Can a Skeptic Believe in God? by James B. Polson

Author:James B. Polson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography/Religious
Publisher: Elm Hill
Published: 2019-08-07T16:00:00+00:00

Notes

2 J. Vernon McGee, Thru the Bible with J. Vernon McGee (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1982), 508–511.

3 Doug Hershey, Israel Rising (New York: Kensington Publishing Corp., 2018).

Selected Bible Prophecies

Are there any other prophecies written in Scripture that have been fulfilled? Yes, there are many. Some of them deal with the question of whether Jesus is really the Messiah (another word for Christ) promised by the Old Testament prophets. The Old Testament in the Christian Bible consists of the same writings as the Hebrew Scriptures of the Jewish faith. God inspired writers of these Scriptures to describe features of the promised Messiah in order to help people identify Him when he arrived on planet earth and to know, in advance, something about His work. There are many such prophecies. I will quote only three examples of those that are especially meaningful to me.

First, Micah 5:2 says, “But thou, Beth-lehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.”

This is a reference to the promised Messiah or the one who “is to be ruler in Israel.” It speaks of his divine origin, as only God’s origin has been “from everlasting.” It says that Messiah’s “coming forth” (His appearance on earth) will be out of a little, insignificant town in Judaea named Bethlehem. Seven hundred years after this prophecy was written, Jesus was born in the tiny town of Bethlehem in Judaea (Luke 2:1–20) exactly as predicted.

Second, Daniel 9:24–26 tells us that it would be 483 years, after a commandment is decreed to rebuild Jerusalem following its destruction by the Babylonians, until the coming of the Messiah. It says in verse 25, “Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks….” The weeks written about are weeks of years, or seven-year periods. Thus, the prophecy calls for sixty-nine times seven, or 483 years from the decree of a certain commandment until the Messiah was to come to Israel. This prophecy was investigated by Sir Robert Anderson4 and by Alva J. McClain5 who reported that the prophesied commandment to restore and build Jerusalem was decreed by Artaxerxes in the twentieth year of his reign. According to these investigators’ calculations, exactly 483 years after the commandment, Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on the colt of a donkey and offered Himself as King of Israel, which fulfilled the prophecy. Not only that, but the manner of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem fulfilled another prophecy found in Zechariah 9:9 which says, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.” Jesus was crucified a few days later.

The prophecy in

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