Prophecy

 The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him. (Deuteronomy 18:15)

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)

 “Know and understand this: From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble.  After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing. Daniel 9:25-26a)

“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” (Micah 5:2)

In Genesis, we learned that our Savior had to be a descendant of Eve, then of Noah. These were by default and obvious. After that, God chose Abram, then Isaac, then Jacob. In Genesis 49, we’re told that the scepter will not depart from Judah. Then, Moses told the Israelites that God would raise up a prophet to whom they must listen. Later, the David is chosen as the ancestor of the Savior.

Moses’ and Isaiah’s statements are examples of a multi-level prophecy. God raised up many prophets that Israel would have done well to listen to, but ultimately, there would come one who was a prophet who deserved to be listened to even more. The virgin mentioned in Isaiah was a woman who became Isaiah’s wife and the mother of his children. But the writers of the gospels point out that it was ultimately another virgin who would be God with us. Part of what this means is that only someone who proved himself a prophet (according to Scriptural dictates) could be considered as the Messiah.

The passage in Daniel describes a period of 62 sevens of years, or 434 years. The decree to which he referred was made roughly 400 years BC. At the end of that time, the Anointed One was to be put to death. And in Micah, we learn that the ruler of Israel – whos origins are from old, from ancient times – would come out of Bethlehem.

Biblical scholars claim there are more than 300 prophecies about the Messiah in the Old Testament. Eleven are mentioned in this post. There are three basic claims that can be made against them. First, someone can claim that the Old Testament prophecies were written after the fact. Second, someone can claim that those writing the New Testament text (or rewiting it centuries later) could have lied about Jesus’ fulfillments of the prophecies. An example of this is a claim that Jesus’ father was a Roman soldier. There’s no substantiation for this claim, but it gets made. Third, someone could  try to claim that other beings/people have died and risen again, so the “myth” of Jesus is just a story appropriated from Greek, Roman, or Egyptian stories.

1) copies of at least some of the prophecies dating well before the First Century make it impossible to claim they weren’t written until after the fact.

2) We have little to no actual evidence that the prophecies were not fulfilled. Yes, there are claims about a Roman father, but no names are named, no records have been found proving that Jesus wasn’t born (roughly) when or where the prophecies claimed, etc. We do have extra-biblical sources that mention Jesus and His reported fate.

Some will say, “Well, but the evidence was destroyed.”

Oh? Then how do you know it ever existed? On what basis do you make an evidentiary claim with evidence that you have not examined?

          3) Yes, there are stories of other gods who were born, died, and resurrected. But were they born of a virgin and were they born so that their death took place during the prophesied time period? Did they live for any length of time in Bethlehem? Were they descendants of Eve, Noah, Abram, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, and David? Did they act as a prophet to Israel? If each of these is not true, the others put forth as Messiah candidates have failed the test. And that’s why we celebrate Christmas.