What Are the Odds of Jesus' 700 Plus Prophecies Fulfillment?

I can not even describe the astronomical odds that just one person could fulfill 300 prophecies written about Him. And some of these prophecies were written thousands of years before the person existed as a man. This One person was Jesus Christ. The prophecies stretched from Genesis, throughout the Old Testament, and for those yet future, in the New Testament. If these were the odds in a lottery, you couldn't even try. Most scholars acknowledge that there are possibly seven hundred prophecies or more about Jesus Christ in the Bible.

For the sake of being able to wrap your mind around the odds, let's just take eight prophecies. The actual mathematical probability that Jesus Christ could have fulfilled even eight prophecies would still be a mind boggling 1 in 1017 of a chance! Put another way, it's 10 to the 157th power. That's 1 in 100, 000, 000, 000, 000, and 000. This page would fill up with "0000" if I wrote out what the odds would look (and the poor publisher would think, "uh oh, we've got a problem"). That number, no one can fathom. That is the same likelihood of Jesus Christ fulfilling seven hundred prophecies.

Now, what are the odds that only 48 of the more than 700 [that we know of] prophecies of Jesus were fulfilled? Dr Peter Stoner [Science Speaks, 1958] estimated the odds against just 48 of the 300 or so Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah being fulfilled in one person. He calculated the odds at 1 in 10 to the power 157. [1]

This illustrates why it is absolutely impossible for anyone to have fulfilled the Messianic prophecies solely by chance. Emile Borel is a leading authority on the probability theory, and he states in his book Probabilities and Life, once we go past one chance in 10 to the 50th power, the probabilities are so small it's impossible to think they will ever occur. [2] Mathematicians generally agree that, statistically, any odds beyond 1 in 10⁵⁰ have a zero probability of ever happening by random chance. This is Borel's law in action which was derived by mathematician Emil Borel. [3] The necessary conclusion then, would be that these prophecies were not mere coincidences; not to the exponential power they weren't. When the Roman soldiers cast lots for Jesus' garment, another prophecy was fulfilled as, "They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing." fulfilled in Psalm 22:18. By the way, dividing of garments between attending Roman soldiers was completely normal at crucifixions, but casting lots was not. This was illegal. And for the Roman soldier while on duty, punishable by death! John 19:23, 24 might explain why this exception was made. This one seamless garment was of much better quality than normal, so instead of tearing to share, they cast lots for it. Now, what are the exact odds against this exception? This seems to have been a rare event since the soldiers had to discuss how to deal with it. Surely it would be conservative to assign a probability of one in twenty-five. This brings the chances down, relatively speaking, to one in 187,500 of being just a random chance happening. [1]

Now the subject on the odds for Biblical prophecies coming true is equally astounding, if not unfathomable. There are over 100 prophecies alone about Babylon that have all been fulfilled and some yet remaining in Revelation. In the book of Isaiah, he foresaw the fall of Babylon which would not even emerge as the world's most dominant power for another hundred years. (Isa. 21:1-10). And the Succession of world empires was told, in advance, in Daniel 2 and 7. And Tyre's fall was foretold, precisely as it happened in Ezekiel 26.

It should be noted that these men actually wrote down God's foreknowledge. Whether it was by the Spirit or they were in the Spirit, I do not know. But this I know. God's Word is the authority behind these prophecies; decidedly not the prophets. The way in which God addresses these prophets is "Thus says the Lord", in fact over 3,808 times! This infers it is God's Word's of prophetic events, and not the words of men. The fulfillment of these prophecies by Jesus Christ is quantifiable, tangible, and quite obvious. I am a Charter Member of my college's Historian's fraternity and no Historian that I know of has written significantly different biographies of Jesus than what is described in the Bible.

Here's another example. Jesus was known by many as being from Nazareth. Ironically (or not), Nazarenes' providential arrangements required the parents to live in Nazareth, which was the fulfilling of prophecies in which the Messiah is described as a "shoot" or "sprout" of Jesse. And by specific application, Jesus fulfilled the perfection of what a Nazarene should be. They were required to be set apart for service to God or essentially a self-sacrifice of them self to His service, they themselves brought the offerings to God (normally Levites' duties) and a monitor or witness of the law (Num 6:2-17, Lev 21:10-12, Ex 29:2). There are far too many of these prophecies to be covered in one book but here are some of those which Jesus fulfilled in two ways. Foretold in the Old Testament, and fulfilled in the New Testament.

Born of a virgin Isa 7:14 Matt 1:23
Born in Bethlehem Micah 5:2 Matt 2:1
Lived in Nazareth * Isa 11:1 Matt 2:21-23
Rejected by his own Isa 6:10, 53:1-3 John 1:11
Enters Jerusalem triumphantly Zech 9:9 John 12:12-19
Betrayed by a friend Zech 11:12-13 Matt 26:14
Died with criminals Isa. 53:9 Matt 27:38
Buried with the rich Isa 53:9-12 Matt27:57-60
Lots cast for his clothes Psl 22:18 Luke 23:24
Offered vinegar to drink Ps 69:21 Matt 27:34
Dying words are given Ps 22:1, 31:5 Mt. 27:46, Lk. 23:46
No bone is broken Ps 34:20 John 19:36
His side to be pierced Ps 22:16, Zech 12:10 John 19:34

Thousands upon thousands of witnesses knew Jesus by sight and knew He was the Messiah and the son of David, by lineage (Luke 1:1-..., 18:35-43). Even the Samaritan Women at the well knew that a Messiah was to come. Difficult as it is to believe, this was common knowledge in Jerusalem especially among the Chief Priests, Scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees. Many of them acknowledged Him as a Son of David...some knew Jesus told the truth and was from God (Luke 20:20-26, 19:28-40, 20:20-26). Incidentally, this generation was the only one in which they could actually blaspheme the Holy Spirit, since they knew better. Everyone should have. In fact in the whole of Judea and Samaria, there were thousands of witnesses (Luke 24:15-24, Act 1:3-4, 2:31-32, 9:3, 17, I Cor 15:4-8, II Pet 1:16-21, Jhn 3:2, 15:27, I Jhn 1:1-3, 14) and more than 500 people that say Him after His crucifixion (I Cor. 15:4-8, 9:1). These people must have talked incessantly about this for years and generations, which is the reason that there were no legitimate stories about it being a hoax, save the false witnesses by the Temple Jews. The Old Testament confirms Christ's coming thousands of years before (Gen. 18:18, 28:14, Duet 18:15-19, Pslm 122:18, 132:11, 11:1-7, 2:7, Ish 53:7-8, 49:6-9, 7:14, Acts 3:22-25, 7:32, Heb 5:5-6) and describes a crucifixion long before such an execution even existed (Psl 22, Ish 53, 50:6, 25-29, 49, 52:13-15, 62). So based solely on quantifiable, mathematical principles, the fulfillment of the hundreds of prophecies by Jesus, and other events, were no mere random chance accidents, or just got lucky. No. He was always at the right places at the right time as the scripture said. Of course, no finite human being could ever possibly pull off such a thing as the fulfillments of all of the Bible's prophecies about Jesus! This takes a Someone Who can, not only predict thousands of years before, but Who Himself can cause it to happen. The necessary conclusion must be that, it was intentionally preordained and intentionally fulfilled.

1. Science Speaks, by Peter W. Stoner. Copyright © 1958, 1963, 1968 by the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago. (P. 333).

2. Borel, Emil (1962), Probability and Life, Dover, translated from the original, Les Probabilite et la Vie

3. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/borelfaq.html

* For Nazarenes', providential arrangements required parents to live in Nazareth, which was the fulfilling of prophecies in which the Messiah is described as a "shoot" or "sprout" of Jesse. By application, Jesus fulfilled the perfection of what a Nazarene should be. They were required to be set apart for service to God or essentially a self-sacrifice of them self to His service, they themselves brought the offerings to God (normally Levites duties) and a monitor or witness of the law (Num 6:2-17, Lev 21:10-12, Ex 29:2)

Excerpt from Chapter Five of "Blind Chance or Intelligent Design?, Empirical Methodologies and the Bible", by Jack Wellman. Copyright, 2009.