing you are not sick? This is nothing but sadness of the heart.” Then I was very much afraid. I said to the king, “Let the king live forever! Why should not my face be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers' graves, lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?” Then the king said to me, “What are you requesting?” So I prayed to the God of heaven. And I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, that you send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers' graves, that I may rebuild it.” And the king said to me (the queen sitting beside him), “How long will you be gone, and when will you return?” So it pleased the king to send me when I had given him a time. And I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, let letters be given me to the governors of the province Beyond the River, that they may let me pass through until I come to Judah, 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 of the temple, and for the wall of the city, and for the house that I shall occupy.” And the king granted me what I asked, for the good hand of my God was upon me."
Now we have our decree to fix Jerusalem! In addition, we have the month this decree was made; Nisan, which is March/April on our calendar. And, we have what year it was; the 20th year of Artaxerxes. Most commentators agree that because no day is given along with the month, this means that Nehemiah refers to the first day of the month. Historians and biblical scholars have shown that the king referred to is Artaxerxes Longimanus, also known as Artaxerxes I. He reigned from 465-424 BC. The 20th year of his reign would be 444 BC due to the fact that ancient peoples started counting a king's rule from the first full year, which in this case would be 464 BC. This means that Nisan 1, 444 BC is our start date.
Our end date is where the real argument lies, though people still argue about the start date as well. The scripture says: "to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again, with squares and a moat, but in a troubled time." The prophecy is now split up into two parts; 69 weeks and 1 week to make seventy weeks. There are 69 weeks total when added in the first part (7+62). However, even this is a point of contention among translators and theologians about how to take the 7 and 62 weeks, but I think it makes the most sense to join them so that it is 69 weeks or 483 years between the decree and the coming of an anointed one. The HCSB, KJV, NASB, and NIV translate it to this effect. I usually read the ESV and that is what is quoted above. That leaves 1 week or 7 years at some point after the "prince" comes. Who is the anointed one that will be the end of the 69 weeks? This seems assuredly to be Christ. In light of verse 24 and the discussion of the end of sin and the ushering in of everlasting righteousness in which a "holy [one]" (see part 1 about the translation here) is anointed seems very clear; it is Jesus Christ. Specifically, it is his crucifixion. This is the only place where atonement for sin was made. Verse 26a gives us that information: "an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing." If Jesus is the anointed one, and I think he is the person in view, then his being "cut off" and coming to "have nothing" seems evident in the Gospels. Specifically in Matthew's Gospel chapter 27, verse 46.
With all that in place, we can now turn to the actual modern calendar dates and figuring out how this prophecy is laid out. We have a start date of Nisan 1, 444 BC and an end date of Christ's crucifixion to be determined by calculating the 69 weeks. In order to do this we are going to take a look at 3 dating models and, in a bit of an anticlimactic ending, we are going to realize that dating this thing with 100% accuracy is virtually impossible this side of heaven. However, even though we can't pinpoint the exact dates, we can get close, close enough to understand that it does happen just as God said it would. That should make us all realize the power in the foreknowledge of God and His providential control of all world events. The three models we are going to look at are:
1. The Coming Prince by Sir Robert Anderson
2. Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ, Part VI: Daniel's Seventy Weeks and New Testament Chronology by Harold Hoehner
3. "An Examination of the Chronological Difficulties of Hoehner and Ice's Calculations of Daniel 9's First 69 Weeks" by Bob Pickle
This is where we will continue next time.
In part 1 we discussed verse 24 wherein we saw that the prophecy related to Daniel in this passage is Messianic. That means it has to do with Jesus Christ as the Messiah. In particular, it has to do with his crucifixion. The reason we can pinpoint that particular aspect of his ministry, his atonement that is, is due to the fact that the removal of transgressions, sins, and iniquity is in view. That only happened on Calvary when Christ was crucified. As mentioned last week, there is a specific timing element to this prophecy and it ends at Christ's crucifixion. In today's post we will look at some theories about where the timing fits in history based on an evaluation of verse 25 and 26a.
Verse 25: The opening phrase of verse 25 is important. It says; "Know therefore and understand...". A lot of people think that prophecy isn't that important, but what we see here is that Gabriel, with a message from God, is telling Daniel to know and understand what he is about to say. Since this is part of the Old Testament canon that God saw fit to give to us, we had also better know and understand it to the best of our ability. The next phrase, "that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem..." is very specific. It points to some kind of word that will allow or order the Jews to rebuild Jerusalem. Remember that in 587/6 BC, Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian armies destroyed Jerusalem and the first temple. Jerusalem has lain in ruins for close to seventy years which is exactly what God told Jeremiah (25:11; 29:10) he was going to do to Israel for their rebellion. At this time, about 538 BC, the Jews were living under Persian rule, so anything they did in their homeland had to be approved by the ruler of the Persian empire. That is exactly what happened. In 538/7 BC, Cyrus the King of Persia allowed, by decree, Jews to return to their homeland and rebuild the temple. This is recorded at the end of 2 Chronicles, verses 22 and 23 and it was prophesied by God through Isaiah in chapter 44, verse 28. This is exactly where Ezra picks up, in chapter 1, verses 1-4; with Cyrus' decree to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. This was the first time that Jews were officially allowed to return to Israel since the Babylonian empire conquered Judah. But, this is not our decree. It says nothing of the city of Jerusalem. It only directs the construction efforts of the temple. The prophecy says specifically that the word is to "restore and build Jerusalem", not the temple.
We have yet another decree concerning the temple in Ezra 6:1-15. It was really just a reinforcement of Cyrus' original decree due to the opposition the Jews were facing in completing the temple. They did get the temple finished, but we still don't have a starting point for the prophecy we are investigating. For that we have to look in Nehemiah 2:1-8.
In Nehemiah chapter 1 it says that Nehemiah got a report that Jerusalem and its gates were still ruined. This causes Nehemiah great consternation. So much so that Artaxerxes, the King of Persia at this time, recognizes his sadness and grants his request to return to Israel. This is how it happens. Nehemiah 2:1-8:
"In the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, I took up the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had not been sad in his presence. And the king said to me, “Why is your face sad, seeing you are not sick? This is nothing but sadness of the heart.” Then I was very much afraid. I said to the king, “Let the king live forever! Why should not my face be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers' graves, lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?” Then the king said to me, “What are you requesting?” So I prayed to the God of heaven. And I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, that you send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers' graves, that I may rebuild it.” And the king said to me (the queen sitting beside him), “How long will you be gone, and when will you return?” So it pleased the king to send me when I had given him a time. And I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, let letters be given me to the governors of the province Beyond the River, that they may let me pass through until I come to Judah, 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 of the temple, and for the wall of the city, and for the house that I shall occupy.” And the king granted me what I asked, for the good hand of my God was upon me."
Now we have our decree to fix Jerusalem! In addition, we have the month this decree was made; Nisan, which is March/April on our calendar. And, we have what year it was; the 20th year of Artaxerxes. Most commentators agree that because no day is given along with the month, this means that Nehemiah refers to the first day of the month. Historians and biblical scholars have shown that the king referred to is Artaxerxes Longimanus, also known as Artaxerxes I. He reigned from 465-424 BC. The 20th year of his reign would be 444 BC due to the fact that ancient peoples started counting a king's rule from the first full year, which in this case would be 464 BC. This means that Nisan 1, 444 BC is our start date.
Our end date is where the real argument lies, though people still argue about the start date as well. The scripture says: "to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again, with squares and a moat, but in a troubled time." The prophecy is now split up into two parts; 69 weeks and 1 week to make seventy weeks. There are 69 weeks total when added in the first part (7+62). However, even this is a point of contention among translators and theologians about how to take the 7 and 62 weeks, but I think it makes the most sense to join them so that it is 69 weeks or 483 years between the decree and the coming of an anointed one. The HCSB, KJV, NASB, and NIV translate it to this effect. I usually read the ESV and that is what is quoted above. That leaves 1 week or 7 years at some point after the "prince" comes. Who is the anointed one that will be the end of the 69 weeks? This seems assuredly to be Christ. In light of verse 24 and the discussion of the end of sin and the ushering in of everlasting righteousness in which a "holy [one]" (see part 1 about the translation here) is anointed seems very clear; it is Jesus Christ. Specifically, it is his crucifixion. This is the only place where atonement for sin was made. Verse 26a gives us that information: "an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing." If Jesus is the anointed one, and I think he is the person in view, then his being "cut off" and coming to "have nothing" seems evident in the Gospels. Specifically in Matthew's Gospel chapter 27, verse 46.
With all that in place, we can now turn to the actual modern calendar dates and figuring out how this prophecy is laid out. We have a start date of Nisan 1, 444 BC and an end date of Christ's crucifixion to be determined by calculating the 69 weeks. In order to do this we are going to take a look at 3 dating models and, in a bit of an anticlimactic ending, we are going to realize that dating this thing with 100% accuracy is virtually impossible this side of heaven. However, even though we can't pinpoint the exact dates, we can get close, close enough to understand that it does happen just as God said it would. That should make us all realize the power in the foreknowledge of God and His providential control of all world events. The three models we are going to look at are:
1. The Coming Prince by Sir Robert Anderson
2. Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ, Part VI: Daniel's Seventy Weeks and New Testament Chronology by Harold Hoehner
3. "An Examination of the Chronological Difficulties of Hoehner and Ice's Calculations of Daniel 9's First 69 Weeks" by Bob Pickle
This is where we will continue next time.
Wednesday, November 2, 2016
Thursday is Link Around the Internet Day
1. On Paul and postmodern skepticism
2. On religious freedom's endangerment
3. On cops looking the other way for other cops
4. Cold-Case Christianity
Cold-Case Christianity is a book written by J. Warner Wallace, an LAPD cold-case detective. He converted from very skeptical atheism to Christianity by evaluating the evidence for the resurrection and the New Testament the same way he would investigate a cold-case homicide. The adult book is excellent. This link takes you to a review of the kids book. Wallace has reworked his original book into a kids format that not only gives the information found in the adult version, but teaches kids how to think critically when evaluating evidence.
5. On justification by Geerhardus Vos
2. On religious freedom's endangerment
3. On cops looking the other way for other cops
4. Cold-Case Christianity
Cold-Case Christianity is a book written by J. Warner Wallace, an LAPD cold-case detective. He converted from very skeptical atheism to Christianity by evaluating the evidence for the resurrection and the New Testament the same way he would investigate a cold-case homicide. The adult book is excellent. This link takes you to a review of the kids book. Wallace has reworked his original book into a kids format that not only gives the information found in the adult version, but teaches kids how to think critically when evaluating evidence.
5. On justification by Geerhardus Vos
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