The reason why prophecy is an indication of the divine authorship of the
Scriptures, and hence a testimony to the trustworthiness of the message of the
Scriptures, is because of the minute probability of fulfillment.
  Anyone can make predictions, for that is simple.  However, having
prophecies fulfilled is vastly different.  In fact, the more statements made
about the future, and the more the detail, then the less likely the precise
fulfillment will be.
  For example, what is the likelihood of a person predicting today the exact
city in which the birth of a future leader would take place, well into the
21st century?  This is indeed what the prophet Micah did 700 years before the
Messiah.  Further, what is the likelihood of predicting the precise manner of
death that a new, unknown religious leader would experience, a thousand
years from now - a manner of death presently unknown, and to remain unknown
for hundreds of years?  Yet, this is indeed what David did in 1000 B.C.
Again, what is the likelihood of predicting the specific date of the
appearance of some great future leader, hundreds of years in advance?  Yet,
this is indeed what Daniel did, 530 years before Christ.
  If one were to conceive 50 specific prophecies about a person in the future,
who one would never meet, just what is the likelihood that this person will
fulfill all 50 of the predictions?  How much less would this likelihood be if
25 of these predictions were about what other people would do to him, and were
completely beyond his control?
  For example, how does someone ``arrange'' to be born in a specific family?
How does one ``arrange'' to be born in a specified city, in which their
parents do not actually live?  How does one ``arrange'' their own death - and
specifically by crucifixion, with two others, and then ``arrange'' to have
their executioners gamble for their clothing?  How does one ``arrange'' to be
betrayed in advance?  How does one ``arrange'' to have the executioners carry
out the regular practice of breaking the legs of the two victims on either
side, but not their own?  Finally, how does one ``arrange'' to be God?  How
does one escape from a grave and appear to people after having been killed?
  Indeed, it may be possible for someone to fake one or two of the Messianic
prophecies, but it would be impossible for any one person to arrange and
fulfill all of these prophecies.

  John Ankerberg et. al. relate the true story of how governments use
prearranged identification signs to identify correct agents :

    David Greenglass was a World War II traitor.  He gave atomic secrets to
    the Russians and then fled to Mexico after the war.  His conspirators
    arranged to help him by planning a meeting with the secretary of the
    Russian ambassador in Mexico City.  Proper identification for both
    parties became vital.

    Greenglass was to identify himself with six prearranged signs.  These
    instructions had been given to both the secretary and Greenglass so there
    would be no possibility of making a mistake.  They were : (1) once in
    Mexico City Greenglass was to write a note to the secretary, signing his
    name as ``I. Jackson''; (2) after three days he was to go to the Plaza de
    Colon in Mexico City and (3) stand before the statue of Columbus, (4)
    with his middle finger placed in a guide book.  In addition, (5) when he
    was approached, he was to say it was a magnificent statue and that he was
    from Oklahoma.  (6) The secretary was to then give him a passport.

    The six prearranged signs worked.  Why?  With six identifying
    characteristics it was impossible for the secretary not to identify
    Greenglass as the proper contact (John Ankerberg, John Weldon and Walter
    Kaiser, The Case for Jesus The Messiah, Melbourne: Pacific College Study
    Series, 1994, 17-18).

  How true, then, it must be that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah if He had
456 identifying characteristics well in advance, and fulfilled them all!  In
fact, what does the science of probability make of this?
  The science of probability attempts to determine the chance that a given
event will occur.  The value and accuracy of the science of probability has
been well established beyond doubt - for example, insurance rates are fixed
according to statistical probabilities.
  Professor Emeritus of Science at Westmont College, Peter Stoner, has
calculated the probability of one man fulfilling the major prophecies made
concerning the Messiah.  The estimates were worked out by twelve different
classes, representing some 600 college students.
  The students carefully weighed all the factors, discussed each prophecy at
length, and examined the various circumstances which might indicate that men
had conspired together to fulfill a particular prophecy.  They made their
estimates conservative enough so that there was finally unanimous agreement
even among the most skeptical students.
  However then Professor Stoner took their estimates and made them even more
conservative.  He also encouraged other skeptics or scientists to make their
own estimates to see if his conclusions were more than fair.  Finally, he
submitted his figures for review to a Committee of the American Scientific
Affiliation.  Upon examination, they verified that his calculations were
dependable and accurate in regard to the scientific material presented
(Peter Stoner, Science Speaks, Chicago: Moody Press, 1969, 4).
  For example, concerning Micah 5:2, where it states the Messiah would be born
in Bethlehem Ephrathah, Stoner and his students determined the average
population of Bethlehem from the time of Micah to the present; then they
divided it by the average population of the earth during the same period.
They concluded that the chance of one man being born in Bethlehem was one in
2.8 x 10^5 - or rounded, one in 300,000.
  After examining only eight different prophecies (Idem, 106), they
conservatively estimated that the chance of one man fulfilling all eight
prophecies was one in 10^17.
  To illustrate how large the number 10^17 is (a figure with 17 zeros), Stoner
gave this illustration :

    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
    10^17 silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas.  They will 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 have 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 (Idem, 106-107).

  In financial terms, is there anyone who would not invest in a financial
venture if the chance of failure were only one in 10^17?  This is the kind of
sure investment we are offered by God for belief in His Messiah.
  Professor Stoner, from these figures, draws the conclusion the fulfillment
of these eight prophecies alone proves that God inspired the writing of the
prophecies (Idem, 107) - the likelihood of mere chance is only one in
10^17!
  Another way of saying this is that any person who minimises or ignores the
significance of the Biblical identifying signs concerning the Messiah would be
foolish.
  But, of course, there are many more than eight prophecies.  In another
calculation, Stoner used 48 prophecies (Idem, 109) (even though he could have
used Edersheim's 456) and arrived at the extremely conservative estimate that
the probability of 48 prophecies being fulfilled in one person is the
incredible number 10^157.  In fact, if anybody can find someone, living or
dead, other than Jesus, who can fulfill only half of the predictions
concerning the Messiah given in the book _Messiah in Both Testaments_ by
Fred John Meldau, the Christian Victory Publishing Company is ready to give a
one thousand dollar reward!  As apologist Josh McDowell says, "There are a
lot of men in the universities that could use some extra cash!" (Josh
McDowell, Evidence that Demands a Verdict, California: Campus Crusade
for Christ, 175).
  How large is the number one in 10^157?  10^157 contains 157 zeros!  Stoner
gives an illustratation of this number using electrons.  Electrons are very
small objects.  They are smaller than atoms.  It would take 2.5 times
10^15 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 (Stoner, op.
cit., 109).

    With this introduction, let us go back to our chance of 1 in 10^157.  Let
    us suppose that we are taking this number of electrons, marking one, and
    thoroughly stirring it into the whole mass, then blindfolding a man and
    letting him try to find the right one.  What chance has he of finding the
    right one?  What kind of a pile will this number of electrons make?  They
    make an inconceivably large volume.

    The distance from our system of stars, or galaxy, to the next nearest one
    is nearly 1,500,000 lightyears; that is the distance that light will
    travel in 1,500,000 years going 186,000 miles each and every second.
    This distance is so great that if every man, woman and child in the
    United States, 200,000,000 of them, had a library of 65,000 volumes, and
    you collected every book in all of these libraries and then started on
    this journey of 1,500,000 light-years, and decided to place one letter
    from one of the books on each mile (e.g., if ``the'' was the first word
    in the first book you would put ``t'' on the first mile, ``h'' on the
    second mile, and ``e'' on the third mile; then leave a mile blank without
    a letter and start the next word in the same manner, etc.), before you
    complete your journey you will use up every letter in every book of every
    one of the libraries and have to call for more (Idem, 110).

  This is the result from considering a mere 48 prophecies.  Obviously, the
probability that 456 prophecies would be fulfilled in one man by chance
is vastly smaller.  According to Emile Borel, once one goes past one
chance in 10^50, the probabilities are so small that it is impossible to
think that they will ever occur (Ankerberg et. al., op. cit., 21).
  As 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 (Stoner, op. cit., 112).''

davidmwilliams@oocities.com