I N T R O D U C T I O N

Now that we established the foundation, that the Scriptures are 100% accurate, that Jesus is God in the flesh, lived a sinless life, died for you and me, and rose from the dead on the third day, ascended to heaven and is seated on the right hand of God, here's how I came to do this study. I, as do many Christians, like reading about the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. I bought a book about the end times and how Israel became a nation exactly so many days after the order to rebuild the city as prophesied by Daniel. Not one to let others do my homework; I decided to see if such a thing existed in the Bible. At first I thought, "How hard could it be?" Well let me tell you, I had to learn about the Jewish, the Roman, the Julian, and the Gregorian calendars. Then learn how to convert from one to another. Since I liked to program, I now had a project. The only algorithm I could find on the rules for the Jewish calendar was written in C++ code. I wasn't very good with C++ but I did understand Visual Basic, so I converted the code. After pouring over the code, I found that they had an ingenious way of converting the dates, by using the Serial Day Number - also known as the Julian Day Number, defined as noon Universal Time (UT) Monday, January 1, 4713 BC in the Julian calendar. The date given in Gregorian, Julian or Jewish would be converted to that day number. That answer would then be translated into the desired calendar and then reversed. If the final answer was correct, then the resulting conversion was correct. Here's an example:

Gregorian day (today's calendar) of August 10, 2008 is converted to 2454689.5 in the Julian Day Number. That number is then converted from 2454689.5 to the Jewish calendar of Av 9, 5768 at noon. That date, Av 9, 5768, is then converted back to the Julian Day Number of 2454689.5. Next, it converts it from 2454689.5 to the Gregorian date of August 10, 2008. If this date matches the date entered, it is correct and "Av 9, 5768" is presented. I put this on my web site at http://www.abdicate.net/cal.aspx.

The reason for doing it this way is to increase the level of accuracy. If the calculations are incorrect, they would show up by presenting different dates. In addition to the process above, there is another step; it includes being converted into the Julian calendar and back as well. This is like taking pounds and changing it to kilograms and then to ounces and then to troy ounces and back to pounds. Each step requires a different mathematical conversion increasing the accuracy of the final product.

After working on it for a few months, I put in the dates the book stated and the number of days since the call to rebuild the city of Jerusalem and found that they were short an entire year by their standards and the rest of the "history" books. Well, I decided to find the date of the "...that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem..." (Daniel 9:25) I needed to do some more homework. Here is the test of the strength of my conviction. If I was going to undertake finding this date, I had to put Scripture above any history book. Did I truly believe II Timothy 3:16-17? It was then I decided that I would not eliminate any verse just because it did not "fit" into my chronology. So, which version of "scripture" do I use? I grew up and studied how the King James Bible was translated and have chosen to stick with it. Besides, I like the way it was translated, and clearly the Lord blessed it because it is still the number one book sold to date with over 6 billion in print throughout history (includes all English versions¹).

I want to point out that most people just accept information that is published or quoted by a source. This is how the United States came to think of our fore fathers as oppressive rich white slave owning deists. In the 1920's many books were written concerning the birth of America and none of them quoted original sources. As a direct result, the attacks on these men, their very deep love for Jesus Christ and for the country, and thereby attacks on the Constitution changed our legal system from rule of law to rule of precedence and judicial law making. What does all this mean? We have rejected God and His Word from anything public - schools, workplace, federal lands and parks: all of which will be the undoing of America. The accepted norm is now abortion, sex, its perversion, murder, lying and cheating², and pornography is one of the biggest industries making over $12 billion in 2006³ and worth $56 billion worldwide⁴. America's motto is no longer "In God we Trust" (which is under attack in the courts as I type) to "If it feels good, just do it!"

"Porn is being downloaded, ordered, rented and tuned in at startling rates across America. And, with millions of customers spending billions of dollars on pornography, corporate America is starting to compete for a piece of that pie. In 1999 pornography sales in the United States exceeded $10 billion -- a market so lucrative that even blue-chip companies such as General Motors Corp. (GM) and AT&T Corp. have jumped into the dirty game. These two Fortune 500 companies are piping pornography by cable and satellite feeds into American homes, providing distribution that porn producers require to increase their production of smut, perversion and filth."
Porn 500, Insight on the News, Jan 8, 2001 by James Harder⁴

There is no end to the citations I can make. Don't get me wrong there are good God-fearing people in America - their prayers are the only thing keeping God's full wrath at bay. Nevertheless, unless we change as a society we will go the way of the unicorn. See if these verses sound familiar in regards to today:

II Timothy 3:1-7 "This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth."

Now I pray you see how very important it is to get the original source when gathering information. Because they don't know better, concerning the English translated history books of old, they simply accept the data when they speak of the Julian dates of AD/BC or the Greek Olympiads. Though there is an accepted date conversion, I did not need them because I know from Scripture all the points from Adam to Jesus' ascension with the authority of Scripture. Since none of us since the 1750's experienced a change of the calendar, it would appear to be easy enough to fix points in time to another calendar. Yet, to complete accurately such a task, you must understand how the conversion was made de facto. That is where you'll run into roadblocks more than anything else. Once you find a source, you'll find another that says it's a year or two different than the first source. Even published encyclopedias cannot agree on dates. With all the technology we have today, it's harder than ever to find the original source. Once you find it, how can you translate it into English from ancient Greek, Latin, or Aramaic?

I wanted to find the conversion of an Olympiad to the Roman Julian dating system. I found a site that provided tables for the conversion. When I looked up their sources, they pointed me to another site⁵. Below is a fragment written in Greek translated into Latin and then into English.

⁵19a. Diodori Sicili Bibliothecae Historicae, Lib.XX, Cap.V, 5
"th d i steraia thlikauthn ekleiyin hliou sunebh genesqai, wste oloscerwV fanhnai nukta qewroumenwn twn asterwV pantacoi."

"[...] Agathocles etiam, quum jam ab hoste apprimeretur, nocte superveniente, quod minime sperasset, evadit. Postridie tantum fit solis eclipsis deliquum, ut stellis ubique apparentibus, omnio noctis instar esset. Quamobrem a naumine difficultatem sibi portendi Agathoclis milites rati, in majore super futuris anxietate erant."

"[...] However, Agathocles, who was already at the point of being overtaken and surrounded, gained unhoped for safety as night closed in. On the next day there occurred such an eclipse of the sun that stars appeared everywhere, it was like at a complete night. Agathocles soldiers, believing that the prodigy portended misfortune for them, fell into even greater anxiety about the future."
(Fotheringham; Newton, 1970, p.103-104; Stephenson, p.348-351)

The site that directed me to the quote above stated:

"The base synchronism is given by Diodorus Siculus, who dates his years according to the Athenian archons, the Roman consuls, and, every fourth year, by Olympiad. By this system, Diodorus 20.5.5 reports a solar eclipse in the year of the archon Hieronmenon, corresponding to Ol. 117.3, which must be that of 15 August 310. This gives us Ol. 117.3 = 310/09, from which Ol. 1.1 = 776/5. The resultant Olympic dates for well-known events, such as the death of Alexander III, dated to Ol. 114.1 = 324/3, shows strong consistency with this date."⁶

So now, I'm presented with the need to know if there were any other eclipses around this battle, when it was, and I need to research who "Agathocles" is and his story to find out where he was when this event happened. I could not locate the book cited in the English translation of the Latin verse from the Greek! So now, if I look up Diodorus Siculus, I find that he is a first century BC historian, but cannot find a collection of his books online. This is how researches need to work in order to get all their facts and assumptions straight. This is why it takes so long to put this into a written form: it wasn't the fitting together of all the verses of Scripture, but the ability to accurately link Creation Years to a date we can understand today. It also didn't help I never lived anywhere near a major city to exploit their metropolitan libraries - not that I believe it would have helped. You'll see what I mean when you get to Herod the Great, his life and death. You have Josephus claiming a date, you find the eclipse mentioned, you determine it is visible in Jerusalem, you convert the date, and it doesn't match a lot of history books who cite the same source you used to find the dates. It's a vicious circle of just who do you believe; and if there is a consensus, how do you know the "scholars" picked the correct date to pin the conversion?

I am certainly not a scholar of Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek, but I might use them to stress a point. Learning Castilian Spanish helped me to understand that the nuances of a language sometimes require adding supporting words. This is why the authors of the King James Bible chose to italicize those supporting words - to show they did not exist in the original language. The written Word of God is so alive that it points any human, wherever they may be in their life, to Jesus. If you are slow to learn, it guides you simply to Jesus. If you're an intellectual, or scholar, it will provide wonderful mysteries begging you to follow them to Jesus. Are you a math wizard? It will push you to Jesus. I challenge you to check out http://www.otherbiblecode.com - even if you're not a math wizard, you'll be amazed!

I had to do this study. Every time I put it down, I would "think" of something else and would have to check it out. After each discovery, another question would require more investigation and prayer. As with building a brick house, each brick was given to me; guided by the Holy Spirit. I started with the math; I then wanted to find the dates of Jesus. Satisfied with those, I went on to study the Kings of Israel and Judah, then the Judges. Once I got those done, I had to work on the prophecy of Daniel. When that was all done, I just counted how many one-thousand years there where in my study, (II Peter 3:8). When the fourth "day" ended with the start of Jesus' ministry, I was amazed! Not only did each of these studies fit into place like a puzzle, I didn't have to do any rework. I look at this as if I was given a raw stone. I simply cut out the extra information that didn't deal with dates. This gem is a gift to me from the Lord, Proverbs 17:8. The design was already there, I was just used to point it out. I wish to only know the truth and I am not out to find the end of the world or the "signs of the time" though they be right in front of me. Prophecy is just history waiting for time to catch up. Nothing I say or do will change prophecy, it will happen.

The more I learn about the world the more in awe I am at the marvelous work of the Lord. The more I read His written word, the more I learn of His marvelous work!

Job 5:9 "Which doeth great things and unsearchable; marvellous things without number:"

I present my findings.

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