As we begin a new Church year with the commencement of Advent, we recall a number of Old Testament prophecies that pertain to Christ’ birth and early life. They include:
-that he would be born of the tribe of Judah (Gn 49:10);
-that he would be born from the line of King David (2Sm 7:16);
-that he would be born of a virgin (Is 7:14);
-that he would be born in Bethlehem (Mi 5:1);
-that he would be born during the fourth kingdom to rule over ancient Israel, which was the Roman Empire (Dn 2:44-45); and
-finally that he would be called out of Egypt (Hos 11:1).
It’s fair for one to ask why Old Testament prophecies are so important to our faith? In the simplest of terms, they reveal the premeditative mind of God by making known his plan for our salvation. And that revelation by God is divulged in the Old Testament with great specificity and in intricate detail.
I can well imagine that if there had only been one Old Testament prophecy and Jesus fulfilled it, many might conclude that it was purely by happenstance. But what if there were two or five or eight? At what point would the probability of Jesus fulfilling them purely by happenstance exceed the improbable and enter the realm of the impossible? Afterall, Jesus didn’t just fulfill one or two or five or eight prophecies, he fulfilled all 353 prophecies contained in the Old Testament!
I’d like to share with you a true story of a mathematics professor who decided to conduct a class exercise with his students to determine the probability of a person randomly fulfilling eight of these 353 Old Testament prophecies. Twelve classes participated in this exercise numbering in excess of 600 students.
This professor’s name was Peter Stoner, and he taught mathematics at Pasadena City College, in California, up until 1953. In 1957, Moody Press published a book written by Professor Stoner on this subject, called “SCIENCE SPEAKS, An Evaluation of Certain Christian Evidences”.
The eight prophecies Professor Stoner had pre-chosen for this class exercise are as follows:
-that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem (Mi 5:1);
-that a messenger would prepare the way for the Messiah (Mal 3:1);
-that the Messiah would enter Jerusalem as a king riding on a donkey (Zec 9:9);
-that the Messiah would be betrayed by a friend and suffer wounds on his chest (Zec 13:6);
-that the Messiah will be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver (Zec 11:12);
-that the betrayal money would be used to purchase a potter’s field (Zec 11:13);
-that the Messiah will remain silent while he is afflicted (Is 53:7); and lastly
-that the Messiah will die having his hands and feet pierced (Ps 22:17).
Notice that none of the eight chosen are by and of themselves extreme. Such as the Messiah’s resurrection or ascension into heaven which are among the 353 prophecies. The students were asked to determine a reasonable probability for each of these eight prophecy fulfillments.
For instance, when considering the first prophecy of the Messiah being born in Bethlehem, the students had to determine the probability by calculating a reasonable estimate of the number of people born in Bethlehem from the time of the prophecy to the present, and dividing that number by a reasonable estimate of the number of people born in the world during that same timeframe. The resulting percentage was then restated as a probability.
Considerable research was conducted and documented to substantiate their conclusions for each of the eight probabilities calculated. Then the eight probabilities were multiplied together to calculate the overall probability that a person randomly fulfilled all eight of these prophesies.
Once the overall probability calculation was completed and reviewed by Professor Stoner, the work was submitted for review by the American Scientific Affiliation and their findings are stated as follows:
The work has been reviewed by members of the American Scientific Affiliation and its Executive Council and has been found, in general, to be dependable and accurate in regard to the scientific material presented. The mathematical analysis included is based upon principles of probability which are thoroughly sound, and Professor Stoner has applied these principles in a proper and convincing way.
So what was the overall probability that the students calculated in this exercise? Astonishingly, they found that the odds a person would have fulfilled each of these eight Old Testament prophecies as 1 in a 100 quadrillion!
That’s 1 in a 100,000,000,000,000,000 chance!!! Scientists have estimated that there have been approximately 100 billion people that have lived on planet earth since its inception, which is a small fraction of the calculated probability!
Professor Stoner illustrated this probability in a more visual manner. He stated that if a 100 quadrillion silver dollars were laid down within the geographic boundaries of the state of Texas, they would cover every square inch of the state and would amass a pile two feet high across the state.
With only one of these silver dollars marked with a X on it; a man would be blindfolded, placed in the middle of the state and told to walk in any direction for as far as he wishes, the probability as calculated is expressed as that man selecting the one and only silver dollar with a X marking on it!
Now as incredible as that sounds, we must realize that Jesus did not only fulfill these eight Old Testament prophecies but all 353 of them! Imagine what the odds of that would be! Bear in mind, that the Dead Sea Scrolls attest to the existence of these Old Testament prophecies before the coming of Christ.
The Gospel of Matthew, written primarily for the benefit of the Jewish people of the time, refers to 54 of the more significant of these Old Testament prophecies fulfilled by Jesus. And Matthew was an eyewitness to many of these fulfilled prophecies. Matthew would die a martyr’s death and in the process never recanted a word of what he had written!
Matthew used phrases such as “this was to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet” with the quotation from the prophet that followed, throughout his gospel.
God wants us to be saved so that we can spend eternity with him. To that end, God does not require us to accept our redemption on faith alone but by faith and reason. And with all the scientific evidence that substantiates and supports the probabilities calculated by Professor Stoner’s students, along with mounting and overwhelming evidence in support of the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, the burial cloth of Jesus, our reasoning abilities are given insurmountable proof of Jesus’ redemptive life, death, resurrection and ascension into heaven!
I’ve heard it said, that for a person with no faith no amount of proof is possible and for a person of faith no proof is necessary. This article is intended for those individuals lacking in faith who are open to the possibilities that with God all things are possible!
In this Advent season we can be assured of that for which the Jewish people have longed for; the coming of the Messiah; who has indeed already come! We have but to accept the invitation to the wedding feast of the Lamb, by living a life of true discipleship, to enter into that which eye has not seen, nor ear has heard what God has in store for those who love him!
26 thoughts on “The Probability of 8 Prophecies Fulfilled by Jesus Occurring by Happenstance”
The essay by Deacon Frank delves deeply into the relationship between faith and reason, emphasizing the remarkable character of biblical prophecy about Jesus Christ’s life. The essay is readable by a broad audience because it balances faith and science.
Peter Stoner’s mathematical analysis enhances the conversation by offering a tangible, empirical foundation for comprehending the impossibility of eight distinct predictions being fulfilled by coincidence. This approach successfully reconciles skepticism and faith by showing that faith in Christ’s accomplishment of Old Testament prophesies can be based on spiritual and intellectual grounds.
The essay’s balance between intellectual rigor and spiritual encouragement is admirable. By addressing both the scientific validation of Stoner’s calculations and the broader theological implications, Deacon Frank speaks to a wide audience. Those who approach faith with skepticism are given logical, evidence-based reasons to consider the divinity of Jesus, while those already rooted in faith find their beliefs reinforced.
Particularly striking is the imagery employed to depict probability, such as the silver coins covering Texas. In addition to capturing the audience’s imagination, it emphasizes how unlikely random fulfillment is. These striking comparisons increase the essay’s effect, helping readers relate to and remember difficult mathematical ideas.
A sincere call to discipleship is made in the concluding reflection, which links faith to the invitation of the “wedding feast of the Lamb.” It reminds readers that prophecy is meant to change lives and lead people to God, not just to astonish.
This article is an invitation to delve deeply into divine truth with open minds and hearts and a monument to the strength of faith grounded in reason. History, mathematics, theology, and the mystery of God’s redemptive purpose are all masterfully woven together in this insightful and inspirational work. Good job, Deacon Frank!
Dennis
Thank you for the kind words about my article. You succinctly summed up my motivations for writing this piece. I couldn’t have said it better.
Deacon Frank
Captcrisis,
You say “they were sometimes concocted to harmonize odd or inconsistent passages”. Another way of saying that is they lied. Which belies the inerrancy of Sacred Scripture! That undermines everything. If scripture can’t be taken at face value where is the truth to be found.
If what you say is correct all of the teachings of the New Testament can be called into question. It’s a slippery slope. Which is exactly what the enemies of the Church wish to do. I’m not implying you are one of them but many have been and are being misled.
Deacon Frank
Your beef is not with me but with the Bishops (and most scholars, many of them Catholic). However one can agree with the Bishops and still be a faithful Catholic who is not being misled.
Captcricis,
The word concoct is not a word that I think the bishops of the Catholic Church would use in this instance. When you boil it down it means lying and that’s completely inconsistent with the teachings of the Church concerning the Bible’s inerrancy. And from my perspective that’s not up for debate. I wish you well on your faith journey.
Deacon Frank
Captcrisis,
Two points with respect to your support for Mark’s precedence.
The first regards the unnamed naked man running from the garden of gethsemane. Church tradition holds that the man was Mark himself. Mark who is often in scripture referred to as John Mark (many men had a Hebrew and a Greek name). He is also the man who accompanied Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey and also referenced in several letters of Paul. Tradition also holds that he is the son of the woman who owned the upper room for the last supper as well as the garden of gethsemane. It would make sense for Mark to personalize that event that Matthew did not see as important to the story.
Second, you raise the point that some sources acknowledge that Mark depicts Jesus as a bumbling faith healer as evidence to support a rough edge and by extension Mark’s precedence over Matthew. I’m not sure if I follow the connection but did want to point that modern medicine has proven this miracle of Jesus an authentic by virtue of this apparent bumbling. Science has shown that when someone who has lost their sight and regains it will see distortions in their vision though the operation has repaired the damage. What’s required within the brain is a reprogramming of signals the brain is receiving from the eye. It’s the brain that requires a little time to do so. No one at that time could have conceived of that which serves to prove Jesus’ healing of this blind man.
You are correct about church traditions, but they were sometimes concocted to harmonize odd or inconsistent passages.
It was also a church tradition that Matthew was written by the Apostle Matthew. As noted below, the Bishops point out that this position is untenable. You can hold it still — either position may be held by a faithful Catholic.
Now it would be interesting if you applied these (admirable) statistics to prophecies from the
time of Jesus to the present, factoring in Revelations, and see how happenstance plays out.
Deacon Frank,
A question that I’ve always wondered about. How can we say Jesus was born of the line of David, since Joseph was not really his father?
Thanks, Cato
Cato,
The Jewish traditions were that a child’s tribe and lineage followed that of the father. Having said that, Mary was also believed to be of the tribe of Judah and if memory serves me correctly of the line of David.
Captcrisis,
Did you know that there is evidence that attests to Matthew having written the first Gospel in the “Hebrew language”. Two church fathers make specific reference to it. The first is Bishop Papias of Hieropolis who stated Matthew wrote the first gospel in his native Hebrew tongue. Papias wrote this in about 125 AD. The second source is the great church father Jerome who was responsible for translating the Bible into one common language of Latin, called the Latin Vulgate. Jerome stated that he himself had a copy of this early version of Matthew’s Gospel written in Hebrew. So who came first. It’s still up for debate. Church Tradition from the earliest days has held that Matthew wrote his first. I know many biblical scholars disagree with that viewpoint but many don’t. You can believe whom you choose. But know that there is source material in existence that corroborate the tradition of the church that Matthew the author was an Apostle and wrote his gospel in Hebrew first.
Papias speaks of a gospel of Matthew but it is not the one that has come down to us. The account of Judas’s death (which goes on and on with gross details — you can look it up) is very different than the one we have. He also says it’s a “sayings” gospel (like the Gospel of Thomas), which our version of Matthew is not.
The oldest manuscripts of “our” Matthew are in Greek. We know that this was the original language because (as the bishops point out) it incorporates almost all of Mark — and not only that, but verbatim for long passages. If it was a translation (either from an earlier Matthew in Hebrew, or even from an earlier Mark in Hebrew) you would not have word-for-word agreement.
Crisis, without getting too much into the weeds, I will say that if the gospel written by Matthew that Papias spoke of isn’t “our” Matthew, then we have a significant contextual problem on our hands, in the form of Ignatius of Antioch.
Writing around AD 108–contemporary to Papias, and even a little earlier–he makes references that specifically draw from the Matthew we have, and are found nowhere else in the New Testament (e.g. John baptizing Jesus in order to fulfill all righteousness–Matt 3:15).
So we have Papias speaking of a gospel written by Matthew. And during the same period, we have evidence that the document we now know of as the Gospel of Matthew was in circulation in the Church and widely known.
So, if we follow your hypothesis: We have two separate documents at that time, both purported to be written by Matthew. Papias is referring to one and ONLY one of these documents. And that one, conveniently for you, has been lost.
Not buying it.
LV,
You are disbelieving Luke, who tells us that there were already “many” Gospels in existence before he even began research on his own (1:1). Where are they? They’ve all been lost.
Crisis,
You’re trying to move the goalposts. Again.
We’re not talking about the other accounts of which Luke was aware (Mark, Matthew).
We’re talking about Papias, and the identity of the gospel written by Matthew he speaks of.
Which, you claim, is NOT the Gospel of Matthew we have today, in spite of the evidence that very document was widely known and in circulation in the Church at that time–and thus, would have been well-known to Papias, as well.
And yet he made no effort to distinguish this second hypothetical document of yours from the Gospel of Matthew that everyone in the Church knew of, and would have thought him to be referencing.
You are grasping at straws, and have nothing to back your claims but wishful thinking.
LV:
As I pointed out, the “Matthew” that Papias was referring to was apparently not the Matthew we know.
My viewpoint is that of the majority of scholars. For an example of a mainstream scholar who says this, see Koster, “Introduction to the New Testament”.
As Luke points out, there were “many” (not just two) earlier gospels. And they’ve been lost. Some hints remain — the “Q” document, and the “signs gospel” that might be a source for John. What probably happened was that the Catholic Church, when it became dominant, crushed all learning that was not consistent with its theology. Books were either burnt, or left uncopied and perished.
I recommend “The Complete Gospels: Annotated Scholar’s Version”, which contains all 20 of the known gospels (or scraps of gospels). It does not contain any other version of Matthew.
As for the Church’s smothering of learning generally, see Nixey, “The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World”.
Captcrisis,
You point out that there were other gospels written. In fact there were many. All toll in excess of 50. But by the end of the first century there was little dispute in the Church that there were but four that were deemed canonical and that the first of these written was Matthew’s. That’s not disputable based upon Church Tradition.
You point out that modern biblical scholars see in the verbatim wording of Mark and Matthew that one was copied. And I agree with that. But you and others conclude that that the longer more embellished account must be the copied version. Another hypothesis is why couldn’t it be the other way around. That Mark who is very expeditious in his use of words, by virtue of how his gospel is written, eliminated what he felt was superfluous. It’s another way of looking at it.
Deacon Frank
Thanks for your quick reply.
One reason Mark is considered to be the source for Matthew is that there are rough edges in Mark that are not in Matthew (or Luke). For example, Jesus is exposed as a bumbling faith healer who needs two tries to heal a blind man (8:22 – 26). That’s in Mark but not in Matthew. There’s the apparent non sequitur of the man running away naked from Gethsemane (14:51). Again, in Mark, not in Matthew. Then there’s Jesus apparently getting his Old Testament history wrong, confusing Ahimelech with Abiathar (2:26) — not in Matthew. Also, Mark contains no birth narrative. Why would he leave it out if he was copying from Matthew?
Great article, Deacon! Thanks!
I’d advise you to read Matthew’s Gospel and the 54 major prophecies he confirms as fulfilled by Jesus. I’ll take the testimony of an eyewitness who went to his death for his faith in Christ….
Matthew (the apostle) didn’t write that gospel. As the bishops point out, the gospel takes most of its material from Mark, and an eyewitness wouldn’t rely on a second-hand source.
“The ancient tradition that the author was the disciple and apostle of Jesus named Matthew (see Mt 10:3) is untenable because the gospel is based, in large part, on the Gospel according to Mark (almost all the verses of that gospel have been utilized in this), and it is hardly likely that a companion of Jesus would have followed so extensively an account that came from one who admittedly never had such an association rather than rely on his own memories.”
See
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/0
The Old Testament “prophesies” are either wrenched out of context, or mistranslations. And the New Testament “fulfillments” are fabrications.
A lot to pick apart here, but let’s take Bethlehem as being the birthplace of Jesus Somehow the Evangelists had to get Jesus born in the same city as David.
No, Quirinius was not Governor of Syria at the time.
No, there was no census ordered at the time. The Romans were unlikely to order one, aware that Jews considered a census to be a curse, unless ordered directly by God (as in Numbers). See this discussion at
https://ww.bibleodyssey.org/articles/counting-and-censuses-in-the-hebrew-bible/
No, even if there was a census and devout Jews complied, there was no tradition that someone go to their 28-times-great-grandfather’s city to be counted. A ridiculous idea anyway. Do you know where your 28-times-great-grandfather was born?
No, Herod didn’t order the murder of all first-born sons. He wasn’t King at that point anyway.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops make some of these points:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/luke/2
Captcrisis,
King Herod was alive at that time. The problem is our calendar that we use today was based upon a 6th century monk by the name of Dionysius who calculated the birth of Jesus based upon records available at the time. He happened to be 6 or 7 years off. not bad considering. Jesus was likely born in 6 or 7 BC and likely died in 30 AD.
I feel sorry for you. You spend a considerable time and effort on this website trying to discredit many of the writers for this site but ultimately it seems your true aim is to discredit our faith. May God give you the grace to open your heart….
Deacon Frank
Why post something that can so easily be picked apart, by our own bishops no less?
It reads like something from that era before 1943 when Catholics were not allowed to apply their brains to what appear to be scriptural inaccuracies. (That era ended when Pius XII issued Divino Afflante Spiritu.)
Crisis – you should apply your brain and read the rebuttals to your claims: https://www.catholic.com/audio/scw/the-nativity-of-our-lord-midnight-mass-year-a
As usual, you’re sadly mistaken.
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