TestingWorldviews.com
"A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets." - Arthur C. Clarke . .
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An archaeological find which verifies the historicity of the book of Jeremiah, is the discovery of the Seal of Baruch in 1975. Baruch was the scribe or emanuensis who wrote down the prophecies of Jeremiah. Read more about the Seal of Baruch at: http://home.att.net/~kmpope/SealofBaruch.html |
ISRAEL, for example, is predicted by a whole group of prophecies (such as Isaiah 11:10-12 ; Jeremiah 23:3-8 ; 30:3-11 ; Ezekiel 37:11-28 ; 38:8 ; Luke 21:23-24 ; and others) to be restored to the land of Israel as a politically functioning nation in the latter days. Back in history, as a result of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. by General Titus of Rome, the Jews were scattered around the world, and they had no homeland or country of their own for more than 1800 years. The literal fulfillment of this group of prophecies was thought by some to be impossible, but in May of 1948 the establishment of the Jewish State of Israel was announced and recognized by the U.N. Though many of us may not approve of many of the political activities of the Israeli government, the prophecy has still come true, and nothing else even nearly comparable to this remarkable fulfillment has ever happened to any other nation of people in all of history.
There are many other predictive prophecies in the Bible, but the most important ones pertain to the Messiah, of which there are more than 300 prophecies in the Old Testament (the Torah).
A PORTRAIT OF MESSIAH
To give a statistical proof of the power of the Bible in the area of predictive prophecy, I will now list some messianic prophecies, along with their fulfillments. Then will be given a conservative estimate of the mathematical chance that each such prophecy could be fulfilled in the life of one individual by the random events of history.
1. Messiah to be a descendant of Abraham & Sarah - Genesis 12:2-3 ; 17:15-17 ; 18:18
Fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth - Matthew 1:1 ; Luke 3:33 ; Acts 3:25.
Logic: How many 90-year-old couples have ever born a child? (From 1500 B.C to 1900 A.D.) Thus...
2. Messiah to be a descendant of Isaac - Genesis 17:19
Fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth - Matthew 1:2 ; Luke 3:33
Logic: Abraham had two sons. (But the other son, Ishmael, was not by Sarah). Thus...
3. Messiah to be a descendant of Judah - Genesis 49:10
Fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth - Matthew 1:3 ; Luke 3:33
Logic: Israel (Jacob) had 12 sons who became the 12 tribes. Thus...
(Note: Do the Jews of today know which of them is from each of the 12 tribes? -- If not, how will they recognize the Messiah when he comes?)
4. Messiah to be a descendant of David - Isaiah 9:7
Fulfilled in Jesus - Matthew 1:6 ; Luke 3:31
Logic: David was one of 8 sons. Thus...
(Note: Again, how will the Jews know the Messiah as a descendent of David?)
Some people are concerned that Maternal bloodlines (Jesus was born of Mary) had absolutely no meaning or significance in Jewish laws of succession. In order to be heir to the throne of David, only the patrilineage mattered. If Jesus wasn't descended from David through his father then he wasn't the Messiah.
But it must be noted, that Jesus was physically descended from David. He in fact IS humanly a descendant of David; in other words, his body came from Mary and ultimately from David. No "legal" hair-splitting can change this fact. The above situation is necessary, since the Messiah was prophecied to be born of a VIRGIN (per Isaiah 7:14) �and Matthew understood it this way (Mat. 1:23), and --in fact-- this was the case, and Jesus had no human father. --What is more important?... the lack of a human father (raising genealogical legal eye-brows) ...or the fact that Jesus was conceived of the Holy Spirit, and he had a God-nature exactly like the Father (making him the sinless and perfect Lamb of God who could pay the death-penalty for our sins)? --Furthermore, Matthew (in Chapter 1) mentions several women, who are actually more important in the lineage than their husbands. This seems to make a clear precedent for the coming of Mary in the line.
As Jesus said, some people strain a gnat out of their drink, but then swallow a camel. |
5. Birth-Place of Messiah, the "Eternal One", to be in Bethlehem, Israel - Micah 5:2
Fulfilled in Jesus - Matthew 2:1 ; Luke 2:4-7
Logic: How many towns have Jews lived in around the world since 1500 B.C.? Thus...
6. The Time of Messiah's ministry specified - Daniel 9:25
Fulfilled in Jesus - (see discussion above)
Logic: How many generations of Jews have there been? Thus...
7. Messiah to be born of a virgin - Isaiah 7:14
Fulfilled in Jesus - Matthew 1:18 ; Luke 1:26-35
Logic: Though basically a miracle, there may be some small chance. (up to 1900 A.D.) Thus...
8. Messiah flees to Egypt to live for a while, and returns to Israel - Hosea 11:1
Fulfilled in Jesus - Matthew 2:14-15
Logic: What percentage of Jews have ever lived in Egypt? Thus...
9. Messiah to be a prophet like Moses, with miracles, authority over the Scriptures - Deut. 18:15
Fulfilled in Jesus - John 6:14 ; John 1:45 ; Acts 3:19-26
Logic: How many Jews have major prophetic status, still recognized worldwide long after death?
10. Messiah to enter Jerusalem triumphantly, as a King, ...riding on a donkey - Zechariah 9:9
Fulfilled in Jesus - John 12:12-14 ; Matthew 21:1-11
Logic: How many Jews have ever done precisely this?
11. Messiah, though innocent, is rejected and dies for our sins - Isaiah 53:3-5,9,12
Fulfilled in Jesus - John 1:11,29 ; John 8:46 ; Hebrews 4:15 ; John 15:23-25 ; Matthew 8:16-17
Logic: How many people (besides Jesus) are sinless? ...and died for the sins of others? Thus...
12. Messiah to be crucified, bones disjointed, mocked, lots cast for clothing - Psalm 22:6-8,16-18
Fulfilled in Jesus - Matthew 27:32f ; John 19:16f
Logic: How many have been crucified, also including just these circumstances? Thus...
13. Messiah's bones would not be broken - Psalm 34:20
Fulfilled in Jesus - John 19:33-37
Logic: The number of crucified victims at Jerusalem whose bones needed to be broken to quickly force the victim to die? Thus...
14. Messiah's side to be pierced at the behest of the people of Jerusalem - Zechariah 12:10
Fulfilled in Jesus - John 19:34
Logic: The number of crucified victims from Jerusalem's population in the first century? -- (Also, with a stab in the side.) Thus...
15. Messiah's body does not decay, but is resurrected in three days - Psalm 16:10 ; Isaiah 53:11
Fulfilled in Jesus - Matthew 28 ; Mark 16 ; Luke 24 ; John 20 ; Acts 1 ; 1 Corinthians 15
Logic: How many people have come back to life after being dead for three days? Thus...
16. Messiah to ascend into heaven, and rightly called "Lord" - Psalm 68:18
Fulfilled in Jesus - Luke 24:50-51 ; Acts 1:9-11
Logic: Very few men have ascended into heaven without mechanical means. Thus...
ANALYSIS of PROBABILITY:
Statistical probabilities are calculated such that, the combined chance of the first two events (above) happening to one person in his lifetime, is the product of those two chances, which is: 1 chance out of 2, times 1 chance out of 1,000,000 ...which multiplies out to 1 chance out of 2,000,000. Similarly, the combined chance of the first three events happening to one person, is the product of the first three chances, which multiplies out to 1 chance out of 24,000,000.
These multiplications continue in this manner, until you get a total product for all fifteen messianic prophecies. Thus, the combined chance of all fifteen events happening to one person, is the product of all fifteen chances, which comes out to: 1 chance out of 1060 ...( 10 to the 60th power ). This large number is a one with 60 zeroes behind it, and is approximately the number of atoms in a million stars. A leading authority on probability, Emile Borel, writes in his book Probabilities and Life, ('62), that when you reach one chance out of 1050, it is a statistically impossible event to occur randomly. To overcome the odds of one chance in 1050, would be like marking one electron in a mass the size of Earth, and then finding it blindfolded with one random selection. But the chance of the fifteen messianic prophecies happening to Jesus at random, was one chance out of 1060, so, we would have to mark one atom in a million stars, and then find it blindfolded with one random selection.
Therefore, obviously, it is virtually impossible that those fifteen prophecies happened in the life of Jesus merely by chance, ...and remember, the people who did those things to Jesus did not realize they were fulfilling the predictions. In this, we have virtually a formal mathematical proof that God supernaturally gave the prophecies in the Bible, and therefore, that the Bible is divinely authoritative, and that God is also in charge of the events of history.
What's more, when we consider that there are about 300 fulfilled prophecies concerning Jesus Christ, and that there are many dozens of other fulfilled prophecies concerning additional people, places and events, we begin to see the power of this evidence, which demonstrates that the Bible is from God.
Now, of course, with regard to some prophecies it can quite justifiably be maintained that the person fulfilling the prophecy did it on purpose ---this idea is certainly true in some instances, and the Bible even says (for instance) that Jesus did a few things to intentionally fulfill scripture. For the purposes of our mathematical calculations of chance fulfillments we could choose not to count such fulfillments, however, the main prophecies in view here are those which are beyond the control of the person involved. For example, Jesus could not control the place of his birth, or the manner of his execution, etc. Also, the re-establishment of the nation of Israel is most probably beyond the control of the people who participated in it.
Looking Elsewhere
Outside of the Bible, there are no known religious scriptures which contain accurate and specific predictions of human history, which are unique to those writings. Any non-biblical "predictions" suggested, have been descriptions of things that had already happened (history), or they are very general and safe predictions which are also accompanied by wrong guesses. Correct predictions of human history are (thus far) the result of taking the prophetic information from the true predictions already revealed in the Bible.
The QURAN of Islam is one instance of the above methods: History shows that an intelligent man named Mohammed, while in Medina and other places, carried on lively theological discussions with both Jews and Christians, and studied (by discussing) the Bible --including its predictions-- for years (...which the reader may investigate by clicking here or here or here). From this, Mohammed gained an understanding of some genuine prophecies (and history) as revealed in the Bible. He accepted the monotheistic God of the Bible as being true, and even attempted to put together an "Arab version" of Judaism ...and only after being rebuffed on this effort (because the Jews of Medina insisted that his work wasn't yet acceptable), did a frustrated Mohammed give up on embracing Judaism and eventually proceed to dictate an independent work: the Quran (ref: A History of the Jews, '87, by Paul Johnson, p.167). It is quite evidently as a result of this background of Mohammed, that the Quran includes allusions to Bible history, as well as a number of prophetic images which are reminiscent of the Bible's apocalyptic end of history ---because they were originally taken from the Bible, which was already about 500 years old at the time of Mohammed. Other than such Biblical concepts, there is no specific predictive prophecy in the Quran, and thus, it does not compare with the Bible, nor qualify as true Scripture from God.
In another direction, there are secular predictions about human history with accuracy levels which are either so poor that they are no better than educated guessing, or any given prediction is so general and vaguely non-specific that many different events could be (and are) considered to be the fulfillments. This includes such foretellers as Jeane Dixon, or Edgar Cayce or Nostradamus (click here)). In the case of Nostradamus, for example, he used a very old kind of French (something similar to Chaucer's English) which is hard to understand to begin with, and then he mixed in various Latin and Spanish terms, and we find one verse which reads: "In the 7th month of 1999, the great king of Terror will descend from the sky" ...however, nobody knows just what that means, and nothing remarkable happened in July of 1999, as Nostradamus again typically fails to make any specifically accurate predictions.
Conclusions
So, we see the divine authority of the Bible especially clearly demonstrated in the area of predictive prophecy. It shows that the God of the Bible (YHWH) knows everything ahead of time, and that he is actually in charge of the events of human history. The Bible exhibits an unequaled capacity to specifically and accurately predict events in history which are then usually carried out by people who unknowingly fulfill those predictions.
In light of such evidence, we should take the statement of the apostle Peter seriously, when he says, "Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:20-21). The Bible comes from God, as Paul declares to Timothy: "All Scripture is God-breathed" (2 Timothy 3:16). No wonder Jesus emphasizes the infallible authority of the Bible, when he says, "the Scriptures cannot be broken" (John 10:35). There's no other book like the Bible. It is incomparable ...surely, the only true Scriptures.
Relevant Articles (Links):
How to Calculate Probabilities - by Dr. Hale
- - - The Genealogy of the Messiah
NOTE: ...You, dear reader, are valuable and loved by God, and that's why Jesus Christ came.
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