April 16 - What Are The Chances?

Read Isaiah 53:1-5

Context:This is in the middle of the second portion of Isaiah's prophecy called "The Book of Comfort" (chapters 40 - 66). While the first 'book' of Isaiah refers to the judgement of Israel, God now speaks of the future and salvation of Israel.

Text:
1 Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed. (NIV)

taken from www.biblegateway.com

According to Josh McDowell's New Evidence Demanding a Verdict, the man Jesus fulfills 61 prophesies of the Old Testament regarding the coming Christ. McDowell references Peter Stoner's book, Science Speaks, reports that the chance of anyone living in our history might have fulfilled eight of these probabilities is 1 in 10 to the 17th power (100,000,000,000,000,000). In an attempt to make this number explainable, he gives the following example:

"(Suppose that) we take 100,000,000,000,000,000 silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. They will cover all of the state two feet deep. Now mark one of these silver dollars 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 right one. What chance would he have of getting the right one?"

And that's to fulfill only eight of the 61 prophecies that Jesus fulfilled!