1 Thessalonians 5:20 Do not despise prophecies.

“The Bible contains 1817 individual predictions concerning 737 separate subjects found in 8352 verses. These numerous predictions comprise 27 percent of the 31,124 verses in the whole of the Scriptures.” (P 161, Grant Jeffrey, The Signature of God)

There have been described in the Old Testament 300 prophecies of the first coming of the Messiah and 500 of the second coming, all of then made hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus and fulfilled to the letter in Jesus Christ, the Messiah.

George Heron, a French mathematician, calculated that the odds of one man fulfilling only 40 of those prophecies are 1 in 10 to the power of 157. That is a 1 followed by 157 zeros.

“They (prophecies) must be exactly fulfilled. The prophecies cannot possibly be just good guesses, because they concerned themselves with things which there was (or is) no likelihood that they would ever come to pass. They predicted the very opposite of the natural expectations of human beings.” (P. 17,  Dr. James Kennedy, Why I Believe) These prophecies are unique because they do not exist in other religious writings.

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Prophecies serve to:

1. Point to the reality of God and that He cares about us.
2. Give us unmistakable proof of God’s inspiration of Scripture.
3. Encourage us to put our trust in Him.
4. Reveals His plan and power over the future.
5. Confirms Jesus as the only Messiah. There are no prophecies concerning the coming of any other religious leader.
6. Assure us Jesus will return.

During Jesus time on earth the prophecies were used to confirm His identity as the Son of God.

John 1:45 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found Him of whom Moses in the law, and also the prophets, wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”

John 5:46 For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me.

Luke 24:27 And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.

Luke 24:44 Then He said to them, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.”

After His death, as the gospel was preached around the world, others came to believe because of the prophecies.

For example, in Acts 8:30-35 is the story of the evangelist Philip and his encounter with the man from Ethiopia. Here Philip explained who Jesus was from the prophecies of the Old Testament.

Prophecies concerning the birth of Jesus:

1. He would be a descendant of the tribe of Judah.
   
   Genesis 49:10 The scepter or leadership shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until Shiloh [the Messiah, the Peaceful One] comes to Whom it belongs, and to Him shall be the obedience of the people.
   
   Matthew 1:1,2 The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham: Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, and Jacob begot Judah and his brothers.
   
   
2. He would be born of a virgin.
   
   Isaiah 7:14 All right then, the Lord himself will choose the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel—‘God is with us.’
   
   Matthew 1:18  Now this is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant by the Holy Spirit.
   
   
3. He would be born in Bethlehem.
   
   Micah 5:2 But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, are only a small village in Judah. Yet a ruler of Israel will come from you, one whose origins are from the distant past.
   
   Matthew 2:1  Jesus was born in the town of Bethlehem in Judea, during the reign of King Herod.
   
   
4. The slaughter of innocent children.
   
   Matthew 2:16-18 Herod was furious when he learned that the wise men had outwitted him. He sent soldiers to kill all the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under, because the wise men had told him the star first appeared to them about two years earlier. Herod’s brutal action fulfilled the prophecy of Jeremiah (3:15): “A cry of anguish is heard in Ramah— weeping and mourning unrestrained. Rachel weeps for her children, refusing to be comforted—for they are dead.”
   
   
5. The flight to Egypt.
   
   Hosea 11:1  When Israel was a child, I loved him as a son, and I called my son out of Egypt.
   
   Matthew 2:14,15 When he arose, he took the young Child and His mother by night and departed for Egypt, and was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, “Out of Egypt I called My Son.”
   
   
6. A messenger would precede Him.
   
   Matthew 3:1-3 In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah (40:3), saying: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the LORD; Make His paths straight.’ ”
   
   
7. Daniel’s amazing prophecy.
   
   Daniel 9:25 “Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, there shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks;