Jesus prophesied

Religious prophecy in perspective

Prophecy can be rather mystical, metaphysical, and—for lack of a better word—creepy. It conjures up images of séances and other worlds. In Star Wars there is the foretelling of one who would bring balance to the Force. The Lord of the Rings movies weave their imaginary themes around scenes of prophetic utterances. But such is the world of imagination.

Regarding the real world, it has been said that if a person knew just one minute of the future he could rule the world. Think about it. One minute of knowing every hand dealt at the Trump Casino. You’d become the richest person in the world and Donald would become a postal worker.

But in the world of religion, prophecy serves an important function. It becomes one sure way to know if someone is speaking from God, or if they are not, for only an omniscient God could exhaustively know the future. And on this point the prophecy in the Old Testament stands as unique for most of the renowned holy books are devoid of predictive prophecy. For example, while the Book of Mormon and the Hindu Veda claim divine inspiration, there is really no means to corroborate their claims; you’re simply left with “Yeah, that sounds like something God might say.”

Bible scholar Wilbur Smith compared the prophecies of the Bible with other historical books, stating that the Bible “is the only volume ever produced by man, or a group of men, in which is to be found a large body of prophecies relating to individual nations, to Israel, to all the peoples of the earth, to certain cities, and to the coming one who was to be the Messiah.”[5] Thus the Bible lays out its claim for inspiration in such a way that it can be either substantiated or disproved.

And if you put this degree of accuracy into everyday perspective, you can see how astounding it is. For example, it would have been miraculous if in 1910 you had predicted that a man named George Bush would win the 2000 election. But imagine if you had included some of these details in your prediction:

• The candidate with the most total votes would lose the election.

• All major TV networks would announce the winner and then reverse themselves.

• One state (Florida) would swing the election.

• The U.S. Supreme Court would ultimately determine the winner.

Had such occurred, there would be churches named after you and dashboard statuettes bearing your likeness. But you didn’t, so there aren’t. As difficult (or impossible) as it would have been in 1910 to have accurately predicted this precise sequence of events, the odds are incredibly more difficult for Jesus, or any one person, to have fulfilled all the Hebrew prophecies for the Messiah. Contained within the Old Testament, written hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, are 61 specific prophecies and nearly 300 references about the Messiah.[6]

According to the Hebrew requirement that a prophecy must have a 100 percent rate of accuracy, the true Messiah of Israel must fulfill them all or else he is not the Messiah. So the question that either vindicates Jesus or makes him culpable for the world’s greatest hoax is, did he fit and fulfill these Old Testament prophecies?

What are the odds?

Let’s look at two of the specific prophecies about the Messiah in the Old Testament.

You, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, are only a small village in Judah. Yet a ruler of Israel will come from you, one whose origins are from the distant past. (Micah 5:2)

The Lord himself will choose [a] sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel—“God is with us.” (Isaiah 7:14)

Now, before considering the other 59 prophecies, you have to stop and ask yourself how many people in the category of potential Messiah throughout history were born of a virgin in the town of Bethlehem. “Well, let’s see, there’s my neighbor George, but … no, never mind; he was born in Brooklyn.” In the case of 61 detailed prophecies being fulfilled by one person, we are talking about virtually impossible odds.

When forensic scientists discover a DNA profile match, the odds of having the wrong person is frequently less than one in several billion (something for deviants to keep in mind). It would seem we are in the same neighborhood of odds, and numbers of zeros, in considering a single individual fulfilling these prophecies.

Professor of mathematics Peter Stoner gave 600 students a math probability problem that would determine the odds for one person fulfilling eight specific prophecies. (This is not the same as flipping a coin eight times in a row and getting heads each time.) First the students calculated the odds of one person fulfilling all the conditions of one specific prophecy, such as being betrayed by a friend for 30 pieces of silver. Then the students did their best to estimate the odds for all of the eight prophecies combined.

The students calculated that the odds against one person fulfilling all eight prophecies are astronomical—one in 10²¹. To illustrate that number, Stoner gave the following example: “First, blanket the entire Earth land mass with silver dollars 120 feet high. Second, specially mark one of those dollars and randomly bury it. Third, ask a person to travel the Earth and select the marked dollar, while blindfolded, from the trillions of other dollars.”[7]

People can do some pretty squishy things with numbers (especially with a last name like that), so it’s important to note that Stoner’s work was reviewed by the American Scientific Association, which stated, “The mathematical analysis … is based upon principles of probability which are thoroughly sound, and Professor Stoner has applied these principles in a proper and convincing way.” [8]

With that as an introduction, let’s add six more predictions to the two we’ve already considered, giving us a total of Professor Stoner’s eight:

The eight prophecies we’ve reviewed about the Messiah were written by men from different times and places between about 500 and 1,000 years before Jesus was born. Thus there was no opportunity for collusion among them. Notice too, the specificity. This is not the genre of a Nostradamus prediction—“When the moon turns green, the lima bean will lie cloaked by the roadside.”

Continue reading…1.2.3.