The world as we know it and the life in this world could not be imagined without space, time, and matter (mass/energy). Matter, as we know it, cannot exist without space and time.

How powerful and thrilling is the message on the first page of the Bible—the biblical record about time, space, and matter coming into existence: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). All three have their origin here: God sets up the great celestial clock and introduces time (“in the beginning”); God creates space (“heaven”); and then, out of nothing He creates the matter (“the earth”). Without this supernatural revelation, the most learned scientists of our age or of any age can only speculate about cosmology—the origin of the universe and of the fundamental structure of the universe—time, space, and matter.

As the work of creation progresses from day to day, on the fourth day God brings into existence the celestial bodies: “And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years. And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also” (Genesis 1:14–16).

Two important truths stand out in this inspired record: Only God by creating matter out of nothing (that is the meaning of the Hebrew word bara) can give existence. The Creator simply said, “Let there be,” and nonexistent matter instantly came into existence, “and it was so.” Second, God not only brings something into existence, He also gives purpose to the matter He creates.

Two distinct, useful purposes of the celestial bodies for planet Earth are plainly stated:

a) Measurement of time: “And let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years” (Genesis 1:14).

b) Illumination: “And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth” (verse 15).

God creates existence and God gives purpose to whatever He creates.

Just one Bible verse from 1 Corinthians 2:7 is sufficient to show that God Who created this world is the One Who exists both in time and outside of time: “We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory.” By His nature God is both transcendent (outside of this world) and immanent (inhabiting space and time).

It is fascinating to learn that measurement of time, even in our days, is still determined by the movement of the celestial bodies, as God originally intended it. Based on the rotation of the Earth, time can be measured by observing celestial bodies crossing the meridian every day. It is only when each day at a given time multiple radio telescopes receive a beam of light from distant quasars that those data are correlated with the data received from an atomic clock at the U.S. Naval Observatory. Celestial objects of immense luminosity are still needed to determine the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) around the world.

God still keeps in motion the earth, the sun, the moon and all the stars. All of them move in perfect order and with perfect timing. “He telleth the number of the stars; He calleth them all by their name” (Psalm 147:4). Isaiah echoes the same thought: “Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth” (40:26).

The truth that God operates on time and that His plans know no haste and no delay is forcefully brought out in the history of His deliverance of the Jewish people from Egypt. (Genesis 15:14; Exodus 12:14.)

“Like the stars in the vast circuit of their appointed path, God’s purposes know no haste and no delay. . . .

“So in heaven’s council the hour for the coming of Christ had been determined. When the great clock of time pointed to that hour, Jesus was born in Bethlehem.”1

As the Creator and Sovereign of the universe, God is not only the founder and caretaker of the laws of nature; He made also the moral laws to govern the conduct of all intelligent beings. Once the first humans transgressed God’s moral law, God immediately set in motion the plan of salvation.

For about 4,000 years, animal sacrifices pointed the repentant sinners to the coming Saviour, “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8).

In addition to the routine daily sacrifices, the sanctuary services included also the services on the specially appointed days throughout a calendar year. These Old Testament annual religious festivals were known as the feast days, ceremonial Sabbaths or the “appointed times” (Hebrew moedim). All the festivals were grouped around two harvesting seasons—four feast days in the springtime and three in the autumn.

All the ceremonial Sabbaths were assigned to certain dates in the Hebrew month, governed by a lunar calendar. The Passover (Leviticus 23:5); the Feast of Unleavened Bread (verse 6); the Feast of Firstfruits (verses 10, 11); the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost (verse 16); the Feast of Trumpets (verse 24); the Day of Atonement (verse 27); and the Feast of Tabernacle (verse 34).

It is important to note that the weekly day of rest, the seventh-day Sabbath, was not controlled by the lunar calendar and was not part of the system of ceremonial, annual Sabbaths.

Of even greater importance is to observe that each moed or “appointed time” in the Hebrew calendar signified a particular saving event in the life and ministry of our Saviour Jesus Christ:

1. Jesus died and offered Himself as our sacrifice exactly on the Passover, the 14th day of the first month (Matthew 27:50; Mark 15:42; Luke 23:54; John 19:14, 31, 42).

2. The following day (the 15th) was considered the “Sabbath” and was called the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Only the sacrifice of Christ completed the day before could make humans free from sin, figuratively represented by unleavened bread.

3. “On the morrow after the Sabbath” or on the 16th (the Feast of Firstfruits), the priests were instructed to wave the sheaf of the firstfruits (barley harvest) before the Lord. The third day following the Passover and His death, Jesus was resurrected as the firstfruits of those who sleep in the Lord, on the first day of the week (Mark 16:2; Luke 24:1; John 20:1; Matthew 28:1).

4. Then, exactly on the 50th day following the Feast of Firstfruits (Pentecost), the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples of Christ and empowered them to witness for Him (Acts 2).

We could also show how the fall feasts (moedim) have found and will find their fulfillment in the closing ministry of Jesus Christ in the heavenly sanctuary and thereafter. It is not by accident that we call the great work of our Saviour in both the Old and New Testament times the “plan of salvation.” It is indeed a well-designed and meticulously executed plan wherein the time element plays a central role.

God has a detailed timetable for each saving event in the life and ministry of His Son. Not surprisingly, the coming of the Son of God and of the Son of Man to this earth, to our space and time—His entry into the public ministry and His sacrificial death—were likewise predicted with mathematical precision.

Messianic promises in the Old Testament can be traced from the books of Moses all the way to the book of Malachi. Many are found in Isaiah—just to name a few: Isaiah 7:14; 9:1, 2, 7; 11:1, 2, 4, 5, 10; 40:3–5; 52:13; 53:1–12; 61:1–3.

Another prophet of God, Micah, foretold about the Messiah’s birth: “Thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting” (Micah 5:2).

While in exile in Babylon under discouraging circumstances, God reminded the prophet Daniel that He was in control with the following explanation: “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy” (Daniel 9:24).

Here is a brief exposition of this passage: Seventy weeks or 490 prophetic days are equal to 490 years. The historicist school of prophetic interpretation relies on the day-year principle as recorded in Numbers 14:34 and Ezekiel 4:5, 6. According to this principle, a prophetic day stands for a calendar year.

The prophecy of seventy weeks applies primarily to Daniel’s people, Israel. During that period, important events closely connected with the Messiah would occur. Most importantly, this prophecy provides a timeline for the important events in Messiah’s life and public ministry:

“Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times” (Daniel 9:25).

The starting date for the seventy-week prophecy was the date when a decree was to be issued “to restore and build Jerusalem” (verse 24). Of the four decrees issued by various Persian monarchs, only the decree made in the fall of 457 b.c. by Artaxerxes I (Longimanus) to Ezra in the seventh year of the king’s reign, as recorded in Ezra 7:12–26, satisfies the prophetic qualification (authorization for full reestablishment of Jerusalem and of the Jewish nation).

Therefore, the year 457 b.c. is the starting year for the calculation of the seventy weeks (as well as for the calculation of the 2,300-day prophecy of Daniel 8:14, referring to the Messiah’s closing ministry in the first apartment of the heavenly sanctuary).

From the year 457 b.c. until Messiah the Prince there would be 7 weeks plus 62 weeks, totalling 69 weeks or 483 years. Starting in the year 457 b.c. and going forward 483 years brings us to the fall of the year a.d. 27. As we look into the biblical and Jewish history we can see that something of extraordinary religious significance took place at that time.

“And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. . . . And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease” (verses 26, 27).

No other interpretation seems more fitting to us than the one declaring that the future Messiah would die—not for His own sake but for others. In the last prophetic week, in other words, in the last seven days or years of His life and public ministry, the Messiah was to confirm the covenant with many. The central point is the midpoint of the prophetic week, or 3½ years following the inception of Messiah’s public work, when He would cause the sacrificial system to come to an end. The middle of the last prophetic week brings us to the spring of the year a.d. 31. It is a well-established fact that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified at the Passover of a.d. 31.

It should be noted that the phrase “seventy weeks” of Daniel 9 reads in Hebrew as “seventy sevens (šavua).” Seventy weeks could be conceived of as seventy periods of seven days/years, in other words, seventy sabbaticals. Understood this way, the “seventy sevens” constitutes ten jubilees (jubilee a cycle of seven sabbaticals or 49 years), the last (the seventieth seven) signifying the ultimate jubilee. In Luke 4:14–21, when Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah, He saw the ultimate jubilee in Isaiah 61:2 as being fulfilled in His own life and ministry.

Sadly, the Jews failed to acknowledge that Messiah, the great Son of David, would need to die and to offer His righteous life as a sacrifice for sin in fulfillment of Isaiah 53:6, 7. Their wrong ideas about the Messiah’s character and the nature of His reign were to have very tragic consequences for the entire Jewish nation.

One of the greatest ironies of history is that the Jewish leaders were found in a state of complete surprise and shameful ignorance when their long-awaited and anxiously hoped-for Messiah was born in the town of Bethlehem. It was not the Jews, but the foreigners, who discovered that the promised King of the Jews was about to be born. The diligent study of the Hebrew messianic prophecies and curiously, the study of the starry heavens, lead the wise men from the East first to Jerusalem and then to the town of Bethlehem in Judah in their search for a newborn Jewish King. (Matthew 2:1, 2.)

“The light of God is ever shining amid the darkness of heathenism. As these magi studied the starry heavens, and sought to fathom the mystery hidden in their bright paths, they beheld the glory of the Creator. Seeking clearer knowledge, they turned to the Hebrew Scriptures. In their own land were treasured prophetic writings that predicted the coming of a divine teacher.”2

Israel’s King was born not in a royal palace or in one of the highly esteemed Jewish families, but in a family of a poor Galilean carpenter from Nazareth. He did not come to restore the earthly reign and worldwide dominion of the Davidic Dynasty as His contemporaries had expected. He rather lived a life of an ordinary, simple young man practicing carpentry together with His earthly father. (Matthew 13:55.)

“But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Galatians 4:4). When the hands on the great celestial clock reached the appointed time, the Messiah was born.

The “fullness of time” is a meaningful expression. What kind of “fullness” (Gr. pleroma) and which “time” (Gr. chronos) is meant here? This fullness should not be understood only in a formal sense, as a correct point on a linear, chronological timeline. This fullness means much more. Jesus came to this world when certain preparation had taken place not only in the sphere of religion but also when the favorable conditions existed in other spheres of both the Jewish and the world community.

Politically the Mediterranean Europe and the Middle East were under the stable rule of the Roman Empire. Augustus Caesar (63 b.c. to a.d. 14) consolidated the power and established the Roman Peace (Pax Romana) that lasted for about two centuries. To facilitate trade and commerce and the rapid movement of their military units, the Romans maintained good roads and communication lines all over the Empire. They also developed one of the most impressive legal systems in the world, which is still studied in the civil law countries. The Romans inherited and cultivated the valuable legacy of the ancient Greeks. Alexander the Great had created a vast empire through which he spread the Hellenistic (Greek) culture, Greek learning and Greek language, which became the common language of that age and the language of the New Testament. Through the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (Septuagint or LXX) that was in existence for about two hundred years before Christ, the Word of God was available to the Gentiles and to the Jews living in diaspora. These dispersed Jews, with all their deficiencies, bore witness to the true God. All these factors—political and economical stability and cultural and linguistic common heritage greatly contributed to the birth and spread of early Christianity.

The “fullness of time” and the heavenly clock did not govern only to the birth of the Son of God. His baptism and entry into the public ministry as well as His death on the cross and resurrection were likewise the fulfillment of the divinely inspired prophecy of Daniel 9:24–27. When 69 prophetic weeks or 483 literal years expired in the fall of a.d. 27, Jesus was baptized of John in the Jordan River. From that time the Messiah was anointed and empowered by the Holy Spirit to preach the good news about the approaching kingdom of God:

“Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:14, 15). The expression, “the time is fulfilled” unquestionably refers to the prophetic time in Daniel 9:25 that is referred to above.

John the Baptist had also declared: “Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 3:2).

In a remarkable Sabbath appearance at the synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus directly confirmed the fulfillment of a major messianic prophecy (Luke 4:18, 19, 21; cf. Isaiah 61:1, 2).

We cannot escape the conclusion that the “acceptable year of the Lord” in connection with the “deliverance of the captives” is another proof for the fulfillment of the prophecy in Daniel 9:24 (the 70th week in the seventy-week prophecy being the year of Jubilee when the debts are forgiven, the land is returned to the original owners and the Hebrew slaves are made free).

In the fullness of time, God sent the One to Whom the entire ceremonial system pointed.

By His death He fulfilled the ceremonial law which pointed to the suffering Messiah.

Through Christ we are not only sons, but also heirs of God—through Christ we become heirs of the Kingdom. We are already citizens of Messiah’s kingdom of grace, but very soon we will be both citizens and co-regents in His kingdom of glory. Looking back at the fulfilled prophecies and realizing how God has worked in the past, our hearts are filled with confidence that the work which the Messiah now performs will be completed at the appointed time. We are further confident that He will come again in the clouds of glory—both as our Saviour and also as the King of kings and the Lord of lords. Most certainly, He will come again “in the fullness of time.”