This past Thursday, I watched the newly released, critically acclaimed movie Dune: Part One. Despite having high expectations, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Three days prior, I had my regularly scheduled men’s group, where five friends of mine and I have been studying the biblical Book of Daniel for the past six months. Initially, I was not terribly excited about our book choice.

How do these two seemingly unrelated experiences correlate with each other? Well, interestingly, both Dune and Daniel put a premium on prophecy, including on a prophesied savior. In our culture, Dune’s appeal to prophecy is alluring, while Daniel’s is often seen as pointless, lame, or worse. Why is that?

From here, I will provide a brief (non-spoiling!) overview of Dune and allude to its intriguing parallels with Christianity; tie in C.S. Lewis’s conversion experience and his view that Christianity is a “true myth”; and, finally, provide evidence to support the claim that the first part of the messianic prophecy contained in Daniel chapter 9 has been fulfilled. Here goes nothing—or something.

Based on a 1965 book, Dune opens in the distant future in the year 10191. Different people groups inhabit different planets. A dark, unrevealed emperor governs the galaxy. Arrakis—a desert planet with a dangerous climate—contains a prized spice named melange. The spice is critical to interstellar travel and, for some, the ability to foretell the future. Arrakis has long been inhabited by its native Fremen—a North African or Middle Eastern-looking people.

For the past eighty years, however, Arrakis has been ruled and exploited by a foreign people group named the Harkonnens. This had been at the emperor’s orders so the Harkonnens could harvest the spice, primarily for the benefit of the emperor. Despite the fact Arrakis’s climate is brutally hot and prone to deadly sandstorms, the Harkonnens were happy to be there because the spice is a source of astronomical wealth. They are a cruel, insatiable people. They oppress the native Freman without mercy.

Within a few minutes of the movie’s opening, it is announced that the emperor has ordered the Harkonnens to vacate Arrakis and for another foreign people, the Atreides, to replace them. The Harkonnens are indignant; however, being inferior to the emperor, they have no choice but to depart, at least for now.

Unlike the Harkonnens, the Atreides are an honorable, free people who reside on a lush, oceanic planet named Caladan. They have no desire to govern Arrakis, but as loyal subjects of the emperor, they oblige the call. The Atreides are governed by a just leader, Duke Leto Atreides I, and his supportive yet independent-minded concubine, Lady Jessica. They have a teenage son named Paul Atreides who is heir to the throne.

Paul, who is the film’s main character, is honorable like his father; however, unlike his father, he has a mystique about him. He also possesses an empathy for the oppressed, an uncanny ability to see his own people’s blind spots, and insight into the future through visions and dreams. Paul inherited many of these characteristics from his mother, who was born to the Bene Gesserit—a quasi-religious entity whose goal is to pave the way for the “Kwistaz Haderach.” This term refers to a messiah figure who will bring all of humanity to a higher plane.

The Freman, meanwhile, are a deeply spiritual people whose never-ending fight against oppression has shaped their identity. They also rely heavily on oral tradition and even more so on prophecy. Their chief prophecy is that a “Lisan al Gaib”—a term meaning savior—will come from another world and deliver them from their bondage.

I will refrain from providing any more details, but for those of you familiar with Christianity the parallels between the two are not trivial (and yet materially different at points, too). I am not sure where the plot goes in Part Two (sadly, it is not set to be released until October 2023). It may depart significantly from its similarities to Christianity. But this is beside the point: Dune is widely beloved—not despite its prophecy, but because of it. It is no. 131 on IMDb’s all-time Top Rated Movies list. The vast majority of Rotten Tomatoes’ Top Critics gave it glowing reviews. And it had one of the highest box office openings since the pandemic began.

Moreover, Dune is not an aberration among blockbuster hits with respect to its focus on prophecy. Other beloved movies that centered around the prophetic include The Matrix series, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Chronicles of Narnia series, Harry Potter series, The Terminator series, Arrival, and a host of others.

We love movies like these because we long for ultimate justice and redemption—which the prophesies promise. However, deep down, we know that we will never experience it in the natural. National or even global disaster seems possible, if not probable, on multiple levels. Yet our desire for absolute redemption remains. For these reasons, I am reminded of the famous C.S. Lewis quote from his book Mere Christianity:

If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.

Before transitioning to Daniel, we will stay on Lewis for a bit. For those of you unfamiliar with him, he was an Oxford-educated author and professor who was an atheist early in life. He would later become the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University. He was a contemporary and friend of J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings author.

As his conversion story goes, in the late-summer of 1931, Lewis began an extended dialogue with Tolkien and another academic named Hugo Dyson. At the time, Lewis was thirty-two years old and had just started to believe in God generally, leaving his atheistic beliefs behind. Nonetheless, he had not yet embraced Christianity. Tolkien and Dyson were both Christians and a bit older than Lewis. Their dialogue with Lewis took place during strolls around Oxford’s campus, over dinner, and in Lewis’s study, among other places. The subject matter generally was Christianity, metaphor, and myth—indicative of where Lewis’s doubts lied.

Lewis quickly came to find Tolkien and Dyson to be compelling. Writing to a longtime friend about a month after their conversation began, Lewis wrote:

Now what Dyson and Tolkien showed me was this: that if I met the idea of sacrifice in a Pagan story I didn’t mind it at all: again, that if I met the idea of a god sacrificing himself to himself . . . I liked it very much and was mysteriously moved by it: again, that the idea of the dying and reviving god (Balder, Adonis, Bacchus) similarly moved me provided I met it anywhere except in the Gospels. The reason was that in Pagan stories I was prepared to feel the myth as profound and suggestive of meanings beyond my grasp even tho’ I could not say in cold prose ‘what it meant’.

Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened.

Within a couple weeks of when his ongoing dialogue with Tolkien and Dyson began, Lewis embraced Jesus as his divine savior. Amusingly, this occurred while he was “riding in his older brother’s motorcycle sidecar on the way to the newly opened Whipsnade Park Zoo in Bedforshire.” (The Gospel Coalition). Lewis recounted the event:

I know very well when, but not how, the final step was taken.

I was driven to Whipsnade one sunny morning. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did.

Yet I had not exactly spent the journey in thought.

Now, I do not believe the “true myth” of which Lewis was speaking was merely Jesus’s birth, death, resurrection, and offer of atonement for our sins. I believe it was also the prophecy underlying it. With that, we now turn to Daniel, who, among other biblical books, prophesied that an “Anointed One” would come. (Dan. 9:25). Daniel further prophesied that this would occur at a specified point in time and that the “Anointed One” would thereafter “be put to death and [] have nothing.” (Dan. 9:26). Many scholars believe this is a clear reference to Jesus, as do I. To lend credibility to this claim, we need to understand the context of Daniel and Israel at large.

By way of background, the biblical figure Daniel was a Jew believed to have been born in the neighborhood of 620 B.C. His parents were contemporaries of Jeremiah—one of the major prophets of the Jewish and Christian Bibles. Before continuing with Daniel’s story, it is important to take a jaunt into Jeremiah’s.

Jeremiah was “born probably after 650 BCE [in] Anathoth, Judah,” a village located a few miles from Jerusalem. (Britannica). He would live approximately eighty years, dying in around “570 BCE [in] Egypt.” Id. Jeremiah’s historicity is virtually unquestioned. (See Britannica, for example).

“According to the biblical Book of Jeremiah, he began his prophetic career in 627/626—the 13th year of King Josiah’s reign [of Israel].” Id. At the time, Israel is believed to have been a subject-state of Assyria, then a world power. Shortly after beginning his ministry, Jeremiah told his fellow Jews, “This is what the LORD says: ‘When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place.’” (Jer. 29:10). He also said this:

This whole country will become a desolate wasteland, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon seventy years.

“But when the seventy years are fulfilled, I will punish the king of Babylon and his nation, the land of the Babylonians, for their guilt,” declares the Lord, “and will make it desolate forever.”

(Jer. 25:11-12). Jeremiah’s writings are believed to have been completed by somewhere between 605 and 580 B.C., and obviously before his death in 570 B.C.

Alright, circling back to Daniel’s story. “[On] March 16, 597,” Babylon, under Nebuchadnezzar II, “captured Jerusalem [and] deport[ed] King Jehoiachin [of Israel] to Babylon.” (Britannica). “The siege of Jerusalem ended in its capture in 587/586 and in the deportation of prominent citizens, with a further deportation in 582.” Id. Daniel was among the deportees over the course of Nebuchadnezzar’s multiple sieges of Israel, which may have begun as early as 605 B.C. when Nebuchadnezzar came to power.

This extra-biblical information comports with what we read in Daniel. After coming to power, Nebuchadnezzar “ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring into the king’s service some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility—young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning.” (Dan. 1:3-4). “Among those who were chosen were some from Judah: Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah.” (Dan. 1:6).

Relatively quickly, after interpreting a dream for Nebuchadnezzar, “the king placed Daniel in a high position.” (Dan. 2:48). In fact, Daniel would later be “proclaimed the third highest ruler in the kingdom.” (Dan. 5:29). “Daniel remained there [in Babylon] until the first year of King Cyrus.” (Dan. 1:21). This event occurred in 539 B.C. when “the legendary Persian king Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon.” (The History Channel). Thus, Daniel lived most of his life as an exile in Babylon.

Daniel chapter 9, which is believed to reflect events occurring in 540-539 B.C., opens with Daniel realizing “according to the word of the Lord given to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years.” (Dan. 9:2).

In great likelihood, Daniel would have known that Assyria—to which Israel had previously been subject—fell in 609 B.C. (Britannica). In fact, it was then when “the Assyrian empire collapsed under the assault of Babylonians from southern Mesopotamia and Medes, newcomers who were to establish a kingdom in Iran.” (The Metropolitan Museum of Art). Thus, Babylon likely would have assumed at least some control over Israel when it took Assyria in 609 B.C. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, “[w]hen the Babylonians defeated the Egyptians in 605 BC, then Judah [officially] became a tribute state to Babylon.” Daniel would have known this, too.

Again fast-forward to 540-539 B.C. when the events in Daniel chapter 9 are believed to have occurred. Upon realizing that the seventy-year period of captivity prophesied by Jeremiah was just about up, Daniel “turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth in ashes.” Daniel’s ensuing prayer lasts sixteen verses. He is asking for freedom for his people.

Remarkably, the next year, “[i]n 538 BCE[,] King Cyrus made a public declaration granting the Jews the right to return to Judah and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.” (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs). It likely would have taken the Jews several months to receive news of King Cyrus’s decree and an even longer period of time to make the lengthy journey from modern day Iran to Jerusalem, a distance of close to 1,800 kilometers. Thus, Jeremiah’s seventy-year prophecy appears to have been fulfilled—perhaps on multiple levels.

All this sets the stage for the last few prophetic verses of Daniel chapter 9, when Daniel receives a word from the angel Gabriel “[w]hile [he] was speaking and praying, confessing [his] sin and the sin of [his] people Israel and making [his] request to the Lord [his] God for his holy hill.” (Dan. 9:20). Rather than address Daniel’s concern over the seventy-year captivity and the looming end thereof, Gabriel addresses another thing altogether. I will only quote verse 25 and part of 26 (Gabriel addressing Daniel):

Know and understand this: From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing.

The word “sevens” is misleading to our English ears. The original text used the word “שְׁבוּעַ”or “shabua,” which is defined as a “a period of seven (days, years), heptad, week.” “Shabua” is also used, for example, in Genesis 29:27 where Laban tells his nephew Jacob that he will need to work for him for “another seven years” in order to marry his daughter Rachel, after Laban had swindled him into first marrying his eldest daughter, Leah.

Thus, “seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens’” (Dan. 9:25) is thought to refer to sixty-nine seven-year periods. This calculates to 483 years. In other words, “From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler comes, there will be [483 years].”

According to many scholars, the term “Anointed One” refers to a messiah figure. But what does “the word [that] goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem” refer to? What event might this be?

According to the Jewish Virtual Library, described by one college as the “the most comprehensive online Jewish encyclopedia in the world” and by a publication of the American Library Association as “a living encyclopedia [more] than it is anything else,” says this:

In the 20th year of the Persian king Artaxerxes I (445), a delegation of Jews arrived from Jerusalem at Susa, the king’s winter residence, and informed Nehemiah of the deteriorating conditions back in Judah. The walls of Jerusalem were in a precarious state and repairs could not be undertaken (since they were specifically forbidden by an earlier decree of the same Artaxerxes (Ezra 4:21)). The news about Jerusalem upset Nehemiah, and he sought and was granted permission from the king to go to Jerusalem as governor and rebuild the city.

See also Nehemiah 2:1-8, where it states that it “pleased the king [Artaxerxes I] to send [Nehemiah] . . . to the city in Judah where [Nehemiah’s] ancestors are buried so that [he] can rebuild it,” and, further, that the king then issued letters to governors and other officials memorializing his decree.

Now, 483 years from 445 B.C. equates to approximately 39 B.C., when Daniel prophesied the “Anointed One” would come. Jesus, however, is widely considered to have been born in 6-4 B.C. and to have died in the 30-33 A.D. timeframe. (See Britannica, for example, estimating it to be at 30 A.D.).

However, when factoring in that “[a]ncient calendars around the world initially used a 360 day calendar,” you end up with approximately 476 years (rather than 483) when calculating the sixty-nine seven-year periods. With this in mind, 476 years from 445 B.C. is approximately 32 A.D., which is the year in which many scholars think Jesus in fact died.

But why assume that the prophecy should calculate to his death rather to his birth? Is not his birth when he “came,” to use the word Daniel uses?

Remember, the prophecy says sixty-nine sevens “until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes” and “after [the sixty-nine sevens the Anointed One] will be put to death and will have nothing.” (Dan. 9:26). To use an example, we would say that a president or prime minister “comes” or arrives when he is actually recognized as a political leader. Thus, the question as to the date of the Anointed One’s coming should be, “When was Jesus publicly recognized as a savior, king, or anything of the sort?”

As commemorated by Palm Sunday, just a few days before Jesus died, he was recorded to have had his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Below is the version as set forth in John 12:12-16 (the event is also recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke):

The next day the great crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. ¹³ They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting,

“Hosanna!”

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

“Blessed is the king of Israel!”

Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, as it is written:

“Do not be afraid, Daughter Zion;
    see, your king is coming,
    seated on a donkey’s colt.”

The other gospels provide additional details, including this in Luke 19:39: Upon witnessing his triumphal entry, “Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, rebuke your disciples!’” Why did the Pharisees do this? As stated by some scholars, they realized the crowd was singing Psalm 118:26 to Jesus, which was considered to be a messianic psalm.

According to Sir Robert Anderson, as set forth in his book The Coming Prince, Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem was exactly sixty-nine seven-year periods to the day from when Artaxerxes I gave his decree to Nehemiah chapter 2.

Obviously, scholars quibble about these things and arrive at vastly different conclusions. But “virtually all scholars . . . accept that a human Jesus existed” and an apparent widespread consensus among them is that he died around 30 A.D. or shortly thereafter. And the timing of the events outlined above, even when extracted entirely from extra-biblical sources, is too eerie to dismiss the prophecy of Daniel outright.

Of course, anyone can find an “expert” to tell them otherwise. As a lawyer, I know this better than most. By saying this, I do not mean to suggest that anyone with a true intellectual curiosity (rather than a pretextual one) should not engage with scholars and academics. By all means do so. But do not place all your hope in them. On that note, here is an excerpt from G.K. Chesterton’s “The Twelve Men: An incomparable explanation of juries”:

Our civilisation has decided, and very justly decided, that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men [i.e., experts]. . . .When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.

Below is a charming, short clip from The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in which the prophecy of Aslan is made known to Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy by a couple of enchanting beavers.