St. Paul's United Methodist Church
Rev. Richard W. Gray
“We May Believe It”
Leviticus 26:33-34
January 22, 2006
Can you imagine if we could see into the future? We would be able to know what stocks to buy to become rich. We could know all about our descendents. We would be able to prevent accidents. We would be able to know what nations will do, such as Iran and North Korea. We would be able to know the outcome of decisions before we make them.
But we are not able to know the future, with the exception of what the Bible teaches us about the future. What the Bible says about the future we may believe. What the Bible says about the future has always come true, and is still coming true. Only the Bible can accurately predict the future. We call this prophecy.
It is interesting that there are no other books held sacred by other world religions that contain prophecy. Only the Bible of the Jews and Christians contain prophecy. The Bible is unique in this regard. Fulfilled Bible prophecies prove the Bible has come from God.
God even used fulfilled prophecies to challenge the false religions of Isaiah's day. God said in Isaiah 42:8, 9, “I am the Lord: that is my name; I will not give my glory to another, or my praise to idols. See, the former things have taken place, and new things I declare; before they spring into being I announce them to you.” Only God can foretell the future. He has accurately done so in the Bible.
We celebrated Christmas four Sundays ago. Did you know that there are over three hundred prophecies, predictions, in the Old Testament concerning the first coming of Jesus?
Scientists Peter Stoner and Robert Newman have
have figured out the mathematical probability of just forty-eight of those prophecies coming true, being fulfilled in just one single man, Jesus. The chance that these forty-eight prophecies were fulfilled in Jesus is 1 in 10 to the 157th power.
To understand what this really means, take about the smallest object we know, the electron. If we were to count the number of electrons in a line one inch long, counting at the rate of 250 each minute, and if we counted 24 hours a day, it would take 19,000,000 years to count just one inch of electrons. A cubic inch of these electrons would take, counting 250 each minute day and night, would take 19,000,000 x 19,000,000 x 19,000,000 years to count them all.
For forty-eight of the more than three hundred prophecies predicting the first coming of Jesus coming true the chance is 1 in 10 not cubed but with the number 157 after the 10. Take this number of electrons, mark one, stir it in with all the other electrons, blindfold someone and tell him to try to find the marked one.
Let us create a solid ball of electrons, extending in all directions from the earth to the distance of six billion light years. How far is that? We are talking six billion light years with light traveling 186,000 miles per second. We still would not have used all those electrons in our figure of 10 to the 157th power. We would hardly have made an impression in the number of electrons.
There is no way a blindfolded, or non-blindfolded man could find that one marked electron among all those electrons.
That is just forty-eight prophecies out of over three hundred concerning the first coming of Jesus. Fulfilled prophecy proves the Bible is from God. These fulfilled prophecies also prove that Jesus is who He claims to be, God come in
human
human flesh, Savior. There is no reason not to believe.
There are many other prophecies in the Bible not concerning Jesus that have been fulfilled in minute detail.
We read in 1 Kings 13:2 that around 931 BC an unknown prophet predicted the birth of a child who would come from the line of David and who would become king of Judah. The prophet even told what his name would be, Josiah. He named him some 290 years before he was born. Indeed a king by the name of Josiah ascended to the throne in Judah in 640 BC and was a righteous king who ruled for 32 years.
Israel has been in the news a lot lately. Ariel Sharon had a massive stroke. Iran's leader recently said he wants to see Israel destroyed so that it no longer exists.
The Bible has predicted the history of the Jewish people. Israel was a nation at the time of Jesus, but it was under Roman rule. It had lost its independence.
The Jewish people did not like not having their freedom, and they revolted against Rome several times. Each time they were defeated. In 70 AD Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in putting down a Jewish rebellion. By 135 AD Rome had had enough of the Jewish revolts and finished off Israel by sending its people into exile. They even erased Israel from their maps and thought that was the last of Israel.
For a number of centuries the Jews existed as a people without a country. They were hated and treated as second-class citizens wherever they went.
They first went to England during the reign of William the Conqueror. They were not welcomed. In 1190 a wave of massacres spread from city to city, wiping out Jewish men, women, and children.
The remaining Jews did not have it easy for the
the next one hundred years in England. In 1290 Edward 1 expelled all Jews from Britain.
They were expelled in 1492 from Spain, with some of them secretly going to England to live. Oliver Cromwell officially allowed Jews to be readmitted to England in 1656. But it was not until 1858 that Jews were allowed to be members of Britain's Parliament.
The exiled Jews were persecuted and massacred in country after country. No other nation on earth has suffered as much as has Israel and for such a long period of time. But at the end of the 1800s a few Jews began to return to Israel. In 1948 Israel became an independent nation again.
All of this was predicted in the Bible. In Deuteronomy 28:64-66 we read that the Jews would be scattered all over the world, hated persecuted, and driven from country to country.
We find the prophecy in Leviticus 26:33-34 that Israel would be scattered among the nations and their land would become desolate. For the land to become desolate was hard to believe because theirs was the land of abundance, the land of “milk and honey.”
Jeremiah 30:11 says that Israel will outlast the nations that persecute her. No one in the days when the Jews were exiled from their homeland in the second century AD would have believed that Israel would outlast the mighty Roman Empire, but it did.
The Bible says in Genesis 27:29 that every nation that curses Israel will be cursed and every nation that blesses Israel will be blessed.
Take Nazi Germany as an example. In the 1930s Adolph Hitler began his rise to power in Germany and set out to build an empire that would last for 1,000 years. He also set out to exterminate all Jews. For those who ask the question, “How could a loving God allow the holocaust?” I have written a little pamphlet on this
this subject that you will find on the table outside the sanctuary doors. By 1945 Germany was in ruins and Hitler was dead.
What caused the defeat of Germany? Experts say Germany was defeated because of its blunders, such as not destroying the British airfields and the RAF when they had the chance, starting a war with Russia, and the German generals being forced to scrap their military plans for Hitler's plans.
There is another reason why Germany was defeated that historians do not mention. When Germany planned to exterminate the Jewish people, they challenged God and signed their own death warrant. They didn't just take on the Allies, they took on God. The Bible says any nation that curses the Jews will be cursed.
It is important that America be Israel's ally. The Bible says any nation that blesses Israel will be blessed.
The Bible predicted the scattering of the Jews. The Bible also predicted Israel would become a nation again and she is, Ezekiel 11:17; 36:24; Hosea 3:5.
The Jewish nation today is powerful proof that the Bible is God's word and is true. Everything has happened just as the Bible said it would. The Jewish nation today is also proof that God exists.
The Bible is accurate. We may believe it. There is no other explanation for the Bible other than God is its author. We are not to be indifferent to the Bible. Will you covenant with God to be a person of the Bible? We will never know what the Bible can do in our lives if we do not study it. We will never know what the Bible will do in our lives if we do not apply it to our lives. It is to be our spiritual resource.
Robert Moffat was a pioneer missionary to South Africa. One of the South Africans to whom he ministered held up a Bible one day and
and said to Moffat, “This is the fountain where I drink and this is the oil that makes my lamp burn.” May it be so for us.
335 Smyth Road
Manchester, NH 03104
Sunday School: 9:00 a.m.
Sunday Worship: 8:00 a.m. and 10:15 a.m.
603-647-7322