The Messiah Promised

God not only promised a Messiah to deliver humans from the effects of sin and death but also provided scores of prophecies to identify that Promised One. Consider only a few of these, prophecies that Jesus could not have arranged to fulfill.

It was foretold hundreds of years in advance that the Promised One would be born in Bethlehem and that he would be born of a virgin. (Compare Micah 5:2 and Matthew 2:3-9; Isaiah 7:14 and Matthew 1:22, 23.) It was prophesied that he would be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver. (Zechariah 11:12, 13; Matthew 27:3-5) It was also foretold that not a bone of his body would be broken and that lots would be cast for his garments.​—Compare Psalm 34:20 and John 19:36, Psalm 22:18 and Matthew 27:35.

Especially significant is the fact that the Bible foretold when the Messiah would come. God’s Word prophesied: “From the going forth of the word to restore and to rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Leader, there will be seven weeks, also sixty two weeks.” (Daniel 9:25) According to the Bible, the word to restore and rebuild the walls of Jerusalem was given in the 20th year of King Artaxerxes’ reign, which secular history indicates was in the year 455 B.C.E. (Nehemiah 2:1-8) These 69 weeks of years ended 483 years later (7 x 69 = 483), in 29 C.E. That was the very year Jesus was baptized and was anointed with holy spirit, becoming the Messiah, or Christ!

Significantly, the people in Jesus’ day were expecting the Messiah to appear at that time, as the Christian historian Luke noted. (Luke 3:15) Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius, Jewish historian Josephus, and Jewish philosopher Philo Judaeus also testified to this state of expectation. Even Abba Hillel Silver, in his book A History of Messianic Speculation in Israel, acknowledges that “the Messiah was expected around the second quarter of the first century C.E.” This, he said, was because of “the popular chronology of that day,” derived in part from the book of Daniel.

In view of such information, it should not be surprising that the Bible would also indicate when the Messiah would return to begin his kingly rule. Chronological evidence contained in the prophecy of Daniel pinpointed the very time that “the Most High” would hand earth’s rulership over to “the lowliest one of mankind,” Jesus Christ. (Daniel 4:17-25; Matthew 11:29) A period of “seven times,” or seven prophetic years, is mentioned, and this period has been calculated to have run out in the year 1914.a