The Bible - The Authentic Word of God (Part 3)

               Okay, it’s pretty impressive to see that someone could predict the coming kingdoms and specific details concerning them long before it was all fulfilled.  It definitely adds weight to the Bible and also to the existence of God.  How else could anyone see the future without aid from some kind of Power?  Now let’s examine the fulfillment of numerous prophecies accomplished by one man in less than thirty-five years.

               

                To start you must realize that Jesus fulfilled a lot of prophecies.  You may see different numbers different places but it appears that He satisfied more than 300 prophecies.  That is a lot.  If Jesus was able to fulfill all of these Messianic prophecies, this would add incredible weight to not only the authenticity of God’s Word but also that Jesus was perhaps who He claimed to be.

                Let’s look at a few of these prophecies so that you can get a feel for what Messiah had to accomplish. 

                1. Micah 5:2 - "But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times."  (Jesus was born in Bethlehem.)

                2. Malachi 3:1 - "See, I will send a messenger, who will prepare the way before me..."  (Thus the Messiah was required to have someone go before Him to prepare the way.  This was fulfilled by John the Baptist.)

                3. Zechariah 9:9 - "Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion!  Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem!  See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey."  (At what is called the Triumphal Entry, Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey.)

                4. Zechariah 13:6 - "If someone asks him, 'What are these wounds on your body?' (or wounds between your hands) he will answer, 'The wounds I was given at the house of my friends.'"  (Think of this one as a prophecy stating that Jesus would be wounded in His hands and betrayed by one of His friends - Judas)

                5. Zechariah 11:12 - "I told them, 'If you think it best, give me my pay; but if not, keep it.'  So they paid me thirty pieces of silver." (Judas betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver exactly)

                6. Zechariah 11:13 - "And the LORD said to me, 'Throw it to the potter' - the handsome price at which they priced me!  So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the LORD to the potter."  (It turns out that Judas later threw the silver into the house of the LORD.  The chief priests then used the money to buy a potter's field.)

                7. Isaiah 53:7 - "He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth."  (At His trial, even though He was guiltless, He said nothing to defend himself.)

                8. Psalm 22:16 - "Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet."  (Jesus was crucified with nails being driven through his hands and feet.)

For a more complete list, visit http://www.accordingtothescriptures.org/prophecy/353prophecies.html

                These are obviously not easy prophecies to fulfill especially the ones that would be outside of your control.  Remember, even if you did pull off these few examples, you would still have more than 300 extras to concern yourself with.  It is incredible!  Jesus did it though.

                Have you ever contemplated the odds of one man fulfilling these prophecies?  In short, it is incomprehensible.  Dr. Peter Stoner tried to determine these odds and he reported his findings in his book Science Speaks.  He estimated the odds of Jesus fulfilling just the eight prophecies given above.

                To get the details behind how he came up with the numbers, check out the book or go to http://www.sciencespeaks.net/.  The figure for this probability is astounding – 1 out of 10¹⁷!  Allow me to type out that figure so that you can visualize it: 1 out of 100,000,000,000,000,000. How you pronounce this number is beyond me.  To help you comprehend how large of a number this is, here is the illustration that Dr. Stoner gave in his book.

                “Suppose that we take 10¹⁷ silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. They will cover all of the state two feet deep. Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state. Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up one silver dollar and say that it is the right one. What chance would he have of getting the right one? Just the same chance that the prophets would have had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man, from their day to the present time, providing they wrote using their own wisdom.”

                Remember, this is only for the fulfillment of eight prophecies out of three hundred plus prophecies.  Read chapter three in Stoner's book at http://www.sciencespeaks.net/ and read as he tries to illustrate the chances of Jesus fulfilling sixteen and then forty-eight prophecies.  Believe me, it is astonishing!  (Please note: At the end of chapter three, Stoner uses the assumption that the earth is six billion years old to help visualize the chances of Jesus' fulfillment of prophecy.  This is an unbiblical and unscientific age for the earth.  Consequently, it causes an error in his work.  However, this error is not critical to the accuracy of his illustration.)

                As a side note, many have claimed that these prophecies were snuck into Scripture after Jesus' life.  As you have seen, it would be quite a feat to fulfill so many prophecies.  Thus, what if people from the early church added to the prophet's writings and then went around claiming that Jesus must be the Messiah?  This would be disastrous!  Look at it this way.  What would the early church have to gain if they added weight to Jesus being the Son of God if they knew it wasn't true?  They would accomplish nothing.  However, hopefully you are not satisfied with this answer.  There is a far better one. 

                The Dead Sea Scrolls, known as one of the greatest archeological finds of the 20th century, were found in an Israeli cave in the mid 1900s.  The cave contained ancient manuscripts including biblical scrolls.  The Isaiah Scroll, for example, contains nearly the entire book of Isaiah.  It has been dated at about 125 B.C. (125 years before Christ's birth).   It turned out that the prophecies were in there.  In fact, you can go to http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/ to digitally view the Dead Sea Scrolls.  Look at the Isaiah Scroll and go to chapter 53:7 and you will see the prophecy we discussed above.  Consequently, the Dead Sea Scrolls greatly supported the Bible and its message.

                We are now faced with two options.  Since Jesus fulfilled all of these prophecies against all odds, He must either have been a really lucky individual who can be ignored, or He was the only One who could fulfill the prophecies and consequently is who He claimed to be - the Son of God and Messiah.  As you have seen, number one is virtually impossible.  What about option two?  Well the prophecies said that Jesus would be our Savior.  Jesus even claimed it Himself.   What reason is there to not believe that Jesus is our Lord and Redeemer?  He died to save us.  We must surrender our lives to Him.  We would not be putting our faith in another random historical figure, but in the One who God foretold about through His prophets.

                Not only do these facts concerning Jesus' fulfillment of prophecy answer the all-important question of "Was Jesus who He claimed to be?" but also adds more evidence that the Bible was truly inspired by God and that its words are critically important.  The fulfillment of Biblical prophecy continues to support God's Word.  Don't you think that you should read it?              

Matthew

The Bible - The Authentic Word of God (Part 2)

        In the first part, we looked to see if the Bible contradicts itself.  As you saw, with closer examination and context study, it does not.  Well, since it does not contradict itself, that's great.  But does it possibly support itself?  In fact, it does.  Now how is that possible?  Can the Bible support itself without assuming that the Scriptures are true?  It is time to take a look at fulfilled Biblical prophecy.
       
        We will begin with a simple example.  Examine Daniel chapter two.  In this chapter, we see Babylon’s ruler, King Nebuchadnezzar having dreamed a dream.  Upon waking from his disturbing dream, King Nebuchadnezzar asks his “magicians, enchanters, sorcerers and astrologers,” (verse 2) to interpret the dream.  Of course, since these men are not God’s prophets, they can do no such thing.  They suddenly see their lives resting in the balance when the king declares in verse five, “This is what I have firmly decided: If you do not tell me what my dream was and interpret it, I will have you cut into pieces and your houses turned into piles of rubble.”  To say the least, these magicians are dumbfounded.  How in the world can they make up an interpretation when the king won’t even tell them his dream? 

        Fortunately, Daniel comes to their rescue.  He was not one of their number by the way, but requested that the king spare their lives.  Daniel proceeds to explain the king’s dream and tell its meaning. 

Daniel 2:31-45: (31) “You looked, O king, and there before you stood a large statue –an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance.  (32) The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, (33) its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. (34) While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands.  It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them.  (35) Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were broken to pieces at the same time and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer.  The wind swept them away without leaving a trace.  But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.

        (36) “This was the dream, and now we will interpret it to the king. (37) You, O king, are the king of kings.  The God of heaven has given you dominion and power and might and glory; (38) in your hands he has placed mankind and the beasts of the field and the birds of the air.  Wherever they live, he has made you ruler over them all.  You are the head of gold.

        (39) “After you, another kingdom will rise, inferior to yours.  Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth.  (40) Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, as strong as iron – for iron breaks and smashes everything – and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others.  (41) Just as you saw that the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay.  (42) As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. (43) And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay. 

        (44) “In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people.  It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.  (45) This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands – a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces. 

        “The great God has shown the king what will take place in the future.  The dream is true and interpretation is trustworthy.”  

        Now although God didn’t reveal the specifics concerning these kingdoms, we now know the details because the prophecy has been fulfilled.  The head of gold was Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom, the Babylonian Empire.  The Babylonian’s ruled the world from 606 B.C. – 539 B.C.  Next, the kingdom of silver rose to power.  This happened during Daniel’s lifetime when Darius and the Medo-Persians snuck into Babylon and took control of the kingdom in 539 B.C.  The Medo-Persians lasted until 331 B.C. when Alexander the Great and the Greeks took over the known world. 

        As you might have guessed the fourth kingdom was the Roman Empire.  They ruled the world until 476 A.D. when their kingdom fell.  As Daniel described nearly 1,000 years earlier, the Roman Empire fell due to inner turmoil.  Remember, (42) “As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. (43) And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay.”  This was an accurate description of Rome’s downfall.  

        The final kingdom is the Kingdom of God.  Christ came to earth during the height of the Roman Empire.  With the salvation that we can now receive, we can become children of God and part of his Kingdom.  Please, note that we are not talking about the 1,000 year reign that will happen after return of Christ (this is according to some prophetical models).  However, the rock that became a huge mountain is the kingdom that started out as a small group of people in Jerusalem but has now spread to millions in the far corners of the earth.   

        What are the odds of someone predicting these things long before it happened?   Compare this to someone during the time of the Middle Ages predicting that explorers would discover the New World and that later the United States of America would be founded.

        God is amazing.  You may not have noticed, but this dream and interpretation displays that God exercises complete control over the earth and its kingdoms.  He also has control over your life.  Even when things seem out of whack and your life is about to go over the edge, remember that God is still in the driver’s seat.  You are resting in His loving hands.

Matthew