Luke 24:44 He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” A number of years ago, 2 scientists worked out the odds of any one man in all of history fulfilling even only eight of the 60 major prophecies fulfilled by the life of Christ.
The probability that Jesus of Nazareth could have fulfilled even eight such prophecies would be 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000
The authors stated that this would be as many US silver dollars as would cover the state of Texas two feet deep. Texas is 2.5 times the size of New Zealand. A silver dollar is about the same size as our $2 coin. Only God could pick out one specifically marked hidden coin out of all those coins on His first attempt.
People who say that it is easy to apply meaning to an event after the fact need to take into account that Israel was expecting their Messiah, it had been foretold for hundreds of years before Christ was born. Christians have not invented the prophecies about Christ. The very scriptures that Israel had known and waited for so long came true before their eyes. The Gospels contain several references to those prophecies and in fact as time has gone by, Christians have discovered that much more of what was written in the Old Testament was referring to Christ and was fulfilled 2000 years ago.
There are very clear references in Psalm 22, Isaiah 53, Daniel 9, Micah 5, Zechariah 9 and Zechariah 11 to name 6 and more subtle references like Exodus 12 and Numbers 21 but well over 300 have been identified so far. Some may seem a little obscure on their own but placed together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, a very beautiful picture can be seen.
Even though we only use historical evidence in a court case, the reader should be aware that there are much more exciting prophecies of greater events to be fulfilled by Jesus in the future!
