ESSAY 05 - 2300 years
So, there was mathematical proof for the Jews, all along, that Jesus was the Christ. But the Jews never saw it, and they never accepted Jesus for other reasons. The reasons are listed in the New Testament, and they are many. Basically, He did not fulfill their expectations. They had their tests and He did not meet them. Of course they said that their tests were from Scripture and that since He did not fulfill them that He was a false prophet.
Just as the Jews expected their Messiah to come and Establish an Earthly Kingdom so too today the Christians expect Him to come and set up a throne where every knee shall bend and every tongue shall confess, in some similar earthly fashion.
Just as the Jews expected a time of Milk and Honey, so do many Christians today expect a Millennium of a Thousand Years of Peace with Lions literally lying down with Lambs.
Some then and now expected phenomena similar to what is called the Resurrection, or Rapture, or other Marvelous Miracles.
They had then, and Christians have now quick little tests -
Is the person claiming to be The Return
Some Christians require that He comes down from heaven with nail prints in His hands, and that He not be buried anywhere.
The Jews had believed that Elijah, (who the Bible said had never died but had been translated), would come first.
"Where is Elijah, (who was to come back down from heaven), they asked."
"John the Baptist", said Jesus.
"Can't be - he was born of a woman", they replied.
Where did you come from, they asked Jesus.
"The Book says no good will come out of Nazareth', said they, quoting their Scripture.
What happened to Jesus, they asked for centuries later.
"Only those accursed of God are crucified", said they, again quoting their Scripture.
And for century after century, the Rabbis pointed out, that the promise of the Messiah, their savior, was that:
He would gather the Jews together,
"as a mother hen gathers her chicks"
as promised in Isaiah.
But the very opposite happened. At the time Jesus came, the Jews WERE together in Israel, although under Roman persecution, and then they were banned from the country and never allowed to return again until the Edict of Toleration was given in 1844.
So what other proof would a young Jew need from his rabbi, that Jesus was not his Messiah, not the savior of the Jews. But the rabbi could and did present him with much more proof and evidence. And now this story takes a strange, strange twist. Because in the last century their grew up among the Christians and Muslims what was called The GREAT Expectation about the Return of Christ.
These numbers that we are looking at became WIDELY known. There is evidence that they were first developed by one whom many even today recognize as the greatest scientist the world has ever known - Isaac Newton. His literary assistant, Edmund Halley, discoverer of the periodicity of comets and after whom Halley's Comet was named contributed much to the authenticating of calendars. As a result of these numbers, many, many people began to expect the return of Christ, in a particular year.
That year was 1844.
They arrived at that number because if one takes the verse -
Daniel 8:14
And he said unto me,
Until two thousand and three hundred days;
then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.
[We are not dealing here with how these verses have been interpreted or might be interpreted but as before are only interested in the mathematics and the dates.]
This date, and using the same starting point as we used before, yields -
2300 Dan 8:14
-457 B.C. (date from encyclopedias, as explained in previous essay)
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1843 C.E.
1844, rather than 1843, is taken as the year of the GREAT EXPECTATION and the Great Disappointment for the return of Christ. There are several reasons for this. One is that there is no year zero. The other reasons are the differences between lunar and solar calendars so that 1843 actually ends in 1844. And still other explanations are given as to which month in the year actually begins the year.
It used to be that New Year's Day was in March. A quick proof can be given. The fifth and sixth months were changed
to the names July and August after the Roman Emperors Julius and Augustus Caesar.
Sept means seven and hence September.
Octo means eight and hence October.
Like in octave, octagon or octopus,
an eight legged sea creature.
Novem means nine and hence November.
Deca means ten and hence December.
Like in decade, Decalogue and even decimal.
January was the eleventh month
but was renamed in honor of the Roman God Janis.
February was the last month and this is why we always put any extra days of a year, like in a leap year, or leap century, at the end of February.
So the New Year begins in March. Actually on March 21st, at the Spring Equinox, although the practice was to begin it on April 1st. It was a tradition that continued with some - long after the 'official' change to January 1st, and those who continued to count April 1st as New Year's day were called April Fools - and that is from whence we get the expression - 'April Fool's Day'.
Prior to 1844 there were many millennialist groups. With the possible exception of the year 1000 there had never been such intense expectation
in Christendom at one single time. But the really phenomenal matter is that similar expectations were equally intense at that time in some Isl�mic sects. Today, the Seventh Day Adventists, the Latter Day Saints
(hence these two groups' names) and some fundamentalist groups still maintain that interest. The interest was not by any means confined to either Protestant Christianity or the United States. Both the Christian Templars from Germany and the Carmelite nuns went to Israel prior to 1844 in expectation that Christ would appear there in 1844.
The single largest and most active group in the United States, with the possible exception of the Latter Day Saints, was the Millerites, the predecessor of the Russelites, Bible Students, Millennial Dawn, and Watchtower, all synonyms for the Jehovah's Witnesses that took the latter name in 1931. Their disappointment in the original 1844 expectations led them to formulate a new date of 1914 for the return of Christ, about which their literature still concedes "wrongful expectations".
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The thesis here is that Christendom's original interpretation (expectations) of the dates were absolutely correct, just as were the Jewish interpretations (expectations)
for the first quarter C.E.. What was wrong was the nature of their expectations. 1844 was again a repeat of what happened in the first century of the Christian Era.