There are many amazing things about Jesus that draw us to Him, and provide the basis for our faith--what He taught about God, how He lived His life, and especially that He rose from the dead! And as important as those things are to our belief in Him as Lord and Savior, it is even more amazing that all of it was predicted in scripture centuries before Jesus ever lived! As Christians we do not just look back in history to the life of one incredible individual that we respect and honor, we actually look back even further to see that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of God’s amazing plan to save us. That’s why His life was no accident and His call that we must believe in Him for salvation must be answered. He is, as C.S. Lewis noted, either a liar, a lunatic or the Lord. So which is it?

            Lee Stroble in his book The Case for Christ says that there are at least 48 prophecies in the Old Testament that point to the Messiah and that Jesus fulfilled every one of them! Now some have suggested that Jesus, who as a Jew would know these prophecies, manipulated events in order to claim to be the long awaited Messiah. Most, however, were completely out of anyone’s ability to make them happen. According to mathematician Peter Stoner the odds of all of these predictions being fulfilled by one person is 1 in 10145.

If you can’t relate to that number (it’s a 1 followed by 145 zeros which would fill over three lines in this article!), consider the following illustration. Stroble quotes Jewish scholar turned Christian Louis Lapides who suggests that the probability of just eight prophecies being fulfilled by one person would be like covering the state of Texas with silver dollars two feet deep, marking one of them, then having a blindfolded person wander around and pick up that one coin (L. Stroble, The Case for Christ, page 183). “The odds alone,” claims Lapides, “say it would be impossible for anyone to fulfill the Old Testament prophecies. Yet Jesus...managed to do it.”

            Another author, Donald Miller in Searching for God Knows What, pondering the same question comes to the following conclusion. “If you consider all of these prophecies, it is a pretty tough list to fulfill. It would take a lot of work to get all that done, much of it, such as being preceded by John the Baptist, fleeing to Egypt, being killed by crucifixion and yet not having a bone broken, being recognized [as the Messiah] as a baby and rising from the dead is stuff you can’t control unless you are, in fact, God” (p. 143, emphasis added).

            As we approach Easter we are going to examine just four of the prophecies that Jesus fulfilled – all from the prophet Zechariah. These include that the Messiah would ride into Jerusalem as a victorious king, but would do so on the back of a donkey, not a war horse (Zechariah 9:9-13), that He would be a Shepherd they would reject (Zechariah 11:4-17), that the people would look upon Him as one they had pierced (Zechariah 12:7-11), and finally that the Messiah would bring light and living water to the people so that On That Day (Easter Sunday) the people would know that the Lord is king of the whole earth (Zechariah 14:4-11). Only Jesus has fulfilled these prophecies.

            What does this mean for us in the year 2006? What difference does it make 20 centuries later that there even were Jewish prophecies and that Jesus of Nazareth was the one to fulfill them? It matters because many would suggest that our faith as Christians is not founded on anything more than religious myth, or that Jesus is just one of many equally valid faith options. That might be true if not for the prophecies. No other religion has made such predictions that could be disproved; no other Faith has such specific details that if untrue would discredit it’s teachings; and no other leader has made the rash claim to be the fulfillment of those prophecies (see Matthew 5:17). That’s why we worship the One who “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets...[explained] what was said in all the Scripture concerning Himself” (Luke 24:27). Lewis’ question is answered—He is Lord!

            So let us prepare to worship the Lord of Easter, the Fulfillment of prophecy, the King of kings! And then let us tell others why that matters, and that they can be confident in believing in Him too!

Denis Whittet