my kids ask a lot of questions

May I be excused?

Could I have my video game time?

What are we having for dinner?

May I go outside?

And then there are the reflective questions involving faith, Jesus, and the world in which we live. Deep stuff.

It happened again last night. Though I won't get into the nitty gritties of our conversation, I would like to share something I was reminded of in my evening reading sprint.

Did you know...

The Old Testament, written over a one-thousand-year period, contains nearly 300 references to the coming Messiah. All of these were fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Many of the prophecies were totally beyond the human control of Jesus, for example:

1. Place of birth (Micah 5:2)

2. Time of birth (Daniel 9:25; Genesis 49:10)

3. Manner of birth (Isaiah 7:14)

4. Betrayal

5. Manner of death (Psalm 22:16)

6. People's reactions (mocking, spitting, etc.)

7. Piercing

8. Burial

The following probabilities are taken from Peter Stoner in Science Speaks to show that coincidence is ruled out by the science of probability.

We find that the chance that any many might have lived down to the present time and fulfilled all eight prophecies is 1 in 10 to the 17th power. That would be 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000. In order to help us comprehend this staggering probability, Stoner illustrates it by supposing we take the same number of 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 this is the right one. What chance would he have of getting the right one? Just the same chance that the prophets would have had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man, from their day to the present time, providing they wrote them according to their own wisdom.

Now these prophecies were either given by inspiration of God or the prophets just wrote them as they thought they should be. In such a case the prophets had just one chance in 100,000,000,000,000,000 of having them come true in any man, but they all came true in Christ. This means that the fulfillment of these eight prophecies alone proves that God inspired the writing of those prophecies to a definiteness which lacks only one chance in 100,000,000,000,000,000 of being absolute.

This is just one of many fascinating perspectives shared by Josh McDowell in this book. Josh was a pre-law student who'd been challenged by his college friends to examine intellectually the claim of Jesus Christ as God's Son. Josh became so irritated at their insistence, he accepted the challenge. He decided to write a book that would make an intellectual joke of Christianity.

Quite the opposite happened and he surrendered his life to the Lord.