Each evening’s weather report is man’s attempt to tell the future by means of science and experience. The weather person says, “I think that we may have thunderstorms tomorrow…”, because he/she doesn’t know for sure what will happen. We can make an educated guess at what the future will bring with some accuracy based upon our experience and knowledge, but no humans can know it exactly. The future is knowable only by the supernatural which is not constrained by time.
Prediction of the future is called prophecy in the Bible. If the writers of the Bible were instructed by God then we would expect that the Bible would accurately predict events in advance and we expect those events to occur as stated.
Does the Bible show such advance prophetic knowledge? The answer is a definite YES! The Bible is filled with prophecies which we can see fulfilled in stunning detail. Some of these biblical prophecies were originally written hundreds or even thousands of years before fulfillment. Often, the Lord would repeat the prophecies at intervals of years through His chosen writers and so there is a prophetic countdown in the biblical passages as the final fulfillment nears. Some times the prophecies were given a few years before the fulfillment so we can see the fulfillment today in history. Some prophecies have been partially fulfilled in history but remain to be fully completed. For these, we have confidence that fulfillment will occur based upon the record of success in other biblical prophecies.
The rule of biblical prophecy is demanding as set down by God through Moses as follows: “When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken.” Deuteronomy 13:22 In other words, prophecy that doesn’t come to pass as written is not of God – God’s predictions do come to pass! We will now examine a couple of biblical prophecies that were given hundreds of years in advance so there is no question about them being recorded after the fact of their occurrence, yet they are far enough back in history that we can know of their completion as written.
Prophecy of Tyre’s Destruction
This prophecy concerned the ancient Phoenician city of Tyre which was a mighty ancient trading city located on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean sea. Tyre was the hub of a vast trading empire of the famous Phoenicians and the city is well known in the documents of ancient history. Tyre was actually built in two parts: one part was a fortified city on the coast and a second part located on an island a few hundred yards from the mainland.
Ezekiel was the prophet of interest here and his prophecy concerning this city is found in Ezekiel, chapter 26, verses 1-14. The reader is invited to turn to this passage and read it through carefully. The basics of the prophecy is that this city would be destroyed, that it would be scraped as flat as a rock, and that it would be a place suited only for drying of fishermen’s nets.
Ezekiel’s prophetic ministry lasted 22 years beginning in 592 B.C. and ending in 570 B.C. This particular prophecy was written during this period, probably the earlier part of it. The prophecy predicts the future destruction of Tyre which would be an unbelievable idea to people alive at that time. The prophecy is presented in two parts as can be seen by a careful study of the passage. The first part (vs. 7-11) specifies that the city would be attacked by the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar. Note the specificity here in the naming of the king. Then verses 12-14 seem to describe a second stage of Tyre’s destruction.
Archaeological records confirm that Tyre was attacked by Nebuchadnezzar in 572 B.C. which is only about 20 years at most after the prophecy was given. The historical records tells us that this king attacked the mainland part of the city and succeeded in doing great damage to it. However, the people of Tyre withdrew to the island city which was out of his reach since he lacked naval forces needed to attack the island. At this point an observer might think that the prophecy was not fully complete. For the next two-hundred years, Tyre continued as a mighty trading hub as it operated out of the island city. Then came 330 B.C. when it was again attacked by Alexander the Great, the great conqueror from ancient Greece. The defenders of the island city must have been amused as they saw Alexander’s forces draw up on the mainland as had Nebuchadnezzar’s two-hundred years earlier. Their amusement must have turned to bemusement as his soldiers began to collect stones from the old mainland city and throw them into the water. Their bemusement must have turned to amazement as the stones began to pile up and take shape as a roadway that was steadily advancing out to them. Then their amazement must have turned to horror as siege machines were brought across the causeway that was built out of the very stones of the old city. In the process of this, Alexander’s army scraped the old city flat as a rock exactly as the early prophecy had specified. Alexander succeeded in defeating and destroying this island city.
Yet Tyre was hard to kill because after Alexander she arose again. We read of her again in the New Testament as being a viable city in the time of Christ, though probably not to her former glory. Had Ezekiel’s prophecy that Tyre would become a place where only fishermen’s nets would be spread, failed?
History was not finished with Tyre and neither was the prophecy of Ezekiel. A full millennium passed after Jesus Christ to a time when Islam was trying to conquer the world for their god. In 1291 A.D., (Unger’s Bible Dictionary) the Moslems attacked Tyre and finally destroyed it forever. Today, the old site of Tyre is occupied only by a few fishermen where they spread their nets to dry and the old city has been scraped flat as a rock – in exact accordance to Ezekiel’s prophecy written 1,800 years earlier!
Prophecies of Jesus Christ
The Old Testament prophets such as Isaiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Micah and others spoke many times about the coming of Israel’s Messiah (Deliverer). Their individual prophecies can be organized into a table such as one below.
Old Testament Messianic Prophecies
|
Prophecy
|
Prophet
|
Time
|
Who Fulfilled
|
|
|
1.
|
A man
|
Isaiah 53:3
|
750 B.C.
|
Jesus of Nazareth
|
|
2.
|
Born in Bethlehem
|
Micah 5:2
|
750 B.C.
|
Jesus of Nazareth
|
|
3.
|
Tribe of Judah
|
Genesis 49:10
|
5000 B.C.
|
Jesus of Nazareth
|
|
4.
|
Family of David
|
2 Samuel 7:12-16
|
1000 B.C.
|
Jesus of Nazareth
|
|
5.
|
Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem
|
Zechariah 9:9-10
|
500 B.C.
|
Jesus of Nazareth
|
|
6.
|
Crucified
|
Psalm 22:16
|
1000 B.C.
|
Jesus of Nazareth
|
|
7.
|
Buried in tomb of rich man
|
Isaiah 53:9
|
750 B.C.
|
Jesus of Nazareth
|
|
8.
|
Year of Death
|
Daniel 9:25
|
530 B.C.
|
Jesus of Nazareth
|
This chart contains just eight of the dozens of prophecies of Messiah that are written in the Old Testament. Any man who claimed this distinction had to have satisfied all of these prophecies plus all of the others not here listed. Briefly, Israel’s Messiah would be a man who was born inBethlehem, of the Tribe of Judah and the family of David, he would enter Jerusalem and be hailed as a king, but then be crucified and buried in a tomb originally intended for a rich man.
Prophecy also dictates the time of Messiah’s death ( # 8 on the chart). According to Daniel 9:25, Messiah would be killed after 69 weeks of years had elapsed following the command to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. That command was issued by King Artaxerxes in the year 445 B.C., according to every historical authority that I have read.
(Verse 26 states the intervening weeks to be 62, or 434 years, but this refers to the interval starting after the walls were completed until the death of Messiah.)
Let’s do the math to calculate the predicted year of Messiah’s death according to this prophecy. A Jewish year was only 98.63 % as long as our year (360 days instead of 365) so multiply .9863 X 483 years and we get 476 years on our calendar from 445 B.C. to the predicted year of Messiah’s death. Doing the math we actually subtract 476 from 445 to get, -31 which corresponds to 31 A.D. as the predicted year of Messiah’s death.
Now we ask, did anyone having the prophetic qualifications of the Jewish Messiah, die in or about that year? The answer is YES!! THAT PERSON IS JESUS OF NAZARETH as attested by the vast majority of ancient historical experts.
The accuracy of Daniel’s prophetic calendar of Messiah’s death is almost convincing in itself but we can go farther in certainty that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed Israel’s Messiah and thus Saviour to the world. Knowing that Jesus of Nazareth satisfied all of the above prophecies some might wonder whether this was just by chance. We can get an idea about this question by calculating the probability that any one man could satisfy six of the above prophecies about Messiah. This calculation is made by multiplying the individual probabilities of each of the above events. The answer is the probability that one person could satisfy all by chance alone. Some of the individual prophecies such as the triumphal entry and burial in the tomb of a rich man are difficult for me to determine an individual mathematical probability for so I will not use them in my calculation. The following calculation is made on the basis of the following probabilities for the following six events:
Probability of Six Individual Prophetic Events
|
Prophecy
|
Probability
|
Comments
|
|
|
1.
|
A male
|
1:2
|
male or female
|
|
2.
|
Born in Bethlehem
|
1:100
|
estimated number of towns
|
|
3.
|
Tribe of Judah
|
1:12
|
12 tribes
|
|
4.
|
Family of David
|
1:250
|
estimated number of families*
|
|
5.
|
Triumphal entry
|
?
|
not calculable
|
|
6.
|
Crucified
|
1:10
|
about 10 methods of execution
|
|
7.
|
Buried in tomb of rich man
|
?
|
uncertain estimate
|
|
8.
|
Year of death
|
1:483
|
years given in prophecy**
|
* Estimate based on Israel growing from 1 family when it entered Egypt to 57 families after 400 years (Numbers 26) it seems reasonable thatIsrael would increase to about 250 families during 1500 years between entering the promised land to the time of Christ.
** Since there were 483 years from the command to rebuild Jerusalem to the death of Messiah, the probability includes the chance that any man might have died in any one of those 483 years. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to make this probability even greater such as 1:500 or 1:1000 since a man might have died after the 483 years. That would greatly increase the final probability calculation but I have stopped at 483 for the calculation.
____________________________________________
The calculation to determine the odds against any person fulfilling just six of the above messianic prophecies by blind chance is made by multiplying the second part of each probability together as follows: 2 x 100 x 12 x 250 x 10 x 483 = 2,898,000,000!
The results of this calculation show that there is only 1 chance in nearly 3 billion that one person could accidentally fulfill just six of the Messianic prophecies. This is a very conservative estimate since two of the probabilities in the table were not used. Though I could not assign a realistic probability to those two events they are still real events that enter the equation making it even more improbable that Jesus of Nazareth satisfied those prophecies by random chance. Also remember that we haven’t even considered all of the Messianic prophecies and so the odds against accidental fulfillment are thousands of fold higher than the above calculation.
With all this said, we can clearly and objectively say that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah that was predicted all through the Old Testament times of thousands of years. Jesus of Nazareth is Jesus the messiah; Jesus the Son of God and God the Son; Jesus the Saviour of mankind; Jesus the Resurrected One; Jesus the soon returning King of Earth; Jesus the coming Judge of your entire life and your eternal soul; Jesus the Lord; Jesus the Creator and Eternal God, Coequal with God the Father and God the Hold Spirit!!!!!! AMEN