AWAYPART 34
(Mark Cahill's Book)
Now consider this. Jesus Christ fulfilled more than 300 prophesies in His life. Here is something that can help you appreciate the odds of this happening : if only eight of those prophesies came true in any one person, it would be comparable to this:
* Build a small fence around the State
of Texas,
* fill it two feet deep with silver dollars
* paint one of them red.
* mix them all up
* then - starting at the Louisiana
border - walk blindfolded as far into
Texas as you want to go,
* Then lean over, still blindfolded, and
pick up the red silver dollar.
What do you think the chances are that you would pick up the red one?
Would you bet your retirement on that one silver dollar? Would you bet your eternal life on odds like that? All of us do, because those are only the odds for eight prophesies coming true in one person. But Jesus had more than 300 prophesies about Him come true.
Rabbis used to wonder if there would be two Messiahs because He was spoken of as both a Suffering Servant, coming to remove the barrier of sin from between people and God, and as a Conquering King coming to deliver His people from worldly oppression. But they were reading of two separate visits of the same Messiah. One down, and one to go!
The rabbis also used to wonder if therecwere going to be three Messiahs, because it is written He would be born in Bethlehem, that God would call Him out of Egypt and that He would be called a Nazarene.
They couldn't imagine one man fulfilling all three requirements. But Jesus was born in Bethlehem, was taken by His parents into Egypt to escape being murdered by Herod, and lived there until God told Joseph it was okay to return to Israel. Then they went to live in Nazareth, where Jesus grew up and learned and worked until He was thirty.
If it was difficult to
of Messiah, imagine
contemplating the
odds for the 300
prophecies that have
come true in Jesus!
First you would have to go down to the neutron, proton and electron level of an atom to get a sample size big enough .
There just aren't enough items in the universe to describe the unlikelyhood of this happening. We know it is absolutely impossible for man to predict the future with 100 percent accuracy. Certainly not to this magnitude. Only God could do that, and He did.
Matthew says:
But he answered and said, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
(Matthew 4:4)
We have those words that proceed out of His mouth, here in the Bible, what is it going to tell us about eternity?
John records that :
Pilate saith unto Him what is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, 'I find in Him, no fault at all.'
John 18:38)
Like Pilate, we are all searching for truth that we can depend on, not a blind faith, but faith based on good solid evidence. John says:
Sanctify them through Thy truth, : Thy word is truth. (John 17:17)
Putting it all together: God's word about Messiah , recorded in the Bible, has been shown to be true.
Investigating the actual findings of science, history, archaeology, and prophecy, has shown us that - based on the evidence - saying there is no God makes no sense, because everything in the universe points to intelligent design and because no one but God could give so many complete, detailed, prophecies
-sometimes thousands of years in advance - and then simply and elegantly fulfill them in One Man's life.
So far we have seen that science cries out for a Creator, Who made us and everything else. Then we found that the Bible is a reliable true document. How does this all fit together? Doescthe Bible support those same position of science? Let's take a look.
Next post 19th September
No comments:
Post a Comment