 What Prophecies REALLY mean!
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What Prophecies REALLY mean! |
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In the Old Testament there are over 300 prophetic references to Jesus Christ.
His life, his ministry, his death, and his resurrection are foretold hundreds if not thousands of years before they actually
happened! It is important
to understand that the ONLY way for prophecies to be fulfilled is for genuine divine intervention to take place. Societies,
cultures, and Hollywood have tried to diminish God’s hand in prophecy or even substitute man’s intuitive sense
as a prophetic statement. Prophecy and man’s intuition are not the same thing! Another thing that they have done is loosely use
the word prophet to describe a person using intuition and trickery to fool people. These manipulators are vague in their “prophecies”
so that they can maneuver an event to fit their “prophetic statement. This is not prophecy at all! Unfortunately,
what has transpired from these self-proclaimed prophets over the years is a lack of appreciation for what true prophecy represents
and God’s involvement. Today, Bible scoffers simply discredit Bible
prophecies as vague statements using the same argument for manipulators acting as prophets. This de-sensitization to true
prophecy has given scoffers the license to simply explain away Biblical prophecy and reject the astronomical probability that
points to God and His authorship of the Holy Scriptures. |
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Isaiah 7:14, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”
The Holy Scriptures also state that the child born of a virgin birth which is truly a miracle would also is referred to as “God with us” which is what Immanuel means. The significance of this is that God would actually come to be with us in the flesh and that the baby will be God Himself! So a child born of a virgin will be God!
Micah 5:2, “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”
We also know that the prophets knowingly spoke of the Messiah being known as a Nazarene meaning root or branch in Hebrew. It is explained in
Matthew 2:23, “So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: “He will be called a Nazarene.”
Isaiah 9:1-2, “but in the future he will honor Galilee of the Gentiles.”
Hosea 11:1, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.”
- The Virgin Mary would be brought to Bethlehem at the exact time in order to give birth to a son.
- The Magi from Babylon would then announce to King Herod the birth of the King of the Jews while bringing gifts that happen to be highly coveted by Egyptians.
- This would then start a chain reaction forcing the family to flee for Egypt with their newly received gifts. (King Herod informed by the Magi would be enraged and try to kill the child.)
- After staying in Egypt for about a year, an angel would then inform them that King Herod had died; they would soon reenter Israel, but decide to stay in Galilee in a small town called Nazareth.
3. The Messiah would also be a descendant of King David. (Written about 600 B.C.)
Jeremiah 23:5, "The days are coming," declares the LORD, "when I will raise up to David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land."
Even in the Jerusalem Talmud, Berakoth 5a it states, "The King Messiah... from where does he come forth? From the royal city of Bethlehem in Judah."
4. The Messiah would come from the tribe of Judah. (Spoken of by Jacob about 1800 B.C.)
Genesis 49:10, “The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his.”
Jacob is prophesying the future of each of his sons just prior to his death at the end of the book of Genesis in the Old Testament. He then explains that the Messiah will come to be a direct descendent from Judah. This is not Jacob’s first born or even his blessed son, Joseph. It is his fourth son of the twelve. God shows here that He is in control of all things and that He so chooses who He will do things through. It is not decided by man’s traditions or rules of benefactor.
If you go further back another 800 years from King David using the genealogic record provided by the Holy Scriptures in 1 Chronicles, you will find that David, in fact, does come from the line of Judah. You then fast forward to Christ and you find out that the Messiah does come from Judah thus fulfilling this prophecy!
How incredibly detailed the Holy Scriptures are!
5. The line of kings from David would endure forever. (The prophet, Samuel, prophesied this about 1000 B.C.)
2 Samuel 7:16, “Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.”
UNLESS…
Prior to Jerusalem’s second fall in 70 A.D., there had to be a descendent of David who established an unending and eternal throne. It had to happen before 70 A.D.!
Aside from Jesus, there has been no king of Davidic descent since the time of the Babylonian conquest. There is only one way to fulfill this prophecy. Jesus Christ is the only way!
Jesus is fully human and fully God. As a human, he is a descendant of King David. As God, he is eternal. This satisfies both criteria, a descendent of David who sits on the throne of the kingdom of heaven forever.
6. The timing of the Messiah is predicted and His rejection. (Spoken of by the prophet, Daniel, about 530 B.C.)
Daniel 9:24-26, “Seventy ‘sevens’ are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy.
Know and understand this: From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be cut off and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed.”
The prophet Daniel lived during the time of the Babylonian Captivity, over 500 years before the birth of Jesus. The Babylonians had destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple and had taken many Jews as captives to Babylon. While in Babylon, Daniel delivered a prophecy of what would happen during the centuries that followed.
--There would be a decree to rebuild the Temple and Jerusalem.
--Jerusalem and the Temple would then be rebuilt.
--After it is rebuilt, the (Messiah) would be "cut off".
--And finally, Jerusalem and the Temple would again be destroyed.
All of these events would actually happen and even happen in the same order described by Daniel.
--About 537 B.C., the Persian king Cyrus gave permission to the Jews to rebuild the Temple and later the Persian king Artaxerxes decreed to the Jews to rebuild Jerusalem which was in ruins after its destruction by the Babylonians.
--The Jews would then rebuild the Temple and the city of Jerusalem.
--The Person named Jesus Christ was born around 5 B.C. fulfilling all the prophetic statements concerning the Messiah. He would be despised and rejected exactly how the prophet Isaiah stated and ultimately crucified by the Romans about 33 A.D.
Isaiah 53:3, “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”
--Soon after Jesus’ crucifixion, the Romans would then destroy the Temple and the city of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. (The Temple has not been rebuilt since.) Daniel explained everything exactly how it would later play out!
7. The Messiah would be crucified. (There are multiple prophecies concerning crucifixion; from the prophet, Zechariah about 500 B.C. to David around 1000 B.C. to Isaiah around 700 B.C.)
Zechariah 12:10, “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son.”Psalm 22:16, “Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet.”Isaiah 53:5, “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.”
Isaiah 49:6, “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.”
8. The greatest prophetic statement about the Messiah! (Written by Isaiah about 700 B.C.)
Isaiah 53, “Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken. He was assigned a grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.
After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”
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