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An OL member emailed me to ask what I thought was a question whose answer was complex enough and interesting enough to merit its own column.
She writes that she has no personal doubts that the Bible is the Word of God. “What,” she then asks, “do you say to an agnostic or young Christian…(who argue) that the latter writers simply read what the former writers said about the coming of Messiah and just made the prophecies “fit”?”
The problem, she continued, was that, “Somehow, saying “just have faith” doesn’t suffice, and that’s the only answer I’ve ever gotten.”
An OL member emailed me to ask what I thought was a question whose answer was complex enough and interesting enough to merit its own column.
She writes that she has no personal doubts that the Bible is the Word of God. “What,” she then asks, “do you say to an agnostic or young Christian…(who argue) that the latter writers simply read what the former writers said about the coming of Messiah and just made the prophecies “fit”?”
The problem, she continued, was that, “Somehow, saying “just have faith” doesn’t suffice, and that’s the only answer I’ve ever gotten.”
"As I see it, the biggest problem lies in keeping an agnostic’s attention long enough to explain the answer."
I thought the quote above from the article was a very good point which is why I would take a different approach that is not so long.
1) Prove there is a God or creator by creation.
Romans 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;
Romans 1:19 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
Romans 1:20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
2) Show that Bible prophecy written before we were born has come true even in our lifetime.
Israel became a nation as an example.
3) Time itself is based on Jesus. The date of 2024 is 2024 years after Jesus was on the earth.
While there are other calendars used, every country acknowledges the date of 2024.
4) The Bible is the most widely printed and read book that exists.
For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 2 Peter 1:16
From the article: "Both logic and deductive reasoning demand the conclusion that the Gospel accounts MUST be true. Any other reading of history would be illogical."
I just bumped into that on Chuck Missler's thru the Bible in 24 hours. It was somewhere between the NT and the OT talks. He went thru the prophecies - just a few about Christ, and the incredible odds of all (just a few) and the math involved. He started it by explaining how unlikely it was that 4 authors of the 4 gospels would be able to tell a story that involved fulfilling prophecy in Christ's birth and ministry unless God was giving them inspiration.
I have a copy of Evidence That Demands a Verdict (both volumes in one), which presents a lot of evidence and reasons for the Bible, the Resurrection, Heaven and Hell, etc. I've found it very helpful when dealing with these kinds of questions. It's also great just to be reminded about how true it all is, and how wonderful it is that God made sure that rational, logical-thinking people, can and do understand and believe, not just people with a more mystical way of thinking.
FWIW, it's one of the few books I'd take with me if I had to evacuate or move into tiny quarters and could only take one small box of books, or a few stashed in a suitcase.
My apologies in advance for the messed up formatting and mathematical notation in this post.
I always liked the mathematical calculation of Jesus fulfilling OT prophecies concerning the Messiah:
Don't have Stoner's book available right now (in storage), but his calculations are widely available on the web. Lamb and Lion posted an article based on his work:
Peter Stoner calculated the probability of just 8 Messianic prophecies being fulfilled in the life of Jesus. As you read through these prophecies, you will see that all estimates were calculated as conservatively as possible.
The Messiah will be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2).
The average population of Bethlehem from the time of Micah to the present (1958) divided by the average population of the earth during the same period = 7,150/2,000,000,000 or 2.8×105.
A messenger will prepare the way for the Messiah (Malachi 3:1).
One man in how many, the world over, has had a forerunner (in this case, John the Baptist) to prepare his way?
Estimate: 1 in 1,000 or 1×103.
The Messiah will enter Jerusalem as a king riding on a donkey (Zechariah 9:9).
One man in how many, who has entered Jerusalem as a ruler, has entered riding on a donkey?
Estimate: 1 in 100 or 1×102.
The Messiah will be betrayed by a friend and suffer wounds in His hands (Zechariah 13:6).
One man in how many, the world over, has been betrayed by a friend, resulting in wounds in his hands?
Estimate: 1 in 1,000 or 1×103.
The Messiah will be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver (Zechariah 11:12).
Of the people who have been betrayed, one in how many has been betrayed for exactly 30 pieces of silver?
Estimate: 1 in 1,000 or 1×103.
The betrayal money will be used to purchase a potter’s field (Zechariah 11:13).
One man in how many, after receiving a bribe for the betrayal of a friend, has returned the money, had it refused, and then experienced it being used to buy a potter’s field?
Estimate: 1 in 100,000 or 1×105.
The Messiah will remain silent while He is afflicted (Isaiah 53:7).
One man in how many, when he is oppressed and afflicted, though innocent, will make no defense of himself?
Estimate: 1 in 1,000 or 1×103.
The Messiah will die by having His hands and feet pierced (Psalm 22:16).
One man in how many, since the time of David, has been crucified?
Estimate: 1 in 10,000 or 1×104.
Multiplying all these probabilities together produces a number (rounded off) of 1×1028. Dividing this number by an estimate of the number of people who have lived since the time of these prophecies (88 billion) produces a probability of all 8 prophecies being fulfilled accident[al]ly in the life of one person. That probability is 1in 1017 or 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000. That’s one in one hundred quadrillion!"
Do statistics prove the Bible’s supernatural origin?
christinprophecy.org
The current edition (2017) of Evidence that Demands a Verdict references this on pages 230-231. It's on pages 166-167 of the 1979 edition.
An article on a separate website includes more of Stoner's work in a very visual way:
"Stoner says that by applying the modern science of probability to just these eight prophecies, “… We find that the chance that any man might have lived down to the present time and fulfilled all eight prophecies is 1 in 1017.” That would be one in 100,000,000,000,000,000. In order for us to be able to comprehend this staggering probability, Stoner illustrates it by supposing that:
“… we take 1017 silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. They will cover all of the state two feet deep. Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state. Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up one silver dollar and say that this is the right one. What chance would he have of getting the right one? Just the same chance that the prophets would have had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man, from their day to the present time, providing they wrote in their own wisdom.
“Now these prophecies were either given by inspiration of God or the prophets just wrote them as they thought they should be. In such a case the prophets had just one chance in 1017 of having them come true in any man, but they all came true in Christ [Mashiach].
“This means that the fulfillment of these eight prophecies alone proves that God inspired the writing of those [eight] prophecies to a definiteness which lacks only one chance in 1017 of being absolute.” [Stoner, Peter W. Science Speaks. Chicago: Moody Press, 1963, pp 100-107.]
Stoner considers 48 prophecies and says, “… We find the chance that any one man fulfilled all 48 prophecies to be 1 in 10157.
“This is a really large number and it represents an extremely small chance. Let us try to visualize it. The silver dollar, which we have been using, is entirely too large. We must select a smaller object. The electron is about as small an object as we know of. It is so small that it will take 2.5 times 1015 of them laid side by side to make a line, single file, one inch long. If we were going to count the electrons in this line one inch long, and counted 250 each minute, and if we counted day and night, it would take us 19,000,000 years to count just the one-inch line of electrons. If we had a cubic inch of these electrons and we tried to count them it would take us, counting steadily 250 each minute, 19,000,000 times 19,000,000 times 19,000,000 [nineteen million times nineteen million times nineteen million] or 6.9 times 1021 years.
“With that introduction, let us go back to our chance of 1 in 10157. Let us suppose that we are taking this number of electrons, marking one, and thoroughly stirring it into the whole mass, then blindfolding a man and letting him try to find the right one. What chance has he of finding the right one? What kind of a pile will this number of electrons make? They make an inconceivably large volume.” [ibid., pp 109,110]
The chances of finding the correct electron out of the pile of electrons that Stoner uses for this last illustration is something on the order of picking one single correct electron out of all of the electrons in all the known mass of the entire known universe.
Such is the chance of any one man fulfilling any 48 prophecies. Yet Yeshua Ha'Natseret fulfilled not just 48 prophecies, not just 61 prophecies, but more than 324 individual prophecies that the Prophets wrote concerning the Mashiach.
_______________
The notation 10157 is the representation of the number 1 followed by 157 zeros, and it looks like this:
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000000,000,000,000,000.
This is approximately the total number of electrons in all the mass of the known universe."
There's only one or two copies of the 1958 edition of Stoner's book, Science Speaks, on the Zon right now, and the price
More reasonably priced copies are available elsewhere.
While looking for copies of Science Speaks, I discovered the estate of Peter Stoner has a revised product freely online, with proper attributions, including the original publisher, Moody Press
I like the old way Moody had of doing things, as illustrated in the conclusion of Chapter 3, Christ of Prophecy:
"If you are this nonchristian man or woman may I entreat you to accept Christ as your personal savior now? Confess to Him your sin of rejection, recognize Him as your Creator, your God. See Christ upon the cross as a sacrifice for your own sin. See in that sacrifice the great love of God,who gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. See the love of Christ when He refused to come down from the cross but said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
You must either accept Christ as your personal savior or reject Him. There is no middle ground. You are either saved, with your name written down in heaven where you will spend eternity, or you are lost and will spend eternity in hell with Satan and all that is evil.
When the children of Israel strayed from God and began to worship idols, Joshua went out before then and said:
And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve ... but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. And the people answered and said, God forbid that we should forsake the Lord, to serve other gods; for the Lord our God, he it is that brought us up and our fathers out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, and which did those great signs in our sight, and preserved us in all the way wherein we went, and among all the people through whom we passed.
Will you not say with Joshua: "As for me and my house,we will serve the Lord"?
consider the two following statements as contracts between yourself and God. One of these contracts is in effect as you finish reading this book. Which one do you now choose?
1. I believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and accept Him as my personal Savior. By this act my sins are all blotted out and I become a son of God, a joint-heir with Jesus Christ. I now have eternal life and shall spend eternity in heaven with Christ.
How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation? -Hebrews 2:3
2. I will not accept Jesus Christ as my savior. I realize that this is the greatest sin against God that any man can commit and in so doing I affiliate myself with Satan. I shall live a life in sin against God, and for this decision I shall spend eternity in hell with Satan.
[Rev 12:11 KJV]
11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.
The word of your testimony is another valuable tool. The end of this verse is also an important point as the apostles and prophets mostly died martyr's deaths. Why would they die for something that is not true or if the body was stolen by their own hands? They wouldn't.
If Jesus, his death and resurrection was a lie, it's pretty amazing that 12 men all stuck to their guns and in turn not only believed this 'lie' but also died for this 'lie'.
And then subsequent followers doing the same. Besides, if this was a lie, why were the religious leaders so bent out of shape about it? Just as one of their own, who was greatly respected, said about the 12 disciples teaching about Jesus, '.....a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, " .....Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.'” Acts 5
Usually if a group of people are lying, they say the same exact lie, same language, same perspectives, etc. but the Apostle's testimonies are from various perspectives, highlighting different aspects of Jesus' ministry but when put together tell the same, consistent story......like witnesses in a court hearing.
This in conjunction with copious amount of historical evidence along with no historical proof of recovering Jesus' body certainly should give one pause to investigate further.
Following Jesus does not require blind faith, but it's reasonable to come to faith based on the evidence looked at, which when honestly considered, one will see consistently points to: Jesus as God, taking on human flesh to connect with humanity and then qualify by his perfect life as the perfect sacrifice, the Lamb of God, on the cross for the World's sins. That by repentance (change of mind about sin) and faith in Jesus we too will be raised to eternal life by the same power of God that raised Jesus to life.
The stark lack of historical denial of Jesus rising from the dead needs to give one pause. But rather, the copious amount of various Biblical and historical evidences, from different points of view are consistent, with the 4 Gospel's information and statements streamlining into a complete and solid testimony. This with other corroborating, historical information is enough light and information, along with the evidence of creation and conscience to make an informed decision to come to faith in Jesus.
And here's something to chew on....consider that the writers of the bible - Isaiah for instance, hundreds of years before Jesus' time, wrote aspects of what crucifixion entails before crucifixion was even invented.
I have a copy of Evidence That Demands a Verdict (both volumes in one), which presents a lot of evidence and reasons for the Bible, the Resurrection, Heaven and Hell, etc. I've found it very helpful when dealing with these kinds of questions. It's also great just to be reminded about how true it all is, and how wonderful it is that God made sure that rational, logical-thinking people, can and do understand and believe, not just people with a more mystical way of thinking.
FWIW, it's one of the few books I'd take with me if I had to evacuate or move into tiny quarters and could only take one small box of books, or a few stashed in a suitcase.
My apologies in advance for the messed up formatting and mathematical notation in this post.
I always liked the mathematical calculation of Jesus fulfilling OT prophecies concerning the Messiah:
Don't have Stoner's book available right now (in storage), but his calculations are widely available on the web. Lamb and Lion posted an article based on his work:
Peter Stoner calculated the probability of just 8 Messianic prophecies being fulfilled in the life of Jesus. As you read through these prophecies, you will see that all estimates were calculated as conservatively as possible.
The Messiah will be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2).
The average population of Bethlehem from the time of Micah to the present (1958) divided by the average population of the earth during the same period = 7,150/2,000,000,000 or 2.8×105.
A messenger will prepare the way for the Messiah (Malachi 3:1).
One man in how many, the world over, has had a forerunner (in this case, John the Baptist) to prepare his way?
Estimate: 1 in 1,000 or 1×103.
The Messiah will enter Jerusalem as a king riding on a donkey (Zechariah 9:9).
One man in how many, who has entered Jerusalem as a ruler, has entered riding on a donkey?
Estimate: 1 in 100 or 1×102.
The Messiah will be betrayed by a friend and suffer wounds in His hands (Zechariah 13:6).
One man in how many, the world over, has been betrayed by a friend, resulting in wounds in his hands?
Estimate: 1 in 1,000 or 1×103.
The Messiah will be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver (Zechariah 11:12).
Of the people who have been betrayed, one in how many has been betrayed for exactly 30 pieces of silver?
Estimate: 1 in 1,000 or 1×103.
The betrayal money will be used to purchase a potter’s field (Zechariah 11:13).
One man in how many, after receiving a bribe for the betrayal of a friend, has returned the money, had it refused, and then experienced it being used to buy a potter’s field?
Estimate: 1 in 100,000 or 1×105.
The Messiah will remain silent while He is afflicted (Isaiah 53:7).
One man in how many, when he is oppressed and afflicted, though innocent, will make no defense of himself?
Estimate: 1 in 1,000 or 1×103.
The Messiah will die by having His hands and feet pierced (Psalm 22:16).
One man in how many, since the time of David, has been crucified?
Estimate: 1 in 10,000 or 1×104.
Multiplying all these probabilities together produces a number (rounded off) of 1×1028. Dividing this number by an estimate of the number of people who have lived since the time of these prophecies (88 billion) produces a probability of all 8 prophecies being fulfilled accident[al]ly in the life of one person. That probability is 1in 1017 or 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000. That’s one in one hundred quadrillion!"
Do statistics prove the Bible’s supernatural origin?
christinprophecy.org
The current edition (2017) of Evidence that Demands a Verdict references this on pages 230-231. It's on pages 166-167 of the 1979 edition.
An article on a separate website includes more of Stoner's work in a very visual way:
"Stoner says that by applying the modern science of probability to just these eight prophecies, “… We find that the chance that any man might have lived down to the present time and fulfilled all eight prophecies is 1 in 1017.” That would be one in 100,000,000,000,000,000. In order for us to be able to comprehend this staggering probability, Stoner illustrates it by supposing that:
“… we take 1017 silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. They will cover all of the state two feet deep. Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state. Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up one silver dollar and say that this is the right one. What chance would he have of getting the right one? Just the same chance that the prophets would have had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man, from their day to the present time, providing they wrote in their own wisdom.
“Now these prophecies were either given by inspiration of God or the prophets just wrote them as they thought they should be. In such a case the prophets had just one chance in 1017 of having them come true in any man, but they all came true in Christ [Mashiach].
“This means that the fulfillment of these eight prophecies alone proves that God inspired the writing of those [eight] prophecies to a definiteness which lacks only one chance in 1017 of being absolute.” [Stoner, Peter W. Science Speaks. Chicago: Moody Press, 1963, pp 100-107.]
Stoner considers 48 prophecies and says, “… We find the chance that any one man fulfilled all 48 prophecies to be 1 in 10157.
“This is a really large number and it represents an extremely small chance. Let us try to visualize it. The silver dollar, which we have been using, is entirely too large. We must select a smaller object. The electron is about as small an object as we know of. It is so small that it will take 2.5 times 1015 of them laid side by side to make a line, single file, one inch long. If we were going to count the electrons in this line one inch long, and counted 250 each minute, and if we counted day and night, it would take us 19,000,000 years to count just the one-inch line of electrons. If we had a cubic inch of these electrons and we tried to count them it would take us, counting steadily 250 each minute, 19,000,000 times 19,000,000 times 19,000,000 [nineteen million times nineteen million times nineteen million] or 6.9 times 1021 years.
“With that introduction, let us go back to our chance of 1 in 10157. Let us suppose that we are taking this number of electrons, marking one, and thoroughly stirring it into the whole mass, then blindfolding a man and letting him try to find the right one. What chance has he of finding the right one? What kind of a pile will this number of electrons make? They make an inconceivably large volume.” [ibid., pp 109,110]
The chances of finding the correct electron out of the pile of electrons that Stoner uses for this last illustration is something on the order of picking one single correct electron out of all of the electrons in all the known mass of the entire known universe.
Such is the chance of any one man fulfilling any 48 prophecies. Yet Yeshua Ha'Natseret fulfilled not just 48 prophecies, not just 61 prophecies, but more than 324 individual prophecies that the Prophets wrote concerning the Mashiach.
_______________
The notation 10157 is the representation of the number 1 followed by 157 zeros, and it looks like this:
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000000,000,000,000,000.
This is approximately the total number of electrons in all the mass of the known universe."
There's only one or two copies of the 1958 edition of Stoner's book, Science Speaks, on the Zon right now, and the price
More reasonably priced copies are available elsewhere.
While looking for copies of Science Speaks, I discovered the estate of Peter Stoner has a revised product freely online, with proper attributions, including the original publisher, Moody Press
I like the old way Moody had of doing things, as illustrated in the conclusion of Chapter 3, Christ of Prophecy:
"If you are this nonchristian man or woman may I entreat you to accept Christ as your personal savior now? Confess to Him your sin of rejection, recognize Him as your Creator, your God. See Christ upon the cross as a sacrifice for your own sin. See in that sacrifice the great love of God,who gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. See the love of Christ when He refused to come down from the cross but said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
You must either accept Christ as your personal savior or reject Him. There is no middle ground. You are either saved, with your name written down in heaven where you will spend eternity, or you are lost and will spend eternity in hell with Satan and all that is evil.
When the children of Israel strayed from God and began to worship idols, Joshua went out before then and said:
And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve ... but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. And the people answered and said, God forbid that we should forsake the Lord, to serve other gods; for the Lord our God, he it is that brought us up and our fathers out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, and which did those great signs in our sight, and preserved us in all the way wherein we went, and among all the people through whom we passed.
Will you not say with Joshua: "As for me and my house,we will serve the Lord"?
consider the two following statements as contracts between yourself and God. One of these contracts is in effect as you finish reading this book. Which one do you now choose?
1. I believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and accept Him as my personal Savior. By this act my sins are all blotted out and I become a son of God, a joint-heir with Jesus Christ. I now have eternal life and shall spend eternity in heaven with Christ.
How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation? -Hebrews 2:3
2. I will not accept Jesus Christ as my savior. I realize that this is the greatest sin against God that any man can commit and in so doing I affiliate myself with Satan. I shall live a life in sin against God, and for this decision I shall spend eternity in hell with Satan.
and how wonderful it is that God made sure that rational, logical-thinking people, can and do understand and believe, not just people with a more mystical way of thinking.
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