What year is it really?

This Feast of Trumpets, the Hebrew calendar turns to 5787.

According to traditional Jewish chronology, that means 5,787 years from the creation of Adam.

Except there is a problem with the calendar.

A real one.

The traditional chronology comes largely through Seder Olam Rabbah, an ancient rabbinic chronology. When you reach the Persian period, its timeline becomes dramatically shorter than the chronology reconstructed from Persian, Babylonian and Greek history.

Traditional Jewish chronology places the destruction of the First Temple around 422 BC.

Modern historical chronology places it around 587 or 586 BC.

That is roughly a 165 year difference.

It gets even more interesting when you look at Persia itself.

Conventional chronology gives Persian rule over the region roughly 207 years. Seder Olam compresses the Persian period to only about 34 years.

This is where some prophecy researchers start doing some very interesting math.

There are proposed chronologies floating around that attempt to restore more than the standard 165 year discrepancy. One commonly repeated calculation uses 207 years.

If you applied a 207 year correction to 5787, you would get this.

5787 + 207 = 5994.

Six years from the year 6000.

Now before somebody screenshots that sentence and tells Facebook I set the date of the rapture, read it again.

I'm not saying the calendar has been proven to be exactly 207 years wrong. It hasn't.

The 207 years refers to the approximate length assigned to the Persian period in conventional chronology, not 207 proven missing years. The historically recognized discrepancy around the destruction of the First Temple is closer to 165 years.

Still, I understand why the theory gets people's attention.

Because year 6000 has been sitting in Jewish thought for a very long time.

The Talmud records this ancient teaching.

“Six thousand years is the duration of the world.”

Sanhedrin 97a

It goes on to compare the seventh thousand years with Sabbath rest.

Think about the pattern.

God worked six days and rested on the seventh.

Psalm 90:4 says,

“For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past”

Peter writes,

“One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”

2 Peter 3:8

Ancient Jewish teachers saw human history through that same creation week pattern.

Six thousand years followed by a seventh millennium of rest.

Then Christians open Revelation 20 and find Jesus Christ reigning for one thousand years.

That's where this becomes fascinating.

Six days.

Six thousand years.

Then the seventh day.

A thousand year Kingdom.

Now put the disputed chronology beside Daniel's final seven years and you can understand why people are talking about it.

If the 207 year correction were right, 5787 would correspond approximately to 5994, leaving about six years until 6000.

I'm not building doctrine on that calculation. I'm certainly not setting a date.

I'm showing you why the discussion exists.

He did command us to watch.

“Watch therefore: for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.”

Matthew 24:42

Maybe we're 48 years from the 6000 year marker.

Maybe somebody eventually demonstrates that the chronology is off by considerably more.

Or neither calculation has anything whatsoever to do with the timing of the Lord's return.

Either way, I'm watching.