The Restoration of all Things

  The goal of this conversation is to establish the year 30 CE for the death of Christ. We shall also confirm the correct decree to rebuild Jerusalem and its year/month of "going forth." We shall establish the correct year that Christ was born and the year Herod died. We will also confirm the age of the Messiah when he appeared at the 483 year mark.  Firstly, we will use the decree of Artaxerxes given to Ezra to establish the appearance of the Messiah at his baptism and ministry start. The decree went forth in the 7th year of Artaxerxes which ends in September 457 BCE, so the decree must reach Jerusalem before then. Which month did the decree reach Jerusalem after Ezra departed? The fifth month (Ab/Av), on the 1st day of that month, in the 7th year of Artaxerxes (summer 457 BCE). This is stated directly in the biblical text of Ezra 7:8–9:  “And he came to Jerusalem in the fifth month , which was in the seventh year of the king. For upon the first day of the first month ...

  What do you think about Job's "restoration" of 7 sons and 3 daughters supposedly pointing to the 7,000 years?  This is an interesting typological question. Let me engage with it critically rather than just validate it. The proposed reading: Job's restoration includes 7 sons and 3 daughters (Job 42:13), and he lives 140 more years (v.16) — double his original lifespan of 70 implied years. The argument would be that 7 sons = 7,000 years of human history, with Job's suffering/restoration mapping onto the cosmic drama of sin and redemption. Where it has some merit: The number 7 does carry consistent weight in biblical chronology — 7 days, 7 years, 7×7 Jubilees, etc. The 7-day week as a template for 7,000 years (2 Peter 3:8 + Psalm 90:4) is a well-attested interpretive tradition going back at least to the Epistle of Barnabas. If Job's 7 sons encode anything, that framework is at least internally consistent with other uses of 7. What's your specific instinc...

Now let us discus the errors of the Watchtower Society who use the 33 CE date. We shall start with their wrong decree selection (Nehemiah instead of Ezra) and their invention of a co-regency and wrong ascension year of Artaxerxes to make the 483 years land in 33 CE (475 BCE instead of 465 leading to the incorrect 20th year of 455 BCE for the word going forth).   The Watchtower Society’s chronology for Daniel 9:24-27 (the “70 weeks” prophecy) is constructed to place the Messiah’s appearance in 29 CE and the ransom (impalement/death) in 33 CE. This requires two key adjustments that differ from the historical and textual evidence: (1) selecting the Nehemiah 2 decree (rather than Ezra 7) as the “going forth of the word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem,” and (2) dating Artaxerxes I’s accession to 475 BCE (instead of the consensus 465 BCE), which shifts his 20th regnal year to 455 BCE. These choices are presented in their publications as necessary to align the 483 years (69 “weeks”) with...