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What Is the Meaning of BC and AD?

B.C. and A.D. are used in history's dating system with the former referring to "Before Christ" and the latter as "Anno Domini," which is Latin for "in the year of our Lord." A.D. is also widely mistakenly as "After Death" (of Christ). The main point here is that this dating system makes Jesus Christ the dividing point of world history.

The system was designed in 525 A.D. by Dionysius Exiguus, a monk and mathematician from the Middle Ages who was commissioned by St. Pope John I to determine the correct day of Easter or Christ's resurrection. It took 400 years for this dating system to reach widespread use after Europe's colonization of Asia and economic pressures from the United States.

But Dionysius' system isn't perfect as he miscalculated Jesus' birth by dating it 753 years from the founding of Rome which couldn't be because Herod died only 751 years after Rome's founding. Biblical scholars later found that Jesus was born between 6–4 B.C. not 1 A.D.

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Christians consider the continued usage of A.D. and B.C. as a fulfillment of the prophecy in Philippians 2:11 that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Indeed, a student of history or anyone for that matter may mention the phrase A.D. in pointing to a date without realizing that he or she is actually saying "Anno Domini" or "in the year of our Lord" in reference to Jesus.

This reference to Christ made secularists jealous which is why they are pushing for the replacement of B.C. to B.C.E or "Before Common Era" and A.D. to C.E or "Common Era." The new reference names were introduced by Jewish academics in the 19th century.

The purpose of this is to remove religious connotations in historical references. But this is just semantics because the transition point between B.C.E. and C.E. remains to be the birth of Christ. Even if B.C. and A.D. are replaced, Christ's birth remains to be the focal point of history.

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