12/25/2022
The First Coming = Confidence in the Second Coming
At His first coming, Jesus fulfilled forty-eight specific prophecies concerning His birth, lineage, life, death, burial, and even His resurrection.
Here are just some of the key Old Testament passages that accurately foretold the details of the Messiah’s first arrival in the world:
Micah 5:2: Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem (700 BC)
Isaiah 7:14: Jesus was born of a virgin (740 BC)
Jeremiah 31:15: Herod’s murder of children in Bethlehem (630 BC)
Zechariah 11:12-13: Jesus betrayed for thirty pieces of silver (520 BC)
Psalm 22:16: the piercing of Jesus’ hands and feet (1010 – 930 BC)
Psalm 22:18: the casting of lots for Jesus’ clothing
Psalm 16:10: Jesus’ resurrection
Not to mention Isaiah 53:
Who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant,
And as a root out of dry ground.
He has no]form or comeliness;
And when we see Him,
There is no beauty that we should desire Him.
3 He is despised and rejected by men,
A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
4 Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;
Yet we]esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was]bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way;
And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He opened not His mouth;
He was led as a lamb to the slaughter,
And as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
So He opened not His mouth.
8 He was taken from prison and from judgment,
And who will declare His generation?
For He was cut off from the land of the living;
For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.
9 And they made His grave with the wicked—
But with the rich at His death,
Because He had done no violence,
Nor was any deceit in His mouth.
10 Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him;
He has put Him to grief.
When You make His soul an offering for sin,
He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days,
And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.
11 He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied.
By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many,
For He shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great,
And He shall divide the spoil with the strong,
Because He poured out His soul unto death,
And He was numbered with the transgressors,
And He bore the sin of many,
And made intercession for the transgressors.
This was written almost 800 years before Jesus’ birth and is such a complete description of what happened to Him that most Jewish Rabbis won’t even read it. If studying through Isaiah, they just skip over it. Isn’t that amazing? God made it so obvious who Jesus is, anyone should be able to figure it out. But then again, that in itself is another prophecy fulfillment.
Romans 11:25 I want you to understand this mystery, dear brothers and sisters, so that you will not feel proud about yourselves. Some of the people of Israel have hard hearts, but this will last only until the full number of Gentiles comes to Christ.
Professor Peter W. Stoner was Chairman of the Departments of Mathematics and Astronomy at Pasadena City College and he calculated the odds of Jesus fulfilling these 48 prophecies at 10157. That’s 10 with 157 zeros. An example by Stoner would be to cover the entire state of Texas 2 feet deep in silver dollars and mark just one. Comparable odds would be for a person to walk across the state and discover that one marked silver dollar, except that is only 1017!
So when the Lord Jesus says;
John 14:1-3 “Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. 2 There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? 3 When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am.
We can have every confidence that is exactly what is going to happen. And observing the current convergence of Bible prophecy being fulfilled, we can also be certain that it must be very soon.
Maranatha! Come quickly Lord Jesus!
