Articles
Inspiration of the Bible (4)
The Inspiration of the Bible (4)
Mike Willis
We are looking at the internal evidences of Scripture that illustrate that the Bible is inspired by God. We previously considered the unity of the Bible as evidence of inspiration. In this article we will look at fulfilled prophecies as proof that the Bible is a product of a Divine Mind. The thesis is simple: (a) Man cannot foretell the future; (b) the Bible contains prophecies of the future events that were later fulfilled. (c) These prophetic utterances show that the Bible is divinely inspired.
Long ago, Isaiah chided those who worshiped a god other than Jehovah using this same argument: “Set forth your case, says the Lord; bring your proofs, says the King of Jacob. Let them bring them, and tell us what is to happen. Tell us the former things, what they are, that we may consider them, that we may know their outcome; or declare to us the things to come. Tell us what is to come hereafter, that we may know that you are gods; do good, or do harm, that we may be dismayed and terrified. Behold, you are nothing, and your work is less than nothing; an abomination is he who chooses you” (Isa. 41:21-23).
Man has no ability to foretell the future. (If he had, he could make billions of dollars playing the stock markets.) Clear proofs of fulfilled prophecy are evidence of a Divine Mind overseeing the writing of the Bible. To be sure we are on the same page, please note the following characteristics of true prophecy: (a) The event must be beyond the power of man to foresee; (b) It must be demonstrated that the prediction was written before the event; (c)The prediction must be applicable to the event; (d) The prediction must be unambiguous and unmistakable; (e) The prediction must have a clear and demonstrable fulfillment (H. W. Everest, The Divine Demonstration, 260).
To keep this article concise, I will make one point from the book of Isaiah. I chose Isaiah because the oldest copy of the book of Isaiah predates Jesus by 100-200 years. In 1947, a young bedouin discovered by accident the Dead Sea Scrolls. One of the most complete texts of that discovery was the Great Isaiah scroll. Isaiah wrote in one of his prophecies: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isa. 7:14). Look at what this verse describes: something physically impossible—a virgin conception. The prophecy predicts the sex of the baby: a son. In some sense this son would be called “Immanuel”—a Hebrew word which means “God with us.” No Jewish father would think that his baby boy was God.
Two chapters later more is said about this child: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this” (Isa. 9:6-7). That we have not misrepresented that the child would be “God with us” is clearly seen from designations give that child in these verses: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. The government of God’s kingdom would fall on this Son and he would rule on the throne of David over an everlasting kingdom. Peter said that the risen Lord Jesus was seated on David’s throne at the right hand of God and is presently ruling from heaven (Acts 2:29-36).
This is a very specific prophecy written 700 years before the birth of Jesus, with copies of that text predating Jesus’s birth. Since man cannot foretell the future, and the Bible contains this clear prophecy, how can one explain it? This is one example of the kind of prophetic evidences that appear in our Bible, leading men to believe that the Bible is a unique book written by the inspiration of God (2 Tim. 3:16-17).
Rene Pache summarized the evidence of divine prophecy in Scripture: “Now it is affirmed that 333 of the prophecies concerning Christ have been fulfilled! According to the law of probabilities, there would be one chance out of 83 billion that so many predictions would come true in the case of one such individual. Needless to say, such a ‘chance' does not exist, and no one but the omniscient God could predict and act like this” (Rene Pache, The Inspiration and Authority of Scripture, 283). I am not qualified to work with the law of probabilities to verify Pache’s statistical probability, though I know enough to know that it is absurdly unlikely that any one man could by mere chance fulfill all of the messianic prophecies. Prophecy is a very strong evidence of the divine inspiration of Scripture.
