Posted by Cygnus [Cygnus] on November 02, 1999 at 14:06:52 {.c1iAaocfMKL7zxXW/42L4bdfUTIaI}:
In Reply to: **Heavens were opened posted by Bibleman on November 02, 1999 at 01:16:47:
Gary,
(It's going great, BTW.)
: That's because the "70 weeks" prophecy is always dated throughout Christendom as the time of Jesus' baptism.
Okay, but what is their position on who Christ was before his baptism. That's what I was getting at.
Tell me what you think of this.
I've read articles which place the end of the 69th week at Jesus' "triumphant entry" into Jerusalem. Here's how it goes (you won't agree with it):
483 biblical years times 360 days per year = 173,880 days
The decree to rebuild Jerusalem occurred March 14, 445 BC (as per the Royal Observatory in Greenwich).
Add 'em up and you get the tenth of Nisan, April 6, 32 AD, Palm Sunday, the day Jesus rode in on both a colt and an ass.
Remember C.T. Russell's stuff on Jesus' invisible second presence and his second "visitation" ("they knew not the time")? Well, that's sort of how this works. Jesus finally displayed himself as the Messiah after keeping it hush-hush for so long. It was decision time for Jerusalem. And they chose to kill Jesus instead of accepting him as the Messiah. So that's when symbolically the Messiah was "cut off," on that very day.
: I didn't realize you were so convinced Jesus had no prehuman existence.
I don't believe anyone preexists their birth. Although Mormon teaching on that is interesting.
Early Jewish Christians, IMO, certainly had no concept of a pre-existent Messiah. I have reservations as to whether apostle Paul believed Christ to have preexisted as well. Even John's prologue doesn't explicitly say that a personal being preexisted.