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The Real Millennium - When really is/was it?
In Switzerland official celebrations to herald 2000 years of the Christian era will not take place until January 1st 2001. The reason for this does not take much explaining. For example
in a book of 2000 pages one reaches page 2000 having only read 1999 pages. Two thousand pages are only completed at the end of page 2000. Likewise the full 2000 years of the Christian era will not be complete
until the 1 st of January 2001. But is this really the date of the true millennium?
Out of step.
The sure and certain truth is that our present sequence of years has become hopelessly out of step with the actual year of Christ’s birth. It means we have very little idea of when he
was born, and consequently the date of the real millennium becomes even harder to fathom.
Bible analysts now say the most likely date of Christ’s birth was the year 4BC. Others specify 2BC, or a variety of other dates stretching back to 8 BC. Although the Bible does not
mention the actual year, it does provide us with several important clues.
Enrolment of Quinirius.
The first clue is the enrolment of the Roman Governor Quinirius mentioned in the Gospel of Luke. This required people to register themselves at the place of their birth. It was
precisely for this reason that Mary and Joseph journeyed to Bethlehem, and how Jesus came to be born there.
It should then have been a simple matter to match the date of Quinirius’ enrolment to arrive at the precise date of Christ’s birth. Unfortunately this caused problems. The enrolment of
Quinirius was in 7 AD, making it almost 10 years after the presumed birth of Jesus. Eventually this dilemma was partially resolved by the discovery that Quinirius had been Governor twice in that region. He is
also believed to have instigated at least two enrolments, and Luke stresses it was during the first of these that Christ was born. Unfortunately it also constitutes a date that so far eludes us, and with it our
efforts to pinpoint the precise time of Jesus’ birth. Important Clue.
A more circuitous route towards deciding when this might have happened can be found in the third chapter of Luke’s gospel. The first two verses clearly state that John the Baptist began
his ministry in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar. Since Tiberius became Emperor in 14 AD, John the Baptists ministry must have commenced around 28 to 29 AD.
Since we also know that Jesus commenced his own ministry six months later “at about thirty years of age”, it means that Jesus must have been born around autumn of the year 2 BC.
If so, then the year 2000 should have commenced in 1998, with autumn 1999 completing a full two thousand years since the birth of Christ. The real impact of this is that our current
calendar is between 2 - 8 years behind the real millennium date. It follows then, that the year 2000 has about as much relevance to Christ’s date of birth as celebrating Christmas on the 25 th of December.
These are purely symbolic dates, the real ones having become lost in the maze of time.
Of immense significance is the realisation that the real Millennium came in as unpretentiously as the birth of the baby Jesus - a date and event known only to a precious few.
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