The astonishing unlikeliness of Jesus being the Messiah
I am not a gambler, because even though my grasp of probabilities is limited, I know that the odds are generally stacked against you and so I have decided to not take the risk.
There is an old quip that says 67% of statistics are made up, which may or may not raise a slight smile, but definitely does raise a valid question – can we trust statistics and probabilities to be accurate? In all probability, probably not. (written with a wry smile)
In other words we can’t always rely on them to be 100% accurate, but they can be a helpful tool when looking at bigger pictures.
Take for example the probability that someone could fulfil 8 of the main Old Testament Messianic prophecies – something which a chap called Professor Peter Stoner calculated some time ago.1 He reckoned that there was a 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000 chance that this would happen. That’s a lot of zero’s and pretty crazy odds – and it doesn’t even include all of the prophecies – some say there are over 300 Messianic prophecies which Jesus fulfilled. Imagine how many zero’s would be on the end of those odds! Now, as with our little statistics quip earlier, we would be right to question how anyone (even a College Mathematics Department chairman like Peter Stoner) could come up with these figures and be sure that they are totally accurate.
But perhaps they don’t really need to be 100% accurate to get the message across that the chances of someone fulfilling all of the prophecies was pretty unlikely! Staggeringly so. Because the prophecies were written by different people in different books of the Bible across hundreds of years. Whilst you might want to argue that some very clever and resourceful individual might have the means by which to manipulate themselves into fitting the bill for some of them, that will never account for fulfilling things like place of birth or genealogy – no unborn child has as yet had much say in these things!
All of which brings me to something which happened in church once: I was left thinking “Wow!” by the ordination of priests in Leviticus (8:1-9)2. And yes, that did come as a surprise. Leviticus isn’t usually the first place people turn if they want to bolster their faith – at first sight it seems full of dry regulations, and many of us might be glad that it is consigned to the Old Testament where we can skim read it without giving it too much thought.
However, the details about the processes decreed by God for how Aaron and his sons were to be made ready for the priestly role left me in wonder at the ingenuity of our God. Here was an example of something prescribed by God in the Old Testament (referred to as types) prefiguring Christ and His work in a wonderfully profound way (with Christ referred to as the antitype – the fulfilment of the types).
I will elaborate. Just as the priests had to be washed before they were ordained, so we have to be washed clean before we can come before God. The priests did not wash themselves – they needed to submit before Moses who would wash them. This seems a bit random, possibly even odd and unnecessary – I mean why did the priests have to be washed by someone else, wouldn’t washing themselves have done the same thing and got them just as clean? But when you stop to relate it to Christ and what He did, it suddenly makes so much more sense – because in the same way, we don’t make ourselves clean by anything we do. We must simply submit to being washed clean from our sins by what Jesus has done for us. Suddenly, a random Levitical detail is really neat!
The priests who had been washed were then given priestly garments free of charge. Once we have been washed clean, we too are clothed – but this time in robes of righteousness. And like the priests, we don’t have to pay for this – it is all paid for by Christ at the cross. This if you ask me is already an awesome parallel, but delving deeper, there is symbolism in many of the elaborate details of the priestly robes.2 I don’t have time to go into them here or this piece would get alarmingly long, but suffice to say it’s fascinatingly intricate and well worth exploring. And asides from these priests and their pretty neat prefiguring of Christ, there are multiple other types in the Old Testament which foreshadow Jesus as their antitype, such as Melchizedek, the sacrificial system, the exodus, the judges, the prophets….I could go on!
And for me, the discovery of these Old Testament types that prefigure Christ, falls into the same category of things that make me go “Wow” as the main prophecies of the Old Testament that were so unlikely for one person to fulfil. For me, they are a huge faith-booster. It would have been extraordinarily unlikely for these things to have happened in a way that so beautifully ties in the events and teachings from Jesus’ life with the events and teachings from centuries earlier, had they not been divinely ordained as part of a long-term plan conceived by God. Indeed, so much about Jesus Christ was hinted at and partially disclosed in the Old Testament, that you could argue that for us to not believe that He was the Messiah and the Son of God takes more creative imagination than to believe that He was!
Even though the probability of someone doing all this is spectacularly low, I couldn’t quite stop my mind wandering and pondering whether it could have been possible for someone to engineer it all – particularly if it was their primary life goal? This could have been either in their own life or by fabricating the life and events of someone who may or may not have even ever walked the earth.
Well, the upshot of my mind’s meanderings was that it seems even less possible when you consider that many of the things foretelling the Messiah are not immediately obvious. If all the Old Testament prophecies and prefigures of Christ had been helpfully listed and systematically explained, it might have been slightly more do-able for some aspiring Messiah-type wannabe, to have been able to go down the list and tick them off as and when accomplished. But it didn’t work like that.
The intricate details of the priests’ ordination that can be seen to foreshadow things that Christ was and did for us, are not immediately noticeable. It is only as we study the Scriptures that their true symbolism becomes apparent. I don’t think I am the only one who would have missed it if it had not been explained to me in systematic form. So, any would-be Messiah would have had to have an incredible knowledge, insight and understanding of the Scriptures to have fulfilled all that was foreshadowed and foretold. And even I, as someone rather averse to the risks of gambling, would wager that there has yet to live someone of such genius that he could make a Messiah up and fabricate people and events with such mastery so as to reveal all the aspects of Christ, with their many levels of meaning and symbolism, that are hidden in Scriptures. I just don’t think anyone could have faked all this.
Proverbs 25:2 reads,
“It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of Kings”.
I never used to understand this verse, and if I’m honest, thought it actually rather unhelpful of God to conceal things – why make us do the searching when some of us might not find it?! Surely it would be much more useful and time-effective if He could just make everything crystal clear, perhaps using bullet points or a handy cross-referenced list, so that people like me could get the facts and explanations of who He is and what He has done. Then we could have more understanding, get the answers to our many faith-related questions and hey presto, we’d have more faith. Simples.
Or maybe not – because now I think I get it. In concealing these things that we might uncover them, the result is actually more wonder and more faith. The beauty, the intricacy and the sheer brilliance of it all bring such joy and ‘oh wow’ moments, which would surely be lacking if it was all just spelled out.
So, what at first sight appears to be rather dull Levitical instructions for Old Testament practices, is actually a treasure trove of hidden hints at what was to come. And this is just one example – there are so many others. Now if this doesn’t wow you, I don’t know what will!
Intricate, beautiful, detailed, planned and purposed.
Nothing was by chance.
Now what are the odds of that happening if the Bible did not have a Divine Author scripting it all behind the scenes? Staggeringly unlikely.
To see God’s hand on it all in such an intricate way is just wonderfully heartening and beautifully faith-building. He really is in control. He truly is big and powerful. He has a plan and a purpose that goes beyond our best understanding and that plan involves welcoming us in – not on the merits of anything we have done, but solely on the merits of Him.
All these prophecies coming to pass and all these types being revealed in their antitype – well it was all engineered. Engineered by the great I AM in order to reveal a truth once hidden and to wow His kids with the stunning ingenuity. All to demonstrate that His Son Jesus really was and is the Messiah and the Saviour of the world.
1 ‘Science Speaks’ by Peter W Stoner, 1952
2 There is more detail about the ordination and priestly garments in Exodus chapters 28 and 29