What did Daniel predict in the Bible about the coming of the Messiah?
In 538 B.C. Daniel wrote, “So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks of years and sixty-two weeks of years” (Daniel 9:25). The time period between these two events would be 69 weeks of years. This was predicted 538 years before Christ. When was the “decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem” issued? Artaxerxes, a Persian king, ascended to the throne in 464 B.C. Therefore, his twentieth year would be 444 B.C. Nehemiah, the Jewish cupbearer to King Artaxerxes, was deeply concerned with the reports about the ruined condition of Jerusalem (Nehemiah 1:1-4) and thus petitioned the king: “Send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers’ tombs, that I may rebuild it. So it pleased the king to send me” (Nehemiah 2:5,6). The exact date of this decree to restore and to rebuild Jerusalem is given: “in the month Nisan, in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes the king” (Nehemiah 2:1). The Jewish calendar
