Why that matters

The Messiah had a deadline.

So when does the clock reach the Anointed One? Christians count it a few ways. The most common starts from the order that sent Ezra back to restore Jerusalem:

Tap a date to see it happen.

  1. King Artaxerxes sends Ezra to Jerusalem, “in the seventh year of King Artaxerxes” (Ezra 7:7). The clock starts.
  2. Count 69 sevens forward. (There's no year zero.)
  3. The clock reaches the Anointed One.
  4. Jesus begins his public work, “in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar” (Luke 3:1).
  5. Jesus is crucified: “the Anointed One will be put to death.”
  6. Rome destroys “the city and the sanctuary.”
    Stones from the Temple Mount walls, found where Roman soldiers threw them down in AD 70. Photo: Wilson44691 · Public domain
    The Arch of Titus in Rome, built to celebrate the victory: soldiers carry off the Temple's menorah. Photo: Paolo Villa · CC BY-SA 4.0
  7. The seventieth seven (Daniel 9:27). Paul describes the same kind of ruler: “the man of lawlessness” who “sets himself up in God's temple,” whom “the Lord Jesus will overthrow… by the splendor of his coming” (2 Thessalonians 2:3–8).

That lands within a couple of years of Jesus, and in the order Daniel gave: the Anointed One comes, he is killed, and then the Temple falls. Whoever the Messiah is, he had to come before AD 70. And one seven is still on the clock, waiting for his return.

Eight copies of Daniel turned up among the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest copied around 125 BC. The book was being copied and read more than a century before Jesus was born. Jesus himself called him “the prophet Daniel.”

Daniel at Qumran · Matthew 24:15
Check it yourself:Prophecy of Seventy WeeksEzra 7Luke 3:1–23When Jesus began preachingMatthew 24:15Daniel 9:272 Thessalonians 2:1–12J. Paul Tanner, “Is Daniel's Seventy-Weeks Prophecy Messianic? Part 2” (Bibliotheca Sacra)
Go deeperArnold Fruchtenbaum, “The Messianic Time Table According to Daniel the Prophet” (Jews for Jesus)Up nextJesus is not a fairy tale.