Micah's undeniable great proof

"Micah 5:2 is a great proof text for the validity of the claims of the Word of God and the deity of Jesus Christ. 

"The idea of DNA matches is based on statistical probability. Any probability that is 10 to the 47th power or greater is considered to be an absurdity not to believe it's true," explains Richard Jordan.

"Well, if you take say eight of the specific prophecies like Micah 5:2 that were fulfilled in the first coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, you have a statistical probability of something like 10 to the 57th power. Mathematicians have done that kind of stuff. It's more than an absurdity not to believe that.

"But one of the things people do is they say, 'Well, wait a minute, all these prophecies about Jesus and His coming and all the things about Him, they were written late.'

"That's why people like to say the Book of Daniel was written late, because it tells you all those kingdoms that are coming--Babylon, Media-Persia, Greece and so forth. They say, 'Well, they're written after the fact.'

"The interesting thing about the Book of Micah is it's in the Old Testament canon, written 700 years before the time of Christ. People say, 'Well, it wasn't really written that long before.'

"The interesting thing though is, in 200 B.C., in Alexandria, Egypt, the library there commissioned a gathering together of the Hebrew Bible in the Greek language. It's called the Septuagint.

"Every historian who writes about the Bible talks about the Septuagint, which has the Book of Micah in it. So, the historical evidence is indisputable that the Book of Micah was on hand, in existence and circulated at least 200 years before the time of Christ. 

"Which means instead of 700, the worst is 200. You have trouble telling what's going to happen next week. So, you have this historical certainty that comes about by these guys, and these are not Believers quoting it.

"These are men who are unbelievers, don't even realize that they're talking about the Messiah having just been born. These guys don't even get it. What you have is unbiased, untainted, clear historical evidence of fulfilled prophecy at the very beginning of the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ.

*****

“Micah lived 700 years before the birth of Christ. Seven centuries, longer than our country’s been in existence, before Christ’s birth, Micah writes Micah 5:2.

“He prophesies to the nation Israel, who were facing enemies coming in and taking them, invading their land. They were facing economic collapse, political upheaval, political corruption. You talk about a Middle East problem.

“You go 2,500 years back to Micah’s day and the same kind of conflict going on in the Middle East today was going on then and the goal of all the Gentile nations around Israel at that time was to destroy Israel. In the face of that, Micah prophesies to his people.

*****

“Bethlehem was a small, little, insignificant town. In fact, there were two Bethlehems in Israel at that time. That’s why he says it’s Bethlehem Ephratah. That’s like saying the name of the city and the county in which it resides. What God picked out was the itty-bitty one. The only claim to fame this town ever had was that a little shepherd boy named David was born there and that little shepherd boy became the king.

“Notice verse 2 says ‘yet out of thee shall he come forth.’ When Paul writes in Galatians, ‘God sent forth his son,’ that’s a reference back to this verse in Micah where he says it’s out of Bethlehem that He shall come forth.

“The verse says He is ‘to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.’ You see the ‘goings’ is plural? He had more than one going. It says He had 'been from of old.’ Now, if you’re old, you’re ancient. That’s talking about how long you’ve been around. It’s a reference to time.

“The verse ends telling you He’s ‘from everlasting.’ Everlasting is not time because time doesn’t last forever. You can go back to a place where time began, in the beginning. In the beginning of what? Of time in creation. The beginning of that continuum in which we live. Time and space.

“In the beginning God created, but this one that’s going to come forth in time comes out of eternity. This isn’t a human; this is God stepping out of eternity into time, into the clothing of our humanity. You see, that makes Him kind of unique. It makes Him a little different.

*****

“In Matthew 2 we’re told that when Herod the king ‘gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born.
[5] And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet.’

“He went out and got all the rabbinical scholars, brought them in and said, ‘Where’s the Messiah going to be born?’ and they said, ‘That’s easy! In Bethlehem of Judaea, for thus it is written by the prophet, and thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.’

“Now that’s a bunch of religious tomfoolery right there. Look at what they say—‘thou Bethlehem art not the least.’ Micah said, ‘You are the least.’

“These guys, they don’t want their king to be born in a little, insignificant, podunk place out yonder. They say, ‘You’re not!’ They actually changed God’s Word.

“You better watch preachers, religious scholars, because they’ll take God’s Word and twist it to make themselves look like the winner. That’s why you better look at the verses yourself. Don’t let somebody take a verse out of its context and stick it on a wall, or stick it in a book, and then impose another meaning to it. That’s what these birds did! But they got the town right. That’s because 700 years before, Micah had said it’s going to be Bethlehem.

“Think about what’s happening here. Here’s a bunch of rabbinical scholars, the leaders of the nation Israel, who have no interest in Jesus Christ at all. When He shows up they’re going to hate Him and cry, ‘Crucify him, away with him, we’ll not have this man reign over us.’ And yet here they are, unsuspectingly, unknowingly, being the No. 1 witness to the fact He is who He says He is!

“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, in the exact time, and 700 years later it takes place . . . 

*****

"This is just a quick little aside--in Micah 5 we are given the prophetic identification of the Antichrist as 'the Assyrian.'

Micah writes in verses 5-6: [5] And this man shall be the peace, when the Assyrian shall come into our land: and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise against him seven shepherds, and eight principal men.

[6] And they shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod in the entrances thereof: thus shall he deliver us from the Assyrian, when he cometh into our land, and when he treadeth within our borders.

(new article tomorrow)