What Are The Chances?

 

Today is Good Friday.  The day that Christians all around the world stop and contemplate the sacrifice by Jesus on the cross to bridge the gap between God and humankind.  I have been asked by a close friend in the past "You aren't one of those Christians are you?  One that takes the Bible literally, are you?"  I've been scolded by a Christian friend not to take the Bible as literal because it isn't trustworthy like a history book.  I've been made fun of by atheists who say I'm unintelligent because I take my faith blindly, without logic or reason.  I respectfully disagree with them all. 

In an exercise of building my own faith,  I have asked myself, "What are the chances?"  Well, come to find out, I'm not the only one that has wondered about that very question. Mathematicians and statistical scholars have asked too, and they have even calculated the odds.  So, here they are:

There are over 700 prophecies written to help us identify the Messiah throughout the Bible.  Prophecies foretelling how, when, where of his birth, death and resurrection.  And don't forget, also his return.

Dr Peter Stoner (Science Speaks, 1958)  calculated the probability  that the chance of one man accidentally fulfilling just 8 of these prophecies is one in 10 ¹⁷ It is a number that is hard to wrap the mind around.  Here is an illustration by Dr. Stoner to help us visualize it:

If you mark one of ten tickets, and place all the tickets in a hat, and thoroughly stir them, and then ask a blindfolded man to draw one, his chance of getting the right ticket is one in ten. Suppose that we take 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. They'll cover all of the state two feet deep. Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state. Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up one silver dollar and say that this is the right one. What chance would he have of getting the right one? Just the same chance that the prophets would've had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man, from their day to the present time, providing they wrote them in their own wisdom.

Now, what are the odds that only 48 of the more than 700  prophecies of Jesus were fulfilled?  Dr. Stoner estimated the odds against that to be 1 in 10 to the power 157. [1]  A number that would fill a  blank page with zeros.  Here is an illustration to help us visualize this number:

How large is the number one in 10¹⁵⁷? Well, it contains 157 zeros! Stoner gives an illustration of this number using electrons.

Electrons are very small objects. They're smaller than atoms. It would take 2.5 TIMES 10¹⁵ of them, laid side by side, to make one inch. Even if we counted 250 of these electrons each minute, and counted day and night, it would still take 19 million years just to count a line of electrons one-inch long.

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.

Dr. Stoner concludes,''Any man who rejects Christ as the Son of God is rejecting a fact, proved perhaps more absolutely than any other fact in the world."

Those are the odds.  If you take blind faith out of the equation and insert mathematical probability and logic, you get a zero probability that Jesus was accidentally or mistakenly the prophesied Messiah. 

That means Jesus came just as God promised. He lived among us just as God promised, He died for you just as God promised.  He rose from the dead just as God promised.  And He will come again in glory just as God promised.  It is a Good Friday, indeed!

Revelation 19:10,

“The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”

*If you are interested in studying some of the prophecies Jesus fulfilled check out the Bible Study link on the top right of the blog.  I will add it as soon as Resurrection Sunday is over, but for now I am going to go celebrate with my family!