Christ is the Greek and Messiah is the Hebrew equivalent, both mean ‘the anointed one.” We have been considering the evidence of the over 300 Old Testament prophecies concerning Jesus and the absolute impossibility of anyone being able to fulfill them by chance. The probability was enormous and beyond comprehension. BUT What if there was a prophecy that made all of these prophecies date sensitive. A date that would specifically tell us when all of these prophecies HAD to be fulfilled. It is so! That prophecy we find in Daniel 9, written nearly 600 years before Jesus and giving us the exact time when the messiah would be anointed. A precise prophecy about when the Messiah would come. It involves more mathematics, but before it can be considered I have to give you an historical context.

This prophecy has upon it the curse of the Rabbis that reads thus, ““May the bones of the hands and the bones of the fingers decay and decompose, of him who turns the pages of the book of Daniel, to find out the time of Daniel 9:24-27 and may his memory rot from off the face of the earth forever.” (Talmudic Law. p.978, Section 2, Line 28.)

The background of Daniel 9 is this; Nebuchadnezzar had taken Israel captive – in three stages he transported the whole nation to Babylon. Daniel had been taken in the first captivity as a teenager. Daniel was amongst the group that would be retrained for the king’s court. There are many fascinating stories and prophecies about this time in the book of Daniel. Jeremiah had prophesied that this captivity would only last 70 years (Jeremiah 25:11) and the Jews would be returned to their homeland (one of the great miracles of history.) Daniel lived his whole life in Babylon, faithfully serving God. In Chapter 9 of his book, he recounts how he was studying the scroll of Jeremiah and computed that the 70 years was almost up. He was praying about it when the angel Gabriel came to him with the prophecy that I will now share with you. By the time we are done with it, you will see the reason for the curse. It accurately pinpoints the exact year of the Messiah’s anointing and death as ‘the lamb of God who will take away the sin of the world.’ If you follow it carefully you will be amazed. It makes all the other prophecies date sensitive. That is, it pinpoints a year by which all the prophecies must be fulfilled.