Messianic Prophecy ‹ The Bible Can Be Proven

Was it prophesied that Jesus would be born of a virgin?

Skeptics often charge that the virgin birth of Christ is not really predicted by the Bible. They claim that Christians are reading the doctrine back into the Old Testament text, Isaiah 7:14, that reads: "Therefore the Lord Himself shall give you a sign; behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel" (KJV). These critics have argued that the Hebrew word for virgin used here simply means "young woman" and that the whole verse is taken out of context, and really applies only to some child contemporary with Isaiah. They also further charge that since Jesus...

Did Matthew get his prophets mixed up?

In the gospel of Matthew, chapter 27:9-10, Matthew describes the account of Judas with the high priests after his betrayal of Jesus and how he throws the betrayal money of thirty pieces of silver down in the temple in front of the high priest and runs off . The priests then take the money and use it to purchase a potter's field. This account is referred to by Matthew as a fulfillment of prophecy spoken by Jeremiah. However, the details about the betrayal price, the place of transaction, and the eventual use of the money are given in the prophet Zechariah, in chapter 11:12-13...

God of the exact: Daniel’s Seventy Week Prophecy

A remarkable prophecy pinpoints the time of the Messiah:Daniel 9:25-26: “Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: . . . And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself.”The starting point of this prophecy is the decree to rebuild Jerusalem. The only decree that fits is in Nehemiah 2:1, where King Artaxerxes Longimanus grants the request of Nehemiah to have the city rebuilt. The time period is given in verse 1: “In...

Did Jesus arrange to fake fulfillments of prophecy?

Question: Did Jesus arrange His life to pretend to fulfill prophecy, as some have alleged? Some say Jesus really lived, but that He knew about the prophecies and simply deliberately arranged to fulfill them all to proclaim Himself Messiah. Indeed, we see in several cases that Jesus knew He was fulfilling prophecy, or the Gospel writer indicates that something Jesus did fulfilled a specific messianic prophecy. But there are two main problems with this theory. One is that it makes Jesus into a deceiver, pretending to be someone He wasn’t. Imagine Him trying to hoodwink people with sleight-of-hand...

How sure can we be that the Bible is God’s Word?

How sure can we be that the Bible is God's word? One way is to look at all the prophecies about Jesus. There are over 300 prophecies and allusions to Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. What if we took just four of them and figured out what the odds are that they could all be fulfilled by chance? The prophet Micah predicts that Jesus will be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2) So what would be the odds that a person born throughout history would be born in Bethlehem? Chuck Missler came up with one calculation by assuming the average population of the world of 2 billion and the average population...