Writing the date

By Kel Richards

Somewhere near the beginning of each year I like to tack the question of how we should write the date for this year. The way we tackle this is important, because this new year is not just the year 2004 – it is 2004 AD, and it’s the “AD” part I want to talk about in particular tonight.
You know perfectly well that in our system of dating all our years are listed as either “BC” or as “AD.” And the historical event that separates BC from AD is the birth of Jesus. Now, as it happens, when this system of counting the years was established they managed to get their calculations slightly wrong. The man who did this was a Greek monk named Dionysius Exiguus.
In the city of Rome, in the year that we would now call AD 532 he was commissioned to coordinate the calendar of the church. Up until that time everyone, including Christians, had used the Roman calendar, which counted its dates from the foundation of Rome (in what we would now call 753 BC). And from there dates were calculated according to the reigns of the different Roman emperors. This is the dating system used in the Bible itself. Thus, John the Baptist is said to have begun preaching “in the 15th year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius” (Luke 3:1) – which corresponds to AD 28.
But as I say, this old Roman system changed in the sixth century when Dionysius Exiguus sat down to do his work. According to his calculations, Jesus was born in the Roman year 754, and this he called the year one. By the way, there was no year zero, which is why the 21st century didn’t really begin – and the third millennium didn’t really begin – until New Year’s Day 2001 (even though we had the fireworks show was in 2000 – that was one year too early). But, that’s just by the by, and doesn’t really matter.
What is of interest is that Dionysius Exiguus made a slight error, since Matthew 2:1 dates the birth of Jesus to the days of King Herod, who died in 4 BC. And Jesus was born at the very end of the reign of Herod the Great, so the year in which Jesus was born was the year 4 BC, not AD 1. That error is a trivial matter, and is not what I want to draw your attention to tonight.
Rather I want to talk about those labels “BC” and “AD.” As you know “BC” stands for “Before Christ” but the corresponding label for all the later years is “AD” not “AC.” AD is Latin (Anno Domini) and means “in the year of our Lord.” The thing to notice here is that there is no such expression as “AC” – “After Christ.” And the reason for this is that there is no period of time that is “after Christ.” That is to say, Jesus Christ came, lived, taught, died, came back from the dead, and ascended into heaven – but his life, his authority, never ended. And because there is no end to the reign of Christ, there is no “after Christ.”
When Jesus came he established his rule and his reign as God’s appointed ruler (and rescuer) of Planet Earth. His rule is recognised in his most important title: “Lord.” Our English word “Lord” translates the Greek word kyrios – and is the most significant title Jesus is given in the pages of the Bible. In his death on the cross Jesus established his defeat over the forces of darkness, and ascended to his throne – to his place, his position, of power and authority. And he has never stepped down from that position from that day to this. He has come, but he has not gone – therefore, there is no such thing as “after Christ.” Good old Dionysius Exiguus understood this, and so he didn’t divide the years into BC and AC, but into BC and AD – into “before Christ” and “in the year of Our Lord.”
You and I are living in AD 2004 – that is to say, “in the year of our Lord 2004.” By the way, it’s a minor point, but it’s worth knowing: in the case of “BC” the letters always come after the year, but in the case of “AD” the letters (strictly speaking) should come before the year. So, we’d talk about the year 50 BC, or, 100 years later, we’d talk about AD 50. You see the difference?
That’s a minor point, and, in the end, it doesn’t really matter whether you put the AD before or after the year number. What is worth doing is writing down those letters AD. One very small way of telling people that Jesus matters, that Jesus is the centre of history, of by using those letters “AD” every time you write the date.

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Now, I’ve gone through this great rigmarole explaining the origin and meaning of BC and AD in order to encourage you to do something quite specific.
Every time you write the date, I want you to add the letters “AD” either afterwards or before the number. On your letters, your emails, your cheques, your appointments, in your diary – anywhere and everywhere you use a date that includes the year, add the letters AD. Never put 2004, always put 2004 AD. Resolve that from now on, for you, every year is not just a number, it’s a number AD.
This may sound like an odd suggestion, or an odd request, so I’d better explain. Remember that the letters “AD” stand for the Latin words Anno Domini which mean “in the year of Our Lord.” That means that every time you use the letters AD you are saying that Jesus Christ is your Lord. It’s a small, simple way of confessing to the Lordship of Jesus every time you write a date.
This may not strike you as important, but the enemies of Jesus know exactly how important it is. They are trying to change the way we label our years. They have adopted a new system, and they are trying to persuade the world to switch to their new system. In their new system BC is replaced by BCE, and AD is replaced by CE. The letters “CE” stand for “common era,” while “BCE” stand for “before the common era.” You can see what they want to do – they want to banish Jesus, and his Lordship, from our years, from our dates. And you can immediately see why they want to do this.
They say that all this BC and AD stuff is not politically correct, that it is culturally, ethnically, and religiously insensitive – that it’s offensive to all the Buddhists, and Hindus, and Muslims and the rest. Non-Christians, so we are told, don’t want their years to be label with the Lordship of Jesus so we have to stop. Well, I think we should refuse to stop. We got there first. Our system, for a whole lot of historical reasons, has triumphed and become the global system, and the Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and the rest will just have to put up with it.
The years acknowledge Jesus, and we should insist that this continues to be the case. We should refuse to either change or be silenced. And we should advertise the fact that we confess Jesus to be the Lord of history, the Lord of time, and (indeed) the Lord of all, by writing those letters AD every time we write the year.
You can see now why this, at first glance, trivial thing is, in fact, well worth doing. We need a little campaign on this. We need to tell our friends who are believers to do the same thing. We need to encourage the members of our church or our Bible study group to do it as well. We need more and more people – as many people as possible – refusing to write this year as 2004 without adding the letters AD.
And, not only when we write – if we have to say the year, there’s no reason not to say out loud “2004 AD” instead of just “2004.”
Go through your chequebook and write the letters AD after all the year dates, so that you don’t forget to do it. If you have a calendar on your wall, go through it and add the letters AD against every appearance of the year number 2004. If you have a desk diary, do the same thing. And don’t forget to do it on all your letters, postcards, notes and so on.
The very first creed ever used by the first followers of Jesus was just three words: “Jesus is Lord.” In Romans 10:9 we read: “if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” And in 1 Corinthians 12:3 we read: “no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” Sometimes that three-word creed was extended to four words by saying, “Jesus is my Lord,” or “Jesus is our Lord.”
And you can confess that Jesus is Lord (your Lord, our Lord) by using the initials for the Latin Anno Domini, AD, every time you write the year date. Do it. Encourage your friends to do it. Let’s start a movement.