Today is the beginning of a new year, 2020. Unless I am mistaken, all countries would have already celebrated the clock ticking to 00:00 of January 1, 2020 by the time I publish this post. Given that, let us take a moment to think about a fundamental detail that goes unnoticed. The number 2020. I’m not talking about the fact here how it would be interesting to watch 20-20 cricket matches in 2020 (although that does sound interesting). What I am talking about here is the number 2020 itself. 2020 years from what?

You probably know the answer to the question because you would have learnt it in mid school. When mentioning the years before 2020 years ago, we post-fix the year with BC, and when mentioning the years from that, we prefix them with AD. Technically speaking, we currently live in AD 2020. When it comes to what BC and AD mean, BC stands for “Before Christ” and AD stands for “Anno Domini“.

When you look up on how these terms came into being, the Wikipedia article on Anno Domini reads that a man named Dionysius Exiguus invented this system in AD 525. In that year, he had stated that the current year was 525 years “since the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ“. He wanted to make an Easter table of the dates on which Easter would fall on on the years to come. How he arrived at that number (525) is unknown, but there is evidence of the system he applied.

It has been suggested that he arranged the numbers so that leap years would be exactly divisible by four, and that his new table would begin one “Victorian cycle” (see below), i.e. 532 years, after his new epoch. The Anno Domini era became dominant in western Europe only after it was used by the Venerable Bede to date the events in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed in 731.

Wikipedia page on Dionysius_Exiguus

Regardless of what was the reason for the introduction of this calendar system, it has be acknowledged that this has stuck for more than a thousand years now.

When you look at the timeline above, you cannot help but notice a similarity with the way the books of the Bible are arranged. There is a total of 66 books in the Bible. 39 in the old testament, 27 in the new testament. Long story short, the old testament is before the birth of Jesus Christ, and the new testament starts with the birth of Jesus Christ followed up with the rest of world history.

The last book of the Bible, Revelation, talks about the things that are to happen in the (near) future. Altogether, when looked at from a distance, the focal point of the Bible is the birth of Jesus Christ. Similar to the focal point of our current calendar system. This is only symbolic, hence I am not claiming that 1 AD is the exact year when Jesus was born. The birth of Christ is believed to be around 6 AD by many researchers.

So what?

You’re probably wondering why I am taking the time to write this, and why this matters at all. Although Christ is the center of World History, and Christianity is the biggest religion in the entire world, with the majority of the world claiming to be Christians, the world by itself is not a Christian world. Although the Bible is the greatest book that was ever written, leading in sales charts as the number 1 most sold book, leading by a huge gap with even the second on the list, it is not the book that is being read by all people by large. Even the people who claim to be Christians haven’t all read the Bible cover to cover. As years go by, our world is turning away from the Bible, year by year.

Let me tell you the reason for this. Christians and Christian preachers. As Christian preaching turns to become more watered down by sticking to just the feel good messages, there is a ecumenical movement on the rise that wants people of all beliefs to come together and form what is known as a one world religion. It is no longer about preaching the Bible, but instead about environmentalism and humanitarianism which are less than nothing in the grand scheme of things.

“Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.” (Matthew 5:13 KJV)

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But here is the thing. Global warming and climate change do not matter if people are going to burn in hell for eternity.

Until next time!