Jesus - fact or fiction?
Xmas - for the rest of us!
Christmas time again. It means something different to everyone, with so many traditions, celebrations and goals for many. There will also be a handful of religious folks talking about ‘the birth of Jesus’.
Some take it for granted, some ignore it, some refute it and others celebrate it in a variety of ways. The story itself is quite in depth, but no good knowing the story if we don’t know if it’s a reliable story.
Is it a myth, fairytale, allegory, religious belief etc - is there any basis for truth in the narrative? We don’t want to be gullible and repeat the fallacy of so many
Jesus - fact or fiction?
Xmas - for the rest of us!
It is true that there is not much debate in the scholarly, historical or archeology world that Jesus the person actually existed. The debate revolves around who he was - which brings us to our topic: prophecy.
Prophecy is incredibly rare. In fact, someone who could foretell the future at all with any reliability, could become very powerful, rich or famous very quickly. Some people have displayed this in part, and the text that describes ‘the birth of Jesus’ in the most detail (the Bible) describes many who had this ability.
Interestingly, the Bible, written by around 60 authors, has many, many very specific prophecies - and many are about this ‘Jesus’ - his birth, life and death. Some are so specific they describe unusual events in clear detail many days beforehand (i.e. 173,880 days after a set event).
Let’s look at a few prophecies:
He had to be a descendant of: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Jesse and David.
Around His birth there would be the death of many sons.
Had to be born of a virgin (they knew and consummating marriage was public!).
He had to be born in Bethlehem.
But had to be called a Nazarene.
And had to spend time in Egypt (??!!)
He had to heal the sick, make the blind see (charlatans were common so it had to be real).
He had to raise the dead. (They knew when people were dead!)
He had to enter Jerusalem on April 6th 32AD on a donkeys foal.
(exactly 173,880 days after the command to rebuild Jerusalem by the Babylonian king Artaxerxes)
It's amazing that this also ‘just happened’ to be ‘lamb selection day’.
He died at the same time the sacrificial lamb was being killed on Passover.
Passover was where the blood of a lamb saved people from death by God.
Jesus was called the lamb of God - not coincidence!
He had to be sold for 30 pieces of silver (and that money used to buy a potters field)
He had to be rejected, spat on, struck, bruised and whipped.
He had to die, sin free on a cross.
Guards had to cast lots for his clothes
His bones could not be broken (contrary to normal crucifixion)
That was 27 prophecies - all recorded hundreds to thousands of years before Jesus was born. Some were well known, others were hidden - only to be understood after the events unfolded. Some were repeated in different ways by different authors at different times.
There are hundreds more in the Bible concerning the Messiah.
Many of these events were impossible to ‘fix’ and many involved unknowing or unwilling participants. But so what? Does it prove anything? A professor decided to find out, appeasing skeptics with (overly?) conservative figures and representing 600 students, all reviewed by the American Scientific Affiliation the results are simply amazing!
For just EIGHT of the prophecies, the conservative peer reviewed probability that they could be fulfilled by one man is 1 in 10^15 !!
That’s 1 chance in 1,000,000,000,000,000 - (15 zeros!)
To get an idea of that - think of an area about the size of New South Wales Australia,
cover it in $1 coins. And then cover it in $1 coins again and again in layers. Keep going up to 55cm high.
Now put in a $1 coin in there that is invisibly marked - and shake the lot around. Have someone drive / walk around the state and randomly pick a coin. The probability of them picking that one coin is about the same.
That is a VERY slim chance.
But it's not impossible. Statisticians say there needs to be 50 zeros for something to be considered impossible.
Remember though, that Jesus didn’t fulfil EIGHT prophecies. Using conservative probability, scholars work through Jesus fulfilling 48 prophecies. The results? One chance in 10^147 !!! 147 zeros is hard to imagine. It is nearly 3 times as many zeros as needed to be counted impossible!
Let that sink in, then remember: He didn’t fulfil 48 prophecies. He fulfilled 365!
It is not surprising that this learned scholar concluded: "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" (Stoner, op. cit., 112)
While these prophecies are incredible and undeniable - they are not the only thing that gives evidence of such matters.
We have evidence after evidence that the Bible is God’s revealed word. From history, continual archaeological confirmation and ongoing scientific discoveries that continue to verify the Bible has had it right for all this time.
People have made fortunes based on the Bible’s revelation of where gold and oil is, and become renowned for scientific discoveries after reading the records from thousands of years ago.
Last century, it was discovered that the Bible (first in the Greek, and later in Hebrew) is divisible by seven in 56 DIFFERENT ways. Another impossibility!
Applying the same criteria to the books of other religions, Panin proclaimed 'No order at all; and not of God'. The Bible is unique.
It has also been discovered that everything around us: animal, vegetable, or mineral, has a unique mathematical signature.
It’s observable everywhere! The order and beauty in creation and the life and love we experience daily.
We will have no excuse when we face God on the day He returns.
The Bible says we will be judged for every idle word, every lie, act of theft or lust and the punishment is eternal.
If you are concerned about your soul - the same way you are concerned for your health, protection etc you will be happy to know…
God send His Son to pay your fine - to die on your behalf.
Put your trust in Him, in what he did today. It’s not about religion - it is about having faith and following the real, risen Jesus Christ.
He will guide you as you live for Him. He will change you from inside so you don’t want to do the same things. He will motivate you to talk about Him, love others and change to be like Him.
And you get to live with Him forever.
This Christmas - remember that Jesus came to earth because your soul is a BIG deal .
Take action today!
Conclusion: We need Jesus - He actually is God’s Son and came to save us. We should trust Him!
PRAYER: Use your own words to say sorry to God - put your trust in what Jesus did for you. Read the Bible & obey what you read.
NOTES: I