WHAT CHANCE IS THERE THAT WE'RE WRONG ABOUT
JESUS BEING GOD'S SON?
By Jon Quinn
"Now He said to them, 'These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled." (LUKE 24:44).
Suppose that we took 100,000,000,000,000,000 silver dollars and marked one of them. Then we mixed them up and scattered them across the State of Texas. Then we put a blindfold on you and told you to walk into Texas, as far as you want to, stepping on silver dollars as you go. When you decide to stop, bend over and pick one up. If it is the one with the mark on it, then you win. How would you like those odds? And what does all this have to do with the title of this article? We shall see.
PROPHECIES AND JESUS
"God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and He will not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?" (NUM 23:19).
The apostles and prophets, and Jesus Himself, appealed to the Scriptures as proof of Jesus' Messiahship. The Old Testament, written over a period of about 1,000 years (1400-400 B.C.), and completed at least four centuries prior to Jesus' birth, establish and confirm the fact that Jesus was who He said He was. There were over 300 prophecies made, including over 60 major prophecies that show obvious Divine foreknowledge.
SOME OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED
"And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in the Scriptures." (LUKE 24:27).
Many have tried to explain away the prophecies. There is really no adequate explanation other than Jesus is God's Son, the Messiah promised from the beginning. Some skeptics suggest that the prophecies were actually written after Jesus lived, but the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls disproved that, as well as the fact that the Greek translation of the Old Testament occurred in 250 B.C. You could not very well translate from the Hebrew to the Greek if the Hebrew Scriptures did not already exist!
Others suggest that Jesus deliberately fulfilled the prophecies. No doubt He did; the riding into Jerusalem on the back of a colt was something He deliberately did to fulfill prophecy. But not all can be explained that way. He certainly had no control over the place of His birth, nor the time of it. He had no control over the price that Judas would receive for betraying Him. He had no control over the method of His execution, the piercing of His side, the casting of lots for His garments nor where He would be buried!
Maybe it was all coincidental. You can find some of these prophecies fulfilled by lots of people. Jesus was not the first, or the last, to die for others. But again, Jesus did not fulfill just one or two, but hundreds. In fact, all of them. No other in human history comes close! No objection conceived by the unbelieving mind of man has ever come close to providing a reasonable alternative.
SOME SPECIFIC PROPHECIES
"Think not that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill." (MATT 5:17).
There are far too many prophecies to note all of them here. We will note eight of them, selected because they were all beyond the human control of Jesus to manipulate. According to the prophet Micah, the Messianic ruler would come from Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus. Here God eliminates all the other cities and villages of the world as possibilities (MICAH 5:2; MATT 2:1). The time of the Messiah's coming would be in the days of the fourth empire, which turned out to be Rome (DAN 2:44). Very exact time references are given (DAN 9:25) and fulfilled in Jesus. He was to be born of a virgin (ISA 7:14, MATT 1:18-24). He would be betrayed by a friend for 30 pieces of silver (ZECH 11:12,13, JOHN 13:21, MATT 26:15). In His execution, His hands and feet would be pierced (PSA 22:16, LUKE 23:33). People would continue to mock Him as He died (PSA 22:7,8, MATT 27:39). He would be pierced (ZECH 12:10) and of course this was fulfilled by a Roman soldier with a spear (JOHN 19:34). Though counted as wicked, He would be buried by a rich man (ISA 53:9, MATT 27:57-60).
"Remember the former things long past, for I am God and there is no other; I am God and there is no one like Me. Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things which have not yet been done, saying, 'My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure." (ISA 46:9,10).
WHAT ARE THE CHANCES?
"For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote of Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?" (JOHN 5:46,47).
Remember those silver dollars we talked about at the beginning of this article? The chances of you picking the right one are 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000. That is the same as the chance that any man living down to the present time could have fulfilled all eight prophecies, based upon mathematical principles of probability. This is according to Professor Peter Stoner in his book Science Speaks, which has been reviewed by the American Scientific Affiliation and found dependable.
Putting it another way, is there any wisdom at all in rejecting Jesus when the chances of Him being who He claimed to be are 99,999,999,999,999,999 out of 100,000,000,000,000,000 with only 1 chance in that same number that He wasn't? And add to that the fact that we're only talking about fulfilling 8 of the more than 300 prophecies which He actually did fulfill! If all the prophecies were considered, the odds of Jesus not being God's Son are even less, much, much less! Since Jesus is obviously God's Son, put your eternal destiny in His hands. Its the right thing to do!
