From a second sermon (sorry about the length I'll try to keep them shorter in future)
A frog goes into the gypsy fortuneteller’s tent after the frog had crossed her palm with silver she gazed into her crystal ball. After a few moments she says to the frog, “You are going to meet a beautiful young woman. From the moment she first sees you she will have an insatiable desire to know all about you. She will be totally fascinated by you. The frog couldn’t contain his excitement any longer. “Where am I going to meet her will it be the local hop?
A singles bar?” “No none of those,” says the fortune teller it will be in her biology class.”
In the last post we looked at the historical and archaeological evidence that goes to prove that historically the Bible is a book you can trust.
We found out that there have been over 25,000 archeological sites found in the middle east concerning people places and events in the Old Testament alone and none have ever put the Bible in doubt, instead they have confirmed the accuracy of the Bible. Dr. William Bright, who was a skeptic and who was probably the foremost authority on Middle Eastern archaeology in his time said this about the Bible...”There can be no doubt that archaeology has confirmed the substantial historicity of the Old Testament.”
We also found out that The Bible is the most documented ancient manuscript in our civilization.
With over 38,000 fragments in existence which show that although the Bible has been copied many times throughout history there is less than a 1% difference in the book we have today. The remaining 1% variations are extremely minor and do not affect the meaning.
In this post we are going to be looking at how the Bible is validated through fulfilled prophecy. But first we need to understand what we mean by prophecy.
There are many who predict the future in our society today and in our recent past. And more and more, people are turning to the supernatural to try and find what the future holds, the trouble is they are looking everywhere except the Book that has all the answers. They are turning to people like Jeane Dixon (1918-1997) who was an astrologer and alleged psychic who was thought by her many followers and herself to have a gift of prophecy.
In 1956 she made this prediction for the American presidential election: "As for the 1960 election Mrs. Dixon thinks it will be dominated by labor and won by a Democrat. But he will be assassinated or die in office though not necessarily in his first term."
Her followers would point out how accurate she was - a Democrat did win the election John F Kennedy and he was assassinated on November 22 1963. What her followers forget to mention is that the elections weren’t dominated by Labour and that during the 1960 elections she had a vision that Richard Nixon would win.
She also had a vision that on February 5, 1962, a child was born in the Middle East, who would transform the world by year 2000, creating a unifying world religion, and bringing world peace. She saw a cross growing above this man, until it covered the whole earth. This child was a descendant of the very beautiful Egyptian Queen Nefertiti.
Then we have probably the most well known prophet of recent times Michel Nostradamus (1503-1566) he was a 16th century French physician and astrologer. His modern followers see him as a prophet. His prophecies, say his followers have a magical quality for those who study them: they are muddled and obscure before the predicted event, but become crystal clear after the event has occurred:
1
He who by iron shall destroy his father, born in Nonnaire.
Shall in the end carry the blood of the gorgon,
Shall in a strange country make all so silent
That he shall burn himself, and his double talk
2
The great man will be struck down in the day by a thunderbolt.
The evil deed predicted by the bearer of a petition;
According to the prediction another falls at night time.
Conflict in Reims, London, and pestilence at Tuscany.
Confused 1- Adolf Hitler 2 – John F Kennedy and his brother
But these are not prophets in the Biblical sense?
Numbers 12:6 says, "When a prophet of the LORD is among you, I reveal myself to him in visions, I speak to him in dreams.”
Another sign of a true prophet is that the predictions they give must come true.
In Old Testament times there was no room for; “You know I’ve got this feeling that God wants us to……” or “I’ve had this dream and I think God is saying…..”
If the prophecy didn’t come true they took you out and stoned you to death.
So you didn’t say, “God says…” unless you were 100% certain it was from God.
All of which brings us to today’s post: fulfilled prophecy proves we can trust the Bible.
And I’m not talking about airy fairy predictions that could mean just about anything you want it to like we see with the Nostrodamus’ prophecies and I’m not talking about Jeane Dixon type prophecies that are a bit hit and miss. I’m talking about accurate predictions which name names, times, places and the like. The Book of Daniel is so accurate in its predictions that historians and scholars tried to alter the dates of when it was written, as they said it was impossible to have been written at any time other than after the event. Except that as they did further research they had to concede it was written in 553 BC, 14 years before the fall of Babylon
In our reading today we are looking at a dream that Daniel had, in Daniel chapter 7 but we will also be looking at a dream someone else had namely King Nebuchadnezzar himself because we will see that both dreams are interlinked. Just as John’s vision in the Book of Revelation is.
Daniel’s dream begins with four beasts coming up out of the sea. Now before you get visions of godzilla like creatures coming up out of the sea we need to realize that the creatures and the sea are purely symbolic. We are told what the sea represents in; REV 17:15 Then the angel said to me, "The waters you saw, where the prostitute sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations and languages. So the great sea represents peoples or nations and the beasts represent kingdoms coming out of the people.
The first beast we come across in our reading is a lion with the wings of an eagle. This is a symbol that is closely associated with the Babylonian Empire. In fact archeologists have found winged lions carved in to the wall and gates of this once magnificent city.
The lion is regarded as the most powerful beast on the Earth and the eagle is the most powerful bird of prey. All of which symbolizes Babylon, which was the most powerful nation in all of the known world. Then we read in verse 4 I watched until its wings were torn off and it was lifted from the ground so that it stood on two feet like a man, and the heart of a man was given to it.
Which is precisely what happened to Babylon and its King, - King Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar was no longer content with just being a king and so he declared himself to be a God and was struck down by God and became like a demented wild beast for a period of time until his heart was changed and he turned to the God of Daniel and for the short time he had to live he used his considerable power and influence to tell his subjects of his conversion to the one true God of Daniel, but by then it was too late the lions wings were torn off and Babylon was losing its power.
In verse 5 we read “And there before me was a second beast, which looked like a bear. It was raised up on one of its sides, and it had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth.”
History tells us that this was the Medo-Persian Alliance led by Cyrus which defeated Babylon in 539 BC but we’re not looking back at history - it may surprise you to know that if the Babylonians had studied the prophecies in the Bible they would have known the who, when, and how of their defeat. Jeremiah 27:6 Now I will hand all your countries over to my servant Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; I will make even the wild animals subject to him. 7 All nations will serve him and his son and his grandson until the time for his land comes; Which means that Babylon will only last until the reign of Belshazzar Jeremiah also said it would be an army from the north other prophets predicted that it would happen during a drunken feast. And the Prophet Isaiah even named the leader of that army 175 years before Cyrus was even born, that’s right 175 years before Cyrus was born Isaiah said this in;
ISA 45:1 "This is what the LORD says to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold of to subdue nations before him and to strip kings of their armor, to open doors before him so that gates will not be shut:
And how did Cyrus get into the impregnable city of Babylon? Through a gate that was left open in the aqueduct during a drunken feast.
But why was the bear that Daniel saw, raised up on one side this was a symbol the unequal alliance between the Medes and the Persians with the Medes being the most dominant although this turned around during the reign of Darius. And the three ribs in the bear’s mouth were the three nations the Medo-Persian army defeated. Lydia, Egypt and Babylon.
Now we come to the fourth beast, the leopard with four wings and four heads this symbolizes the Greek kingdom led by a brilliant young tactician called Alexander the Great he defeated the combined Medo-Persian Army in 334 BC Alexander’s army was known for its swiftness as it moved from place to place conquering the known civilized world you could say he moved with the speed of a leopard with wings. Why four heads? This was because when Alexander died at a young age of pneumonia his kingdom was divided up amongst his four generals. Being divided as they were, they were easily overcome by this fourth beast coming out of the sea.
In verses 7 & 8 we read; "After that, in my vision at night I looked, and there before me was a fourth beast--terrifying and frightening and very powerful. It had large iron teeth; it crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left. It was different from all the former beasts, and it had ten horns.
"While I was thinking about the horns, there before me was another horn, a little one, which came up among them; and three of the first horns were uprooted before it. This horn had eyes like the eyes of a man and a mouth that spoke boastfully.
This next beast which was the last Kingdom to dominate the civilized world was the Roman Empire which subdued every nation in its path this Empire stretched from India right across Europe to Southern Britain and down to North Africa.
If you notice no other beast followed this one out of the sea. Rome was the last World Empire. Rome was never defeated on a battlefield. Rome just became fat and lazy and fell apart from within.
I said that this dream is linked to Daniel's interpretation of King Nebuchadnezzar's dream in Daniel chapter 2: If you remember Nebuchadnezzar had dreamed of a huge statue but would not tell anyone what he had dreamed. The king demanded that his magicians, exorcists, sorcerers, etc. describe the dream to him, and to interpret its meaning. Maybe he didn’t tell them what the dream was in order to test their psychic abilities. Understandably, they failed. Daniel then described the dream, which was a statue made from different metals and explained that the metals that the king dreamed of (gold, silver, bronze and iron) each represented one earthly kingdom: his own and three to come in the future.
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This is how the statue may have looked. A head of gold, chest and arms of silver, Belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of clay mixed with iron. We can also see at the bottom of the statue the rock not made with human hands which eventually caused the statue to crumble and fall.
How do these two dreams link with each other; again we can see this from this table.
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As I said earlier Rome was never defeated as a whole on the battle field there was no world dominating kingdom to follow Rome up to the present day many have tried like Hitler but none have ever succeeded.
So what we have in our present time grew out of the Roman Empire but none compare with its strength and dominance and we can see this in the fourth beast you will remember it had ten horns and if we look at our statue again we see its feet made from clay and iron. Iron being the remnants of Rome.
The feet also have ten toes which corresponds to the ten horns. And from our next table we can see how those ten horns or toes became the kingdoms that shaped our modern world;
Kingdom Modern Equivalent
Alamanni Germany
Ostrogoths Austria, Switzerland, and
Yugoslavia
Visigoths Spain
Vandals North Africa
Suevi Portugal
Burgundians South France
Heruli Italy
Anglo-Saxons England
Lombards Hungary
Franks France
Now I could go on to explain how the little horn represents the coming antichrist and how the rock not made from human hands represents Christ who is coming to bring and end to all the man made kingdoms. But that concerns prophecies that are still to be fulfilled. We are looking at prophecies that history proves were fulfilled.
What I would like to turn our attention on now briefly is the single most important event in history, and what the Bible is all about….. Jesus. There are 360+ prophecies about Jesus as the coming Jewish Messiah in the Old Testament made hundreds of years before he was born and fulfilled when Jesus was born, died on a cross and rose again 3 days later. Over 360. And out of those 365 prophecies that were fulfilled by Jesus, there are 109 that only Jesus as the Christ, as the Messiah could have fulfilled. What I mean by that is there were probably thousands of babies born in Bethlehem over the years but how many were the result of a virgin birth?
Now I know I have shared this with you in the past, but it’s worth repeating to illustrate the enormity of one man fulfilling just eight of these prophecies.
Peter Stoner, a mathematician, in a periodical ‘Science Speaks’ (Moody Press, 1963) shows that its beyond coincidence that any man, let alone Jesus, could fulfill these prophecies by chance, is ruled out by the science of probability. Stoner says that by using the modern science of probability in reference to just eight of these 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 10to the power of 17." That would be 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000. In order to help us comprehend this staggering probability, Stoner illustrates it by saying. "Suppose we take 1017 silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. They will cover the whole of the state of Texas with a 2 feet layer of silver dollars. Great Britain covers about 94200 square miles. Texas covers about 268,601 square miles, Nearly 3 X bigger "Now mark one of these silver dollars with a red cross, 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 one with the red cross on it. What would be the chance that he had picked the right one? Its the same chance that the prophets would have had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man."
Stoner considers 48 prophecies and says, "we find the chance that any one man fulfilled all 48 prophecies to be 1 in 10 to the power of 157, or 1 in
100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
In comparison these are the odds of matching 6 of 6 main numbers in the national lottery is - 1 : 13,983,816
But Jesus didn’t fulfill 8 prophecies he didn’t fulfill 48. Jesus fulfilled over 360 I would’ve shown the probability of all of them being fulfilled by one man but this blog isn’t big enough.
And finally one last prophecy;
In Isaiah 66 we read this prophecy concerning the Jews; “Who has ever heard of such a thing? Who has ever seen such things? Can a country be born in a day or a nation be brought forth in a moment?”
Who would have thought this could possibly happen. After the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. The Jewish people were scattered all over the world they no longer had a land to call home they were no longer a nation. But Isaiah’s prophecy accurately describes what happened on May 14, 1948 - when the Jews moved back to the land we now call Israel and declared independence for the state of Israel as a united and sovereign nation for the first time in 2900 years.
During that same day, the United States issued a statement recognizing Israel's sovereignty. And, only hours beforehand, a United Nations mandate expired, ending British control of the land. During a 24-hour span of time, foreign control of the land of Israel had formally ceased, and Israel had declared its independence, and its independence was acknowledged by other nations. Modern day Israel was literally born in a single day just as God said it would.
Did you know that the Bible is ⅔’s prophetic and over ½ of those prophecies have already been fulfilled exactly as they were written and if over half have already been fulfilled we can be sure the rest will be fulfilled exactly as God said they will.
2Timothy 3:16 ”All Scripture is God-breathed”
The Bible always brings you to a crossroads. There is no middle ground with the Bible. You can’t say “I think it’s a good moral book but I don’t believe it was inspired by God.” Or “ I believe some of it is true and some of it isn’t.” The Bible doesn’t give us that option. If it’s not what it said it is then it’s a book of lies and deserves to gather dust on bookshelves all over the world. But if it’s true then we have the very words and the very thoughts of God himself written to you. If the Bible is what it says it is you have the most powerful and priceless and precious book ever written.
If the Bible is what it says it is don’t you think you should be treating it with the reverence it deserves?
Thank you. Much appreciated.