Page 14 - Eschatology - Student Ebook

The New Testament spoke of the coming of Jesus Christ, “Which he promised beforehand through his
prophets in the holy scriptures” (Romans 1:1–4, RSV).

The testimony of the Scriptures is that the purpose of prophecy is to let us know that God exists and
that He has a plan for this world. By the foretelling of persons, places, and events hundreds of years
before their occurrence, the Bible demonstrates a knowledge of the future that is too specific to be
labeled a good guess. By giving examples of fulfilled prophecy, the Scriptures give a strong testimony to
their own inspiration
.
An example of this would be the prophecy of King Cyrus (Isaiah 44:28; 45:1). The prophet Isaiah, writing
about 700 BC, predicts Cyrus by name as the king who will say to Jerusalem that it shall be built and that
the temple foundation shall be laid.

At the time of Isaiah’s writing, the city of Jerusalem was fully built, and the entire temple was standing.
Not until more than 100 years later would the city and temple be destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar in
586 BC.

After Jerusalem was taken by the Babylonians, it was conquered by the Persians in about 539 BC.
Shortly after that, a Persian king named Cyrus gave the decree to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. This
was around 160 years after the prophecy of Isaiah!

Thus, Isaiah predicted that a man named Cyrus, who would not be born for about 100 years, would give
the command to rebuild the temple which was still standing in Isaiah’s day and would not be destroyed
for more than 100 years. This prophecy is truly amazing, but it is not isolated.

There are, in fact, literally hundreds of prophecies which predict future events. The idea that the
fulfillment of the predictions is a result of coincidence or chance is absurd, in light of the evidence. God
has given sufficient evidence of His existence and of the divine inspiration of the Scriptures by means of
fulfilled prophecy. (https://www.josh.org/answer/christians-appeal-fulfilled-prophecies-prove-bible-gods-word)

Could it be that he’s just one of many throughout history who have coincidentally fit the prophetic
fingerprint?

“Not a chance,” comes the response of Louis Lapides, a Christian convert from Judaism. “The odds are
so astronomical that they rule that out. Someone did the math and estimated that the probability of just
eight prophecies being fulfilled is one chance in one hundred million billion. That number is millions of
times greater than the total number of people who’ve ever walked the planet!

“That same person calculated that if you took this number of silver
dollars, they would cover the state of Texas to a depth of two feet.
If you marked one silver dollar among them and then had a
blindfolded person wander the whole state and bend down to pick
up one coin, what would be the odds he’d choose the one that had
been marked? The same odds that anybody in history could have
fulfilled just eight of the prophecies.”

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