Seven, 70, & Sevens: Daniel 9 & the Bible’s Messianic Symbolism

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Did you know that the Bible tells us that someday all mankind will offer an oath of seven to YHWH, the living God of the Bible? This week we’ll learn about this oath, a covenant made with Abraham, the prophecy of 70 “Weeks”, and how all share a common thread in the Bible’s messianic symbolism.

In the past several articles we’ve explored the amazing influence the law of Moses has had on Bible prophecy in general and the Bible’s messianic symbolism in particular. We can say with the Apostle Paul that indeed the “law” is a shadow of good things to come.

If you haven’t read the other articles in this series I’d encourage you to do so. They provide important context for the thrilling information I’m going to share in today’s blog post.

Bible Prophecy and the Law of Moses
Part I – The Bible’s Holy Days: Pictures of the Messiah
Part II (a) – The Messiah Factors: Numerical Evidence of Yahweh’s Redemptive Plan
Part II (b) – The Messiah Factors: Numerical Evidence of Yahweh’s Redemptive Plan
Part III – Seven, 70, & Sevens: Daniel 9 & the Bible’s Messianic Symbolism

At the heart of the Bible’s messianic symbolism, that is entwined into the law of Moses, are what I’ve termed in these articles, the Messiah Factors. The Messiah Factors are the numbers 7, 13 & 14, and they are part of the Bible’s messianic symbolism that points us to Yahweh’s redemptive plan for mankind through Yeshua (Yahweh’s Salvation). These numerical symbols exemplify divine perfection, the messiah, atonement, and redemption.

As amazing as this exploration has been so far, I now want to show you another reason these numbers were chosen by Yahweh to represent His Yeshua (salvation) to mankind and why Continue reading →

The Messiah Factors: Numerical Evidence for Yahweh’s Redemptive Plan – Part II (b)

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Last week we looked at the Messiah Factors of 7, 13 & 14 and their relationship to the Bible’s sacred festivals and a Biblical reckoning of time. Today in Part II of this fascinating exploration of the Bible Messianic symbolism we will look at the 13th Enumeration, the Root of David, the Hebrew word behind “His Anointed”, and how each of these are important parts of how Yahweh describes His redemptive plan for mankind.

The 13^th Enumeration
We’ll start today by looking at one of the most fascinating enigmas of the Bible, namely the lineage of Yeshua as presented by the apostle Matthew in the 1^st chapter of the New Testament.

For those who don’t know, it has long been understood that Matthew wrote his account of Yeshua’s life and ministry to his Jewish brethren. In other words, this gospel account uses Biblical (Jewish) idiom, symbolism, and type. So when reading this gospel account it’s important to view it through this contextual lens.

So what do we find as the opening argument in Matthew’s account of Yeshua as the promised Messiah? We have a lineage of Yeshua as a son of Abraham and David. This lineage is used to establish Yeshua bona fides as a legitimate descendant of the two main Biblical heros through which the promised Messiah was prophesied to come.

Take a look at Matthew’s lineage of Yeshua. See if anything stands out to you. Once you’ve had a chance to study this ancient list of names, we’ll explore it in depth and I’ll show you some important details that will really thrill you.

The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham…

So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations. (Matthew 1:1 & 17)

Matthew’s generational listing of Yeshua’s ancestors is unique in the Biblical record on several accounts:

First of all, it is arranged in three epics or groupings of 14 generations. In consideration of the sacrificial symbolism we have explored in Part I of this article it should come as no surprise that Matthew would emphasis the number 14 in relationship to Yeshua as the promised Messiah.
Second, while this list is described a grouping of three 14 person generations, in actual fact, Matthew presented only 14 + 14 +13 generations. In other words, there are only 41 names in Yeshua’s lineage instead of the 42 implied by the 3×14 generational grouping. Matthew made Yeshua the 13th generation or what I like to call the 13th Enumeration.
Third, Matthew purposely left out 4 of Yeshua’s ancestors in order to present his arrangement of Yeshua’s lineage the way he did. These omissions were chosen to emphasis some very important information Matthew was trying to convey in this list.

I want to stress here, that for Matthew to take the liberties he did with Yeshua’s lineage he had to have had a Continue reading →

The Messiah Factors: Numerical Evidence of Yahweh’s Redemptive Plan

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Part I (a) – Calendars, Apostles, & the Middle Wall of Partition

Do you believe all Scripture is inspired by Yahweh, the living God of the Bible? Do you believe it has meaning and symbolism meant to be understood by us today? If you do, then what purpose could there be for the number and order of the sacrifices I showed you in my last blog post: The Bible’s Holy Days: Pictures of the Messiah? (If you missed those charts I’ve reproduced them at the end of this blog post)

Sure, we know that Yeshua’s death and resurrection were fulfillments of the shadows or types found in the Biblical holydays of Passover, Unleavened Bread, and First Fruits, and that the fall feasts: Trumpets, Atonement, and Tabernacles – prophesy of His second coming. But why the clearly intentional use of the numbers 7, 13, and 14 in sacrifices offered during these feast days? What purpose could they have?

Part of the answer, I believe, is that numbers are the universal language and to insure that His redemptive plan could be identified and its purpose amplified, Yahweh in His infinite wisdom chose to stamp the sacrificial system of the Bible with the numbers 7, 13 & 14. Because of their importance to this redemptive message, I think of these numbers as the Messiah Factors.

What is Biblical Time?

As I hope you’ll see in this article, the Messiah Factors are not only found in the sacrificial rites related to the Bible’s holydays of Passover, Unleavened Bread, First Fruits, Trumpets, Atonement, and Tabernacles. In fact, these numbers are incorporated into the very calendar by which these Biblical holydays are regulated.

The first detailed explanation of “time” in the Bible is found in Genesis 1:14-16. Here it describes Yahweh’s heavenly Rolex and the basics of its celestial gears:

And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. (Genesis 1:14-16)

According to Genesis the “lights in the firmament of heaven” divide the day and night. In this divine arrangement there were two “lights”. The greater light (the sun) rules the day and the lesser light (the moon) rules the night. These lights were made as signs (‘owth – signs or signals), seasons (appointed times or seasons), days, and years.

So the two main gears of Yahweh’s heavenly Rolex are the sun and moon. The sun, the light that rules the day, is a heavenly gear of 365.24 days in length. This gear is further reduced into a gear of 6 days labor and a 7^th day of rest. This 6/7 gear makes 52 cycles in every solar year (plus a fraction of 1.24 days ever year). Because of the design of this gear (the earth’s position and movement relative to the sun) there are roughly 4 seasons of 13 weeks (52 weeks) in every solar year of 365.24 days.

Now the lesser light in this heavenly Rolex is the moon. The moon is a gear of 29.53 days in length. Because of our heavenly watchmaker’s design, the moon has an internal cycle of waxing and waning. The visible light of this bi- monthly cycle is roughly 13 or 14 days. This nighttime gear in Yahweh’s Rolex has been flashing its signal for millenniums now. Take a look for yourself from April of this year.

Image from: https://www.calendar-365.com/moon-calendar/2018/April.html

A 13^th Month
Finally, the lunar and solar gears of Yahweh’s heavenly Rolex were designed to regulate two different aspects of the Bible’s calendar so they naturally have different cycle lengths. In other words, 12 lunar cycles of 29.53 days only equal 354.36 days. This means that a 12 month lunar “year” is roughly 11 days shorter than a solar year. To reconcile both sides of the Biblical calendar then, a 13^th month is added roughly every three years. It is this 13^th month that keeps lunar and solar aspects of the calendar in synchronization.

The way I like to think of it is, that the solar side of the Bible’s calendar regulates mankind’s day to day activities under the curse of sin. The lunar side of the Bible’s calendar is up there in the night sky reminding mankind every night of Yahweh’s redemptive plan for us. Reminding us that Yahweh’s Salvation, His Yeshua, has paid the price for our sins (He became our Passover – the lamb slain from the foundation of the world) and that someday He will be Continue reading →

Bible Prophecy and the Law of Moses

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Over the next few weeks I’m going to explore the subject of Bible prophecy and its relationship to the Bible’s holy festivals and their related sacrificial service as described in the Torah (law). Seeing the subject through this contextual lens, I believe, will give you a new appreciation for the beauty and congruency of YHWH’s redemptive plan for mankind (it has for me).

In this series, I hope to show you, there is more to the sacrificial symbolism of the Bible than most have understood and that symbolism points us to the inescapable conclusions that Yeshua (Jesus) is the Messiah promised in the Scripture.

We will start this series by looking at the significance of Yeshua’s fulfillment of the Bible’s holydays. We’ll then dig below the surface to show how these holydays and their associated sacrificial rites provide us with an amazingly congruent picture of the Messiah’s redemptive mission. Finally, in Part III will take that symbolism, shadow, and type and show why it is an integral part of Daniel’s 70 Weeks, the only prophecy in the Bible which gives a specific date for the coming of the Messiah Yeshua.

Bible Prophecy and the Law of Moses
Part I – The Bible’s Holy Days: Pictures of the Messiah
Part II (a) – The Messiah Factors: Numerical Evidence of Yahweh’s Redemptive Plan
Part II (b) – The Messiah Factors: Numerical Evidence of Yahweh’s Redemptive Plan
Part III – Seven, 70, & Sevens: Daniel 9 & the Bible’s Messianic Symbolism

So without further introduction, here is Part I in my exploration of Bible Prophecy and the Law of Moses:

The Bible’s Holy Days: Pictures of the Messiah
Did Yeshua (Jesus) fulfill the law? This is one of the most controversial questions of the church age. Interestingly, both extremes of this discussion often point to the following words of Yeshua as evidence for their position.

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil [pleroo]. ¹⁸ For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. (Matthew 5:17-18)

One extreme says that Yeshua’s death and resurrection fulfilled all the law so that now the church is under a period of grace where no law applies. The other extreme of the argument says that all the law and the prophets have not yet been fulfilled, so the church is still under all 613 commandments of the law.

What if both side are looking at the subject from the wrong perspective? Continue reading →

Did the Apostle Peter Believe in the Imminence of Christ’s Return?

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Peter & Paul

This week I’d like to look at the controversial question of Christ’s “imminent” return for the church, but from a different angle than most of you might have approached the subject before.

Today many of my peers believe that this event could have taken place at any point after the death and resurrection of Yeshua and that there is no “prophesied event” that needs to take place before this “rapture” of believers transpires. Here is how two of today’s highly respected evangelical prophecy teachers see the subject:

A foundational aspect of the rapture, as taught in Scripture, is that it is imminent. By imminent we mean it could happen at any moment, and there is no prophesied event that has to take place first before the rapture can occur. It is the next event on the calendar. (Ed Hindson & Hitchcock, Can We Still Believe in the Rapture? (p. 123). Harvest House Publishers. Kindle Edition.)

Is Mr. Hindson & Mr. Hitchcock’s perspective on the subject accurate? To be fair, it’s a perspective shared by many respected expositors of the Bible.

To hopefully give you some additional insight into this question I want to look at the subject through the perspective of the apostle Peter. You know, I sometimes forget that the books of the Bible that comprise our New Testament are for the most part actually letters written by the apostles to specific members or groups of what became known as the “Christian” church. Often in my mind I lump them together as just a collection of books written to the church without considering the context and perspective of those to whom those letters or epistles were written.

Let me give you an example of why context is so important. How many of you can tell me what the words in the following picture mean?

The words don’t make much sense, do they? What if I told you that I was responsible Continue reading →

Eliashib, Artaxerxes, & Sir Robert Anderson

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I don’t know about you, but I hate when I get things wrong, especially subjects related to the Bible. It recently came to my attention that I’ve been making a statement that is not accurate. This week I want to set the record straight.

As many of you know, I’ve often claimed that the sum total of Sir Robert Anderson’s evidence for his Artaxerxes Assumption is a quote by Rawlinson regarding Artaxerxes’, Ezra’s, & Nehemiah’s place in the 2nd temple era. Well, it turns out, due to sloppy research on my part, this is not an accurate statement. To give you the context of my erroneous statement here is a quote taken from my book Daniel’s Seventy Weeks: The Keystone of Bible Prophecy:

“By far, the decree by this unnamed Persian Artaxerxes— once again presumed to be Longimanus, known to history as Artaxerxes I— is the most popular choice when scholars look for the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem prophesied by Daniel. Sir Robert Anderson, the great Christian writer, popularized this theory in his influential book The Coming Prince. Anderson does indeed make an impressive case, but surprisingly, he fails to address the scriptural basis for his belief that Ezra and Nehemiah were contemporaries of Longimanus. Instead, Anderson, in one of the most far-reaching eschatological errors of the past two centuries, simply defers to the judgment of the great historian Rawlinson. I quote Rawlinson as found on p. 71 of Anderson’s The Coming Prince:

“Artaxerxes I reigned forty years, from 465 to 425. He is mentioned by Herodotus once (6. 98), by Thucydides frequently. Both writers were his contemporaries. There is every reason to believe that he was the king who sent Ezra and Nehemiah to Jerusalem, and sanctioned the restoration of the fortifications.”— RAWLINSON, Herodotus, vol. 4, p. 217.

Did you catch that? “There is every reason to believe” is the sum of Rawlinson’s and Anderson’s evidence for Ezra and Nehemiah’s place in the Second Temple era! Not a single reference to Ezra’s age or the natural chronological flow of Ezra 6 and 7 is mentioned. Anderson, out of a well-intentioned necessity to prove his interpretation of Daniel 9, simply ignored the biblical evidence, instead relying on Continue reading →

Sacrifice, Symbolism, & the Passover

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Imagine how it would affect your world view if you found yourself bound to an altar looking up at your father with a knife raised to kill you. Imagine yourself as a father being asked to do such a task. Of the two who do you think was the more profoundly affected by the events?

You know, we often point to the faith of Abraham in obedience to God, in this probably the most difficult test of his life, but what about the faith of Isaac? Have you ever thought that maybe Isaac’s faith in his father was also great? We often assume, at least I have, that Isaac was a helpless child bound against his will, but I wonder if that is really the whole story.

I wonder just how much Isaac trusted his own father’s word. You see, before Abraham and Isaac ascended the mountain, Abraham made it clear to his servants that he and Isaac would go and worship and return again. Abraham when asked by Isaac where the sacrifice would come from was assured by his father that YHWH would “provide himself a sacrifice”.

And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together. – (Genesis 22:7-8)

What do think Abraham said to Isaac as he raised that knife to the terrified look in his beloved son’s eyes? Through his own tears I wonder if Abraham didn’t remind Isaac of what a miracle his birth had been and that when he came into this world it was as a result of God’s promise to give Sarah and himself a son in their old age. Maybe he reassured him that he was their miracle child YHWH had promised and while he didn’t understand why he was being asked to sacrifice that precious gift or exactly how the next few minutes would play out, he trusted YHWH, the living God of the Bible, and he knew that at the end of the day both of them would be coming back down that mountain because they had a destiny to fulfill.

As Passover comes once again this year I can’t help but hear the echoes of that poignant story as I Continue reading →

Patterns of Evidence: The Exodus

Of Superstitions and Unknown Gods

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Temple-Minerva-Athens Are you superstitious? Whenever I think about superstitions I can’t help but think of the Apostle Paul and his speech to the men of Athens. By all accounts, Paul was quite a character. I can just picture him standing on the ancient Areopagus (Mars Hill) of Athens nearly two thousand years ago calling out to those gathered at the famous altar to the Unknown God:

“Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.”

I admit, I would like to have been there for that speech. To see Paul in his billowing robes challenging the highly educated Atheneans about their unfounded superstitions would have been quite a sight. Anyway, Paul goes on to explain to the men of Athens that the God they ignorantly worship was the living God of the Bible. If the Apostle Paul was here today, I can just see him chiding our generation with similar advice.

Let’s take the number 13 for example. Even among Christians this number has a certain evil connotation about it. Have you ever wondered why the number 13 has such a superstitious aura? What if I told you, that like the ignorance of those men of Athens concerning the altar to their Unknown God, the superstitions surrounding the number 13 are but the vestiges of a similar story that involves that same “Unknown God”? Continue reading →