‘The year of the Lord’

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Luke 1-2 records the incarnation and birth of Jesus. The entirety of history in the Western world is dated backward and forward from this most seminal event in history, the birth of the Savior of the world. Our calendar notates years A.D. Anno Domini “the year of the Lord,” and B.C., “before Christ.” Jesus’ birthday is the most important event in human history. It is literally the fulcrum point for dating all other events in the history of the world.

Measuring time based on the birth of Jesus began when Roman monk Dionysius Exiguus (A.D. 470-544) wrote that he was living in a time 525 years “since the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.” In 731 English monk Saint Bede the Venerable (673-735) wrote a history using Exiguus’s method of dating introducing the phrase “Anno Domini” and by the end of the century the term was in widespread use and remained the standard in the Western world.

There is a movement today by secularists to erase all acknowledgment of Jesus as the central figure of world history. They want to replace B.C. with B.C.E., “before the common era” and A.D. with C.E., “common era”; the same dating but no longer specifically acknowledging God. This is a departure from American history. Early American educators and textbooks used Christ’s birth for dating history and Genesis 1 in the beginning when God created all things. 



The Constitution of the United States was “Done in convention by the unanimous consent of the States present the seventeenth day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven...” The Founding Fathers deliberately declared “in the year of our Lord” personalizing their identification with Christ. Many government documents signed by U.S. presidents were dated “in the year of our Lord Christ.”

Founder John Quincy Adams said... Why is the birthday of the Savior and the 4th of July the top two holidays in America? It is because the birthday of the Savior and birthday of America form leading events in the progress of the gospel dispensation. On the foundation of the Gospel is the cornerstone of human government. The cornerstones of human government are the precepts of Christianity, it is a social compact. The birth of Christ and birth of America are indissolubly linked.