Jesus Christ the Messiah (2 of 2)

Jesus the Messiah:
Prophetic Proof – Part 2
by Brett Hickey


I hope you were able to catch last week’s message as we discussed the major role that prophecy plays, first in pointing to Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, and consequently, the evidence that fulfilled prophecies give in sustaining the fact that the Bible is not merely a merely human product, but as it claims, the word of God.

We noticed last week that Jesus rested His authority and the authenticity of His ministry largely on His ability to fulfill the prophecies that pepper the Old Testament Scriptures. After the establishment of the church, the apostles followed His lead. Consider this excerpt from the sermon that Peter preached in Acts 3:18-25,

“But those things which God foretold by the mouth of all His prophets, that the Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled. Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began. For Moses truly said to the fathers, "The LORD your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your brethren. Him you shall hear in all things, whatever He says to you. And it shall be that every soul who will not hear that Prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.' Yes, and all the prophets, from Samuel and those who follow, as many as have spoken, have also foretold these days. You are sons of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham, "And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (italics mine)

Notice the layers of repetition of a common theme of fulfilled prophecy:
“God foretold by the mouth of all His prophets” (v 18)
“Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before” (v 20)
“which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets” (v 21)
“For Moses truly said to the fathers, ‘The LORD your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me’” (v 22)


“Yes, and all the prophets, from Samuel and those who follow, as many as have spoken, have also foretold these days. You are sons of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.'” (vv 24-25)



Peter’s sermon, consisting of little more than a string of prophecies regarding Jesus as the Messiah, infuriated the Jewish leaders who locked the apostles up (Acts 4:1-3), but also brought the number of men who believed to five thousand (Acts 4:4). No doubt, this kind of preaching must be duplicated today.

This morning, we want to build on the strong foundation laid last week and notice Biblical, historical, logical, and even mathematical evidence that Jesus is the Christ, the promised Messiah. You will see that your only hope of salvation rests in actively responding to His great work by obeying the gospel and living for Him until His glorious return.

Despite the considerable influence that Buddha, Confucius and Muhammad have had on the world, their impact falls short of the dominant influence of Jesus the Christ. Jesus so changed the world for the better that the calendar of human history has been reset in His honor. No other man can claim this global distinction. We date letters and documents so frequently and thoughtlessly that we often take this for granted, but we speak of history today in terms of AD and BC.

The abbreviation AD stands for “Anno Domini” which is a Latin phrase that means in “the year of the Lord.” The initials BC simply indicate the number of years “before Christ.” This means that Jesus’ birth now represents the fulcrum of history. The days and months linked to the Greek and Roman gods of yore (Thursday for Thor; January for Janus), must settle, even in a largely godless world, for a subservient role to the year of our Lord Jesus Christ, 2011. Every time the Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or Jew dates a letter, they tacitly acknowledge the monumental impact that Jesus has had on the world. In an attempt to soften this admission, some of members of other religions use CE for “Common Era” instead of AD and BCE for “Before Common Era” instead of BC, but that actually draws more attention to the same truth.

Notable Christian scholar and historian, Philip Schaff, speaks to Jesus’ weighty influence on the world (tract on The Person of Christ), “This Jesus of Nazareth, without money and arms, conquered more millions than Alexander, Caesar, Mohammed, and Napoleon; without science and learning, He shed more light on things human and divine than all philosophers and scholars combined; without the eloquence of schools, He spoke such words of life as were never spoken before or since, and produced effects which lie beyond the reach of orator or poet; without writing a single line, He set more pens in motion, and furnished themes for more sermons, orations, discussions, learned volumes, works of art, and songs of praise than the whole army of great men of ancient and modern times.”

I have always been impressed with the power of the hundreds of Messianic prophecies Jesus fulfilled, but recently I have read more widely on what others have said about them and I’ve been even further amazed. While Jesus himself was a Jew, thousands of Jews responded to the gospel in the early days of the church, and hundreds of thousands of Jews follow Jesus today, the Jewish people are ordinarily not responsive to the truth about Jesus. In ‘The Case for the Real Jesus,’ Lee Strobel quotes comedian and Jewish rabbi Jackie Mason who said, “There’s no such thing as a Jew for Jesus. It’s like saying a black man is for the KKK. You can’t be a table and a chair. You’re either a Jew or a Gentile.”

In light of that, I was fascinated by the fact that Jewish Rabbi, Pinchas Lapide, in his book, ‘The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective,’ actually acknowledges Jesus’ bodily resurrection, qualifying his admission by saying that Jesus is not the Messiah for the Jews, but for everybody else.

Many impressive, highly educated Jews have issued touching descriptions of their conversion to Christianity. Perhaps the most interesting Jew, though, was Alfred Edersheim, author of ‘The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah’ — one of the first books in my personal library. This book (my copy is two volumes in one) is essentially a commentary on the four gospels. For years I’ve benefited from Edersheim’s scholarly writing and unique perspective on the gospel. What was so meaningful to me more recently, though, was his handling of the Messianic prophecies. Edersheim documents 456 Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah. That is not so unusual. What is striking is that Edersheim cites these prophecies as being suggested by over 500 rabbinical writings. The emphasis on these Scriptures pointing to the coming Messiah was first initiated by Jewish rabbis, not Christians.

Lee Strobel cites Rabbi Aryeh Kaplain who says, “Belief in the coming Messiah has always been a fundamental part of Judaism. Thus, for example, [Jewish philosopher] Maimonides counts the belief in the Messiah as one of the thirteen cardinal principles of Judaism. It is a concept that is repeated again throughout the length and breadth of Jewish literature.” This confirming Jewish perspective was news to me.

Consider some of the major Messianic prophecies that Christians use to substantiate Jesus’ as the Christ which are identified by Jewish sources as Messianic (most of these are identified by Edersheim):
Genesis 3:15, “And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel."
Genesis 22:18, “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice."
Genesis 49:10, “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, Nor a lawgiver from between his feet, Until Shiloh comes; And to Him shall be the obedience of the people.”
Deuteronomy 18:18, “I will raise up for them a Prophet like you from among their brethren, and will put My words in His mouth, and He shall speak to them all that I command Him.”
Psalm 22:15, “My strength is dried up like a potsherd, And My tongue clings to My jaws; You have brought Me to the dust of death.”
Psalm 45:6-7, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your kingdom. You love righteousness and hate wickedness; Therefore God,Your God, has anointed You With the oil of gladness more than Your companions.”
Psalm 110:1, “The LORD said to my Lord, "Sit at My right hand, Till I make Your enemies Your footstool."
Isaiah 2:4, “He shall judge between the nations, And rebuke many people; They shall beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning hooks; Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, Neither shall they learn war anymore.”
Isaiah 9:6, “For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
Isaiah 28:16, “Behold, I lay in Zion a stone for a foundation, A tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation…”
Isaiah 42:1, “Behold! My Servant whom I uphold, My Elect One in whom My soul delights! I have put My Spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles.”
Isaiah 52:3 "You have sold yourselves for nothing, And you shall be redeemed without money."
Isaiah 52:7 “How beautiful upon the mountains Are the feet of him who brings good news, Who proclaims peace, Who brings glad tidings of good things, Who proclaims salvation, Who says to Zion, "Your God reigns!"
Isaiah 52:13 “Behold, My Servant shall deal prudently; He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high.”
Isaiah 53:5, “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.”
Isaiah 53:10 “Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand.”
Micah 5:2, "But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, Though you are little among the thousands of Judah, Yet out of you shall come forth to Me The One to be Ruler in Israel, Whose goings forth are from of old, From everlasting."

The admission of this testimony on the behalf of the Messiah and acknowledged by neutral, if not hostile witnesses, is a giant step toward convicting the skeptical people of the truth about Jesus.

So, we not only have hundreds of prophecies fulfilled by Jesus, but many of these same prophecies were confirmed beforehand in non-Christian Jewish sources as applying to the Messiah. How seriously should we interpret the fulfillment of scores of such prophecies?

Peter Stoner, science professor of Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, steps forward to offer his input. Stoner investigated the mathematical probabilities associated with Old Testament Messianic prophecies being applied to Jesus of Nazareth (Peter Stoner, Science Speaks: Scientific Proof of the Accuracy of Prophecy and the Bible, 101-109).

Aided and scrutinized by six hundred college students in twelve classes, Stoner then relayed their findings to a Committee of the American Scientific Affiliation for evaluation. They corroborated his calculations as reliable. How meaningful were Professor Stoner's findings? His research determined that the odds of any man fulfilling only ‘eight’ Old Testament Messianic prophecies was one chance out of one with "seventeen’ zeros after it (100,000,000,000,000,000)!

To try to comprehend a number like that, Professor Stoner used the following illustration: “Cover the entire state of Texas two feet deep in silver dollars. Choose and ‘mark’ one silver dollar and drop it from an airplane flying somewhere over Texas. Thoroughly ‘stir’ the silver dollars all over the state. Blindfold a person and let them travel anywhere in the state, stopping only ‘once’ at a spot of his choice to dig into the two feet of silver dollars and pick out the marked’ one. The chance of a person being able to do that in ‘one’ try is the same chance as one man fulfilling only ‘eight’ Messianic prophecies. Professor Stoner concluded, ‘The fulfillment of these eight prophecies alone proves that God inspired the writing of those prophecies to a definiteness which lacks only one chance in ten to the seventeenth power of being absolute.’"

In view of these odds, which would require more faith?: 1) believing that one man (in this case Jesus)—by mere coincidence—just happened to fulfill these prophecies or 2) believing that God, as a part of His plan through the ages, providentially saw to it that each of these were fulfilled by (or in) Jesus the Christ?

That’s not all, though. We have just evaluated the likelihood of eight prophecies being fulfilled in one man. Jesus actually fulfilled over three hundred prophecies. The chances of one man fulfilling even forty-eight prophecies "increases" to 1 out of 1 x 10. Playing the lottery is a pitifully poor “investment.” The odds of winning the lottery are about one in ten million or 1 out 7 of 1 x 10.

A quick comparison shows this to be a “sure thing” compared with the chances of Jesus fulfilling only forty-eight of the predictions made about him. Emil Borel, author of ‘Probabilities and Life,’ and expert on probability theory, says that anytime there is less than one chance in ten to the "fiftieth" power (one with fifty zeros after it), the probabilities are so small that it becomes a logical impossibility. That, mind you, is one with fifty zeroes after it— essentially the equivalent of eight prophecies inadvertently fulfilled in one man. For only forty-eight prophecies being fulfilled, the probabilities go far beyond the realm of possibility. This is incredible evidence in favor of Jesus being everything He claimed to be and the Old and New Testament being what it claimed to be — the Word of God.

This evidence is not cited merely to impress you with the evidence for the identity of Jesus and that authority of God’s word. God expects you to act on it. God expects you to come to Him for salvation. Jesus says in John 8:24, “except that you believe in Me, you shall die in your sins.” Believing that Jesus is the Son of God is not difficult when you weigh all the evidence. We are told, in addition, that we must repent in Acts 2:38, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” You must turn away from your past life and turn toward God.

You must confess that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. This was the last step prior to baptism for the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:37. He said confidently, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”

We must also be baptized; it is not optional, as some suggest. Even the apostle Paul could not enjoy forgiveness until he was baptized. In retelling his own conversion, he says Ananias told him in Acts 22:16, “Arise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord.”

Jesus says that baptism saves in Mark 16:16 and John 3:5. Peter says baptism saves in I Peter 3:21. Paul says baptism saves in Romans 6:3-5 and Galatians 3:27. Why would anyone claiming to believe in Christ and the Scriptures diminish the role the Holy Spirit assigned for baptism? Why would anyone support a religious institution that said it (baptism) was not necessary for salvation?

Contact us and we will help you obey the gospel today. Don’t delay!

Please visit our website, letthebiblespeak.com, and watch videos of the program at your convenience. Finally, we echo the sentiment of the apostle Paul when he wrote in Romans 16:16, “the churches of Christ salute you.” Until next week, goodbye and God bless.

Sermon delivered by evangelist Brett Hickey over “Let the Bible Speak” April 27, 2011 Sources:
Edersheim, Alfred. Jesus the Messiah : The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1979.
Edersheim, Alfred. "The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah." Christian Classics Ethereal Library ; NetLibrary,
Lapide, Pinchas. The Resurrection of Jesus a Jewish Perspective. Minneapolis: Augsburg Pub. House, 1983.
Schaff, Philip. The Person of Christ: The Perfection of His Humanity Viewed as a Proof of His Divinity. [with a Collection of Impartial Testimonies to the Character of Jesus]. New York: American Tract Society, 1880.
Stoner, Peter Winebrenner, and Robert C. Newman. Science Speaks ; Scientific Proof of the Accuracy of Prophecy and the Bible. Chicago: Moody Press, 1976.
Strobel, Lee. The Case for the Real Jesus : A Journalist Investigates Current Attacks on the Identity of Christ. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2007. 1-800-380-LTBS (5827)
http://christianbookshelf.org/schaff/the_person_of_christ/index.html See also:
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/p/philip_schaff.html and citation at end of this manuscript.
http://www.netlibrary.com/urlapi.asp?action=summary&v=1&bookid=2009005.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserve

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