Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures; all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. Hence we always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable. An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula.
C.S. Lewis

Prophecies In The Life Of Chris

Prophecies In The Life Of Chris

Prophecies In The Life Of Christ

Our next lessons will deal with the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. This subject is called Christology, that is, the study of Christ.

This lesson will deal primarily with the prophecies that had to do with the earthly life of Christ: prophecies concerning Christ’s origin and prophecies concerning His human ministry because long before the Lord Jesus Christ was born it was certainly prophesied that He would come. After all, the final and sure test of the infallibility of the word of God and God’s authority is prophecy, for He who knows the end from the beginning has spoken and has already committed it to writing.

First of all, we deal with the prophecies in the earthly life of Christ. Long before Jesus Christ was born it was prophesied that He would come. As a matter of fact, the first prophecy occurred more than 3,000 years before His birth. Fulfilled prophecy is the main proof that the Bible is the written word of God and the Bible makes more than 800 prophecies, all of which are removed far enough in time from their fulfillment that there could be no chance of accident. Of these 800 prophecies, 300 of them have already been fulfilled literally and there are 500 that remain to be fulfilled in the future. The mathematical probability of these prophecies coming to pass is less than one out of ten to the 895th power. So, when we speak about the Bible being “Holy” scripture, we are speaking with mathematical certainty of a scientific fact. There are no books on science written which are that accurate. There is no textbook on science that can match the word of God.

The Bible, for example, makes forty-eight prophecies about the Lord Jesus Christ’s first coming to Israel as their Messiah. The chances of forty-eight prophecies coming to pass in the life of one man when the prophecies are written 400 to 2,000 years before he was born are about one out of ten to the 157th power; there are not that many electrons in the universe. You figure out the number of electrons in the universe by figuring out the number in the atoms and then figure out the number of atoms per square inch and multiply it by 150 billion square light years; you will find it does not take up 157 zeros. So, when we speak of the Holy Bible we are on a level high above any scientific achievement in America today, and there are no scientists at Houston Space Center or the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who could possibly keep up with the word of God. The mathematical geniuses who can figure out the square root of a certain number running into eight or nine digits are “small pickings.” After all, the Bible makes forty-eight prophecies about one man over 400 years before he is born. All of them come true on the button and there are no mathematical geniuses, dead or alive; there are no college curriculums, existent or nonexistent; and there are no textbooks on mathematics that have been written or that are going to be written that would take such chances; and if they did, they could not produce “the goods.” So, when we talk about the prophecies of Christ we are on a scientific level far above the most brilliant mathematician that ever lived, and silly little modern computers are extremely non-scientific compared with these mathematical facts.

Jesus did not come to earth unannounced. He came in “the fullness of time,” and a study of the scripture fulfillment dealing with minute details encourages our faith in God, who not only draws up the master plan but also the intricate details of the blueprint ahead of time. We see that the details are fulfilled exactly as prophesied and this reinforces the faith of the believer in the inspiration of scripture and proves to him that the Bible is not just an assortment of books by various authors but is one book with one Author, God. It also proves that the Bible is not a “drop of truth in an ocean of truth” or a “bucket of truth in an ocean of truth.” It is the whole ocean collapsed into your pocket. There are no so-called “sacred scriptures” in any religion that dare to undertake what the Holy Bible undertakes, and the surest proof you have that the other so-called sacred scriptures are irreverent tomfoolery is the fact that none of them even tries the phenomena we find recorded in the Bible.

The Bible prophesies forty-eight details of a man’s life before he is born, brings them through on the money, and then hazards 500 more prophecies which are yet in the future. The Shastas, Vedas, Tripitaka and Puranas do not dare hazard such guesses. The Koran, of course, compared with the Bible in this respect looks a lot like a mole hill would look alongside Mount Everest. I don’t mean to be unkind in what I am saying. What I mean to be is mathematically exact from the twentieth century scientific point of view. When I say what I say about the Koran I am speaking from the standpoint of fact; I am not speaking from the standpoint of some religious “faith.” After all, our religion is not based just on faith; our religion is based on historical facts. There are no computers made now or that will be made which would hazard the chances that are hazarded by the King James Bible.

For example, the King James text has 5OO prophecies in it that deal with the second coming of Christ that have not taken place yet. Do you know what the chances are of a man “batting 500” out of 500? That is, do you know what the chances are of a Book “batting 1,000” through a period of 300 years? Do you know what those chances are? Well, those are the chances the Bible takes and never apologizes to anybody. And considering the fact that there are now five and one half miles of obsolete books on “science” where the “scientific facts” have changed and are no longer relevent, what would “modern science” be alongside the Bible but a baby waiting for a handout. To assume that all these things just accidentally happen is an accident too great even for the imagination of an evolutionist. You will find evolutionists who don’t believe in the word of God and yet they have more mathematical scientific proof that the Bible is the word of God than they do in Darwin’s puddle to paradise theory in the Child’s Garden of Verses.

Our faith is undergirded by the witness of fulfilled prophecy and it helps us to stand firm and unmovable because everything that God ever said would come to pass came to pass, and what He has said that has not yet come to pass will come to pass as surely as the things He said before came to pass which He said would come to pass. For example, here are some prophecies concerning Christ’s origin and Christ’s life. The chance of these prophecies coming out and being fulfilled in the life of one man are one out of ten to the 97th power. One out of ten with ninety-seven zeros after it! Did you ever write that down on a sheet of paper and see what it looks like? Do you know what that is the equivalent of? That is the equivalent of taking one grain of sand on a beach in Samoa and wrapping it in Scotch tape and putting that grain of sand back on some other beach and burying it three feet deep and then telling a man to go out and find that grain of sand. He would have to look for that grain of sand on every beach in the world and find it. Do you know what your chances would be of doing that? One out of ten times itself 97 times. And those are the chances the Bible takes which no religious book in the world would dare take. And Jean Dixon and Edgar Cayce and Kahlil Gibran alongside such odds are simply too much, brother. I mean, who would take such nonsense seriously who knew the Bible?

Christ would come out of Israel (Num. 24:17-19).

Christ would be descended from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob (Gen. 12:3; 17:19, Num. 24:17).

Christ would be born of the family of David (Gen. 49 and Isa. 11).

Christ would be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2).

Christ would be born of a virgin (Isa. 7:14).

The time of His coming was specified (Dan. 9:25).

Christ’s coming was announced by a forerunner (Isa. 4:3-5).

The Messiah would be God manifest in the flesh (Isa. 9:6).

He would spend His childhood in Egypt (Hosea 11:1).

He would suffer and make an atonement for sin (Isa. 53).

He would enter Jerusalem on a colt, the foal of an ass (Zech. 9:9).

He would be given gall and vinegar in His agony (Ps. 69:21).

Not a bone would be broken (Ps. 34:20).

Men would cast lots for His garments (Ps. 22:18).

He would utter certain words in His dying agony, which were quoted before He was born (Ps. 22:1).

He would rise from the dead (Ps. 16:10).

Christ would be betrayed by a friend (Ps. 41:9).

He would be sold for thirty pieces of silver (Zech. 11:12).

He would be accused by false witnesses (Ps. 35:11).

He would be spat upon and smitten (Isa. 50:6).

He would be hated without a cause (Ps. 35:19).

He would be scorned and mocked (Ps. 22:7,8).

Now, explain it! I haven’t cited one reference that wasn’t written more than 400 years before Jesus Christ was born, and there isn’t any linguist or etymologist in the world who doesn’t know everything listed above was written before Christ was born. Not even the radical extremist or the Graf-Wellhausen school that followed Kuenen and Dewette back in the nineteenth century believe that any of the Old Testament was written later than the time of John the Baptist because every Orthodox Jew had all the thirty-nine books of your King James Bible in print and was reading them in the synagogues 200 years before Jesus showed up.

Now, let’s talk mathematically, shall we? Explain what I just gave. All right, if you can’t explain it, would you imitate it, please? Surely, you are as smart as Isaiah and David and Hosea and Zachariah, surely! I mean, with the benefit of modern, inductive scientific methods and the vast researches into empirical methods and means whereby the existential, positivistic baloney can come out, surely you can duplicate what I have just said!

I have just listed twenty-two details of a man’s life that were given before he was born that come through on the money. Now it is your turn!

Requirement Number One: You have to get the statements of seven different writers a thousand years apart.

Requirement Number Two: They have to write the events without any known record to get their material from.

Requirement Number Three: They have to be unaware of each other’s writings when they write.

Requirement Number Four: The details have to be fulfilled far enough in the future so that there is no chance that the author could have used hindsight instead of foresight.

When you do that, let us know, won’t you? A fellow said to me, “You just believe the Bible because you don’t know any better.” I gave him the classic answer. I said, “That’s right, son, I don’t know any better. When you show me something better, I’ll believe it.” After all, the phenomena I have just listed can’t be found in the Harvard five foot shelf of classics. They can’t be found in the Encyclopedia Britannica or in the Encyclopedia Americana. It doesn’t show up in there anywhere. Now tell me something, you stupid doctors and lawyers (and I use the words with “charity” the same way you use the word of God!). How do you account for this Book that we go by having mathematical, scientific phenomena in it that you can’t produce with twenty centuries of science behind you? Rather interesting, isn’t it?

Numbers 24:17 says, “…There shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel…”–fulfilled Matthew 1:1-17.

Genesis 49:10 says, “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah…”– fulfilled Luke 1:31-33.

Micah 5:2 says, “But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah…out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel”–fulfilled Luke 2:47.

Isaiah 7:14 says, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel”–fulfilled Matthew 1:18.

Daniel 9:24,26 says, “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city….And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off.” He was crucified exactly at that time, and if you put the Gregorian system and the Capernican system and the Julian system and the Roman calendar together and work out your lunar years and your solar years until you are red, white and blue in the face you will find out that His triumphal entry into Jerusalem was dated within eight hours, more than 400 years before His birth.

In Isaiah 9:6 Jesus is called “The mighty God.” He is said to be deity in John 1:14.

Hosea 11:1 says that He would spend part of His childhood in Egypt. This was fulfilled in Matthew 2.

It said in the Old Testament (Isa. 53) that He would suffer as an atonement. It is fulfilled in Matthew 26 and 27.

We read in Zechariah 9:9 that he will come into Jerusalem on “the foal of an ass.” It is fulfilled in detail in Matthew 21:2-5.

We are told in the Old Testament in Psalm 69:21 that at His death He would be given gall and vinegar on the cross. This is fulfilled in Matthew 27:34.

We are told in the Old Testament (Exod. 12:46, Ps. 34:20) that at His death not a bone of Him would be broken. This is fulfilled in John 19:33. This is very unusual because the legs of the crucified prisoners were broken. How did they miss Christ’s legs? And since the Jews’ method of capital punishment was stoning, why would an Old Testament man say, “He keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken” (Ps. 34:20)? What are the chances of a man not having his bones broken in capital punishment under a Jewish nation if he was a Jew when it would be Jews who would carry out punishment on him? And capital punishment for a Jew was stoning. Do you know what those chances are? Why don’t you figure them out? Figure the number of people who had capital punishment in Israel in a year and multiply it by the thousand years that their nation was active as a nation under their own government and how many they stoned and what the chances are of one man not being stoned who is accused of committing blasphemy when the law says that the blasphemer is to be stoned to death. You say, “The Roman government.” Nice coincidence, isn’t it? You say, “Well, the Roman method of killing was crucifixion, not stoning.” Real handy, don’t you think? I wonder why Greece wasn’t in power when the Lord came? That would have blown the scripture. I wonder why Persia or Syria wasn’t in power. That would have blown the scripture. Kind of a “coinky-dinky,” don’t you think?

In the Old Testament (Ps. 22:18) it says, “They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.” This is fulfilled in Matthew 27:35.

We are told in Psalm 22:1 that Christ would cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” This prophecy was fulfilled in Mark 15:34.

We are told in Psalm 16:10, “For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.” And Peter affirms that this is literally true (Acts 1:3) and is confirmed by 500 eyewitnesses. You say, “Well, they just made that up.” They did? Five hundred of them did, did they? Five hundred firsthand eyewitnesses? You want to try it in court? Do you know what the laws of jurisprudence state in America? They state that if eyewitnesses testify to something they have seen and commit what they have seen to writing and it isn’t proved conclusively at the time of this committal that they are wrong, then that which they have committed to writing, once it has been testified to, cannot be annulled or overthrown or rejected unless conclusive evidence to prove they were liars is produced. And that is why every “scientist” in the world is sweating blood trying to find one bone of Jesus Christ. Because the only conclusive evidence that He didn’t rise from the dead would be to find the corpus delicti. So, they have been working on it for twenty centuries. Just like they have been trying to get to the moon to try to find signs of life to prove Darwin’s puddle to paradise theory. Twenty-five billion dollars to disprove Genesis 1 because they are worried about the new birth that was necessary if Genesis 1, 2 and 3 are right. Some people never consider the motive for a college education, do they? They just take it for granted.

Now, what have we said here? I have actually gone through a very short thing. There are dozens of prophecies throughout the Old Testament that speak about His ministry. There are also prophecies in the Old Testament which speak about the men He will witness to–types of the Antichrist. There are prophecies in the Old Testament that speak not only about the soldiers casting lots for His garments but also about His cry from the cross, “I thirst.” There are not only prophecies on these things but we read: “…They pierced my hands and my feet,” Psalm 22:16.

When He comes again they shall “look upon me whom they have pierced,” Zechariah 12:10.

We read about the virgin birth, “A woman shall compass a man,” Jeremiah 31:22. Whereas a woman has no seed, yet Christ is said to be the seed of the woman (Gen. 3:15).

We are told in the Old Testament that as a sacrifice He will be called a Lamb, and in Exodus 12 we are told that the house of Israel is to get a lamb which is first called “the Lamb” (vs. 4) and is then called “your Lamb” (vs. 5), showing the required sacrifice is a Lamb. But only one Lamb will do because it is called “the Lamb,” and unless you appropriate it for yourself (“your Lamb”) His atonement is ineffectual. How do you explain that “a” (vs. 3), “the” (vs. 4), and “your” (vs. 5)?

How do you explain the prophecies in Genesis 22 about an only son (vs. 2), the son of His father’s old age, going up a hill with wood on his back (vs. 6)–indicating the mode of Christ’s capital punishment?

How do you explain in Exodus 12:7 the Jew being told to put blood on each side of the door for the dying thief that was lost and the blood over the door for Jesus Christ in the middle?

You explain to me how forty-eight prophecies could come to pass on one man written 400 to 2,000 years before that man was born. You explain that to me logically, scientifically and mathematically and give me a demonstration like those empirical, logical positivists at Vienna wanted and like Einstein wanted–when he changed the definition of “meaning”–and I’ll throw my Bible in the trash can. But, until you can offer me twentieth century empirical, scientific proof, I’m going by scientific fact and you are going by deluded pagan imagination. We born again believers are not going by anyone’s imagination or by anyone’s “religious experience.” We were going by computerized empiricism before scientists knew what a computer was.

There are forty-eight prophecies that come to pass in the life of one man, Jesus Christ. And if that weren’t enough, here is Joseph back in the Old Testament between Genesis 37 and Genesis 50 whose life matches Jesus Christ’s earthly life in 152 different particulars. A shepherd, hated of his brethren, envied by his brethren, betrayed by his brethren, sold by his brethren, sold to Gentiles by his brethren, sold for silver by his brethren, in prison, connected with new wine and bread while in prison, and with one prisoner hung and one prisoner released. Explain it! If you had all the prophecies of Nostradamus and Mother Shipton and Jean Dixon and Edgar Cayce and laid them alongside eight chapters in Genesis, they couldn’t win, place or show. Let me hear you explain it! Here is a book, Genesis, written by a man who lived 1500 years before Christ was born, but he gives 152 details of Christ’s life before He shows up. Who would like to step up and try that? Any of you educated folks with twenty years of college think you’re smart? Know a little Greek and Hebrew, do you? You know what supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism is, do you sonny? You’ve been working the Piel, the Pual, the Hiphil and the Hithpael, have you? You have, huh? You trying to impress somebody, talking about the Apocrypha and the pseudepigrapha and the antilegomena and the circumflex accent on the ultima; is that it? You think because you know about lepidoptera and brontosaurus and cenozoic and stegosaurus and triceratops and listen to The World Tomorrow you’ve got some brains, do you? All right, there is one that will try out your medula oblongata, sonny. That will test your metal, brother! Try that one! Explain how any Book could give 152 details of a man’s life before he shows up, and then when he shows up they are all fulfilled to the letter with 500 more to go.

Now, if I have spoken rather harshly to you in this lesson, I have done so with a purpose in mind because every Bible believer is harassed and dogged day and night by educated dingbats who think twenty years of education makes them intelligent. These people, of course, are the curse of Christendom, especially the educated Christians. We have many so-called “Christians” in America who think they are much smarter than God or smarter than the Holy Spirit and who think they are smart enough to correct Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I only mention these things to show you that the King James Bible has 500 prophecies laid on the line that you can put your money on and no scientist or physicist can attempt one tenth that number.

Now, before you tell us all about your degree, sonny, produce the Koran and show us this phenomenon in the Koran before you ask for an ecumenical movement toward Hinduism and Mohammadanism. Pick up the Sutras and the Vedas and show us this phenomenon. Will you show us that? Do you think truth can be separated from fact? We are dealing with facts! Don’t give me this ethereal guru stuff about transcendental meditation that evaporates you into a cloud of whatever you think you should be. Deal with the facts, kiddies. Those are the facts. They are documented. They are attested to by witnesses and have survived 3,000 years of Satanic, irrational criticism. Before you ask to take our Bible and lay it alongside what some of you have read, would you show us the same phenomenon in the junk you call your “sacred scriptures of the East”? Is there any man reading this who will mail me a copy of the Analects of Confucius and mark for me 800 prophecies that will come to pass on the money, with 300 of them already fulfilled? Send me a copy. I would like to look it over. Would you send me anything that Joseph Smith wrote (or “Moroni”) when he diddled with the golden plates–would you send me something that he wrote that wasn’t taken from the Bible that has this phenomenon in it? I mean, never mind the places Smith copied out of the King James Bible–we’ve got them all marked anyway. We keep track of it, you know, to see how things go.

The Bible is the word of God. The Bible constitutes the Holy Scriptures which can be proved scientifically by mathematical phenomena. The Lord said to the unbeliever in Isaiah that if you want to know who I am ask me concerning things to come. I am the first, I am the last, declaring the end from the beginning. I am God and there is none else. I know no other God. Beside me there is no God and Saviour, I am the first and the last and before me there was no God, neither shall there be after me. God has committed Himself to man in print so that no mathematician could even dispute His word and retain a sound mind. You have to be intellectually dishonest to classify the Bible with other so-called “scripture” because the mathematical phenomena in it is not found in any other book in the world, including the textbooks on mathematics.

I repeat: The chances of forty-eight prophecies coming to pass, fulfilled on one man and written 400 to 1,000 years before he was born, are one out of ten to the 157th power; and my dear mathematician, there are not that many electrons in the universe if you count the universe to be 50 billion square light-years in all four directions. Something to think about, isn’t it, if you’re an unsaved man! And something to thank God for if you are a saved man! This completes our first study on Christology–the Biblical passages that deal with the prophecies on the life of Jesus Christ.