What Is The Meaning Of A.D. and B.C.? How Does It Connect To Christianity?

Why do we measure time with A.D. and B.C.? What is the significance of that and what is the connection with Christianity and civilization?

The Measuring of Time

We use AD or BC to measure the years and centuries today but this is something that did not originate until the 6th-century AD by a Christian monk by the name of Dionysius Exiguus who designated the delineation of time by adding “Anno Domini” which means “in the year of our Lord” which was later abbreviated as “AD.” Jesus was the reference point or the focal point of time as Exiguus saw it. Before this time, there was no standard measurement of the years and centuries which were consistently and universally used. The abbreviation BC means “Before Christ” and begins from the zero, although there is actually no notation given to this year. In other words, something had either occurred before Christ was born (BC) or it occurred after His birth (AD) so for centuries, Jesus birth was the reference point of time and for notation for which the event or events took place.

CE and BCE

The use of CE was introduced by Jewish academics in the mid-19th century and is an abbreviation for Common Era while BCE is Before Common Era. In recent years, both CE and BCE have been used by academic and scientific publications and more frequently by publishers. The years are exactly the same as when using CE and BCE as we do for AD and BC but even with the use of CE and BCE the transition point was still the year that the Lord Jesus Christ was born and the birth of Jesus Christ still remains the main dividing point of world history and even though scholars later discovered that Jesus was actually born around 6—4 B.C. and not A.D. 1 this still is the main reference point used for the events of human history.

Before AD or BC

Before the institution of dividing the events of human history and giving us reference points as to the approximate time that these events took place, they used to mark time by who ruled as king or emperor and even in the Bible we see this in Luke 3:1-3 “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Some credit Charlemagne with beginning a new system of dating pegged to the birth of Christ but most historians attribute this to the Christian monk Dionysius Exiguus. Some popes had employed the regnal year of the emperor in Constantinople on their documents. Some churchmen had derived dates from a wide assortment of starting points like the accession of their local ruler while others used events like ancient persecutions and some even more extravagantly tried fixing the dates from the creation of the world.

Conclusion

It was said of Jesus that God “has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18b-19). The only time that will matter is the day of your death because we are all going to die and after this there is the judgment (Heb 9:27) and the fact is “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Cor 5:10) “For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done” (Matt 16:27). That is why to the Christian it is “commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:42) and “This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares” (Rom 2:16) which is when “each of us will give an account of ourselves to God” (Rom 14:12). Let today be your day of salvation (2 Cor 6:2) for the day is coming when it will be too late to repent and trust in Christ (Rev 20:12-15).

Article by Jack Wellman

Jack Wellman is Pastor of the Mulvane Brethren church in Mulvane Kansas. Jack is also the Senior Writer at What Christians Want To Know whose mission is to equip, encourage, and energize Christians and to address questions about the believer’s daily walk with God and the Bible. You can follow Jack on Google Plus or check out his book Blind Chance or Intelligent Design available on Amazon.