NASA scientists have calculated the date a lunar eclipse occurred in A.D. 33 that may pinpoint the day of Jesus’ crucifixion.
In Genesis 1, we read that God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years.”
So it’s not surprising there would be a least one sign in the heavens to mark the death of Jesus as a sacrifice for the sins of the world.
The New York Post reported that NASA’s “astronomical models suggest that a lunar eclipse turned the moon red over Jerusalem on Friday, April 3, 33 AD — a date many scholars tie to Jesus’ death.”
In the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 27, we read, “Now from the sixth hour [noon] there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour.”
But extra-biblical texts indicate that in addition to this daytime darkness, a blood moon occurred the night of Jesus’ death.
“At his crucifixion the sun was darkened; the stars appeared and in all the world people lighted lamps from the sixth hour till evening; the moon appeared like blood,” read a passage from the Report of Pilate — part of the New Testament apocrypha, the Post said.
The Bible answer site Got Questions reported that A.D. 33 is the likely year of Jesus’ crucifixion, based on a prophecy in the book of Daniel.
In Daniel 9, the prophet writes of being visited by the angel Gabriel while he and his fellow Jews were being held in Babylonian captivity. Gabriel told him that the time from the decree to rebuild Jerusalem is issued until the “anointed one” (i.e., Jesus) is cut off, will be 69 weeks of years, or 483 years.
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King Artaxerxes of Persia issued the decree to “restore and rebuild Jerusalem” c. 444 B.C.
“Converting the 360-day year used by the ancient Jews, 483 years becomes 476 years on our solar calendar. Adjusting for the switch from B.C. to A.D., 476 years after 444 B.C. places us at A.D. 33, which would coincide with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Matthew 21:1–9). The prophecy in Daniel 9 specifies that, after the completion of the 483 years, ‘the Anointed One will be cut off’ (verse 26). This was fulfilled when Jesus was crucified,” according to Got Questions.
The late Dallas Theological Seminary professor Harold Hoehner calculated April 3, A.D. 33 as the date of Jesus’ crucifixion in his seminal book “Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ” employing the Daniel prophecy.
Additionally, author Andreas Köstenberger wrote a piece titled “April 3, AD 33: Why We Believe We Can Know the Exact Date Jesus Died” for the Center for Biblical Studies at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
“In the Pharisaic-rabbinic calendar commonly used in Jesus’s day, Passover always falls on the fifteenth day of Nisan (Exodus 12:6), which begins Thursday after sundown and ends Friday at sundown. In the year a.d. 33, the most likely year of Jesus’s crucifixion, Nisan 15 fell on April 3, yielding April 3, a.d. 33, as the most likely date for the crucifixion,” he explained.
The number three is significant in the Bible. Got Questions explained that it stands for divine perfection.
We know that Jesus rose on the third day, and that he is the second Person of the Trinity.
So it would not be shocking that God, knowing the Gregorian solar calendar would become the world’s calendar, would choose April 3, A.D. 33 as the date he redeemed sinners.
And NASA may have helped verify the date.
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