Who God is
112. The Integrity of
the Word
The promises of
God may seem like something in the future, but to God it is something that has
already happened! It is a done deal.
Can anything be trusted today? Everything seems to change. People who you thought were your friends hurt you. Friends leave, teachers change, jobs
change. Is there anything that can
be counted on NO MATTER WHAT?
How do you know where you are going after you die?
How do you know Jesus was raised from the dead?
Can you really trust the Bible as the Word of God?
The way Satan got Eve to sin was to ask the question, “Did God
really say…?” (Genesis 3:1).
For sure, human beings on this planet called Earth, are the
objects of spiritual warfare.
Satan has no new weapons to use, just old ones with new wrappers. He still causes us to ask the question,
“Did God really say…?”
We need to be
able to trust the Word of God no matter what comes our way!
If there is one
thing the Word of God dares to do that no other book in the world does, it is
to accurately predict the future.
This proves beyond argument that only God could have authored the Bible.
There are 8,352 verses directly or indirectly concerned with
prophecy in Scripture. About one
verse out of six tells of future events.
God’s challenge to the world is that we might prove Him. “I am the LORD: I will speak, and the
word that I shall speak shall come to pass” (Ezekiel 12:25a, KJV).
Buddhists, Confucianists and the followers of Mohammed have their
sacred writings, but in them the element of prophecy is conspicuous by its
absence. The destruction of Tyre,
the invasion of Jerusalem, the fall of Babylon and Rome – each of these events was
accurately predicted in the Bible and fulfilled to the smallest of
details. The entry of Jesus into
Jerusalem was foretold hundreds of years earlier by the prophet Daniel - TO THE
VERY DAY. The forming of Israel as
a new state in 1948 was foretold to the day and month in the Old Testament.
Prophecies
about Jesus
There are over
300 prophecies that Jesus fulfilled in His birth, life, death, and
resurrection. Let’s consider only 17 most prominent ones.
The combined probability against these 17 predictions occurring is
equal to:
1 chance in
480,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
or 480 Billion x 1 Billion x 1
Trillion
Concerning the over 300 fulfilled prophecies about Jesus, it is
ridiculous to imagine that these prophecies would all be fulfilled by accident
by one person. Only one chance in
a number followed by 181 zeros! To
give you some idea of the size of this immense figure, think of a ball that is
packed solidly with electrons (two and a half million billion make a line about
one inch long). Now in your mind
imagine this ball expanded to the size of the universe, some four billion
light-years in diameter (a light-year being the distance that light travels in
a year at the speed of over 186,000 miles per second). Multiply this by 500 quadrillion. Out of this vast container of
electrons, remove just one electron, “color” it red and return it to the container. Stir it with the other electrons for a
hundred years. Then blindfold a
man and send him in to pick it out the first time. Impossible?
With the same chance, Jesus the Christ lived, died, was resurrected and
is now alive according to the Scriptures by “accident”!
There are many other Old Testament prophecies too numerous to list.
They include the destruction of certain cities like Tyre and others, and they
all took place as foretold in the Bible. There are 1,817 individual prophecies
concerning 737 separate subjects found in 8,352 verses. These comprise 27% of the whole of
Scriptures.
Isaiah 42:9 says, “Behold, the former things have come to pass,
and new things I declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them.”
Some
prophecies in the Old Testament
Genesis 3:15
says, “And I will put enmity (strife) between you and the woman, and between
your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His
heel.”
This is a clear prophecy that Satan will cause Jesus to be
crucified, yet Jesus will ultimately crush Satan.
In Genesis 15 God
told Abraham (the first Jew), thousands of years before Jesus, that he would be
the father of a great group of people who would bless all the other peoples of
the earth. God also said that they
would be slaves for 400 years before they came back to their own land. This happened, Abraham became the first
Jew, and the Jews went into Egyptian slavery for 400 years.
In Isaiah 53 God prophesied that the Messiah would come as a suffering savior
who would die for our sins. The
Jews were looking for a conquering King, and when Jesus came, they did not
recognize Him. This was about 500
years before it happened. Isaiah
also told that the Messiah would be born of a virgin.
Daniel told of the coming of the Messiah, His crucifixion and entry into
Jerusalem, to the very date, over 400 years before it happened.
Daniel saw the prophecies regarding the kingdoms of the earth in history
before they happened. Those
kingdoms were to be Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, and finally, the
anti-Christ’s rule. Daniel also
saw the Kingdom of God finally becoming the world victor.
Ezekiel saw the re-gathering of Israel in May of 1948. He saw this over 2,000 years before it
happened and prophesied it to the date.
How does God do that?
It may seem like
a promise to us, but to God it is something that has already happened! It’s a done deal.
He calls those things that are not yet as though they were, just
so they will be. He wants us to be
the same way; just like Abraham in Romans 4.
A prophecy from God is not really predicting something that will happen, it is God looking
forward in time, actually seeing it happen, then looking back in time and
telling us about it!!!
One reason you can trust God: He knows the End from the
Beginning! God does not live in
time.
One of the best bridges of thinking I have been able to construct
on this subject is the simple thought of light. Light travels at 186,282 miles per second. Einstein came up with the idea that as
an object approaches the speed of light, it approaches timelessness. That goes right along with the
Bible. What if one could travel in
space at 75% of the speed of light for one year? Not being a scientist I could only guess, but someone gave
me the formula. If you could
travel at 75% of the speed of light in a space ship for one year, when you came
back I would be 1.5 years older, and you would only be one year older. If you
traveled at 99.999999999% of the speed of light, you would be one year older
and I would have aged 70,710 years.
At 99.9999999999999% the ratio would be 1 year to 22,369,621 years. If you could travel at 100% of
lightspeed, the ratio would be infinite, and time would stop for you. I think you would have entered
timelessness. You would be in the
realm of the I AM.
Here are some Scriptures supporting the integrity of
God’s word.
“The law of the LORD is perfect,
converting the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple”
(Psalm 19:7).
“Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means
pass away” (Matthew 24:35).
“Forever, O LORD, Your word is settled in heaven” (Psalm 119:89).
“I will worship toward thy holy temple, and praise thy name for
thy lovingkindness and for thy truth: for thou hast magnified thy word above
all thy name” (Psalm 138:2, KJV).
“…who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of
His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power” (Hebrews 1:3a).
“I have declared the former things
from the beginning; they went forth from My mouth, and I caused them to hear
it. Suddenly I did them, and they came to pass” (Isaiah 48:3).
“Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times
things that are not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will do
all My pleasure’” (Isaiah 46:10).
“Let them bring forth
and show us what will happen; let them show the former things, what they were,
that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare to us
things to come. Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know
that you are gods; yes, do good or do evil, that we may be dismayed and see it
together. Indeed you [idols] are nothing, and your work is nothing; he who
chooses you is an abomination” (Isaiah 41:22-24).
There are over 400 prophecies telling of the coming of Jesus. The possibility of all of these being
fulfilled in one person perfectly is about the same as picking out one marked
quarter out of a sea of quarters filling up the State of Texas 6 feet deep.
One of the most amazing prophecies in the Word of God is Daniel’s prophecy in Daniel chapter 9
telling the exact day when Jesus would enter Jerusalem to be crucified, 500
years before it happened.
God wants us to know that He is coming back to earth some
day. But He wants us to
concentrate more on the fact that He will come back NOW for our individual
situations in much the same way and with the same process. We are warned that not every believer
will inherit the promises of God, that some will be deceived and fall
away. We are not necessarily
talking about going to heaven but about making it here on earth.
In the struggles of life there is a time called THE DAY OF
VISITATION (Luke 19:44, 1 Peter 2:12, Daniel 9:24) where we see God coming
through for us, but not all of us will experience that. Daniel and Jesus tell about a great
deception that will be used against God’s people. We need to know that the Word
is true no matter what things look like; then we will inherit the promises.
If somebody gave you his word that something would take place in
the future, and over a very long period of time everything happened as he said
it, without exception, without any error, would you tend to believe his word?
Daniel is the Old Testament prophet that gave the most important
prophecies of the Bible. God
showed him which powers would rule the world and how they would fall. He told about Babylon, then Medo-Persian
Empire, then Alexander the Great and Macedonia, and then – Rome.
Most Bible scholars would agree that Daniel 9 is the most
important prophecy in the Bible.
Jesus studied and quoted Daniel perhaps more than any other
prophet. It is a supernatural act
showing the accuracy of God’s Word.
Daniel had been shown many vision prophecies. He saw that in the last days many of
his people (which is now us) would fall away and be deceived by the anti-Christ
spirit. He actually got sick and
began to pray, confessing his sin and the sin of his people and praying for
them and us. All of the sudden,
the angel Gabriel came to him and spoke the most amazing, comforting
prophecy. He told him that God’s
people would have a period of 70 weeks cut out of history for them, and during that
time several things would take place: (1) to finish the transgression (or
revolt against authority, the Adamic problem), (2) to make an end of sins
(through the Cross), (3) to bring
in everlasting righteousness (through Jesus and the new birth), (4) to seal up
the prophecy, and (5) to anoint the most Holy place (which for us is the Holy
Spirit dwelling in our hearts).
69 of the 70 weeks have been fulfilled in actual history. There is a pause of thousands of years,
and then the last week will be fulfilled.
This is a common thing in Bible prophecy. In a spiritual way we are in
the last week, now in our lives today.
The word week is “shabua,” which in Hebrew means seven; it is like saying a dozen. The entire Old Testament proves this
out; when a week is spoken of, it means seven, and it usually associated with
years (Leviticus 25). Daniel was
thinking in terms of periods of seven years for each “week.”
We are going to focus on the 69 weeks which now is history and
prophecy fulfilled in a supernatural way.
The year in Old Testament terms was not 365 days but 360 days; proven
in Genesis 7:11- 8:3. It verifies
that the flood lasted 150 days and then it gave us the five-month period by
dates.
The starting point for this prophetic event was to be the issuance
of a command to rebuild Jerusalem, including the streets, the walls, and the
moat as a protection against the enemies.
“Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the
command to restore and build Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, there shall be
seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; the street shall be built again, and the wall,
even in troublesome times” (Daniel 9:25).
There were four commands given by various Gentile kings to rebuild
something in Jerusalem which might have qualified as the starting point of this
prophetic event.
1. Ezra 1:1-4 talks about
building the house of God. This is 80 years off from the prophecy dates and
could not be the starting point of the prophetic event.
2. Ezra 6:6-12, included only
the Temple, and could not be the starting point of the prophetic event.
3. Ezra 7:11-26 talks about
building Temple. This was 7 years
off, could not be the starting point of the prophetic event.
4. The real starting point
was the command to rebuild the City, and that was given in Nehemiah 2:1. It was the month of Nisan in the 20th
year of King Artaxerxes. He began
his reign in 465 BC + 20 years = 445 BC, so the decree took place in 445 BC the
month of Nisan. 445 BC Nisan =
March 14.
69 weeks x 7 x 360 days = 173,880 days.
Now for the
rest of the math:
Add to March 14,
445 BC 173,880 days = April 6, 32 AD, which is the very day Jesus rode into
Jerusalem in his triumphal entry.
What an amazing prophecy and fulfillment!
Just as a test, we can convert it to our calendar of 365 days: 445
BC - 32 AD = 476 years, less one year due to BC 1 and AD 1 being the same
year. 476 x 365 = 173,740, add
leap years of 116 days and add 24 days from March 14 to April 6 = 173,880
days.
Daniel said that the Messiah is the Prince and that the official
presentation of the Messiah would take place, and it did as He rode into
Jerusalem (on a donkey as foretold by Zechariah 9:9). Who ever heard of a king riding a donkey? They thought it should have been a
white horse. He had refused to
allow His disciples to proclaim His Messiahship prior to this. Now He said that if they did not, the
rocks would.
Jesus wept over the unbelief of Jerusalem; He said that if you
would have just known this prophecy and counted the days, and recognized that
it is I, that you would not have missed the day of visitation, or the day of
God’s reward.
For some, the day of visitation is a reward, for others it carries
the punishment and disaster of following idols, being disobedient and other
such sins.
If the first 69 weeks of years were fulfilled perfectly in
history, why would we not trust the future prophecy of the last week that is in
our time, right now? While we
won’t go into its meaning in future historic events, we can trust that Jesus
told us some things about the end time, or the last week. We can apply that last week to our life
today. It has a real life
application for each one of us.
Basically, it says that many believers will be deceived by the
anti-Christ spirit and will believe a lie, they will go after popularity,
money, fame, intellect, political power, power in the world of some kind, and
in doing so they will (like in Hebrews 6) be crucifying the Lord afresh. Hebrews 6 says that if we know that God
cannot lie, and we get into His Word and His presence then we can hang on to
the promises and use them as an anchor until the DAY OF OUR OWN PERSONAL
VISITATION.
This is more proof that God is the Author of the Bible. Such
prophecies being fulfilled in this way are beyond human manipulation. When I am in doubt due to contrary
circumstances, I fall back on the perfection and the absolute integrity of the
Word of God. There is no way that
God did not write it. There is no
way that it is not perfect!
When Jesus speaks, prophecy comes out of His mouth.
Revelation 19:10 says, “And I fell at his feet to worship him. But he
said to me, ‘See that you do not do that! I am your fellow servant, and of your
brethren who have the testimony of Jesus. Worship God! For the testimony of
Jesus is the spirit
of prophecy.”
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