The time of His coming was fixed by Jacob's prophecy: "The scepter shall not be taken away from Juda, nor a ruler from his thigh, till He come that is to be sent, and He shall be the expectation of the nations" (Gen. XL,IX, 10). Now the Holy Land became a Roman province shortly before Christ's birth, and the Jews soon after were scattered over the whole earth. Lastly, Daniel had determined the period of seventy weeks of years, at the end of which the Redemption was to be accomplished: ' 'Seventy weeks are shortened upon thy people and upon thy holy city that . . . everlasting justice may be brought, and vision and prophecy may be fulfilled, and the Saint of Saints may be anointed. Know, therefore, and take notice that, from the going forth of the word to build up Jerusalem again unto Christ the Prince, there shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks .; . and after sixty-two weeks the Christ shall be slain: and the people that shall deny Him shall not be His. And a people with their leader that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary" (IX, 24-26). All this was fulfilled in Christ and in the destruction of Jerusalem.
30. When the Jews, His own people, had rejected the Christ, because His was not an earthly, but a Heavenly Kingdom, they strove hard to put a new interpretation on Jacob's and Daniel's prophecies. But it was too late: their own interpreters had applied the words of the prophecies to the expected Messias. In fact, the world, owing to these predictions, was in expectation of His coming at the time of His birth, as even pagan authors have recorded.
Thus Tacitus, writing of the year 70, a time within his own recollection, says: "There was a wide spread persuasion that, according to the ancient books of priests, the time had come when the East should regain its
