Biblical Prophecy

Dr. Peter Stoner applied the mathematical laws of probability to Old Testament prophecy, particuarly Messianic prophecy, in his book “Science Speaks”. It had a deep impact on me as I read it in my early 20’s. If you are interested in my “Readers’ Digest” version, below you can read my condensation of the essential argument:

There are over 300 prophecies in the Old Testament about the Messiah and His first coming. (There are even more about His second coming!). Of those 300 prophecies, Dr. Stoner admitted that many of them are somewhat nebulous, i.e. not very clear. So, he reduced the number to only 8 prophecies which are all very clear. A prime example is the prophecy in Micah 5:2 that the Messiah would be born in the city of Bethlehem Ephrata (very specific).

As a professor of mathematical statistics, Dr. Stoner divided his class into 8 groups, and gave each group one of the 8 prophecies. Their homework was to come up with a rational probability that their one prophecy would come true on its own, apart from any consideration of God. So the example of Bethlehem, they found out the rough estimate of the population of Bethlehem and divided it by the estimated total population of Israel. This resulted in a chance of 1 in 700 or so. Then Dr. Stoner rounded their estimate off to the nearest power of 10, but in favor of the skeptic. So he rounded it to 1 in 100, or 1 in 10 to the 2nd power.

After all 8 groups were considered and rounded down in favor of the skeptic, one can calculate the chance of all 8 prophecies being fulfilled. To do this you simply multiply the individual probabilities together. This yielded a chance of all 8 prophecies coming true to be 1 in 10 to the 17th power! (And of course, all 8 prophecies were fulfilled in history.)

One chance in 100,000,000,000,000,000 (17 zeros) is hard to grasp. So Dr. Stoner gave a physical example. He said to imagine piling silver dollars 6 feet deep across the entire surface of the state of Texas. (I’ve driven across Texas, and that impressed me.) Then take one (and only one) more silver dollar, mark it with a big red X, and toss it somewhere out in the middle of the state. Then hire a bunch of bulldozers around the borders and mix all the coins into one huge heap. Now blindfold someone, so they can’t see (no cheating!) and fly them in a helicopter over the top of the pile. Let them at random reach out and grab one (and only one) of the coins. The chance that the first one grabbed has the red X on it is roughly the chance of only 8 (out of over 300) prophecies coming true on its own!

If you were to add only another 8 clear prophecies (out of the 300), you would end up with a ball of silver dollars which would reach from earth to the moon. And only one coin in that huge mass would have the red X on it. Woah!

At the time I read this information, I was a committed agnostic. I was convinced that one could not know for sure whether a God exists or not. So I wracked my brain to find a rational solution to this evidence. And after a day or so, voila!, I thought I had it. My explanation was - these prophecies are SO precisely written, they must have actually been written AFTER Jesus came, and weren’t really prophetic at all. Phew! I thought I had found a rational explanation.

But it was only a matter of days later that I found out my explanation was far from reality. I learned that Alexander the Great wanted the Hebrew Bible translated from Hebrew into Greek. In 250 B.C. he commissioned such a translation, which includes all of these messianic prophecies. No one, not even the most anti-Christian critic, would question that the prophecies were actually written hundreds of years before Christ came.

At this point, I concluded that the Bible really must have been supernaturally inspired by God. So I began to read it with a new interest, and after a few months I came to personal faith in Jesus Christ.

In case you are interested in reading more detail about this book on biblical prophecy, “Science Speaks”, you can read in digital form HERE. I recommend in particular the section starting in Chapter 2 on prophetic accuracy and especially on the accuracy of messianic prophecy.

You may also find this YouTube video of Lee Strobel informative as evidence for the supernatural inspiration of biblical prophecy.

The only reasonable objection I have ever heard about the evidence from messianic prophecy, is the question of whether or not the prophecies are truly independent events. Dr. Werner Gitt answers this objection in one of his latest books by looking at the independent events of the messianic lineage through Jewish history.

I hope someday to apply Bayes’ Theorem to the question of the independence of the messianic prophecies to demonstrate the supernatural implications of such incredibly accurate prophecy. If I can get to that project, I’ll post it here. Watch this space! :-)

And when time allows, I may also add a section on future prophecy, known as the field of eschatology, the study of the end times. It has only been since 1948 that Israel has been back in the land which God so clearly promised to them (almost exactly the time that the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered! Coincidence?). And there are many other current event developments which are very interesting to keep an eye on. Again - watch this space! :-)

I couldn’t resist sharing one example of future prophecy, which I personally take literally. It comes from Ezekiel 47:10. Lori and I have had the privilege of traveling to Israel many times (one advantage of living as close as we do in Germany). I thought it would be really fun to get a picture of me fishing at the Dead Sea. (I figured I’d catch as many fish there as I usually do anywhere else, so why not?) Here is a picture of me doing that in 2012….

Ezekiel 47:10 clearly says: Fishermen will stand along the shores of the Dead Sea. …. Fish of every kind will fill the Dead Sea. …

Some would say that this should be taken metaphorically or spiritually and not literally. But then there are the verses about water flowing from the Temple in Jerusalem, etc. My leaning is to take it literally. But I must admit, I caught literally no fish, not even an anchovy!