As we read this story made familiar by so many Christmas pageants, I wonder if any of us consider the implications of it for the understanding of prophecy. This seemingly simple account, when examined closely, will bring us to a clearer view of God's intention in giving us prophecy. It will reveal Christ more fully.

Our first step in this journey to understanding to identify the magi.  Strong's Lexicon identifies magi (Greek magos) as a title referring to the wise men of Babylon or Persia.  Indeed, this is what many Christmas stories call them.  The magi would have been students of astronomy, since celestial signs were an important part of ancient cultures.  This is what led to their observation of the star.  The ordinary understanding of a celestial observation such as a new star would have to do with local events.  Celestial omens could deal with things as mundane as crop failures or as dramatic as victory over neighboring kingdoms.  Without special advance information, a local answer to match the celestial sign would be sought. At this point, let us consider the question the magi asked Herod.

The magi asked Herod, " Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east, and have come to worship Him."  This is not a question regarding their home.  It implies that when the magi saw the star, they knew that it was a sign of the birth of the Messiah.  This requires that they knew both that a Messiah would come, and that they knew when He would come.  These facts bring us to our first problem.  There is no prophecy in the OT that directly indicates when the Messiah would be born.  The magi could not just look up a date.  They had to study more deeply to get their answer.  And they had to do it in advance.  If they saw the star without prior knowledge of its coming, they would not have asked about foreign events. The only OT prophecy that indicates when the Messiah would come is Daniel 9:25.

25 "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 and sixty-two weeks;

But this prophecy does not say when the Messiah would be born.  It tells when He would be seen by the world.  So, using this by itself, the magi are still helpless.  They need more information.  Also, how would they know to look for a celestial sign?  We find our answer in the prophecy of Balaam.

16 The oracle of him who hears the words of God, And knows the knowledge of the Most High, Who sees the vision of the Almighty, Falling down, yet having his eyes uncovered.
17 "I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near; A star shall come forth from Jacob, And a scepter shall rise from Israel, And shall crush through the forehead of Moab, And tear down all the sons of Sheth.
18 "And Edom shall be a possession, Seir, its enemies, also shall be a possession, While Israel performs valiantly.
19 "One from Jacob shall have dominion, And shall destroy the remnant from the city."  Num 24:16-19

Balaam told of a "star" that would come from Jacob that would have dominion.  This king would be known by a celestial sign!  Now the magi know what to look for, but they still don't know when to look.  They need more information.

35 'But I will raise up for Myself a faithful priest who will do according to what is in My heart and in My soul; and I will build him an enduring house, and he will walk before My anointed always.
36 'And it shall come about that everyone who is left in your house shall come and bow down to him  1 Sam 2:35-36a

Things are coming together.  The Messiah will be a priest, and priests were anointed for service at age thirty.  If the magi can identify the proper decree to start the prophetic clock, then they can count sixty-nine weeks of years (483 years), subtract thirty years, and get to the Messiah's birth date, IF the time envisioned in Dan 9:25 is the time the Messiah becomes an active part of history at His anointing.  Before we introduce our friends, the Dispensationalist/Futurists (D/F's), let us review what the magi did not know.

The first fact is that the magi did not know that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem.  The Jews knew, since they had Micah's prophecy.  Also, the star did not tell them.  If it had, they would have gone to Bethlehem.  Instead, they made the logical assumption that a new king would be born in the capital, Jerusalem.  They then went to the sitting ruler and asked his help, since logically he should know of his successor.

Next, we may note that the magi did not follow the star to Jerusalem.  Had they followed it, we would have expected them to go directly to Bethlehem.  In verse 2, they tell Herod that they saw His star "in the east".  Verse 7 notes that Herod asked the magi of the time that the star had appeared.  He did not ask of what it said or did, since the star said nothing and did nothing or those actions would have been reported as well.  Herod then sends them to Bethlehem, and verses 9 and 10 tell us that this time the star led the magi to the place where Jesus was.  We are now ready to visit our D/F friends.

D/F's tell us that the prophecy of Dan 9:25 extends from (a) the decree of Artaxerxes I in 444 BC which allowed Nehemiah to rebuild the walls and gates of Jerusalem to (b) the crucifixion. They further tell us that the prophecy in Dan 9:27 describes a time in the future when a world leader known as the "Antichrist" makes a peace treaty with the Jews. After 3 ½ years, he breaks the treaty, and begins a terrible oppression of the people of God. This "Great Tribulation" lasts 3 ½ years and ends with the second coming. Let us look at Dan 9:26-27 with the D/F ideas highlighted.

26 "Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing ( the cross at the exact end of the 69 weeks), and the people of the prince (Titus, the Roman general) who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. ( the AD70 destruction of Jerusalem) And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined. (the Antichrist's peace treaty with the Jews) but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering (he breaks the treaty, and stops all sacrifices in the Temple which has been rebuilt) ; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, (the Antichrist sets up the "abomination of desolation" on the temple site, and initiates the worst oppression in history against the saints) even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate. (All ends at the second coming, after the second half of the week, the tribulation, is completed)" Dan 9:26-27

As we can see, the D/F interpretation provides an explanation for each segment of the prophecy. It is all nice and neat. Then they add Dan 7:25,

25 'And he will speak out against the Most High and wear down the saints of the Highest One, and he will intend to make alterations in times and in law; and they will be given into his hand for a time, times, and half a time.

Rev 11:2-3,

2 "And leave out the court which is outside the temple, and do not measure it, for it has been given to the nations; and they will tread under foot the holy city for forty-two months.
3 "And I will grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for twelve hundred and sixty days, clothed in sackcloth."

and Rev 12:14

14 And the two wings of the great eagle were given to the woman, in order that she might fly into the wilderness to her place, where she was nourished for a time and times and half a time, from the presence of the serpent.

to support the idea. These texts clearly talk about a periods of time that sound like they are the same length and which speak of a time of trouble. It all seems to fit nicely. An additional feature is that if you do the arithmetic, when forty two months equals 1,260 days or three and a half years, you get 360 days in a year and thirty days in a month. Now that we have set the stage, let us return to the magi.

Daniel 9:25 tells us of a time from a decree to "Messiah the Prince". It looks like this. . .

The D/F version of this looks like this . . .

.

Now we must consider the rest of the picture. Before the cross, the Messiah has to be born, grow to age thirty, be anointed as a priest, and have a period of ministry. Only then can he be crucified. This means that the picture now looks like this.

All we need to do is to determine how long the Messiah's ministry will be. This is quite easy for us, since we can look at the chronology in the gospel of John and determine that Jesus preached for 3½ years before He was crucified. Unfortunately for the magi, they do not have this luxury, and the OT does not contain any information whatever to help them. Dan 9:27 is part of the Great Tribulation, so these texts can't help the magi. They are left without a clue. The Messiah's ministry can be as short as a month or as long as ten years, and still not contradict any OT prophecy.

The consequences of this are profound. The magi will be utterly unable to tell when the Messiah is to be born. They may see the star, but because they cannot know when the Messiah's star is due, they must interpret it as another celestial sign involving their own country. They will never know that it is time to go to see the Messiah, and the story in Matthew 2 will never be written.

Allow me to restate this. If the D/F approach to prophecy is true, the visitation of the magi is impossible. The information required for them to know when to look for the Messiah's star does not exist. As long as Dan 9:27 is in the far future, no solution is available.

We must find an answer, since the magi did in fact visit Jesus. There has to be information which would allow them to determine the birth date of the Messiah. As we just noted, without Dan 9:27, there is no solution to the problem, so perhaps we should re-examine this verse. This time we will include different notes which are consistent with the original Hebrew.

27 "And he (Messiah, not Antichrist) will make a firm covenant (strengthen an existing covenant, not make a new one such as a peace treaty) with the many (the Jews) for one week (seven years), but in the middle of the week (after 3½ years of ministry) he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering (he will become the one sacrifice which is truly able to cleanse us from sin); . . .

When we see this perspective, now we can now see the information required for the magi to calculate the time for the Messiah's birth. We have to back up 33½ years from the cross to get to Jesus' birth.

This is the only viable way to make the visitation of the magi possible in the D/F schema. There is no other OT text which can be interpreted as defining the length of Jesus' ministry before the crucifixion. Unfortunately for the D/F interpreters, it introduces new problems. Since Dan 9:27 describes the seventieth week, it is now 486½ years from the decree to the cross.

There is no way to fit 486½ years from the decree of 444BC to the cross. The D/F's have determined that Christ was crucified in 33AD, and that 483 years of 360 days span the period from the decree to the cross exactly. Now, in order to fit this time span, the years have to be shortened to 357.41 days. This fits neither the 3½ years/42 months/1,260 days arithmetic nor the Jewish calendar, which has years of 353, 354, 355, 383, 384, or 385 days. There is no evidence in any source of a year of 357 days in any civilization, so we may rest assured that the magi would not know of it. The only conclusion possible is that the 360 day year is nonsense. This brings us to a second problem: the seventieth week. The only way to gain the information required to pinpoint the Savior's birth date is to bring the seventieth week of Daniel 9 into the calculation. But how do we handle the D/F reading of Dan 9:26 which has the cross at the exact end of the sixty-ninth week?

In fact, this is quite simple, since the D/F interpreters have over-read the text. Verse 26 begins with " Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing". We should notice the word "after". This is dramatically different from saying "at the end of the sixty-two weeks" or "at that time" (as Daniel states in Dan 12:1). Daniel is saying that the cross will occur sometime after the completion of the sixty-nine weeks. Then in verse 27 he gives the actual time. (The reasons for doing things this way have to do with Hebrew writing styles and are beyond the scope of this essay.)

A consistent reading of Daniel 9 allows us to place the cross at the middle of the seventieth week. Unfortunately for the D/F's, it removes the seventieth week from end times, and with it goes the Great Tribulation. All of the miscellaneous items such as peace treaties with the Jews and Antichrist ending sacrifices in the rebuilt Temple go out the window. Allow me to restate this.

The only way that the magi can know to visit the new born Jesus is by properly understanding the prophecy of Dan 9:24-27. They must include verse 27 in their calculations to figure out when to look for the star. This means that the Antichrist/Great Tribulation discussions of the D/F's must be discarded, since the seventieth week in which they supposedly take place is part of the Messiah story, not end times. Finally, the 360 day year must be thrown out, since it is foreign to reality and fails to describe any part of Daniel's prophecy.

It seems odd that all these conclusions can be drawn from a simple question asked by foreign travelers in 4BC. But that is the nature of logical explorations. They take us places we did not necessarily expect in the beginning, but, because we are honest in evaluating the word of God, we accept the conclusions it requires.

For the D/F's to rescue their end-times schema, they must rebut the evidence presented here. They cannot use speculation, because the facts presented here are not conjectural. They are either primary facts or the direct necessary conclusions drawn from those facts. For any part of this to be shown to be incorrect, it must be demonstrated to be erroneous by facts. Since the required facts simply do not exist, this will not be possible.

The magi have shown us that the major elements of Dispensationalist/Futurist prophetic interpretation are wrong. The seventieth week of Dan 9 belongs to Christ, not Antichrist. 360 day years are imaginary, not real. And when a time of trouble comes, we need to look back to Daniel.

1 "Now at that time Michael, the great prince who stands guard over the sons of your people, will arise. And there will be a time of distress such as never occurred since there was a nation until that time; and at that time your people, everyone who is found written in the book, will be rescued. Dan 12:1