Conclusion: He is who He said He was

I am home sick today with a blockbuster headache (I’ve had them on and off through this endless heat wave of a supposed winter) and other debilitating pains brought by Aunt Flo when she came roaring into town last night for her monthly visit. I’ll just say, “peri-menopause” is everything they warn you about and lots of it!

So rather than spend the whole day wallowing in my agony (with make-you-drowsy-and-useless Claritin-D coursing through my system), I decided to get up and finish that piece I was going to finish last night when all this malaise came on me.

Here’s the conclusion to the last post (Jordan’s Christmas day study):

“One of the great proofs that God’s Word is true and that Jesus Christ is exactly who He says He is, is the accurate, exact fulfillment of predictive prophecy. If you can predict something down to the exact place and the exact time, and seven hundred years later it takes place . . .

“You know what the world says? ‘Must have been written after the fact and just made to look like that.’ But you know you can have an absolute historic certainty that cannot be argued with successfully in that one verse right there.

“According to every historian—I don’t care if he’s a saved one or lost one; a Christian or atheist—the general understanding of all of history is that in about 250 B.C. the Jewish Bible was translated into the Greek language into a book called by people the Septuagint.

“The Greek translation of the Bible contained the Book of Micah and contained that verse exactly as it is I your Bible. Every historical source you could find to document the historicity of the Book of Micah guarantees you that at least 250 years before Christ (more probably 700).

“But let’s say you don’t want to take anything Christians say, so, okay, let’s take what the worlds says. What does the scholarship of the University of Chicago say? It says that 250 years before, minimum, the exact town . . . Now you know how improbable that was? Mary and Joseph didn’t live in Bethlehem; they lived in Nazareth almost 100 miles north.

“How in the world are you going to take a man and his pregnant . . . ‘she’s great with child,’ as the verse says and I love that expression. She’s ready to pop and be delivered. How’s he going to get her a hundred miles from up there to Bethlehem? God uses a pagan ruler to give the decree that all the world has to be taxed and you’ve got to go back to your hometown.

“What would have motivated Joseph to put his pregnant little wife on the back of a donkey, or in the back of a cart, and drag her a hundred miles in that condition? Because she had to go 100 miles for Him to be born where He’s supposed to be born.

“Everything about it is beyond human calculations. What that means is that based on the mathematical, statistical laws of probability, the very science that you use to demonstrate that DNA conclusively identifies someone as guilty or innocent (DNA is all based on statistical probability) on that science of statistical probability that one verse right there demonstrates.

“There are over 300 verses just like that. If you just took eight specific verses like that, and there are 300 of them, but if you just took eight markers like that, you’d have the ability to identify in a court of law a statistical absoluteness that this is true. That He is who He said He was.

“To me that’s a fascinating thing, because surrounding the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ is the scientific, cultural, conclusive proof that He is who He said He was by the fulfilling exactly on time…how could a baby prearrange all that to happen? How did a baby pre-stage it?

“When He died on the Cross, and He’s dead, they take Him down off that Cross and bury Him in a rich man’s tomb like Isaiah 53 said they would. His body lays there and doesn’t see corruption like Psalm 16 said it would. He’s raised from the dead like Psalm 2 said He would be. He then ascends up into heaven like Psalm 110 said He would. When He’s stone cold dead on the market, how did He arrange to be buried where Isaiah said He would be buried? How do you arrange that for yourself?”