Epilogue

“Who Do Men Say That I Am?”

(Based on Matt 16:13-20; Mark 8:27-30; Luke 9:18-21)

            One day in the final six months of His ministry, Jesus, after having healed a blind man in Bethaisda,^S1 took His disciples on a 25 mile journey to a place beyond the limits of Galilee, into one of the little (Gentile) towns of Caesarea Philippi [See Map #3]. In this place where the worship of pagan gods prevailed, Jesus asked His disciples two related questions concerning who they thought He was. He first asked: “Who do men say that I am?” (Mark 8:27). Either Jesus was here trying to get the disciples to think a little, or He really wanted hear what other people thought, and had said about Him, as Luke’s version of this question seems to indicate by saying: “Who do the crowds say that I am?” Luke 9:18 [i.e.s].^S2 Jesus had really caused a stir in Jerusalem since He had begun His ministry (cf. e.g., Mark 6:14), and apparently He hadn’t been keeping up with all of the rumors that had been circulating about Him, so now the disciples began to restate to Him what they had heard being said about Him and His strikingly Biblical Ministry (cf. John 7:40-43). They said that some the people were saying that He was either: John the Baptist (Mark 6:14, 16; 8:28; Luke 9:19), or Elijah (Matt 16:14; Mark 6:15; 8:28; Luke 9:19), or Jeremiah (Matt 16:14) or one of the prophets of old (Matt 16:14; Mark 6:15; [cf. Matt 21:11]; 8:28) or the long-awaited for “Prophet.” (John 6:14; 7:40; cf. Duet 18:15). The crowd of 5000+ that He had fed at Bethaisda had strongly believed that He was the promised King of Israel (John 6:15), while others began to wonder if He was not the promised Son of David (Matt 12:23; cf. 21:9). In all of these responses, people had recognized that Jesus was more than just an ordinary man, but they still had failed to see Him as who He really was.

            Having heard the opinions of others, Jesus now pointedly directed this question to the His disciples, who had left all to follow Him simply by faith (Luke 5:11; cf. Matt 19:27-29; Luke 9:59-62). He asked them: “But who do you say that I am?” (Matt 16:15). Peter, as usual, was the first to speak up, and he usually would say the first thing came to his mind without thinking about it first, but this time around he expressed, with great conviction, what he had come to deeply ponder and believe and said: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Matt 16:16; comp. with John 6:66-69^N3). Jesus was quite pleased with this response of Peter and pointed out to His usually brash disciple that he had just spoken an eternal and inspired truth saying:

“Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.” (Matt 16:17).

            Today, in this time that we are living in, this same question that Jesus had once posed to His disciples, and to then-known "world" back then, is still being asked by Him to this further-removed generation of the 21^st century, because even in a world that is dominated by secularism, materialism, "immoralism," paganism and all kinds of non-Christian "-isms," the question about who the historical Christ was, still needs to be answered by each and everyone. His actual existence just cannot be denied by anyone since He had such an unforgettable, and undeniable impact on this world, and the evidence for Him just cannot be simply pushed aside.^R4 He is even greatly acknowledged by people of religious faiths outside of Christianity; but the question that they, and everyone else must come to answer is: Do I believe, like the apostle Peter, and many others, that Jesus Christ, -Jesus of Nazareth- is the Son of the living God?

 Christ Into All The World

          Since the great gospel commission was given by Jesus to His disciples of all ages (Matt 28:19, 20), Christians have done their best to help others understand and accept the truth about who Jesus really is; and that with a great measure of success. According to the World Christian Encyclopedia,^B5 despite the exponential increase in the world’s population over the centuries, the increase in the percentage of the world’s population that has been evangelized with the Gospel of Jesus Christ has gone from a first century percentage of 28% to an estimated 72% by the mid 1980's, and with an increase projected to reach 80% by the year 2000.^R6  But what these pro-rated projections did not take into consideration (simply because they could not), are the tremendous and unforeseen advances in global communication of the past two decades, which have literally come to shrink our world. Today, with the quantity, and the variety of resources that are available for evangelism, such as television, printing presses, satellite technology and especially the Internet, it is not impossible that well-over 90% of the world’s population will be “evangelized”  around the turn of the New Millenium.

            These are indeed exciting statistics and times for Christians today since all these figures serve as a continual reminder that the second coming of Jesus is very near. Of all the signs of the end and concerning His Second Coming, the only one that He said would bring about the “end” and His Second Coming was that the gospel would be preached in all the world, as a witness to all nations. (Matt 24:14).

            Unfortunately, this is where the good news from the statistics in the World Christian Encyclopedia come to an end because the majority of the number of those who have been “evangelized” (about 2/3) are people who have simply heard about Christianity and that does not include the over 1 billion people who have never heard Christ’s Gospel Message. So while about 5.5 billion people in this world are said to have been “evangelized,” the number of those who have actually come to"believe" in Jesus Christ still numbers (now) over 2.4 billion,^R7

            While Jesus did sadly predicted that the end-time worldwide proclamation of the gospel would primarily serve as ‘a witness to all nation’(cf. Luke 17:26-37; 18:8b; 2 Thess 2:11, 12; Rev 6:14-17), He still greatly urged and commissioned Christians to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,”(Matt 28:19) for, as every Christian knows, is not good enough for someone to just know about Christ or about Christianity, but they must also come to believe in Him in the full sense of the word. For it is only a belief in Jesus as “Immanuel,” “God with Us,” (i.e., the Pre-Existent and Eternal God) that will save anyone, in this world, from their sins. (See Matt 1:21-23 & John 8:24). This necessity for salvation is of particular importance for the people who have already been “evangelized” for they have been given a chance to come to a saving knowledge of Christ. (Eph 4:13, 14; Phil 3:8-10; 2 Pet 3:18). God then will not be able to ‘wink at their days of ignorance’ (Acts 17:30), and judge them as such (Luke 12:48). It also should not be forgotten that the Great Gospel commission of Christ also encouraged Christians to ‘teach [others] to observe all that Jesus has commanded’ (Matt 28:20a), and that included becoming an active part of His movement here on earth (cf. Acts 2:40-47; 16:31).

            So then, what concrete evidence for Christ’s Messiahship can the Christian offer to unbelievers today? How can Christians help others come to have the same faith that Peter and the other disciples had in the historical Christ back in the first century A.D.? Fortunately, we do not have to search far for the answer for Peter himself provides the solution in a letter that wrote to first century believers, in about 67 A.D. Even though he had been an eye-witnessed of the great evidences about Jesus’s Deity through the many signs and miracles that Jesus had performed and the events of the transfiguration (Matt 17:1, 2) and resurrection (Mark 16:7; Luke 24:33-49), he still recommended later first-century believers to base their faith in Jesus Christ on the “more sure word of prophecy” so that they too would know that they had not followed “cunningly devised fables.” (2 Peter 1:16-21).

            Indeed, because of the many Old Testament Messianic prophecies that were fulfilled by Jesus, as reported in the factual accounts of the Gospels, Christians today have no doubt that Jesus was all that He claimed to be. As Peter Stoner reported in his book Science Speaks, the probability that any man might have lived down to the present time and fulfilled but 16 of the 300 Old Testament prophecies about the advent of the Messiah is an astounding 1 in10⁵³.^B8   
             Indeed because of the fact that the first century Gospel writers: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, reported events exactly as they had happened, and because of the overall textual and historical reliability of the 2000 year-old New Testament and the 3500 year-old the Bible, Christians today do have a very reliable, and well-documented basis upon which they can build up their faith in Jesus Christ.

            Unfortunately, there is still a problem that remains. How do you get someone who still refuses to accept the reports of the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies that are pointed out in the Gospel accounts to come to fully believe in Jesus Christ? Is there a prophecy in the Bible that does not depend on the explicit indications of fulfillment by neither Matthew, Mark, Luke or John? Is there a prophecy about Jesus that can stand on its own witness and still provide a strong witness that Jesus was all that He claimed to be?  Indeed there is, and this is where the Seventy Week prophecy of Daniel comes into the picture.^N9As it was shown in this book, this prophecy so accurately outlined the future life, ministry and death of Jesus Christ, the Messiah that it is practically impossible for any thinking and honest person not begin to take the story of the Gospel and the rest of the Bible more seriously after studying it. Indeed many non-Christians over the years, have had to wrestle with the irrefutable evidences that is provided by this amazing prophecy.

            For example while Jews are generally not be impressed by the Midrashic^N10 exposition of some Old Testament passages by Levi-^N11Matthew,^{R12,  N13} they have to go out of their way to try to muffle the undeniable “timely” Messianic testimony found in the Seventy Weeks of Daniel as in their religious book called the Talmud, a ban has been placed in order to strongly discourage the study of particularly this “time” prophecy (along with other Messianic prophecies), and a curse has even been pronounced on anyone who does by saying: “Cursed be the bones of the fingers of the land of the man who turns in the book [of Daniel] to study the time.”^B14 Even Jewish historian Flavius Josephus went out of his way to avoid discussing the Messianic themes in this prophecy. While he devoted much time to the discussion of the book of Daniel in general^R15 and particularly discussed the prophecy of Daniel 8;^R16 he still avoided discussing the Messianic predictions of the Seventy Weeks, even though he did comment on the predicted destruction of Jerusalem in Dan 9:27.^R17

 While the ban in the Talmud may have been made in order to prevent unnecessary and at times dangerous Messianic uprisings and resulting revolts (such as the aftermath of Bar Kokhba revolt),^N18 what Josephus, and especially these Jewish religious leaders, have indeed come to do is prevent the Jewish people from studying this prophecy for themselves which would have permitted them to realize that the determined "time" for the advent of the Messiah had completely run out before the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 A.D. Then they would have come to see that these predictions were accurately fulfilled in the life, ministry, and death of Jesus of Nazareth.

            When one does indeed consider the Biblical interpretation of the Seventy Weeks, as it has been given in this book, it is indeed no surprised that the study of this prophecy has been led to be banned in especially Judaism, as it certainly would be an undeniable piece of evidence that would lead the Jews to fully accept the distinctive truths about Jesus the Messiah, as it is revealed in the events of the gospel accounts which they are already fully aware of.^N119 Case in point, the late Christian preacher Ray C. Stedman in his work God’s Countdown (1969) tells the story that:

“In the seventeenth century a very learned Jew published a book in which he set forth the claims of Jesus Christ to be the Jewish Messiah. In the preface to the book he told how he himself had been converted by listening to a debate between a knowledgeable Jew and a Christian convert from Judaism over the meaning of this passage in Daniel 9. The moderator of the debate was a learned rabbi, and as the Christian pressed the claims of this passage home it became so clear that the passage was pointing to Jesus Christ that the rabbi closed the debate with these words: "Let us shut up our books, for if we go on examining the prophecy we shall all become Christians."”^B20

            The Biblical interpretation of the Daniel’s Seventy Weeks could also serve as a bridge to reach other people around the world today who are of other religious faiths outside of Christianity, like the Muslims, the Buddhists and the Hindus.

            First of all, since the Muslims already believe that Jesus was “a great prophet” and make repeated mentions of Him in the Koran^R21 (where He is referred to as “Isa”), they may be the one religious group that could be really captivated by this prophecy. Since their reluctance to fully accept Jesus as the Divine Son of God is largely based on the fact that they say that it would be disrespectful to believe that God would allow one of His prophets- and especially one of the most honored of the prophets- to be crucified,^R22 (some would rather say that it was someone else who died on the cross [some say it was Judas] and not Jesus), in the specific dates for the Messiah’s baptism and death that were foretold in the Seventy Weeks, they would come to see that Jesus was simply following and fulfilling the long ago, pre-ordained plan of His Father when He allowed Himself to be arrested, falsely condemned and crucified.

            A former Muslim who wrestled with the issue of Jesus’s crucifixion said that one thing that really affected him was to see that Jesus “over and over mentioned and predicted His death... and it really happened.”^R23 If Muslims were to see that the Seventy Week prophecy had accurately predicted, and accurately pre-depicted this very event over 600 years before it actually happened, to the exact year and season (Dan 9:26, 27), then this would surely lead them to fully accept Jesus Christ's claims of Divine Messiahship.

            Concerning the Buddhists, because this amazing prophecy was given around the time that Buddhism was founded (the 6^th century B.C.),^B24  then this minor link could actually lead them to come to acknowledge the inspiration of the Bible and to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ more closely since they already consider Him to be a great spiritual Master, and on the same level as Buddha, no less.^B25  Another part of this prophecy that could really captivate their attention is the fact that this prophecy alludes to the significance of Christ's sacrificial death since they also believe in a very similar sacrificial-death story, as taught by Buddha.^R26

            As for the Hindus, who are told by one of their religious leaders Gandhi that “your lives will be incomplete unless you reverently study the teachings of Jesus,”^B27  this prophecy could help them to see that this same Jesus was actually the only "Chosen One of God" (John 14:6), and not one of several divine beings who provided a way to God.^B28 If they would come to understand this truth about the Uniqueness of Christ, as it was indicated in this prophecy by the double absolute titles of "Messiah" and "King" (Dan 9:25, 26), then they could come to fully grasp the other truths about Jesus’s exclusiveness as it is revealed throughout the Bible (cf. John 5:39). They would then come to realize that He was the only Chosen One of God, and was also foreordained to redeem all of mankind

            To sum it all up, all of these religious groups, and other “unbelievers,” would find in the Seventy Weeks of Daniel the "concrete evidence" that they needed, or were looking for, as this prophecy contains great historical accuracy and specivity, and also delves into what constitutes the heart of the gospel message; the vicarious, atoning, and sacrificial death of Jesus Christ on Calvary. (John 12:32).

                                   

God Has Saved the Best For Last!

            When one ponders the fact that the apostles, in their day tried to use every available “piece of evidence” to show that Jesus was indeed the Messiah,^S229 God made Man, it then becomes really surprising that the Seventy Weeks prophecy wasn’t used at all in their apologetic repertoire. One would expect that Levi-Matthew, of all people, would have been the first to point out the precise fulfillment of this prophecy as he was writing for Jews who were well already aware of this prophecy, and, according to the study of Roger T. Beckwith,^B30 were anticipating a Messianic fulfillment of it.^R31 Since the interpretation of Daniel’s Seventy Weeks wasn’t really fully understood until some time in about the late second century A.D.,^N32 but also since, as we have seen, Jesus was fully aware of it and its precise chronological predictions,^R33 yet still did not fully reveal it to His disciples, it could then only be seen here that God in His clairvoyance had decided to save the best for last. I.e., He chose to saved this undeniable “piece of evidence” for the generations that would be living in the centuries after Christ’s first advent (particularly the generations from the mid-nineteenth century on [see Dan 12:4 & 9, 10]) and would be further removed from the quite noticeable, and at times (literally) earth-shaking, events of the early first century that accompanied the birth, rise and progress of Christianity. This harmonizes with the apologetic method that was established by the resurrected Jesus Himself as He used the Scriptures (i.e. the Old Testament) to prove that He was indeed the Messiah (Luke 24:27).

            Indeed when one ponders this development here, it can only be seen that in the Seventy Weeks prophecy, God provided, for especially this end-time generation, an immovable “Cornerstone” for anyone today who would like to build up their faith in Jesus Christ.

                       

Glory be to God for the great things which He has done!

Notes to "Epilogue"

1. Mark 8:22-26.

2. See also the exchange between Christ and some Jews in John 10:24-26.

3. Chronological harmonies of the Gospels agree that the discussion in John 6:66-69, which took place at the time of the feeding of the 5000+, did take place before the discussion that Jesus had with his disciples just prior to “Peter’s Confession.” This is then just as Luke’s “sequential account” had also indicated. (See Luke 9:10-21. A period of a few weeks had elapsed between the event mentioned in Luke 9:10-17 and the one mentioned right after in Luke 9:18-21).

4. See the investigation of journalist Lee Strobel in The Case for Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1998).

5. David B. Barrett, ed., World Christian Encyclopedia. A Comparative Study of Churches  and Religions in the Modern World. A.D. 1900-2000 (Oxford University Press, 1982).

6. Ibid., 18, -Global Table 10.

7. See Elwell and Yarbrough, 246.

8. Peter Stoner, Science Speaks: An Evaluation of Certain Christian Evidences (Wheaton IL: Van Kampen Press, 1952), 77.

9. Cf. the similar comments or the Christian Jew: Louis S. Lapides to discredit the “Intentional Fulfillment Argument” quoted in Strobel, The Case for Christ, 184, 185.

10. The Jewish Midrashic style is “an exegesis which, going more deeply than the mere literal sense, attempts to penetrate into the spirit of the Scriptures, to examine the text from all sides, and thereby to derive interpretations which are not immediately which are not immediately obvious.” [UJE  8:548 -"Midrash"].

11. This is understood to be a second name for Matthew since it was used interchangeably in identical accounts to refer to a tax collector who had followed Jesus and was identified as “Matthew” in Matt 9:9, but as “Levi” in Mark 2:14 and Luke 5:27 (cf. Matthew 10:3; Luke 5:28, 29), but the name “Levi” never appeared in a list of the twelve disciples while the name of Matthew did (See Mark 3:18; Luke 6:15 cf. Acts 1:13).

12. See the comments of Jim Lippard [@]: http://www.strbrasil.com.br/English/Atheos/messiah.htm

13. See e.g., Matt 1:22 [Isa 7:14]; Matt 2:15 [Hos 11:1]; Matt 2:18 [Jer 31:15]; Matt 2:23b [???]. Matthew could not have been making up stories here since the Jewish audience that He was writing for could easily verify his accounts. (Cf. the similar comments of the Christian Jew Louis S. Lapides in: Strobel, The Case for Christ, 183, 184). based on the fact that the OT context of these passages that Matthew quotes are not explicitly messianic, it therefore appears that Matthew was not using these somewhat obscure Old Testament passages to conjure up some legend about a unique birth of Christ, as some skeptic have said, but that instead, through a Midrashic exegesis of the Old Testament Scriptures, he was been able to find a Biblical precedence/explanation for the incredible actual events that had historically taken place in the circumstances surrounding (especially) Jesus’s birth and infancy. He was trying to support a present reality by citing a Biblical precedent.

            The apostle Paul also used a Midrashic/“proof-texting” method to help Jewish Christians and Gentiles converts have “concrete” Biblical evidence that the integration of Jews and Gentiles in God’s New Israel was indeed, and always in God’s plan from the conception of the Jewish Nation (Gen 12:2a, 3b). [See the “proof-texts” found in (especially) the Old Testament LXX quotes that Paul used in the epistle to the Romans (e.g., Rom 9:25 [Hos 2:23]; Rom 9:26 [Hos 1:10]. Cf. Chae, Paul as Apostle to the Gentiles, 234-238].  (Albeit, the way this inclusion came to be fulfilled by the falling away of Ancient Israel had not been according the plan of the God. (see Luke 19:41-44).

14. Sanhedrin 97b (Soncino ed),  659.

15. See Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 10:10.1-10:11.7 [#186-#281].

16. Ibid., 10:11.7 [#269-#275]

17. Ibid., 10:11.7 [#276].

18. See Ray Pritz, "On Calculating the Time of Messiah’s Appearance," The Death of Messiah, ed. Kai Kjær-Hansen (Baltimore, MD: Lederer Publications, 1994), 85.

19. Church Father Julius Africanus (ca. 160 A.D.-240 A.D.), after an extensive chronological analysis of Dan 9 exclaimed: ‘I am shocked at the Jews who say that the Messiah has not arrived, and the Marcionites [(the followers of a 2^nd century Christian(?) heretic named Marcion)] who say that there was no prediction of him in the prophecies.’ [Although the original work of Africanus on the Seventy Week prophecy has not been preserved, several excerpts of his are preserved in the works of: George Syncellus, 391.22-393.24].

20. See [@]: http://www.pbc.org/dp/stedman/daniel/0366.html.                  

21. See Neal Robinson, Christ In Islam and Christianity (New York: State University of New York Press, 1991), 3-7.

22. Cf. Dean C. Halverson, Gen. ed., The Compact Guide to World Religions (Minneapolis: (Bethany House Publishers, 1996), 108, 116-117.

23. See Ibid., 117.

24. Ibid., 54.

25. Ibid., 62.

26. This similar story is as follows:

            Prince Mahanama, of the Shakya clan and a cousin of Buddha, had great faith in the teachings of Buddha and was one of the most faithful followers.

            At the time a violent king named Virudaka of Kosala conquered the Shakya clan. Prince Mahanama went to the King and sought the lives of his people, but the King would not listen to him. He then proposed that the King let as many prisoners escape as could run away while he himself remained underwater in a nearby pond.

            To this the King assented, thinking that the time would be very short for him to be able to stay underwater.

            The gate of the castle was opened as Mahanama dived into the water and the people rushed for safety. But Mahanama did not come up, sacrificing his life for the lives of his people by tying his hair to the underwater root of a willow tree.

(See The Teachings of Buddha (Tokyo: Buddhist Promoting Foundation, 1966), 254-255; quoted by Halverson, 66, 67).

27. Anand Hingorani, ed.  The Message of Jesus Christ by M.K. Gandhi the (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1964), 23.

28. Ibid., 53.

29. Eg., Matt 8:17~Isa 54:4; John 19:24b~Psa 22:18; 1 Pet 2:22~Isa 53:9.

30. Roger T. Beckwith, "Daniel 9 and Date of Messiah’s Coming in Essene, Hellenistic, Pharisaic, Zealot and Early Christian Computation,"RevQ 10 (1980): 521-542.

31. See Ibid., 542 (V) where the range of years for an expected Messianic fulfilment has been shown to be from 10 B.C. to 70 A.D.

32. The first recorded expositions of this prophecy as being fulfilled by Jesus Christ was first done in the writings an unknown “Judas” (mentioned by Eusebius [Historia Ecclesiastica 6.7.1)] who was writing around the mid 190's A.D., and also around this time, in the writings of three contemporary Church Fathers: Julius Africanus (ca. 160 A.D.-240 A.D.), see in Note #16; Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150 A.D.-220 A.D.) in: The Stromata,* 1.21 [ANF 2:329]; Tertullian of Carthage (ca. 160 A.D.-240 A.D.) in: An Answer to the Jews, chaps. 8 & 11 [ANF 3:158-160, 168] [Cf. Froom, Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, 1:260-261; 265-266].

            Clement, who had a tendency to interpret the Bible philosophically, and leaned toward speculation, (cf. Froom, 1:265) interpreted the Seventy Week prophecy by saying that the temple was built in seven weeks and during the sixty-two weeks all Judea was quiet. Then “Christ our Lord, the Holy of Holies,’ having come and fulfilled the vision of the prophecy, was anointed in His flesh by the Holy Spirit of His Father and was “Lord” during the one week. He then thought that in the first half of the week (Dan 9:27) Nero held sway, and placed the abomination in the holy city Jerusalem; and in the other half of the week he was taken away, and Otho, and Galba, and Vitellius reigned. Then Vespasian rose to the supreme power and destroyed Jerusalem, and desolated the holy place at the end of that period.

33. See discussions in Ch. 5 under “About 30 Years of Age,” and in Ch. 7 under “The Year of the Crucifixion.” Cf. Matt 26:18; Mark 1:15; 14:24; Luke 13:32, 33; John 2:4; 8:20; 11:7-9; etc.