I enjoyed a question a reader asked because it prompted me to critically and logically think about my faith and my understanding about God.
Question: How do you determine the difference between 1) what God and Jesus actually said and did, versus 2) what the Bible authors merely reported that God and Jesus said and did?
To explicitly affirm what God and Jesus actually said and did would require eye witnesses. Therefore, I will not start with faith; I'll start with fact.
Literary scholars of various religious and non-religious persuasions determined that portions of the Old Testament may have been written as early as 3,500 B.C., but Moses didn't begin compiling the information into the first five books of the Bible until around 1,450 B.C. And the last portions of the OT were written possibly as late as 150 B.C., but more likely around 300 years before Jesus was born.
Add to the equation: the Bible is the oldest history book in the world, and much of it has been verified by archeology and other scientific endeavors.
Hundreds of prophecies have been spoken throughout the OT time frame. A few of the prophecies were spoken by seemingly wild-eyed hermits, while many, if not most, were spoken by kings, priests, farmers, shepherds, merchantmen, and other socially-accepted people. Most of them have already come true, such as: approximately 356 prophecies in the OT about the coming Messiah have been fulfilled in Jesus.
Quoting from https://www.learnreligions.com/prophecies-of-jesus-fulfilled-700159, Learn Religions - Old Testament Prophecies of Jesus, we read: "In the book Science Speaks, Peter Stoner and Robert Newman discuss the statistical improbability of one man, whether accidentally or deliberately, fulfilling just eight of the prophecies Jesus fulfilled. The chance of this happening, they say, is 1 in 1017 power."
Ten to the 17th power is 10 with 17 zeros after it. Go figure the number.
But there were not eight prophecies about Jesus that were fulfilled -- there were approximately 356. For this, I don't know how many zeros would be required. But all that deals only with prophecies about Jesus. There were hundreds of other prophecies throughout the 1,200 years of writing Genesis through Malachi. They were about people, politics, events, and they were fulfilled, also.
Except for someone who knows everything that will ever happen in the course of mankind, this is a staggering impossibility.
Many of those 356 prophecies that were fulfilled in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus point to the fact that Jesus would be the Messiah, and others pointed to the fact that Jesus would be God in human form.
Now, switch to what is called the New Testament.
What we call the "Church Age" did not begin until the Day of Pentecost. That's why we say Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are actually a continuation of -- or the final "chapters" of -- the Old Testament. That would change the 1,200-year period to almost 1,600 years. Those four books reveal the life of Jesus, and show how he fulfilled the prophecies in the OT.
None of what I mentioned above requires faith. It just requires unprejudiced acceptance of historical fact. Faith comes later.
John, the Gospel writer, was possibly the final OT prophet. Remember, he didn't die until somewhere around 100 A.D. -- more than 60 years after Jesus was crucified. And with everything said about the coming Messiah being fulfilled in Jesus, John finished the prophecy of Jesus in John 1:1 which informs us that the Messiah, who had originally been predicted in Genesis 3:15, was and is God.
Now, we're getting pretty close to the requirement of faith.
To acknowledge that 356 prophecies were fulfilled in Jesus is one thing. But to say that a man -- a human being -- is God? That's a tough pill to swallow! But let's continue.
Since 356 prophecies were fulfilled in one person, we now have to ask the question: How did all those people (prophets) know what to write? It's impossible for several people over a span of 1,600 years to agree with each other in knowing exactly what will happen to a single individual hundreds of years later. There had to be a master-mind to share the information with them.
Oh yes: that master-mind had to be alive for the duration of human existence so there would be no mistake in telling these people what to write. But no one in the history of the world -- even before the flood in Noah's time -- lived longer than 969 years.
(Save this Reflection, and we'll continue next week.)
-- Gene Linzey is a speaker, author and mentor. Send comments and questions to [email protected]. Visit his website at www.genelinzey.com. The opinions expressed are those of the author.
Religion on 07/17/2019