The Bible is a remarkable book. It's made up of 66 books written by about 40 different authors over a period of around 2000 years, yet it contains a consistent message. It has been written with a knowledge of past, present and future events that the 40 or so authors could not have possessed individually.

No other book, secular or religious, can make these claims and stand up to scrutiny. It's just as though the Bible was written by one author who knows everything there is to know. In fact that's what it claims...

"All scripture is given by inspiration of God" (2Timothy 3:16)

If the Bible claims to be inspired by God, what's it about? Does it tell us why we're here? Are we here by accident or has God got a plan for us and if so, what is it? Are we here as the result of evolution and chance cosmic events that somehow managed to bring order out of chaos?

God's Plan

We believe the Bible answers these questions. It tells the story of God's plan for this world. It tells us why God has a plan, what that plan is and when it's all going to happen.

Timing of Events

The Bible starts by giving us an outline of that plan in the seven days of creation week...

"One day is with the Lord as a thousand years" (2Peter 3:8)

The first chapter of the Bible specifies what happens in each of the first seven days of this age. The last three chapters of the Bible refer to a closing period of the thousand-year reign of Christ on earth followed by eternity.

Right at the beginning, the Bible gives us a structure for dating events...

"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons (appointed times), and for days, and years" (Genesis 1:14)

The sun and the moon govern the days, months and years that form the basis of all our calendar systems. It seems that God wants us to know when things happened and will happen. In fact the Bible refers to the timing of events in its very first and last verses, and at the start of the New Testament...

"In the BEGINNING God created the heaven and the earth." (Genesis 1:1)

"He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come QUICKLY. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus." (Revelation 22:20-21)

"In the BEGINNING was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the BEGINNING with God." (John 1:1-2)

Over a third of the Bible is prophetic, and it is full of dates and references to time which have been put there for us to read.

Appointed Times

God is Sovereign over history. We believe the Bible makes it clear that mankind has freewill, but only within the permitted bounds of God's Sovereign will. We are all subject to His Sovereign decrees and appointments concerning the times and the seasons when His Sovereign will comes into play...

"God... hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation." (Acts 17:26)

God has appointed times and keeps His appointments. God carries forward His plan of redemption and kingdom according to a timetable.

God Measures Time in Chronologies

Chronologies are records of events or periods arranged in date order. A chronology should not be confused with a calendar which is a method of organising time into periods such as days, months and years. Chronologies use calendars to record the date when events occur.

• Chronologies are selective records dealing with specific themes or topics. Events or periods are recorded or RECKONED according to particular criteria.
• There are also events or periods relating to those themes that are not counted, or UNRECKONED, because they fail to meet these criteria.
• Combining the two sets of records relating to a theme - reckoned and unreckoned - gives a continuous record.
• In some reckoned periods, God adds an extra JUBILEE year every 49 years!
• Some chronologies use different calendars at different stages of history.

We can only gain an accurate understanding of Bible history if we have a correct chronology. Then we can see the flow of history and understand why things happened when they did. It is probably for this reason that so much of the Bible stresses the timing of events. If the Bible is a complete record and revelation of Redemption, then surely it must contain an exact chronology.

God's Plan for the Ages

This is a generic term we have employed encompassing the various chronologies of the Bible. The most important of these is the Chronology of Redemption.

The Chronology of Redemption

This chronology holds the keys to constructing a continuous chronology of the Bible. In the Chronology of Redemption...

• One day is as a thousand years.
• Reckoned periods add up to the 7000 years represented by the seven days of creation week.
• Adding unreckoned periods gives us an exact continuous chronology of the whole Bible.
• Some reckoned periods have an extra jubilee year added every 49 years.
• Different calendars are used at different stages of history.

To construct a continuous chronology of the Bible we need to know which calendars to use at each stage of history and we need to factor in unreckoned periods and discount jubilee years. BibleChronology shows you how it's done! This enables us to make more sense of the whole Bible.

Bible Calendars

Many different calendar systems have been used throughout history. They fall into 3 main categories.

Lunar

Month lengths approximate to a lunation (the time between new moons) which on average is just over 29½ days, and the year of about 354 days has 12 months. The calendar drifts from the solar seasons by about 11 days each year. A true lunar calendar would start at a new moon.

Lunisolar

Months start at a new moon and the year normally has 12 months, but an extra month is added every two or three years to keep in line with the solar seasons.

Solar

The year normally has 365 days extended by a day in leap years to keep in line with the solar seasons. Month lengths vary and so months are unlikely to start at a new moon. The Solar 360-Day Calendar has twelve 30-day months, but an extra month is added every five or six years to keep in line with the solar seasons.

The Bible uses different calendars for each of its chronologies, and even uses different calendars at different stages of some chronologies. This isn't unusual - many different calendars are in use round the world today by different countries and cultures. God distinguished different groups of people by their calendar

Piecing it Together

There are many genealogies and dates in the Bible and there have been various attempts to piece them together to create a continuous chronology. It you try it for yourself, you'll find there are some missing bits and some apparent contradictions, but the problem periods only add up to a few hundred years at most.

Perhaps the most famous attempt at putting together a chronology of the Bible was in the 17th-century by Archbishop James Ussher, who had been Anglican Primate of All Ireland before the English Civil War.

Ussher calculated that the first day of creation began at nightfall before Sunday 23 October 4004 BC in the Julian calendar. Other estimates have been made by Jose ben Halafta (3896 BC), Bede (3952 BC), Lightfoot (3929 BC), Scaliger (3949 BC), Johannes Kepler (3992 BC) and Sir Isaac Newton (4000 BC).

Ussher believed that the Earth was going to last 6000 years, 4000 before the birth of Christ and 2000 after, corresponding to the six days of Creation because "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" (2Peter 3:8). Of course something should have happened in 1997, six thousand years after 4004 BC!

6000 years?

So does this mean we're past the Biblical date for the end of the world? At the end of the last millennium, lots of religious groups predicted that we were. The answer is NO and to find out why we need to understand how the calendars and chronologies of the Bible work. That's what BibleChronology does.

BibleChronology enables us to understand the times we live in so that we can act wisely according to God's plans and purposes...

"And of the children of Issachar, which were men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do." (1Chronicles 12:32)

We believe that BibleChronology reveals that we are living very close to the end of the Age and this will in turn affect how we live.

We accept that many have made unfounded guesses about times and seasons, but scripture itself issues a challenge to understand history (the former things) before we can understand prophecy (the latter end, the things to come)...

"Let them bring them forth, and shew us what shall happen: let them shew the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things for to come." (Isaiah 41:22)

We cannot understand the future without understanding the past. We must discover how God reckons time, and find the dates of the past before we can accurately understand how God will work in the future.

A Jigsaw Puzzle

The BibleChronology website is a computer model of time from a Biblical standpoint. It has been derived empirically using the Bible to discover how its calendars and chronologies work. We've used all sorts of information including dates, time periods, feasts, astronomical data and many other kinds of chronological information.

Piecing together the chronology of the Bible is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. As one piece fits into place, we see where the next one goes. When we finish it and all the pieces fit together perfectly to form a complete picture, then we know there is One who has designed it and our confidence that the plan had an author is justified.

Prophecy

The Bible contains a massive amount of prophetic material given by God to many different prophets over thousands of years, yet it all combines to produce a unified vision of the future. Each prophecy is just a glimpse of the bigger picture. Back to our jigsaw puzzle, the Bible contains all the pieces but they're not all neatly arranged in order in one book. They're scattered all over the Bible, and so it is up to us to study and put these pieces together in the right way so that we can see the whole picture.

We shall see that the prophets looked into the future and saw events in certain different and distinguishable time periods such as the First Coming of Christ, the Church Age, the Rapture, the Tribulation, The Second Coming of Christ, the Millennium, and the Eternal State. By learning the characteristics of each of these times we work out roughly where each piece fits. It's easy to go wrong and put the pieces together incorrectly which gives a distorted picture. We can't put the pieces together any old way. You know when you've got it right - when ALL the pieces fit with one another perfectly. If you have an interpretation, it must harmonise with the rest of prophetic scripture. If we think we've found a contradiction, it's simply that we're not fitting the pieces together correctly because God does not contradict Himself. So, to understand prophecy correctly, we first have to grasp the foundational principles or keys. If we don't do this first but just look at prophetic scriptures randomly, then we won't fit the pieces together correctly and we'll get a distorted and incomplete picture.

Test it

What we've tried to do is to show what we've done and to give the information you need to piece the jigsaw together so that you can test it and make up your own mind about the message of the Bible.