{"id":13870,"date":"2020-08-30T09:12:15","date_gmt":"2020-08-30T13:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=13870"},"modified":"2020-09-13T22:17:23","modified_gmt":"2020-09-14T02:17:23","slug":"old-testament-messiah-prophecy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/old-testament-messiah-prophecy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Old Testament Messiah Prophecy: Is it for Jesus?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What is the Old Testament messiah prophecy? Is there any evidence that Jesus is the messiah? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Old Testament messiah prophecy is a term that refers to the scriptures that predict the coming of a messiah, or child of God. The messiah was to act as a savior of mankind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read more about the Old Testament messiah prophecy, and if Jesus fulfills it, below. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Was Jesus the Messiah of the Old Testament Prophecy?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Another way to establish Jesus\u2019s deity, separate and apart from his divine traits, <strong>is to compare him with descriptions in the Old Testament Messiah prophecy. <\/strong>Jewish scriptures are full of prophecies about the arrival of the Messiah, an emissary of God who would redeem humanity. These prognostications often feature specific details (so that the Jewish people would recognize the Messiah when he came). If Jesus matches these details, which were articulated generations before Jesus\u2019s birth<strong>, there\u2019s good reason to believe Jesus is indeed the Anointed One<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To explore this possibility, Strobel visits <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/louis-lapides-the-case-for-christ\/\">Louis Lapides<\/a>, a pastor at a church in California. Lapides\u2019s path to Christ was a winding one. Raised Jewish in New Jersey, Lapides was drafted and sent to Vietnam, where he began exploring Eastern religions. When he returned home, depressed and rootless, he experimented with drugs and even contemplated suicide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eventually, Lapides ended up in California, where he continued to search for a religious path. In 1969, an impromptu encounter with a pastor led to Lapides\u2019s revisiting the Old Testament. The pastor had told him that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah\u2014a figure entirely absent from Lapides\u2019s childhood instruction in Judaism\u2014and gave him a copy of the Bible with both the Old and New Testaments. Lapides began scouring the Old Testament Messiah prophecy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Soon enough, he found them: in Deuteronomy, which prophesies the coming of a prophet greater than Moses; and in Isaiah, which describes the Messiah as an \u201coppressed and afflicted\u201d man who dies for the sins of his fellow humans. In the end, <strong>Lapides found nearly 50 prophecies in the Old Testament that refer explicitly to Jesus<\/strong>, including:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>The Virgin birth (Isaiah)<\/li><li>His birthplace of Bethlehem (Micah)<\/li><li>The manner of his death and his resurrection (Psalms)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>After an epiphany he experienced while camping in the Mojave Desert, during which God spoke to him and told him Jesus was the Messiah, Lapides swore off drugs and accepted Jesus into his life. He married a Jewish woman who was also a follower of Christ and joined a church (which, coincidentally, was led by the pastor who\u2019d given him the Bible that sparked his curiosity about Jesus).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Challenges to the Prophecies<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Many Jews, like Lapides himself, are simply oblivious to the fact that the prophets of the Old Testament anticipate Jesus\u2019s arrival; once they do the necessary reading\u2014of the Bible and the relevant secondary sources\u2014the facts of the case become undeniable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That said, there are a number of possible objections to Jesus\u2019s being the Messiah of the Old Testament Messiah prophecy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Sheer Coincidence<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Isn\u2019t it possible that the parallels between Jesus and the Messiah described in the Old Testament are just the product of chance?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The simple answer is no. Mathematician Peter Stoner calculated the odds that a single person would fit even just <em>eight <\/em>prophecies at one-in-one-hundred-million-billion. The odds of fitting all 48 prophecies of Jesus? <strong>One of out of many trillions of trillions<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That is to say, <strong>it\u2019s as good as impossible that Jesus matched the Old Testament Messiah prophecy by coincidence<\/strong>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Retrofitted Gospels<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Another challenge to Jesus\u2019s messianism concerns the gospels. Given the fact they were written long after the Old Testament, by authors schooled in Jewish scripture, isn\u2019t it possible the gospel authors simply added details to Jesus\u2019s story to make him match the prophecies?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What this question fails to consider is the timeline of the gospels\u2019 writing and dissemination. As noted earlier, the gospels would have been read by contemporaries of Jesus;<strong> if they\u2019d noticed something amiss, they would have objected to it<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\u2019s an even more compelling rejoinder to this theory. Matthew was put to death for his loyalty to and faith in Jesus. <strong>Why would he have sacrificed himself for a lie?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Jesus\u2019s Confidence Game<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Like the authors of the gospels, Jesus too was well versed in Jewish Scripture. Couldn\u2019t he just have <em>planned<\/em> his activities so that they conformed to the Old Testament\u2019s prophecies?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In some cases\u2014for example, concerning the Old Testament Messiah prophecy that the Messiah would ride a donkey into Jerusalem\u2014this argument seems plausible, but in others, it patently fails. For example, how could Jesus arrange that his legs would remain unbroken on the cross? Or that Judas would be offered thirty pieces of silver to betray him? Or the circumstances and place of his own birth? (Daniel 9:24 prophesies that the Messiah would appear a specific amount of time after King Artaxerxes\u2019s decree that the Jews rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.<strong> Jesus appeared at that exact moment.<\/strong>)&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Bad Interpretation<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Not all scholars agree that the passages Christians cite as prophesying Jesus are indeed prophecies. Could Christians simply be misinterpreting the Old Testament?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lapides simply recommends that skeptics read the passages in question themselves, as he did. He also urges those skeptics to be open to God\u2019s speaking to them\u2014to ask God truly whether Jesus was the Messiah.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is the Old Testament messiah prophecy? Is there any evidence that Jesus is the messiah? The Old Testament messiah prophecy is a term that refers to the scriptures that predict the coming of a messiah, or child of God. The messiah was to act as a savior of mankind. Read more about the Old Testament messiah prophecy, and if Jesus fulfills it, below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":13873,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,6],"tags":[125],"class_list":["post-13870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-spiritual","tag-the-case-for-christ","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Old Testament Messiah Prophecy: Is it for Jesus? - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What is the Old Testament messiah prophecy? Does Jesus fulfill it? If so, this can prove that Jesus was truly the messiah. Here&#039;s how.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/old-testament-messiah-prophecy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Old Testament Messiah Prophecy: Is it for Jesus?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What is the Old Testament messiah prophecy? Does Jesus fulfill it? If so, this can prove that Jesus was truly the messiah. Here&#039;s how.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/old-testament-messiah-prophecy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Shortform Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-08-30T13:12:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-09-14T02:17:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/wordpress.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/bible-1-case-for-christ-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1706\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Carrie Cabral\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Carrie Cabral\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/old-testament-messiah-prophecy\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/old-testament-messiah-prophecy\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Carrie Cabral\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/2ababb7c63a94ff5d2190f71dc417d56\"},\"headline\":\"The Old Testament Messiah Prophecy: Is it for Jesus?\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-08-30T13:12:15+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-09-14T02:17:23+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/old-testament-messiah-prophecy\/\"},\"wordCount\":916,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/old-testament-messiah-prophecy\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/bible-1-case-for-christ-scaled.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"The Case for Christ\"],\"articleSection\":[\"History\",\"Spiritual\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/old-testament-messiah-prophecy\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/old-testament-messiah-prophecy\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/old-testament-messiah-prophecy\/\",\"name\":\"The Old Testament Messiah Prophecy: Is it for Jesus? - Shortform Books\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/old-testament-messiah-prophecy\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/old-testament-messiah-prophecy\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/bible-1-case-for-christ-scaled.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-08-30T13:12:15+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-09-14T02:17:23+00:00\",\"description\":\"What is the Old Testament messiah prophecy? 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