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Sometimes trying to use Scripture to justify the existence of God makes it difficult since Scripture is written by those who don’t have to be convinced of His existence. Especially complex to convince if one would look to science as being the authority of truth. We know this is not so, since the truth of science changes as knowledge is gained making all previous truths obsolete to the current one. Scripture does not change and has not changed. Some would site translations, and interpretations, but in its original it has not changed from its revelation to the prophets.
I’ve read a rather interesting book which places Biblical prophecy front and center against science if you will. Science has difficulty addressing prophecy since dating documents of antiquity are difficult at best. So the only empirical evidence possible is to let time take its course and see if it comes true, then determine if it was somehow manipulated somehow so that it would occur exactly as predicted. So I leave you with this read. Praying that some good may come of this to those who may be wavering, or entirely lost.
C4E
Title: The Bible – Dead Letter or Message from Your Creator?
Author: M.E. Brines
Expert in almost its entirety:
Jesus himself claimed to be the Son of God. (in ; , , ; , ; ; etc.) But what credentials does he have to make such a claim?
The Old Testament was written over a millennium and contains hundreds of prophecies of the coming messiah. New Testament authors appealed numerous times to such prophecies as authentications of Jesus. For example:
“Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, a called apostle, separated to the gospel of God (2) (which He had promised beforehand through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures), (3) about His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, (4) who was marked out the Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead…”
The life of Jesus fulfilled over 300 of these prophecies – THREE HUNDRED.
And most of these aren’t prophecies that Jesus or his followers could have decided to fulfill. For example, Jesus had no control of where he was born, his parent’s decision to flee to Egypt when he was an infant, or Herod’s massacre of the innocents. And what about the visit of the Shepherds in Luke chapter 2 or of the Magi in the second chapter of Matthew?
The supreme example of this is the prophecy in Daniel Chapter nine.
At the beginning of your prayers the commandment came out, and I have come to explain. For you are greatly beloved; therefore understand the matter, and attend to the vision:
Seventy weeks are decreed as to your people and as to your holy city, to finish the transgression and to make an end of sins, and to make atonement for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy.
Know therefore and understand, that from the going out of the command to restore and to build Jerusalem, to Messiah the Prince, shall be seven weeks, and sixty-two weeks. The street shall be built again, and the wall, even in times of affliction.
And after sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself. And the people of the ruler who shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. And the end of it shall be with the flood, and ruins are determined, until the end shall be war.
And he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week. And in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the offering to cease, and on a corner of the altar desolating abominations, even until the end. And that which was decreed shall be poured on the desolator.
Daniel is talking the angel Gabriel. Gabriel tells him God has fixed a timetable of seventy “weeks” for Israel to “make an end of sins, and to make atonement for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy.” The period ends with anointing of the Messiah (the Most Holy) as King over Israel.
“Weeks” in prophecy often means seven-year periods, therefore 7+62 “weeks” = 69 x 7 (one “week” of years being 7 years) = 483 years.
The Book of Daniel was written in 538 BC and has existed in Jewish sources unchanged since that time. This is verifiable as far back as the fourth century when Jewish scribes convinced Alexander the Great to spare their city by showing him another prophecy in Daniel predicting his victory over the Persians.
We see from the prophecy in Daniel above God declared that 483 years after the issuance of a decree to rebuild Jerusalem he will send the Messiah who will anointed as King of the Jews. By God’s own word in Deuteronomy chapter eighteen (quoted above,) if this does not come to pass then God is a fraud. Conversely, if it does come to pass it authenticates both the Bible and the identity of the Messiah. So, was this prophecy fulfilled or not? The whole Bible, the deity of Christ, all his teachings and the truth of Christianity stand or fall on this one prophecy.
The starting point of the timetable is given in verse 25:
Know therefore and understand, that from the going out of the command to restore and build Jerusalem, to Messiah the Prince, shall be seven weeks, and sixty-two weeks. The street shall be built again, and the wall, even in times of affliction.
In Hailey’s Bible Handbook, in the section about Daniel chapter nine there is a note that references three decrees were issued involving the rebuilding of Jerusalem: the first in 536 BC, the second in 457 BC and finally 444 BC.
The first decree was issued in 536 BC. Zerubbabel and about fifty thousand Jews were allowed to return and rebuild the temple but not the city.
That work on the temple was not finished so, in 457 BC another group was dispatched with permission to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem and finish the temple. The wall was completed in 444 BC.
Finally in 444 BC the third decree was issued appointing Nehemiah as governor.
So which decree is the one the prophecy refers to?
The starting point of the timetable is given in verse 25:
Know therefore and understand, that from the going out of the command to restore and to build Jerusalem, to Messiah the Prince, shall be seven weeks, and sixty-two weeks. The street shall be built again, and the wall, even in times of affliction.
We can disregard the first decree because it involved the temple, not the actual city of Jerusalem.
We can also disregard the third decree because while the prophecy mentions that the wall is to be restored, the timing of the prophecy isn’t based on when the wall is completed but when the decree to build it was issued, and that was in 457 BC.
Therefore the prophetic countdown started in 457 BC. This prophesy was literally fulfilled when Christ began his earthly ministry in 26 AD, exactly 483 years after the commandment to rebuild Jerusalem was issued in the seventh year of Artaxerxes I, King of Persia in 457 BC.
Let’s verify our math: 457 BC + 483 years = 26 AD.
Why do we know 26 AD is the fulfillment date? Christ first declared himself as the Messiah in his first public appearance in his home synagogue in 26 AD. We should use Christ’s own declaration at the beginning of his ministry as his official arrival:
And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And, as His custom was, He went in to the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read.
And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And unrolling the book, He found the place where it was written,
“The Spirit of the Lord is on Me; because of this He has anointed Me to proclaim the Gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim deliverance to the captives, and new sight to the blind, to set at liberty those having been crushed.
to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
And rolling up the book, returning it to the attendant, He sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fastened on Him.
And He began to say to them, Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your ears.
This was Isaiah chapter 61, a passage everyone at the time knew referred to the coming of the Messiah. Christ announced himself then, at the beginning of his earthly ministry. By the time of the Triumphant Entry, three and-a-half-years later, he was already well known. This was the standard interpretation of the events in the gospels for almost 2,000 years. Nothing has ever been changed, altered or tampered with.
When Christ declared he was the Messiah he couldn’t have been trying to time it to this prophecy because at that time nobody knew when that decree had been issued. It had been lost long ago in the ruins of Persia and was not discovered until archeologist found the archives and translated the documents in the 19th century. No one at the time of Christ could have known when or how to fulfill that prophecy except God himself. And no one at the time of Christ, or for the next 1800 years ever claimed this prophecy was fulfilled in the first coming of Christ. Yet now, twenty-five centuries later we can authenticate God’s message.
But that’s not the only authentication encoded in the prophecy. Going back let’s compare Christ’s annunciation of his arrival as the Messiah with the timing of the prophecy:
And after sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself. And the people of the ruler who shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. And the end of it shall be with the flood, and ruins are determined, until the end shall be war.
And he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week. And in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the offering to cease, and on a corner of the altar desolating abominations, even until the end. And that which was decreed shall be poured on the desolator.
Out of the 70 “weeks” required to fulfill the prophecy, 69 “weeks” will pass from the issuance of the decree to the coming of the messiah. This part of the prophecy was fulfilled when Jesus died on the cross for our sins (“Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself.”) And the end came in 70 AD when the Roman army destroyed both the city and Temple (the sanctuary.)
In verse 27 it mentions that in the midst of the “week” (three and a half years after the arrival of the Messiah) he will cause the sacrifices to cease. How long was Christ’s earthly ministry from his announcement in his home synagogue to his crucifixion? Three and a half years. If one uses the time of the Messiah’s appearance, the end of sacrifices came in 29.5 AD. (26 AD + 3.5 years = 29.5 AD)
Three and a half years from the start of Christ’s ministry is the exact time of his crucifixion. His death on the cross ended the purpose of sacrifices for all time, just as Daniel predicted. The sacrifices continued to be offered in the temple for a few years until the Romans destroyed it. But they were only a pointless exercise, no longer valid for the forgiveness of sins. From God’s point of view, the time for sacrifices was ended at the crucifixion of Christ. In fact, offering further sacrifices showed contempt towards the atoning death of God’s son. Such an act would be an abomination, exactly as is mentioned in verse 27.
But what about the end of the 70 weeks? What happened seven years after the crucifixion? Let’s look at the prophecy again:
Seventy weeks are decreed as to your people and as to your holy city, to finish the transgression and to make an end of sins, and to make atonement for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy.
Beginning in 457 BC, another math exercise puts the end of the 490 years at 33 AD. What happened in 33 AD?
According to the prophecy, after Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross, God gave the Israelites three and a half years to “make an end of sins, and to make atonement for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy.” The apostles preached first to the Jews:
Then Peter said to them, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ to remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
The Jews were given an opportunity to anoint the Most Holy and accept Christ as their Messiah but they rejected him. (“We have no King but Caesar!”) When they did so, God sent the gospel to the Gentiles by way of the Apostle Paul. When did that begin?
Paul says in Galatians that after he was converted in the same year that Christ was crucified (30 AD), then three years later he went to Jerusalem to visit Peter:
But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and having called me by His grace, to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the nations, immediately I did not confer with flesh and blood; Nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those apostles before me, but I went into Arabia and returned again to Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and stayed with him fifteen days. But I saw no other of the apostles, except James the Lord’s brother.
Not long after that he began his first missionary journey. The Jews rejected his teachings so he went to the Gentiles: We see this recorded in Acts chapter 13 verses 44-47:
And on the coming Sabbath day almost all the city came together to hear the Word of God. But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy and contradicted those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming. But speaking boldly, Paul and Barnabas said, It was necessary for the Word of God to be spoken to you first. But since indeed you put it far from you and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the [Gentile] nations. For so the Lord has commanded us, saying, “I have set You to be a light of the nations, for salvation to the end of the earth.”
This shows that the Gospel was sent to the Gentiles starting in 33 AD, precisely as the prophecy in Daniel declared. This “determined” the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem because of the Jewish rejection of their Messiah. The prophecy doesn’t actually say when this destruction would occur – just that it would, but we know now that was in 70 AD.
It wasn’t until almost 2,000 years later that archeological discoveries revealed the timing of that decree and could demonstrate the precise fulfillment of the prophecy. Who else but an omnipotent God could set up something like that 2,500 years in advance of the events?
Jesus also fulfilled other prophecies that were beyond his control if he were a mere faker. The Bible declared the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, but that he’d also be from Nazareth (where he grew up,) and from Egypt (where his parents fled when Herod ordered the murder of all baby boys in Bethlehem.) It prophesied he’d be crucified, long before crucifixion was invented, and that none of his bones would be broken, in spite of the fact that breaking the victim’s leg bones is standard procedure in execution by crucifixion. And we haven’t even begun discussing his miracles.
Even if one simply cannot accept the Bible (the ancient work of which we have the most and best records of) then accept the words of Josephus, a first century historian (who was not a Christian) who wrote of Jesus that he was a man of God and a miracle worker that many at the time claimed was the Jewish Messiah.
Through prophecies and miracles God has provided authentication of his message to anyone who chooses to accept it. The only remaining question is whether the receiver is willing to adjust their hypothesis to match the evidence, or simply reject the evidence on the basis of a pre-conceived belief.
Many people reject such “supernatural” evidence as “unscientific.” But is it?
Peter Stoner, Professor Emeritus of Science at Westmont College calculated the probability of a single man fulfilling the major prophecies made concerning the Messiah.
Professor Stoner then encouraged other skeptics or scientists to make their own estimates to see if his conclusions were more than fair. Finally, he submitted his figures for review to a committee of the American Scientific Affiliation. Which Verified his calculations were dependable and accurate in regard to the scientific material presented (Peter Stoner, Science Speaks, Chicago: Moody Press, 1969, 4).
After examining only eight different prophecies it was conservatively estimated the chance of a single man fulfilling all was only one in 10 to the seventeenth power. (For those unfamiliar with scientific notation that’s ten with seventeen zeros after it: 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000)
To illustrate how large the number is, Stoner gave this illustration:
“If you mark one of ten tickets, and place all the tickets in a hat, and thoroughly stir them, and then ask a blindfolded man to draw one, his chance of getting the right ticket is one in ten. Suppose that we take 10 to the 17 power silver dollars and lay them on the fac3e of Texas. They’ll 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 this is the right one. What chance would he have of getting the right one? Just the same chance that the prophets would’ve 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 them in their own wisdom.”
Dr. Harold Morowitz, a former professor of biophysics at Yale University, estimated the probability of the chance formation of the simplest, smallest life form known, is about 1 in 1 times 10 to the 340,000,000. Dr Carl Sagan, who happens to be an evolutionist, estimates even greater odds against the simplest of life forms taking shape on our planet by chance. According to him, the odds are more like 1 in 1 times 10 to the two billionth power.
Therefore, it is 339,999,983 times more likely that Jesus is the Christ and the Bible a message direct from God, than of the chance formation of the simplest life form on this planet by evolution.
So which is more scientific?
I’ve read a rather interesting book which places Biblical prophecy front and center against science if you will. Science has difficulty addressing prophecy since dating documents of antiquity are difficult at best. So the only empirical evidence possible is to let time take its course and see if it comes true, then determine if it was somehow manipulated somehow so that it would occur exactly as predicted. So I leave you with this read. Praying that some good may come of this to those who may be wavering, or entirely lost.
C4E
Title: The Bible – Dead Letter or Message from Your Creator?
Author: M.E. Brines
Expert in almost its entirety:
Jesus himself claimed to be the Son of God. (in ; , , ; , ; ; etc.) But what credentials does he have to make such a claim?
The Old Testament was written over a millennium and contains hundreds of prophecies of the coming messiah. New Testament authors appealed numerous times to such prophecies as authentications of Jesus. For example:
“Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, a called apostle, separated to the gospel of God (2) (which He had promised beforehand through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures), (3) about His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, (4) who was marked out the Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead…”
The life of Jesus fulfilled over 300 of these prophecies – THREE HUNDRED.
And most of these aren’t prophecies that Jesus or his followers could have decided to fulfill. For example, Jesus had no control of where he was born, his parent’s decision to flee to Egypt when he was an infant, or Herod’s massacre of the innocents. And what about the visit of the Shepherds in Luke chapter 2 or of the Magi in the second chapter of Matthew?
The supreme example of this is the prophecy in Daniel Chapter nine.
At the beginning of your prayers the commandment came out, and I have come to explain. For you are greatly beloved; therefore understand the matter, and attend to the vision:
Seventy weeks are decreed as to your people and as to your holy city, to finish the transgression and to make an end of sins, and to make atonement for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy.
Know therefore and understand, that from the going out of the command to restore and to build Jerusalem, to Messiah the Prince, shall be seven weeks, and sixty-two weeks. The street shall be built again, and the wall, even in times of affliction.
And after sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself. And the people of the ruler who shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. And the end of it shall be with the flood, and ruins are determined, until the end shall be war.
And he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week. And in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the offering to cease, and on a corner of the altar desolating abominations, even until the end. And that which was decreed shall be poured on the desolator.
Daniel is talking the angel Gabriel. Gabriel tells him God has fixed a timetable of seventy “weeks” for Israel to “make an end of sins, and to make atonement for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy.” The period ends with anointing of the Messiah (the Most Holy) as King over Israel.
“Weeks” in prophecy often means seven-year periods, therefore 7+62 “weeks” = 69 x 7 (one “week” of years being 7 years) = 483 years.
The Book of Daniel was written in 538 BC and has existed in Jewish sources unchanged since that time. This is verifiable as far back as the fourth century when Jewish scribes convinced Alexander the Great to spare their city by showing him another prophecy in Daniel predicting his victory over the Persians.
We see from the prophecy in Daniel above God declared that 483 years after the issuance of a decree to rebuild Jerusalem he will send the Messiah who will anointed as King of the Jews. By God’s own word in Deuteronomy chapter eighteen (quoted above,) if this does not come to pass then God is a fraud. Conversely, if it does come to pass it authenticates both the Bible and the identity of the Messiah. So, was this prophecy fulfilled or not? The whole Bible, the deity of Christ, all his teachings and the truth of Christianity stand or fall on this one prophecy.
The starting point of the timetable is given in verse 25:
Know therefore and understand, that from the going out of the command to restore and build Jerusalem, to Messiah the Prince, shall be seven weeks, and sixty-two weeks. The street shall be built again, and the wall, even in times of affliction.
In Hailey’s Bible Handbook, in the section about Daniel chapter nine there is a note that references three decrees were issued involving the rebuilding of Jerusalem: the first in 536 BC, the second in 457 BC and finally 444 BC.
The first decree was issued in 536 BC. Zerubbabel and about fifty thousand Jews were allowed to return and rebuild the temple but not the city.
That work on the temple was not finished so, in 457 BC another group was dispatched with permission to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem and finish the temple. The wall was completed in 444 BC.
Finally in 444 BC the third decree was issued appointing Nehemiah as governor.
So which decree is the one the prophecy refers to?
The starting point of the timetable is given in verse 25:
Know therefore and understand, that from the going out of the command to restore and to build Jerusalem, to Messiah the Prince, shall be seven weeks, and sixty-two weeks. The street shall be built again, and the wall, even in times of affliction.
We can disregard the first decree because it involved the temple, not the actual city of Jerusalem.
We can also disregard the third decree because while the prophecy mentions that the wall is to be restored, the timing of the prophecy isn’t based on when the wall is completed but when the decree to build it was issued, and that was in 457 BC.
Therefore the prophetic countdown started in 457 BC. This prophesy was literally fulfilled when Christ began his earthly ministry in 26 AD, exactly 483 years after the commandment to rebuild Jerusalem was issued in the seventh year of Artaxerxes I, King of Persia in 457 BC.
Let’s verify our math: 457 BC + 483 years = 26 AD.
Why do we know 26 AD is the fulfillment date? Christ first declared himself as the Messiah in his first public appearance in his home synagogue in 26 AD. We should use Christ’s own declaration at the beginning of his ministry as his official arrival:
And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And, as His custom was, He went in to the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read.
And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And unrolling the book, He found the place where it was written,
“The Spirit of the Lord is on Me; because of this He has anointed Me to proclaim the Gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim deliverance to the captives, and new sight to the blind, to set at liberty those having been crushed.
to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
And rolling up the book, returning it to the attendant, He sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fastened on Him.
And He began to say to them, Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your ears.
This was Isaiah chapter 61, a passage everyone at the time knew referred to the coming of the Messiah. Christ announced himself then, at the beginning of his earthly ministry. By the time of the Triumphant Entry, three and-a-half-years later, he was already well known. This was the standard interpretation of the events in the gospels for almost 2,000 years. Nothing has ever been changed, altered or tampered with.
When Christ declared he was the Messiah he couldn’t have been trying to time it to this prophecy because at that time nobody knew when that decree had been issued. It had been lost long ago in the ruins of Persia and was not discovered until archeologist found the archives and translated the documents in the 19th century. No one at the time of Christ could have known when or how to fulfill that prophecy except God himself. And no one at the time of Christ, or for the next 1800 years ever claimed this prophecy was fulfilled in the first coming of Christ. Yet now, twenty-five centuries later we can authenticate God’s message.
But that’s not the only authentication encoded in the prophecy. Going back let’s compare Christ’s annunciation of his arrival as the Messiah with the timing of the prophecy:
And after sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself. And the people of the ruler who shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. And the end of it shall be with the flood, and ruins are determined, until the end shall be war.
And he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week. And in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the offering to cease, and on a corner of the altar desolating abominations, even until the end. And that which was decreed shall be poured on the desolator.
Out of the 70 “weeks” required to fulfill the prophecy, 69 “weeks” will pass from the issuance of the decree to the coming of the messiah. This part of the prophecy was fulfilled when Jesus died on the cross for our sins (“Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself.”) And the end came in 70 AD when the Roman army destroyed both the city and Temple (the sanctuary.)
In verse 27 it mentions that in the midst of the “week” (three and a half years after the arrival of the Messiah) he will cause the sacrifices to cease. How long was Christ’s earthly ministry from his announcement in his home synagogue to his crucifixion? Three and a half years. If one uses the time of the Messiah’s appearance, the end of sacrifices came in 29.5 AD. (26 AD + 3.5 years = 29.5 AD)
Three and a half years from the start of Christ’s ministry is the exact time of his crucifixion. His death on the cross ended the purpose of sacrifices for all time, just as Daniel predicted. The sacrifices continued to be offered in the temple for a few years until the Romans destroyed it. But they were only a pointless exercise, no longer valid for the forgiveness of sins. From God’s point of view, the time for sacrifices was ended at the crucifixion of Christ. In fact, offering further sacrifices showed contempt towards the atoning death of God’s son. Such an act would be an abomination, exactly as is mentioned in verse 27.
But what about the end of the 70 weeks? What happened seven years after the crucifixion? Let’s look at the prophecy again:
Seventy weeks are decreed as to your people and as to your holy city, to finish the transgression and to make an end of sins, and to make atonement for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy.
Beginning in 457 BC, another math exercise puts the end of the 490 years at 33 AD. What happened in 33 AD?
According to the prophecy, after Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross, God gave the Israelites three and a half years to “make an end of sins, and to make atonement for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy.” The apostles preached first to the Jews:
Then Peter said to them, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ to remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
The Jews were given an opportunity to anoint the Most Holy and accept Christ as their Messiah but they rejected him. (“We have no King but Caesar!”) When they did so, God sent the gospel to the Gentiles by way of the Apostle Paul. When did that begin?
Paul says in Galatians that after he was converted in the same year that Christ was crucified (30 AD), then three years later he went to Jerusalem to visit Peter:
But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and having called me by His grace, to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the nations, immediately I did not confer with flesh and blood; Nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those apostles before me, but I went into Arabia and returned again to Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and stayed with him fifteen days. But I saw no other of the apostles, except James the Lord’s brother.
Not long after that he began his first missionary journey. The Jews rejected his teachings so he went to the Gentiles: We see this recorded in Acts chapter 13 verses 44-47:
And on the coming Sabbath day almost all the city came together to hear the Word of God. But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy and contradicted those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming. But speaking boldly, Paul and Barnabas said, It was necessary for the Word of God to be spoken to you first. But since indeed you put it far from you and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the [Gentile] nations. For so the Lord has commanded us, saying, “I have set You to be a light of the nations, for salvation to the end of the earth.”
This shows that the Gospel was sent to the Gentiles starting in 33 AD, precisely as the prophecy in Daniel declared. This “determined” the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem because of the Jewish rejection of their Messiah. The prophecy doesn’t actually say when this destruction would occur – just that it would, but we know now that was in 70 AD.
It wasn’t until almost 2,000 years later that archeological discoveries revealed the timing of that decree and could demonstrate the precise fulfillment of the prophecy. Who else but an omnipotent God could set up something like that 2,500 years in advance of the events?
Jesus also fulfilled other prophecies that were beyond his control if he were a mere faker. The Bible declared the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, but that he’d also be from Nazareth (where he grew up,) and from Egypt (where his parents fled when Herod ordered the murder of all baby boys in Bethlehem.) It prophesied he’d be crucified, long before crucifixion was invented, and that none of his bones would be broken, in spite of the fact that breaking the victim’s leg bones is standard procedure in execution by crucifixion. And we haven’t even begun discussing his miracles.
Even if one simply cannot accept the Bible (the ancient work of which we have the most and best records of) then accept the words of Josephus, a first century historian (who was not a Christian) who wrote of Jesus that he was a man of God and a miracle worker that many at the time claimed was the Jewish Messiah.
Through prophecies and miracles God has provided authentication of his message to anyone who chooses to accept it. The only remaining question is whether the receiver is willing to adjust their hypothesis to match the evidence, or simply reject the evidence on the basis of a pre-conceived belief.
Many people reject such “supernatural” evidence as “unscientific.” But is it?
Peter Stoner, Professor Emeritus of Science at Westmont College calculated the probability of a single man fulfilling the major prophecies made concerning the Messiah.
Professor Stoner then encouraged other skeptics or scientists to make their own estimates to see if his conclusions were more than fair. Finally, he submitted his figures for review to a committee of the American Scientific Affiliation. Which Verified his calculations were dependable and accurate in regard to the scientific material presented (Peter Stoner, Science Speaks, Chicago: Moody Press, 1969, 4).
After examining only eight different prophecies it was conservatively estimated the chance of a single man fulfilling all was only one in 10 to the seventeenth power. (For those unfamiliar with scientific notation that’s ten with seventeen zeros after it: 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000)
To illustrate how large the number is, Stoner gave this illustration:
“If you mark one of ten tickets, and place all the tickets in a hat, and thoroughly stir them, and then ask a blindfolded man to draw one, his chance of getting the right ticket is one in ten. Suppose that we take 10 to the 17 power silver dollars and lay them on the fac3e of Texas. They’ll 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 this is the right one. What chance would he have of getting the right one? Just the same chance that the prophets would’ve 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 them in their own wisdom.”
Dr. Harold Morowitz, a former professor of biophysics at Yale University, estimated the probability of the chance formation of the simplest, smallest life form known, is about 1 in 1 times 10 to the 340,000,000. Dr Carl Sagan, who happens to be an evolutionist, estimates even greater odds against the simplest of life forms taking shape on our planet by chance. According to him, the odds are more like 1 in 1 times 10 to the two billionth power.
Therefore, it is 339,999,983 times more likely that Jesus is the Christ and the Bible a message direct from God, than of the chance formation of the simplest life form on this planet by evolution.
So which is more scientific?
