martin

Hello everyone,

In my humble opinion, the below evidence is simply overwhelming. I'd be interested in your feedback.


Many of the prophecies concerning the messiah were totally beyond human control:
Birth: Place, time, manner of.
Death: Peoples reactions, piercing of side, burial
Resurrection: Where did His body go?
By using the modern science of probability in reference to just eight of these prophecies --- the chance that any man might have lived to fulfill all eight prophecies is one in one hundred trillion!

To illustrate this: If we take 100 trillion silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas, they would be two feet deep. Now we mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly --- all over the state. Now blindfold a man and let him travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick only one silver dollar. What chance would he have of picking the right one? The same chance that the prophets would have of writing just eight of these prophecies and having them all come true for any one man --- if they had written them without God's inspiration!

The chance of any one man fulfilling all of 48 prophecies is one in 10 to the 157 power. The electron is about as small an object as we can imagine. if we had a cubic inch of these electrons and tried to count them, it would take us (at 250 per minute) 19,000 time 19,000 time 19,000 years to count them. Now mark one of them, and thoroughly stir it into the whole mass. What chance does our blindfolded man have of finding the right electron? --- The same chance as one man of fulfilling 48 of the prophecies about Christ, without being the Son of God!

Jesus Christ fulfilled every prophecy written about the coming Messiah --- over three hundred of them! Would that have been possible had He not been the Son of God?

Here is a short listing of some of the hundreds of prophecies concerning Christ:

Linage Genesis 3:15; 9:26: 22:18; 26:4; 28:14; 49:10; 2 & Samual 7:12-16
Son of God Psalm 2:6-7
Virgin birth Isaiah 7:14
Birthplace Micah 5:2
Piercing of side Zechariah 12:10
Darkness Psalm 22:2
Vinegar Psalm 69:21
Mocking Psalm 22:6-8
Nakedness Psalm 22:17
Gambling for clothes Psalm 22:18
Unbroken bones Psalm 34:20
Burial Isaiah 53:9
Resurrection Psalm 16:10; Hosea 6:2; Psalm 30:3,9; Isaiah 53:10
Assention to right hand of God Psalm 110:1; 68:18; Proverbs 30:4; 24:3-10

taken from:http://www.quiknet.com/~dfrench/evidence/prophecy.htm

It seems to me all statements above are true.How many people were born in Bethlehem,had their side pierced and their clothes gambled for? I mean the odds of any one man fulfilling just those three prophecies are way past 100-1 agreed?

graymouser

(This belongs, methinks, in Biblical Criticism and History.)

If the Gospels were true, then your probablistic description would be correct. However, there is an amazing dearth of proof to actually corroborate the Gospel stories - anything pre-100 CE has been demonstrated to be forgeries (such as the "Testimonium Flavianum" in Josephus). The Gospels were written probably sometime between 100 and 150 CE, a remove of a century from the events depicted therein. There's no reason to assume that they are true, there's no evidence, and there are internal contradictions that lead us to believe that they're fabrications. The probability of a fictional character matching the "prophecies" is 1 - for he can be whatever the author wishes.

Furthermore, prophecies - most famously the virgin birth - are minor OT prophecies pulled out of context. They're not actually messianic predictions at all.

So, your "overwhelming" evidence is that a possibly fictional person, written about at the remove of a century if he did exist, who was allegedly the founder of a religion, was written up in his hagiography (and we know that hagiographies never go out of their way to make their subject look better...as if...) so that he fulfilled an unrelated bunch of old prophecies that are taken out of context. Not exactly enough to get most people down on their knees.

-Wayne

Howay the Toon

The problem is that the only accounts we have of the life of a supposedly historical Jesus are written by people wanting us to believe that he is the Messiah and who knew about the prophecies.

The possibility that they inserted details into the narrative purely to coincide with the known prophecies must be at least as likely a possibility as that Jesus was some miraculous fulfilment of prophecy.

There are many other issues of translation, context, vagueness and selectiveness about the whole prophecy argument as I am sure you are about to discover

martin

{Double post deleted}

Jobar

Although I certainly agree that many people consider fulfilled prophecy a valid argument for EoG, graymouser is quite correct; our real experts on the subject are to be found in BC&H, so I'm moving it there. Jobar.

Sven

Just curious: Why particularly the jews, who wrote exactly these (supposed) prophecies, don't see them fulfilled in Jesus?

From a short look at the "fulfilled" prophecies in your post, it look likes you still have to learn a lot about the bible... I leave the answers to your claims to the more knowledgeable-there surely will be loads of answers

Hedshaker

The Jesus myth is not original.

MITHRA MYTH CAME FIRST

There is no evidence of prophecy fullfilment outside of the bible, and the bible is not to be taken seriously.

edit: btw, welcome to the boards

The Evil One

Let's take, for instance, the place fo birth:

Luke says J & M lived in Nazareth, travelled to Bethlehem for a census under Quirinius, then travelled back to Nazareth where Jesus grew up.

Matthew does not say anything about J & M living in Nazareth before Jesus' birth. We first meet them at Joseph's house, in Bethlehem, where Jesus was born. Then, circa two years later, they flee to Egypt to avoid Herod's slaughter of all the boys in the Bethlehem region, then moving to Nazareth (not back to Bethlehem) after Herod's death made it safe.

Now, each of these stories uses a completely different explanation for how Jesus was born in Bethlehem but grew up in Nazareth. Simplest conclusion? It was known that Jesus came from Nazareth, but at the same time the Messiah HAD to be born in Bethlehem. So "Luke" and "Matthew" each made up a story for how Jesus really had been born in Bethlehem, even though it was known he'd come form Nazareth. Unfortunately the stories are contradictory.

For instance, Luke says that after Jesus's birth and presentation at the Temple in Jerusalem,

This is a clear contradiction with Matthew's claim that it was dangerous for Jesus to even be in the country (let alone that it says they went to Nazareth after the birth, not Egypt).

At least one of these guys (and probably both) is making stuff up out of whole cloth to make Jesus' life story satisfy prophecies. So we know that the Gospel writers are fully willing to make up the prophecy fulfilments. So to answer your quesiton ... well, the odds are actually 1-to-1 (IE a sure thing) if you're allowed to make up the fulfilments to fit the propecies.

Magus55

According to who?

martin

You're ASSUMING a bias that ignores reality to favor a myth,this implies they were less then honorable men, no?