One of the biggest objections people have with using prophecy to believe the Bible is the charge of circular reasoning. They say we’re using the Bible to prove the Bible, and that feels self-serving. I get that. If all we had was prophecy, it would be a fair criticism. But that’s not what I’m doing in this series. In the previous posts we’ve looked at the remarkable unity of Scripture, the archaeological evidence, the way the text has been preserved, and how science actually lines up with the Bible in many places. When you take all of that together with the prophecies we’re about to look at, I believe it becomes one of the strongest pieces of the puzzle — not the only piece, but an important one.
While the number varies depending on who you talk to and what they want to believe, there are said to be over 300 prophecies fulfilled by Jesus alone, and that’s not even including some of the others. Micah 5:2, written over 700 years before the time of Jesus, clearly states that from this tiny town will come forth the Messiah. The odds of that happening were 1 in 280,000, and yet, history shows us that Jesus was born there. Peter Stoner a mathematician and astronomer once did a study where he calculated the odds of 8 of those prophecies taking place, and the number that he came up with was 1 in 10¹⁷– that is one in one hundred quadrillion. It kinda makes you think that maybe God had to be involved, doesn’t it? I want to take this blog and look through 7 more such prophecies and let you make the call.
- Zechariah 11:12-13
12 Then I said to them, “If it seems good to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them.” And they weighed out as my wages thirty pieces of silver. 13 Then the LORD said to me, “Throw it to the potter”—the lordly price at which I was priced by them. So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the LORD, to the potter.
Now we know according to Matthew (26:15, 27:3,9) that Judas betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. When things didn’t go the way that he believed that they would, he brought the silver back to the chief priests and elders and threw the silver down in the temple. (Matthew 27:5). Matthew clearly views this as something that was alluded to in Zechariah 11. (Matthew references Jeremiah here, but the whole “book of prophets” was sometimes referred to as the book of Jeremiah). What are the odds of him being given exactly 30 pieces of silver for that job of turning Jesus in, then throwing that same amount down in the temple? According to Stoner’s research, the odds of this specific detail (the 30 pieces of silver) happening by chance, are about 1 in 10,000.
All of Psalm 22 seems to point to Jesus especially vs 16-18.
- Psalm 22:16-18
16 For dogs encompass me;
a company of evildoers encircles me;
they have pierced my hands and feet—
17 I can count all my bones—
they stare and gloat over me;
18 they divide my garments among them,
and for my clothing they cast lots.
When you consider the fact that these verses were written 1,000 years before Jesus, and the idea of crucifixion was completely nonexistent in the mind of the writer, it gets pretty interesting. Yet this passage clearly says, “they have pierced my hands and feet.” Doesn’t that seem oddly specific? Then on top of that, it says they will cast lots for his clothes. While the practice of taking the clothes from those who were crucified was normal, they didn’t normally cast lots for them. Again, this was written 1,000 years before the fact. How could the psalmist know any of this without divine intervention?
As we consider the prophecy in Zechariah 9:9, it seems to go against conventional wisdom. Conquering kings (which is what was expected in the Messiah) usually wanted to display a sense of authority and power, and the idea of riding on a donkey tends to go against that idea. It would be more likely to see somebody of authority riding in on a great stallion, yet Zechariah 9:9 (written over 500 years before Jesus) is very specific about His humility and that He will ride in on a donkey, the foal of a donkey.
- Zechariah 9:9
9 Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your king is coming to you;
righteous and having salvation is he,
humble and mounted on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
And that’s exactly what Jesus did. All four Gospels record that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a young donkey — a colt that had never been ridden. This was not normal for a king. Jesus deliberately chose this humble way of entering the city. This was written over 500 years before Jesus was born. Once again, it shows God revealing details long before the event took place.
While I had planned to give several more examples, here are just a few more for you to look up yourself:
- Isaiah 7:14 – the virgin birth
- Isaiah 53 – the Suffering Servant pierced for our transgressions
- Zechariah 12:10 – they will look on the one they have pierced and mourn
- Psalms 16:10 – God would not allow His Holy One to see decay
As mentioned above, the odds of just those 8 specific prophecies being fulfilled in one person are staggering. But that doesn’t even include the 250+ other prophecies many scholars believe point to Jesus. You can choose to dismiss some of them if you want. But to dismiss all of them starts to feel like it takes more faith than believing them. After looking at the unity of Scripture, the archaeological evidence, the preservation of the text, and now these prophecies… if you still can’t see that God’s Word carries unique authority, it may not be a lack of evidence. It may just be that you don’t want to see it. The choice is yours.
Thank you for reading this, as always, I would encourage you to spend time in His Word, in prayer and in the fellowship of other believers. And if you haven’t visited already, I would encourage you to come visit our little church on the hill, it’s worth the drive.
Bro. Jason
❤️
Thanks for all that info!