Christian Apologetics Part 7 - How do we know Jesus is the Messiah?

Act 9:22 Yet Saul grew more and more powerful and baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Christ. (NIV)

Act 18:27,28 When Apollos wanted to go to Achaia, the brothers encouraged him and wrote to the disciples there to welcome him. On arriving, he was a great help to those who by grace had believed.  For he vigorously refuted the Jews in public debate, proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ.

Prophecies Fulfilled

This question, like most everything I've talked about in this series, boils down to probabilities.  What is the probability that Jesus is the Messiah?

The latest book of the Old Testament (Malachi) was completed ~400 years before Christ’s birth.  Depending on who you talk to, there are as many as 400 messianic scriptures in the Old Testament which describe the coming messiah.

We will list 61 of the major messianic prophecies here giving details about the Messiah which can be used to identify him.[1]

The following list gives the prophecy, the Old Testament reference where the prophecy was made, and the New Testament reference of where the prophecy was fulfilled.

	Prophecy	OT Reference	NT Fulfillment
1	Born of the Seed of  a Woman	Gen 3:15	Gal 4:4; Matt 1:20
2	Born of a Virgin	Is 7:14	Matt 1:18,24-25; Luke 1:26-35
3	Son of God	Ps 2:7, 1 Chr. 17:11-14	Matt 3:17, 16:16; Mark 9:7; Luke 9:35; 22:70; Acts 13:30-33; John 1:34,49
4	Seed of Abraham	Gen. 22:18	Matt 1:1; Gal 3:16
5	Son of Isaac	Gen 21:12	Luke 3:23, 34; Matt 1:2
6	Son of Jacob	Gen. 35:10-12, Numbers 24:17	Luke 3:23, 34; Matt 1:2; Luke 1:33
7	Tribe of Judah	Gen 49:10	Luke 3:23, 33; Matt 1:2; Heb. 7:14
8	Family line of Jesse	Is 1:10, 11:1	Luke 3;23, 32; Matt 1:6
9	House of David	Jer 23:5	Luke 3:23, 31; Matt 1:1, 9:27, 15:22, 20:30-31, 21:9, 15, 22:41-46; Mark 9:10, 10:47-48; Luke 18:38-39; Acts 13:22-23; Rev 22:16
10	Born at Bethlehem	Mic 5:2	Matt 2:1, 4; Luke 2:4-7; John 7:42
11	Presented with Gifts	Ps 72:10; Is. 60:6	Matt 2:1, 11
12	Herod Kills Children	Jer 31:15	Matt 2:16-18
13	Pre-Existence	Mic 5:2	Col 1:17; John 17:5,24; Rev. 1:1,2, 1:17, 2:8, 8:58, 22;13
14	Shall be called Lord	Ps 110:1, Jer. 23:6	Luke 2:11; Matt 22:43-45
15	Shall be Immanuel (God with us)	Is 7:14	Matt 1:23; Luke 7:16
16	Shall be a prophet	Deut 18:18	Matt 21:11; Luke 7:16; John 4:19, 6:14, 7:40
17	Priest	Ps 110:4	Heb 3:1, 5:5-6
18	Judge	Is 33:22	John 5:30; 2 Tim 4:1
19	King	Ps 2:6; Jer 23:5; Zech 9:9	Matt 27:37, 21:5; John 18:33-38
20	Special Anointing of the Holy Spirit	Is 11:2, 42:1,61:1-2; Ps 45:7	Matt 3:16-17, 12:17-21; Mark 1:10-11; Luke 4:15-21,43; John 1:32
21	Zeal for God	Ps 69:9	John 2:15-16
22	Preceded by Messenger	Is 40:3; Mal 3:1	Matt 3:1-2,3:3,11:10; John 1:23; Luke 1:17
23	Ministry to Begin in Galilee	Is 9:1	Matt 4:12-13,17
24	Ministry of Miracles	Is 35:5-6,32:3-4	Matt 9:32-35, 11:4-6; Mark 7:33-35; John 5:5-9, 9:6-11, 11:43-44,47
25	Teacher of Parables	Ps 78:2	Matt 13:34
26	Enter the Temple	Mal 3:1	Matt 21:12; John 1:14,2:19-21
27	Enter Jerusalem on a Donkey	Zech 9:9	Luke 19:35-37; Matt. 21:6-11
28	“Stone of Stumbling” to the Jews	Ps 118:22; Is 8:14,28:1	1 Pe 2:7; Rom 9:32-33
29	Light to the Gentiles	Is 60:3,49:6	Acts 13:47-48,26:23,28:28
30	Resurrection	Ps 16:10	Acts 2:31;Matt 28:6;Mark 16:6; Luke 24:46; Acts 13:33
31	Ascension	Ps 68:18	Acts 1:9
32	Seated at the right hand of God	Ps 110:1	Hebrews 1:3; mark 16:19; Acts 2:34-35
33	Betrayed by a Friend	Ps 41:9, 55:12-14	Mtt 10:4, 26:49-50; John 13:21
34	Sold for 30 pieces of silver	Zech 11:12	Matt 26:15, 27:3
35	Money to be thrown into God’s house	Zech 11:13	Matt 27:5
36	Price given for potter’s field	Zech 11:13	Matt 27:7
37	Forsaken by His disciples	Zech 13:7	Mark 14:27,50; Matt 26:31
38	Accused by false witnesses	Ps 35:11	Matt 26:59-60
39	Silent before accusers	Is 53:7	Matt 27:12
40	Wounded and bruised	Is 53:5; Zech 13:6	Matt 27:26
41	Smitten and spat upon	Is 50:6; Mic 5:1	Matt 26:67; Luke 22:63
42	Mocked	Ps 22:7-8	Matt 27:29, 41-43
43	Fell under the cross (knees gave way)	Ps 109:24-25	John 19:17; Luke 23:26; Matt 27:31-32
44	Hands and feet pierced	Ps 22:16; Zech 12:10	Luke 23:33; John 20:25
45	Crucified with thieves	Is 53:12	Matt 27:38; Mark 15:27-28
46	Made intercession for his persecutors	Is 53:12	Luke 23:34
47	Rejected by His own people	Is 53:3; Ps 69:8,118:22	John 7:5,48, 1:11; Matt 21:42-43;
48	Hated without a cause	Ps 69:4; Is 49:7	John 15:25
49	Friends stood afar off	Ps 38:11	Luke 23:49; Matt 27:55-56; Mark 15:40
50	People shook their heads	Ps 109:25,22;7	Matt 27:39
51	Stared upon	Ps 22:17	Luke 23:35
52	Garments parted and lots cast	Ps 22:18	John 19:23-24
53	To suffer thirst	Ps 69:21	John 19:28
54	Gall and vinegar offered to Him	Ps 69:21	Matt 27:34; John 19:28-29
55	His forsaken cry	Ps 22:1	Matt 27:46
56	Committed Himself to God	Ps 31:5	Luke 23:46
57	Bones not broken	Ps 34:20	John 19:33
58	Heartbroken	Ps 22:14	John 19:34
59	His side pierced	Zech 12:10	John 19:34
60	Darkness over the land	Amos 8:9	Matt 27:45
61	Buried in a rich man’s tomb	Is 53:9	Matt 27:57-60

The possibility of just 48 of these being true of any one person is 1 chance in 10¹⁵⁷.  Borel’s "single law of chance" tells us that anything with odds of 1 in 10⁵⁰ will not happen[14].  Considering only 10¹⁰ people have ever lived on the Earth, the only conceivable way it could happen is through a miracle of God.

Other Evidence

Old Testament Rituals

All of the rituals observed by the Jews prior to the destruction of the temple in AD 70 were symbolic of the coming Messiah and His role in the salvation of His people.  This role is vividly explained in the book “The Miracle of the ScarletThread”, by Richard Booker and will not be recounted here.

The symbolism of the Tabernacle/Temple, the sacrificial system, the high priest and the Passover point clearly and directly to the role of the Messiah in salvation and His nature as the suffering servant described in Isaiah 53 and other places in Old Testament Prophecy[2].  Any Messiah (in the Christian understanding of Messiah) would have to be suitable to fill that role as per the above prophecies and adds credence to the credibility of Jesus as the Messiah.

The Year of Birth and Death

Daniel 9:24-27 describes the exact year in which the Messiah will come.

Dan 9:24-27  "Seventy 'sevens' are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy.

      "Know and understand this: From the issuing of the decree 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 cut off and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed.

      He will confirm a covenant with many for one 'seven.' In the middle of the 'seven' he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on a wing of the temple  he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him."

One seven (which is translated by some Bible versions as a week) can be used to mean any block of 7 periods of time.  It could mean 7 days, 7 months, 7 years, 7 decades, and this terminology is used frequently throughout the Old Testament.  In this instance, it is commonly understood that the 'sevens' are blocks of seven years (see Leviticus 25 discussion the year of jubilee which happens every 7 cycles of 7 years - every 49 years).

So, let’s have a look at the math...

70 sevens are decreed (490 years)[15]

-          To finish transgression

-          To put an end to sin

-          To atone for wickedness

-          To bring everlasting righteousness

-          To seal up vision and prophecy

-          To anoint the most holy

v25: "From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be 7 'sevens' and 62 'sevens'.

The issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem is well documented in Ezra 7.  Ezra 7:7 gives the date of the issuing of the decree as as “The seventh year of King Antaxerxes” which historians know to be 458BC (on the Gregorian calendar, April 8th, 458 BC, to be exact).

69 'sevens' (7 sevens and 62 sevens) or weeks of years is 483 years.  

v26: "After the 62 'sevens', the Anointed One will be cut off and will have nothing."

So, after the last period of sevens (after 483 years) the Messiah will be killed.  That's a pretty specific date.  We have to remember here that these time frames are based on the Jewish calendar and not our present Gregorian calendar.  In order to convert the dates we're going to have to do some math.

The Jewish calendar has 12 months of 30 days each (360 days/year).  So we have to multiply the number of years defined in the scriptures by 360 to get the number of days in those years.  483 * 360 is 173,880 days.

Approximately every 3^rd year an additional month is added so the lunar calendar will correspond to the solar year.[4]  Over those 483 years there would have been 161 extra 30 day months added.  161 * 30 is 4,830 additional days for a total of  178,710 days.

((483 * 360) + ((483/3) *30)) = 178,710 days

If we divide 178,710 by 365 days (the number of days in a Gregorian year) we get 489.6 Julian years.  0.6 Gregorian years is 219 days.  So our current number is 489 years, 219 days.

Every fourth Gregorian year constitutes a leap year in which there are 366 days in a year.

(489/4) = 122.25 additional days making our total 489 years, 341 days, or approximately 490 Gregorian years.[16]

There was no zero AD, the Gregorian calendar jumps directly from 1BC to 1AD, so to get an accurate date we must add one to compensate.

-458 + 490 years + 1  = AD 33

So, the year foretold by the prophet Daniel for the death of the Messiah is AD33. 

Jesus began his ministry when he was "about 30" and was crucified (cut off) three and a half years later (three to three and a half, most believe three and a half). 

Luke 3:1 places the beginning of Jesus’ ministry at “the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar”.  Tiberius Caesar aka Tiberius Caesar Augustus aka Tiberius Claudius Nero began his reign in AD14 at the death of Caesar Augustus.[5]

The fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, then,  would be AD29.

Luke 3:23 states that Jesus was “about 30 years old” when he began his ministry and his ministry lasted for (most likely) about 3 1/2 years.

The week of the feast of unleavened bread begins on 15^th Nisan of every year by commandment of God.[6]  Jesus ate the Passover meal with his disciples on the evening before he was crucified, the day before the sacrificial lamb was to be killed, or 13^th Nisan.[7]

We know that Jesus was crucified on the day of Passover which is the day before the first day of unleavened bread which is 14^th Nisan.[8]  After he was placed in the tomb the women who were to attend him had to wait until after the Sabbath to anoint Him.[9]  He then rose from the dead on the “the third day” which was the first day of the week (Sunday 16^th Nisan).[10]

This means that in the year of Jesus’ death the Passover (14^th Nisan) fell on a Friday.  Looking at the Hebrew calendar[11] for years after AD29 when Jesus began his ministry, we find the Passover fell on a Friday on April 3, 33AD and not again until March 30, 36AD.

This means that Daniel’s prophecy of the year of the coming Messiah was exact to the year and month if Jesus is the Messiah.

 Unless some other person was crucified on that exact day at that same time who was from the line of David and met all the other requirements of Messianic prophecy we have no alternative than to believe that Jesus is the promised Messiah.

From this evidence we can conclude that the Messiah would fulfill a very specific role.  He would establish himself by doing Miracles, he would be rejected by the people he came to save and he would suffer for them.  He would then be sacrificed for his people and raised from the dead on the third day.  His death would occur on Passover in AD33 by being “lifted up” on a tree.

The sacrifice of Jesus in Jerusalem is also significant.  This is the same location (the temple mount in Jerusalem) where Abraham took Isaac to be sacrificed.  It is the same location (the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite) where David built an alter to offer a sacrifice for the salvation of his people after he had sinned.[3]

There were three people who where crucified in Jerusalem on Passover in AD33 - Jesus and the two thieves and neither of the two thieves fulfilled even the tiniest fraction of the prophecies that Jesus fulfilled and neither claimed to be the Messiah.

Therefore there is nobody in the past or future history of the world who could possibly be the Messiah, other than Jesus.

The only conclusion then, is that Jesus is who he claimed to be - the Messiah.

In my next post, I will attempt to answer the age-old question: Why would a good God let bad things happen to good people?

Until then, have a blessed week.

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[1] This entire list taken from The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict, Josh McDowell, Thomas Nelson Publishers, pp168-192

[2] The Miracle of the Scarlet Thread, Richard Booker, Destiny Image.
[3] 2 Samuel 24

[4] NIV study bible.  Page 101 "Hebrew Calendar and Selected Events"

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiberius

[6] Lev. 23:6

[7] Lev 23:5

[8] Matt 26:18-26.

[9] Luke 23:55-56

[10] Matt 28:1

[11] http://www.rosettacalendar.com/index.cgi

[12] The Broadman Bible Commentary.  Volume 6, pg. 442.

[13] NIV study bible.  Page 1474, Note on Matthew 24:2
[14] It is not quite as simple as this in reality.  The principle discussed here comes from a book written by Borel in which he declared:

Referring to an example of monkeys who, randomly hitting keys of a typewriter, happen by chance to produce the complete works of Shakespeare he said: "Such is the sort of event which, though its impossibility may not be rationally demonstrable, is, however, so unlikely that no sensible person will hesitate to declare it actually possible. If someone affirmed having observed such an event we would be sure that he is deceiving us or has himself been victim of fraud."

He then calculated that anything with a probability of less than 1 in 10⁵⁰ can be said to be impossible, but he was referring to these types of examples of unreasonableness.  It is certainly possible however unlikely that such a monkey randomly hitting keys on a typewriter could produce the works of Shakespeare, no rational person would believe it (although if one believes in the multiverse one would have to say that in one of those infinite number of universes exactly that has happened).

Those who denounce the Christian's usage of this to apply to creationism and other probabilities reject that it was intended for this purpose.  They will say "If you had a die with 51 sides and threw it, you would have a less than 1 in 10⁵⁰ chance that it would turn up a 2".  In such a case, it is highly possible and even probably that at some point, if you threw it enough, it will indeed turn up a 2.

The problem with this point of view is those who are arguing against using this "law" are those who choose to believe that abiogenesis and other such principles are possible and it is left up to the individual to determine what a sensible person might actually believe and what someone chooses to believe because the alternative is unpalatable to them.
[15] The number 10 in the Biblical numerology represents divine perfection.  The combination of the year of Jubilee (every 49 years) and the number of divine perfection (10) yields 490 years which is the number of years described by Daniel. http://www.biblestudy.org/bibleref/meaning-of-numbers-in-bible/10.html
[16] The gregorian calendar also has the concept of leap centuries.  Every 4th century is not a leap year.  This would only account for one day in our calculation and does not have a material affect on the calculation