Every year, I get caught
up in the college basketball bonanza that is March Madness. I love every second
of the Cinderella teams making a run deep into the tourney, the buzzer beating
shots, the Bracketology. By the way, have you filled out your bracket yet? This
year I filled out five, just for fun. But like most fans, I find that after the
first two rounds my bracket is busted.
If you're holding out hope
that this is the year you're finally going to break through and get that
perfect bracket, you may need to wait a while. Like, a few billion years. The
odds of you filling out a perfect bracket are a staggering: 1 chance in 9.2 quintillion
tries. That's a nine with 18 zeroes. How big is that? It’s 500,000 times more
than our $19 trillion national debt. You'd have a better chance of hitting four
holes-in-one in a single round of golf. Using that number, if everyone in the
United States filled out a bracket, we'd see a perfect one every 400 years.[1]
As staggering as those
figures are, crunching the numbers on Messianic prophecy is even more
mind-boggling. Years ago, Peter Stoner a brilliant mathematician and professor
turned his attention to the subject of prophecy, specifically the odds of an
individual fulfilling numerous prophecies like Jesus. The result of his study
was a landmark book entitled, Science
Speaks.
Dr. Peter Stoner
He identified over 300
specific prophecies fulfilled in the life of Christ, 30 of which were satisfied
in the last 24 hours leading up to His death on the Cross. Stoner selected 16
of the most prominent prophecies and then gave the following illustration of
the chances that one man fulfilled them as Christ did.
“We
find the chance that one man fulfilled all 16 prophecies is 1 in 1045. Let us try to visualize this . . . Taking
this number of silver dollars you could stack coins from the earth to the sun
thirty times. The earth is approximately 93 million miles from the sun. If you
can imagine randomly marking one silver dollar with red paint from one of the
thirty stacks of coins reaching to the sun and then blindfolding a man and
telling him to pick out one dollar, and expect it to be the marked one, you
have somewhat of a picture of how absolutely the fulfillment of sixteen
prophecies referring to Jesus Christ proves both that He is the Son of God and
that our Bible is inspired . . . Any man who rejects Christ as the Son of God
is rejecting a fact proved perhaps more absolutely than any other fact in the
world.”[2]
If we let the facts speak
for themselves it’s clear that Jesus alone fit the Messianic profile. Each
Gospel writer highlighted Jesus’ unique identity as the one that the Old Testament
predicted would be the sin-bearer of the world. In this way, we can see how the
events that transpired on Calvary were simply history written in advance. The
Cross was no accident, but the divine drama of redemption complete with a
protagonist, supporting roles and prop pieces.
Not only does fulfilled
prophecy confirm Jesus as the Son of God, but also the Bible as the Word of
God. 2 Peter 1:19-22 says, “19 And we
have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to
pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the
morning star rises in your hearts, 20 knowing this first of all, that no
prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. 21 For no
prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they
were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
Fulfilled prophecy down to
the gnat’s whisker is what sets the Bible and Christ apart from all the phony
prophets and their sacred books. Check it out and you’ll find that Muhammad,
Buddha, Confucius and the rest of the world’s religious leaders don’t come
close to meeting Jesus and the Bible in this arena. When it comes to Saviors,
Jesus is the only safe bet. -DM
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