Sir Robert Anderson (1841-1918)

Sir Robert Anderson served as assistant police commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police during the 1888 Jack the Ripper investigations. While it may seem incongruent to bring a nineteenth-century policeman into our discussion of Daniel’s prophetic visions, it is actually quite enlightening. Sharon’s research into police departmental structure during the Ripper investigation forms the bedrock for The Redwing Saga series of novels. During that research, she discovered a marvelous connection between these serial murders and, of all places, Mount Hermon: the very mountain where the Watchers of Enoch descended and dared to take human women as their “wives.”

We’ll return to Anderson in a moment, but first, let’s consider his superior in the Metropolitan Police Department, Commissioner Sir Charles Warren.

Before his appointment as police commissioner, mathematics “nerd” Warren served his native England as an army surveyor in Egypt, South Africa, and the Levant—including the ancient sites of Jericho and Jerusalem. As part of his duties, Warren surveyed the Old City and the Temple Mount. In 1867, he discovered and documented the details of “Warren’s Shaft,” a vertical channel next to Gihon Spring that provided fresh water to Bronze Age and Iron Age Jerusalem.

General Sir Charles Warren (1840-1927)

In 1869, on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund, Sir Charles climbed up the forbidding sides of Mount Hermon to determine its true height and describe any archaeological sites found there. As such, Warren explored, measured, and sketched an ancient temple known as Qasr Antar. Here, the visitor passed through a temple, but was then forced him to continue upwards along the peak, in a peculiar anti-clockwise spiral pattern, in order to reach the summit.

The southern peak’s rocky terrain had been scooped out to receive ritual libations to the god or gods of the mount. In confirmation of this theory, Warren discovered within the area a strange stele (alternatively spelled stela; a stone pillar or marker), engraved on one side in ancient Greek. Once translated, the text is chilling to anyone who’s read of the Watchers’ descent onto Hermon and the vow each had to make to satisfy their leader Semjâzâ:

According to the command of the greatest and Most Holy God, those who take an oath, proceed from here.¹

The stele discovered by Sir Charles Warren inside the temple on the summit of Mount Hermon.

After leaving the summit, Warren chose to remove the marker from Hermon’s slopes and carry it down the nine thousand-foot height for transfer to London. But being four feet thick and far heavier than his team could manage, the surveyor ordered the stone to be sliced longitudinally to reduce its thickness. Though the lighter weight did make the trip down the mountain easier, the ancient stone suffered as a result, cracking horizontally along its midsection.

The marker is currently housed at the British Museum, listed as Item 1903,0422.1.² While visiting the museum in 2019, we tried to find the marker, but were told it is no longer displayed to the public.

In a strange coincidence and through a series of personal life changes that only our wonderful Lord might contrive, Sir Charles Warren eventually found himself working alongside a fellow Bible archaeology enthusiast. During the 1888 Jack the Ripper investigation, Warren’s assistant commissioner for crime was Sir Robert Anderson—mentioned earlier. Besides holding a degree in law, this erudite gentleman also held a degree in divinity; it was in this capacity, as a clergyman, that he published many treatises on the prophet Daniel. With the doggedness of a trained policeman and prosecutor, Sir Robert approached the study of Daniel’s seventy-week vision and dared to calculate the clues of its possible timing.

Remember, the angel Gabriel told Daniel this:

Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time. And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. (Daniel 9:25–26a; emphasis added)

As mentioned earlier, seven weeks added to sixty-two gives us sixty-nine total weeks until “an anointed one shall be cut off.” Believing this sixty-nine-week period must have ended sometime during Christ’s lifetime, Anderson endeavored to follow every clue at hand. He lists his thoughts in The Coming Prince, a powerful and insightful book.³

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Beginning on page 52, we read a summary of Anderson’s calculations. (All emphasis is added.)

1. 1. The scepter of earthly power which was entrusted to the house of David, was transferred to the Gentiles in the person of Nebuchadnezzar, to remain in Gentile hands “until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” The blessings promised to Judah and Jerusalem were postponed till after a period described as “seventy weeks”; at the close of the sixty-ninth week of this era the Messiah should be “cut off.”
   2. These seventy weeks represent seventy times seven prophetic years of 360 days, to be reckoned from the issuing of an edict for the rebuilding of the city—“the street and rampart,” of Jerusalem. The edict in question was the decree issued by Artaxerxes Longitmanus in the twentieth year of his reign, authorizing Nehemiah to rebuild the fortifications of Jerusalem.
   3. The date of Artaxerxes’s reign can be definitely ascertained—not from elaborate disquisitions by biblical commentators and prophetic writers, but by the united voice of secular historians and chronologers.
   4. The statement of St. Luke is explicit and unequivocal, that our Lord’s public ministry began in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar. It is equally clear that it began shortly before the Passover, The date of it can thus be fixed as between August A.D. 28 and April A.D. 29. The Passover of the crucifixion therefore was in A.D. 32, when Christ was betrayed on the night of the Paschal Supper, and put to death on the day of the Paschal Feast.
   5. If then the foregoing conclusions be well founded, we should expect to find that the period intervening between the edict of Artaxerxes and the Passion was 483 prophetic years. And accuracy as absolute as the nature of the case permits is no more than men are here entitled to demand. There can be no loose reckoning in a Divine chronology; and if God has; deigned to mark on human calendars the fulfillment of His purposes as foretold in prophecy, the strictest: scrutiny shall fail to detect miscalculation or mistake.
   6. The Persian edict which restored the autonomy of Judah was issued in the Jewish month of Nisan. It may in fact have been dated the 1st of Nisan, but: no other day being named, the prophetic period must be reckoned, according to a practice common with the Jews, from the Jewish New Year’s Day. The seventy weeks are therefore to be computed from the 1st of Nisan B.C. 445.
   7. In B.C. 445 the new moon by which the Passover was regulated was on the 13th of March at 7h. 9m. A. M. And accordingly the 1st Nisan may be assigned to the 14th March. But the language of the prophecy is clear: “From the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks and threescore and two weeks.” An era therefore of sixty-nine “weeks,” or 483 prophetic years reckoned from the 14th March, B.C. 445, should close with some event to satisfy the words, “unto the Messiah the Prince.”
   8. No student of the Gospel narrative can fail to see that the Lord’s last visit to Jerusalem was not only in fact, but in the purpose of it, the crisis of His ministry, the goal towards which it had been directed. After the first tokens had been given that the nation would reject His Messianic claims, He had shunned all public recognition of them. But now the twofold testimony of His words and His works had been fully rendered, and His entry into the Holy City was to proclaim His Messiahship and to receive His doom. Again and again His apostles even had been charged that they should not make Him known. But now He accepted the acclamations of “the whole multitude of the disciples,” and silenced the remonstrance of the Pharisees with the indignant rebuke, “I tell you if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.” (Luke 19:39, 40)
   9. The time of Jerusalem’s visitation had come, and she knew it not. Long ere then the nation had rejected Him, but this was the predestined day when their choice must be irrevocable,—the day so distinctly signalized in Scripture as the fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! behold thy King cometh unto thee!” (Zechariah 9:9) Of all the days of the ministry of Christ on earth, no other will satisfy so well the angel’s words, unto Messiah the Prince.
   10. And the date of it can be ascertained. In accordance with the Jewish custom, the Lord went up to Jerusalem upon the 8th Nisan, “six days before the Passover.” But as the 14th, on which the Paschal Supper was eaten, fell that year upon a Thursday, the 8th was the preceding Friday. He must have spent the Sabbath, therefore, at Bethany; and on the evening of the 9th, after the Sabbath had ended, the Supper took place in Martha’s house. Upon the following day, the 10th Nisan, He entered Jerusalem as recorded in the Gospels.
   11. The Julian date of that 10th Nisan was Sunday the 6th April, A.D. 32. What then was the length of the period intervening between the issuing of the decree to rebuild Jerusalem and the public advent of “Messiah the Prince,”—between the 14th March, B.C. 445, and the 6th April, A.D. 32? THE INTERVAL CONTAINED EXACTLY AND TO THE VERY DAY 173,880 DAYS, OR SEVEN TIMES SIXTY-NINE PROPHETIC YEARS OF 360 DAYS, the first sixty-nine weeks of Gabriel’s prophecy.

If you wonder at the precision of these statements and calculations, Anderson goes on to explain that he was:

…indebted to the courtesy of the Astronomer Royal, whose reply to my inquiry on the subject is appended:

“ROYAL OBSERVATORY, GREENWICH.”

June 26th, I877.

“SIR, —I have had the moon’s place calculated from Largeteau’s Tables in Additions to the Connaisance des Tems 1846, by one of my assistants, and have no doubt of its correctness. The place being calculated for—444, March 12d. 20h., French reckoning, or March 12d. 8h. P. M., it appears that the said time was short of New Moon by about 8h. 47m., and therefore the New Moon occurred at 4h. 47m. A. M., March 13th, Paris time.”

I am, etc.,

“(Signed,) G. B. AIRY.” (all emphases to above quotes are added)

What a mind Sir Robert Anderson possessed! Again, we strongly recommend The Coming Prince to you, for it is filled with incredible insights and scholarly exposition. Sharon certainly found Sir Charles Warren’s connection to Mount Hermon fascinating; but then to discover that a second man, Sir Robert Anderson—who served side by side with Warren during that pivotal crime spree—had studied biblical archaeology and prophecy and composed entire volumes on both positively made her shout for joy!

Even today, Jack the Ripper remains a mystery; his identity is now synonymous with evil: a bogeyman embodiment of the ancient chaos-dragon, who would destroy all humans just to spite the Creator.

We now turn to one of the men who hunted Ripper to compute the timing of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. Instead of welcoming Him as their Messiah, most in the city saw Him as an invader—even a charlatan. And so, He would be “cut off” and become a substitutionary sacrifice in our place.

As Paul says in Hebrews 2:14–15:

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. (Emphasis added)

By taking on flesh, the Lord provided a release from the curse of spiritual death, placed on us in the Garden. And it returns us to our original positions as members of the divine council. That is what this current battle is all about, and it is a continuation of the original war, the Chaoskampf.

Sir Robert Anderson’s calculations give us the very day when the first sixty-nine weeks ended!

And, according to the angel (most likely Gabriel), there is one more “seven” of years remaining until Israel is finally redeemed and released from bondage to the enemy. If we can rely upon this nineteenth-century master detective’s calculations—and many scholars do—then Christ literally fulfilled the first sixty-nine weeks to the very day; therefore, we may assume the final week of the seventy-week prophecy will proceed the same way—in literal fashion.

When Jesus was “cut off” on that Palm Sunday, the prophetic pause button was pressed. Ever since then, the world has waited for the timeline’s clock to resume ticking.

[1] Translation of the Mount Hermon stela by George Nickelsburg.

[2] British Museum entry for the Mount Hermon stele can be found online in the museum’s catalogue: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/G_1903-0422-1 (accessed May 18, 2020).

[3] Sir Robert Anderson, The Coming Prince, Or, the Seventy Weeks of Daniel: With an Answer to the Higher Criticism (London: James Nisbett and Company, 1915).

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