Page 26 - Doctrine and History of the Preservation of the Bible revised

I am a new person in Christ. When I sincerely asked Him, Jesus did what no one or anything else ever did
or could have done. Through Him, I found meaning and purpose. Only through Christ could I begin to
conquer all the problems I had throughout my life. He truly is the Ultimate and Only Truth. Those who
knew me before cannot believe that I am now a minister, and those who meet me now, who do not
know my past, cannot believe what I once was like.

How could millions of people who have declared their faith in Christ and give testimony of how their
lives where completely changed be wrong? Drunkards have been made sober, drug addict have been
clean, and families have been made whole again by applying the Bible to their lives. The testimonies of
so many whose lives have been changed gives strong support to the uniqueness of the Bible.

Another uniqueness of the Bible is its ability to foretell future events. Throughout Scripture, hundreds
of prophecies were made by Old Testament writers concerning the Messiah, the future kingdom on
earth, the restoration of Israel as a nation, and their return to their Promised Land. In the New
Testament also many predictions are made of events to come. As Scripture unfolds, about half of these
prophecies have already been fulfilled, but others, following the same pattern of literal fulfillment, are
subject to fulfillment in the future.

Many scholars believe there are more than 300 prophecies about the coming Messiah in the Old
Testament. These prophecies are specific enough that the mathematical probability of Jesus Christ
fulfilling only a handful of them, let alone all of them, is staggeringly improbably if not impossible.

Peter Stoner, Chairman of the Departments of Mathematics and Astronomy at Pasadena College, looked
at eight specific prophecies about Jesus. He came up with extremely conservative probabilities for each
one being fulfilled, and then considered the likelihood of Jesus fulfilling all eight of those prophecies.
The conclusion to his research was staggering. The prospect that anyone would satisfy those eight
th
prophecies was just 1 in 10 to the 17 power.

After looking at only three lines of prophecies that Jesus fulfilled at His first coming, we can make the
following observations. Jesus told the religious leaders to search the Scriptures and discover where they
spoke about Him. The coming Messiah was to be born in one particular family. This would be through
Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, and David. The New Testament is clear that Jesus was a descendant
of David. The Old Testament prophet Micah predicted the Messiah would be born in the small town of
Bethlehem. Matthew tells us that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Daniel the prophet said the Messiah
would come before the city of Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed at that He would also be killed.
Jesus came upon the scene of history before the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. He was
crucified about forty years before they were destroyed.

The prophecies that Jesus fulfilled were fulfilled literally. He was a literal descendant of David, literally
born in Bethlehem, and literally died before the city and temple were destroyed. These three lines of
prophecy were fulfilled by Jesus' birth. There is no way, humanly speaking, that He could have
deliberately fulfilled them. The coming of the Messiah was predicted in the Old Testament. Jesus
fulfilled these prophecies and, in doing so, has the right to claim to be the promised Messiah.

Prophecies of Jesus Fulfilled

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8iyjJo2PPU

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