A Note about the Second Edition

Having read The Harbinger and The Mystery of the Shemitah by Jonathan Cahn, I was prompted to review the Jubilee connected dates published in the First Edition of this book. The impetus for review was the extremely strong evidence, presented by Cahn, that the years 2001 and 2008 were indeed Sabbath (Shemitah) years (Lev. 25:4; Deut. 15:1-2). If so, this revealed a small discrepancy in the Jubilee years, such that 1994 should be a Jubilee year instead of 1995.

An apparent error was found concerning the year that I had accepted as the beginning of the reign of Tiberius Caesar. This year was A.D. 14, which is commonly recognized as the start of the reign of Tiberius because it is the year Augustus died. This led to the erroneous conclusion that A.D. 28 was the year when Christ was baptized. However, reviewing the history of Augustus and Tiberius in more depth revealed that A.D. 14 was not the correct year. This is a critical date because it defines the “fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar” spoken of by Luke (Luke 3:1), which is the best connection we have between Bible chronology and our Gregorian calendar. This mistake created a one-year-forward discrepancy with all the Jubilee-based dates of the First Edition.

The root of this discrepancy was two-fold. The first error was failing to recognize that in Luke 3:1, “the fifteenth year” pertains specifically to the time when “the word of God came unto John” (Luke 3:2), and not to the precise time of Christ’s baptism. The second error was overlooking the historical detail that in August of A.D. 12, Tiberius began a two year co-reign with Augustus as a co-emperor, during which his power was made equal to that of Augustus (Smith 257-258). Apparently this elevation to co-regency was considered the beginning point of Tiberius’ reign by Luke, because from the Hebrew perspective the co-reign of a monarch was considered as part of the total reign. If one considers August of A.D. 12 as the starting point, then the “fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar” would have begun in August of A.D. 26. Thus, John the Baptist would have begun to preach near Passover time A.D. 27, and Christ would have been baptized on Rosh Hashanah that same year (Luke 3:1-3, 21-22). Therefore the year of Christ’s baptism moves backward one year from A.D. 28 to A.D. 27. This in turn requires that the point in time, when “the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem” went forth, be moved backward one year from Rosh Hashanah 456 to 457 B.C. (Daniel 9:25). This is necessary in order to fulfill the sixty-nine week (483 year) time span that was prophesied by Gabriel to occur between the “going forth of the commandment” and the appearing of “Messiah the Prince” (Dan. 9:21, 25).

That year, 457 B.C., was a Jubilee year, confirmed by the agreement of the total chronology of Israel as a nation. Because the cycle of Jubilees must remain continuous, if we move the year when “the commandment” went forth backward from 456 to 457 B.C., then all the Jubilee-derived dates of the First Edition timeline must likewise move back one year. Also, the two paragraphs on page 644 concerning the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar and Christ being thirty years old have been revised to reflect this better understanding of Tiberius’ reign. The Second Edition timeline now agrees with the years 2001 and 2008 being Shemitah (Sabbath) years, since 1994 was our last Jubilee year instead of 1995.

Trent G. Conner       from the scribe’s cave        20 June 2015

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