It might surprise you to read this but there are more verses in the Bible devoted to prophecy than to any other subject. Approximately one-fourth of the Bible is prophecy. Twenty-five percent of Scripture is a word from the Lord concerning the present or the future.4

The aspect of prophecy that led me to become a Christian was that which concerned the future.  I knew that if God did exist, He could predict what is to come.  And I knew that if the Bible was a true Word from God, then it could do the same.  To add to this, I knew that if Jesus Christ was the Son of God, then He would have been prophesied about in the Old Testament.  And that is exactly what we find.

Over and over and over again, the writers of the Old Testament prophesied about a coming Messiah who would die to save men from their sins.  Over and over and over again, they wrote about a coming King who would sit on the throne of His father David and reign eternally.  They told us about the Son of God Who would overthrow all the nations and usher in a time of holiness and peace on the earth.

By some estimates, the Old Testament contains 60 major Messianic prophecies and approximately 270 ramifications or versions of them.5  The chances of one man fulfilling even eight of them is about one in ten to the seventeenth power.  That is 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000.  To understand something of the enormity of that number, Peter Stoner gives the following illustration in his book, Science Speaks:

[Suppose that] we take 100,000,000,000,000,000 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 eight prophecies [about Jesus] 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.6

The amazing thing about this is that the Old Testament Prophets gave more than 8 prophecies about Jesus; they gave 270.  And they all came true.7  That was one of the things that convinced me of the truth of Christianity.  I pray that it will do the same for you.

In this article, we will look at just a few of those 270 prophecies.

I. JESUS CHRIST IN PSALM 2

The Book of Psalms was written by several authors over a wide range of time.  Moses wrote Psalm 90 around 1400 B. C. and Psalm 126 was written during the Jewish exile in the late 6^th Century B.C.8  Some time during this period, Psalm 2 was written.  The author is unnamed9 but the Psalm contains a popular prophecy about Jesus used many times in the New Testament.

Why are the nations in an uproar
And the peoples devising a vain thing?
The kings of the earth take their stand
And the rulers take counsel together
Against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying,
“Let us tear their fetters apart
And cast away their cords from us!”

He who sits in the heavens laughs,
The Lord scoffs at them.
Then He will speak to them in His anger
And terrify them in His fury, saying,
“But as for Me, I have installed My King,
Upon Zion, My holy mountain.”

“I will surely tell of the decree of the Lord:
He said to Me, ‘You are My Son,
Today I have begotten You.
‘Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance,
And the very ends of the earth as Your possession.
‘You shall break them with a rod of iron,
You shall shatter them like earthenware.’”

Now therefore, O kings, show discernment;
Take warning, O judges of the earth.
Worship the Lord with reverence
And rejoice with trembling.
Do homage to the Son, that He not become angry,
And you perish in the way,
For His wrath may soon be kindled.
How blessed are all who take refuge in Him!

While Christians today can see the references to Jesus, it is helpful to mention that Christians in the past could see them as well.  In Acts 4:25-26, the Apostles Peter and John quote this passage and relate it to Jesus.  In Acts 13:33, the Apostle Paul quotes it in a synagogue in Pisidian Antioch in connection with Him.  Hebrews 1:5 quotes it when describing the majesty of the Son of God and Hebrews 5:5 refers to it when it calls Jesus our great High Priest.  Revelation 12:5 borrows imagery from Psalm 2 when it says, “And she gave birth to a son . . . who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron.”  In fact, one Old Testament Scholar said this about the New Testament use of Psalm 2:

Psalm 2 is one of the psalms most frequently quoted and alluded to in the New Testament; from the perspective of early Christianity, it was a messianic psalm par excellence.10

But what does Psalm 2 say about the Messiah?  Specifically, what does it prophesy about Jesus?

First, it says that Jesus is the Messiah.  Verse 2 says, “The kings of the earth take their stand . . . against the Lord and His Anointed.”  The word for “Anointed” in Hebrew is mashiach or “Messiah.”  In Greek, it is Christos or “Christ.”  In English, it means just what the New American Standard Bible says it means: “Anointed One.”11

In ancient days, a king would begin his term of office by having oil poured on top of his head.  This would symbolize that he has been set apart or “anointed” to rule on the throne.12  In Psalm 2:2, the author says that Jesus would be set apart to rule over the throne of Israel.  He will be “the one anointed by God and empowered by God’s spirit to deliver His people and establish His kingdom.”13

Second, Psalm 2 says that Jesus is God’s Son.  Verse 7 says,

I will surely tell of the decree of the Lord: He said to Me, “You are My Son, today I have begotten You.”

This verse sounds a little confusing but Hebrews 1:5 says that this is a reference to the Trinity.  In looking at the context of Hebrews 1, it tells us that Jesus is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being (v. 3).  And it says that, after Jesus had made purification for our sins, He sat down at the right hand of God and showed Himself to be “much better than the angels” (v. 4).  Then Hebrews 1:5 quotes Psalm 2:7 and says,

For to which of the angels did [God] ever say,
“You are My Son,
Today I have begotten You?”

In other words, Jesus is totally unique in that He is the only Person to have ever been called the Son of God.  It is not the scope of this article to discuss all of the theology behind the word “begotten” but, suffice it to say, Psalm 2 does not say that Jesus would be born like a normal human being is born.  It says that He will be “begotten.”14

Third, Psalm 2 says that Jesus will receive the nations for His inheritance.  In other words, He will rule the earth.  Verses 8-9 say,

Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance,
And the very ends of the earth as Your possession.
You shall break them with a rod of iron,
You shall shatter them like earthenware.

This is a prophecy about Jesus that has not been fulfilled yet, but a time is coming when it will be.  A time is coming when Jesus will return to rule the very ends of the earth.  A time is coming when He will break all other authority like an earthenware pot breaks when it is thrown to the ground.

The Book of Revelation says that Jesus will one day come back to rule the earth for a thousand years (20:1-6).  After that, the Lord will create a new heaven and a new earth (21:1-8) where there will be no sun or moon, for the glory of God will illumine it and the Lamb will be its lamp (21:23).  But before all of that happens, Jesus will return to judge the nations.  As He does so,

From His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty (19:15).

II. JESUS CHRIST IN ISAIAH 53

If Psalm 2 is one of the most quoted Old Testament passages in the New Testament, Isaiah 53 is one of the most quoted Old Testament passages in the modern church.  From start to finish, it covers the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus in tremendous detail.  So much so that, when my wife and I were in Israel, our guide said that unbelieving Jews today avoid reading it in their synagogues because it sounds “too Christian.”  It was written sometime during the 8^th-7^th Century B.C., almost a thousand years before the life of Christ.15

It would be best to quote Isaiah 53 in its entirety to demonstrate how explicit it is in its references to Jesus.

Who has believed our message?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot,
And like a root out of parched ground;
He has no stately form or majesty
That we should look upon Him,
Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.
He was despised and forsaken of men,
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
And like one from whom men hide their face
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

Surely our griefs He Himself bore,
And our sorrows He carried;
Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.
But He was pierced through for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,
And by His scourging we are healed.
All of us like sheep have gone astray,
Each of us has turned to his own way;
But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.

He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He did not open His mouth;
Like a lamb that is led to slaughter,
And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers,
So He did not open His mouth.
By oppression and judgment He was taken away;
And as for His generation, who considered
That He was cut off out of the land of the living
For the transgression of my people, to
Whom the stroke was due?
His grave was assigned with wicked men,
Yet He was with a rich man in His death,
Because He had done no violence,
Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.

But the Lord was pleased
To crush Him, putting Him to grief;
If He would render Himself as a guilt offering,
He will see His offspring,
He will prolong His days,
And the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand.
As a result of the anguish of His soul,
He will see it and be satisfied;
By His knowledge the Righteous One,
My Servant, will justify the many,
As He will bear their iniquities.
Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great,
And He will divide the booty with the strong;
Because He poured out Himself to death,
And was numbered with the transgressors;
Yet He Himself bore the sin of many,
And interceded for the transgressors.

Due to the size of this chapter, it is not possible to look at every single prophecy that it gives.  To help explain its contents, though, here are some aspects of Jesus’ life that it talks about.

First, Isaiah 53 mentions Jesus’ rejection.  Several statements in this passage demonstrate that Jesus was forsaken by men.  Verse 2 says that there was nothing about His appearance that would attract others to Him.  Verse 3 says that “He was despised and forsaken of man.”  It also says that He was acquainted with grief and sorrow and He was despised “like one from whom men hide their face.”   Verse 7 says that “He was oppressed and He was afflicted.”

Edward J. Young explains these verses well when he writes,

[These verses] do not describe the physical appearance of Christ. On that subject the entire Bible is silent. Rather, the purpose is to show that the appearance of the servant was such that man, judging from a wrong perspective, would completely misjudge him.16

Numerous passages in the New Testament mention Jesus’ rejection at the hands of the Jews.  As they did with the prophets who came before Him, the city of Jerusalem did not accept Jesus’ ministry.17  They left Him homeless18 and accused Him of being demon-possessed19 and a Samaritan.20  It was ultimately the Jews who had Jesus crucified.21

Second, Isaiah 53 mentions Jesus’ death.  With supernatural insight, the prophet describes how the Son of God will die.  Verse 5 says “He was pierced through for our transgressions,” describing the process of Jesus’ hands and feet being nailed to the cross.  The verse continues to say that “He was crushed for our iniquities,” showing that His death would be a painful and conclusive one.  When Jesus said, “Father, into Your hands I commit My Spirit,”22 there was no doubt in anyone’s minds that His earthly life was over.23

Verse 7 says that “like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, so He did not open His mouth.”  At Jesus’ trial before Pilate, Mark 15:4-5 tells us,

Then Pilate questioned Him again, saying, “Do You not answer? See how many charges they bring against You!” But Jesus made no further answer; so Pilate was amazed.

Isaiah 53:9 gives us the most explicit statement about Jesus’ death.

His grave was assigned with wicked men,
Yet He was with a rich man in His death.

As everyone knows, Jesus was crucified between two robbers24 or between two “wicked men” but He was also buried in a brand new tomb.  The tomb itself was owned by “a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who himself had also become a disciple of Jesus” (Matt 27:57-60).  Furthermore, Nicodemus wrapped Jesus’ body in about a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes (Jn 19:39-40), a procedure reserved for only the very rich.  Jesus was definitely assigned a grave with wicked men and yet He was with a rich man in His death.

Third, Isaiah 53 mentions Jesus suffering the wrath of God.  Several years ago, when the “Passion” movie came out, a controversy erupted over who killed Jesus.  Was it the Jews?  Was it the Romans?  Was it someone else?  Isaiah 53 puts that controversy to rest when it clearly says that God killed Jesus.25

Verse 4 says that Jesus was “smitten of God, and afflicted.”  The Hebrew word for “smitten” here actually refers to a disease such as leprosy.  Its use in this passage is figurative, meaning that Isaiah is not saying that Jesus will die of leprosy.  Rather, he is saying that Jesus will die in such a way that others will wonder what He did to deserve such a painful death,26 and it will be from the hand of God Himself.  To quote from John N. Oswalt:

So here the people had seen the Servant afflicted with some hateful disease and had wondered to themselves what terrible thing he had done to deserve that. Now they know that it is they who deserved these fearful consequences. This is metaphorical language, as the following verse shows. As noted above, all kinds of suffering are ascribed to the Servant in order to emphasize the totality of his mediatorial work.27

Verse 6 says that “the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.”  Again, God is the One Who punishes Jesus.  Verse 10 explains it this way: But the Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief . . .

Not only does Isaiah say that Jesus will bear the wrath of God, but he says that God will be pleased to punish Jesus.  The Lord will be pleased to crush Him and put Him to grief.  Just like a falling rock crushes a bug, the anger and hatred that God feels towards our sin crushed the human body of Jesus on the cross.  And the terrifying thing about this is that Isaiah says “the Lord was pleased” in it.

To explain this, it is important to remember what Jesus’ death actually accomplished: the reconciliation between God and man.  While the moment of crucifixion itself did not please God,28 the long-term consequences of that crucifixion did.29  Jesus’ death brought mankind into a right relationship with God.  Through Jesus’ selfless sacrifice, God can now “be just and the justifier.”30  He can be righteous because He punished sin on the cross and He can be gracious because He offers forgiveness to those who accept His Son and turn from their sin.

Fourth, Isaiah 53 mentions how Jesus saves others.  Most of the focus of this passage is on this aspect of Jesus’ life.  Jesus bore the wrath of God for others.  He was rejected and forsaken of God so that those who believe in Him might not have to be.31  Verse 4 says that Jesus bore our griefs and carried our sorrows.  Verse 5 says that He was crushed for our iniquities and chastened for our well-being and scourged so that we may be healed.  Verse 6 says that all of our iniquities have fallen on Him.

Verse 8 says that He was cut off for the transgression of His people.  Verse 11 says,

By his knowledge the Righteous One,
My Servant, will justify the many,
As He will bear their iniquities.

Verse 12 says,

Yet He Himself bore the sin of many,
And interceded for the transgressors.

Isaiah 53 makes it crystal clear that Jesus would be a suffering Messiah Who will pay for the wrong-doing of others.  He Himself would be sinless.  “He had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in His mouth” (v. 9).  Yet, with His sinless life, He would allow God to punish Him for sinners.  And He would give sinners who believe in Him the reward of His sinless life.

Here, in Isaiah 53, God gives us a prophecy that should leave us speechless.  Some of the most important aspects of Jesus’ life32 are spelled out in incredible detail seven centuries before He is even born.

III. JESUS CHRIST IN DANIEL 7

The Book of Daniel is chock full of future prophecy.  From chapter 2 when Daniel interprets King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream until chapter 12 when Daniel hears about the “abomination of desolation” (v.11), the entire book discusses things that are yet to come.  This is not surprising when one considers the main theme of the book.  In the words of Gleason Archer,

The principal theological emphasis in Daniel is the absolute sovereignty of Yahweh, the God of Israel. At a time when it seemed to all the world that his cause was lost and that the gods of the heathen had triumphed, causing his temple to be burned to the ground, it pleased the Lord strikingly and unmistakably to display his omnipotence. The theme running through the whole book is that the fortunes of kings and the affairs of men are subject to God’s decrees, and that he is able to accomplish his will despite the most determined opposition of the mightiest potentates on earth.33

The Book of Daniel was written in the 6^th Century B.C.,34 so any statements it makes about Jesus are 500 years prior to His lifetime.  One of those statements is found in Daniel 7:13-14:

I kept looking in the night visions,
And behold, with the clouds of heaven
One like a Son of Man was coming,
And He came up to the Ancient of Days
And was presented before Him.

And to Him was given dominion,
Glory and a kingdom,
That all the peoples, nations and men of every language
Might serve Him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion
Which will not pass away;
And His kingdom is one
Which will not be destroyed.

Daniel 7 gives a vision four beasts that represent four kingdoms.  Verse 17 says, “These great beasts, which are four in number, are four kings will arise from the earth.”  Looking from our point in time, each kingdom has already come and gone but, looking from Daniel’s point in time, they were all to come in the future.  The kingdoms are, in order of appearance: Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome.35

When I was in Seminary, I preached a sermon on this passage for our Preaching Lab entitled, “A Contest of Kingdoms.”  I spent a considerable amount of time demonstrating which kingdom each beast represented and how each kingdom conquered the one before.  When I finished, to my dismay, the professor told me these memorable words: “Leave the beasts in the zoo!  Preach the blood!”  What he meant was, “Don’t spend so much time on the smaller characters in this prophecy.  Talk about Jesus!  Talk about the Son of God!”  That is what I want to do here.

In verses 13-14, Daniel’s vision tells us that when all of these kingdoms have come and gone,36 the one true King will reign forever.  As seen in Psalm 2, Jesus will be given the nations as His inheritance and the ends of the earth as His possession.  He will break them with a rod of iron and shatter them like earthenware.

Several statements in these verses demonstrate this.  One of them is in Daniel 7:13, where it says:

I kept looking in the night visions,
And behold, with the clouds of heaven
One like a Son of Man was coming . . .

Revelation 19:11-16 says that when Jesus returns to the earth, it will be from Heaven.  Furthermore, Matthew 24:30 says that Jesus will return “on the clouds of the sky.”  Matthew 26:64 has “on the clouds of Heaven” and Mark 13:26 says, “Coming in clouds with great power and glory.”  The Bible authors state that Jesus, when He comes back to the earth, will come back the same way that He left the earth: in the sky.37

Furthermore, Daniel 7:13 says that Jesus is “One like a Son of Man.”  The phrase “Son of Man” was used 96 times in the New Testament, almost exclusively by Jesus Himself.  It was used 32 times in Matthew, 14 times in Mark, 26 times in Luke, 12 times in John, 7 times in Acts, 1 time in Hebrews, and 2 times in Revelation.38  In each of these instances, Jesus made it very clear to His audience: He was the One that Daniel was referring to in this prophecy.  He was “the Son of Man.”

Another statement of prophecy about Jesus in Daniel 7 is found in the latter half of verse 13.

And He came up to the Ancient of Days
And was presented before Him.

The Bible is very clear that man cannot come into God’s presence on his own initiative.  Due to our sinful nature39 and due to God’s holy nature,40 none of us can approach “the Ancient of Days” and live.  Isaiah 6:5 gives the response that every man would give if he was led into the presence of God:

Woe is me, for I am ruined!
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I live among a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.

Yet Daniel 7:13 says that the Son of Man (Jesus) was led into the presence of the Ancient of Days (God) and lived.  He walked right up to the throne of God as if He belonged there.  How could He do that?!  How could He approach the One Who made Isaiah say, “Woe is me, for I am ruined”?!

Jesus could do that because He was sinless.41  Jesus could do that because He had the same holy nature that God had.42  He could walk right up to the throne of God because He did belong there, because He was/is God.43

One more statement from Daniel 7 proves that this prophecy refers to Jesus Christ.  It is found in verse 14:

And to Him was given dominion,
Glory and a kingdom,
That all the peoples, nations and men of every language
Might serve Him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion
Which will not pass away;
And His kingdom is one
Which will not be destroyed.

A lot has already been said about Jesus conquering and ruling the nations, but this verse adds an extra piece of information: Jesus will rule forever.  Not only will the Son of Man be given dominion, glory, and a kingdom, but He will be given an everlasting dominion which will never pass away or be destroyed.  As the Son of Man, Jesus could die for the sins of man.  As the Son of God, Jesus could live and rule over His kingdom forever.

While the kingdoms of Babylon and Greece and Medo-Persia and Rome have come and gone, Jesus’ kingdom will never go.  While the nations that exist today will one day disappear, Jesus’ kingdom will never disappear.  It has yet to come.  We are still waiting for His return.  But when He does return, He will never leave.  He will rule eternally.

IV. JESUS CHRIST IN ZECHARIAH

Zechariah is the second-to-last book in the Old Testament.  It is one of the Minor Prophets, falling between Haggai and Malachi, so it is typically ignored by most Christian audiences.  The book itself was written around the same time as Daniel, in the 6^th Century B.C.,44 and it was written for the purpose of comforting Israel during their exile in Babylon.

Interestingly enough, Zechariah was quoted some 40 times by different authors in the New Testament45 because one way that Zechariah comforted his Jewish brethren was with the reminder that God was not through with them.  Even though they had sinned to the point of exile, the Lord would bring them back into the Promised Land.  The Lord would restore their nation and their people.  He would bring them a Messiah.

One of the prophecies related to that Messiah is found in Zechariah 12:10.

I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.

While the other prophecies that we have looked at cover large portions of Scripture, this one is only a few sentences.  It is, however, no less profound than the others.  To unpack it a little bit, Zechariah says that at some point in the future, God will act to save Israel.  He gives a Word from the Lord which says, “I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication . . .”  The house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem refer to Jews in the future.  The Spirit of grace and supplication refers to the Holy Spirit.

So, at some point in the future, the Lord will pour out His Holy Spirit on the Jews and save them.  This obviously does not refer to every individual Israelite but rather to the nation as a whole.46  This is the same prophecy that the Apostle Paul gives us in Romans 11:25-27:

For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery – so that you will not be wise in your own estimation – that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written,

“The Deliverer will come from Zion,
He will remove ungodliness from Jacob.”

“This is My covenant with them,
When I take away their sins.”

This prophecy of a future salvation for the Jews is also given in Ezekiel 39:29.

“I will not hide My face from them any longer, for I will have poured out My Spirit on the house of Israel,” declares the Lord God.

Some time in the future, God will pour out His Spirit on the Jews to give them a heart of flesh instead of a heart of stone.47  As He is saving large numbers of Gentiles today, a day will come when His Spirit will save a large number of Jews.48  As one commentator put it, “Because of the convicting work of God’s Spirit, Israel will turn to the Messiah with mourning.”49

The Prophet Zechariah goes on with this prophecy in 12:10 and tells us something about Jesus Christ.  He writes, “I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced . . .”  After the Lord pours out His Spirit on the Jews or, rather, at the same time that the Lord pours out His Spirit on the Jews, they will look to Jesus.

The way that Zechariah refers to Jesus is very interesting.  He refers to Jesus in the first person pronoun: “Me.”  In other words, as God is talking, He says that the Jews will look “on Me whom they have pierced.”  They will look to God whom they have killed.  They will look to their Lord whom they crucified.  Acts 20:28 gives a similar statement when it says:

Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.50

Just as the Son of God purchased the church with His own blood by dying for their sins, the Jews in Zechariah’s prophecy can look “on Me whom they have pierced.”

Zechariah does not come right out and say that the Jews will look “on Me whom they have crucified” because crucifixion had not been invented yet or it had recently been invented at the time of his writing.  There is evidence that Alexander the Great used crucifixion during the 4^th Century B.C.  According to Josephus, King Cyrus threatened to crucify rebels against his government in Zechariah’s day.51 But there is no evidence that the Jews in the 6^th Century B.C. knew of this form of punishment or that, if they did, the Hebrew language had a word for it.  So Zechariah, like Isaiah before him,52 simply says that Jesus was “pierced.”

Finally, the prophet tells us what happens after the Holy Spirit is poured out on Israel and they look to Jesus: “and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.”  The realization that they crucified their Messiah will cause the Jews to weep.  Knowing that their rejection of Jesus led to His untimely death will cause them to mourn “as one mourns for an only son.”  But their tears will be tears of repentance.  Their sorrow will be Godly sorrow “leading to salvation.”53

CONCLUSION

While the study of prophecy scares some people, it tends to fascinate others. Two recent examples should demonstrate this. In 1970, Hal Lindsey published a book entitled, The Late Great Planet Earth, 54 which was written as a comparison of Biblical prophecies to current events in the world.  The New York Times considered it to be the “Number One Non-Fiction Bestseller of the Decade” and it sold over 15 million copies and was translated into several languages.55

More recently, in 1995, Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins published the first of 13 fictional books called The Left Behind Series.56 The books told the story of a group of Christians who lived through the Great Tribulation to see Jesus Christ return to the earth. The series was a sensational blockbuster, selling millions upon millions of books and spending weeks at the top of the New York Times and USA Today’s Best-Sellers lists.57

This type of interest in prophecy seems to be nothing more than superficial.  It appears that most people just want to hear a good story and there is no better story than that of the end of the world.  But prophecy has more important purposes than this and one purpose it has is to point to Jesus Christ.  Just as the Law was given to “become our tutor to lead us to Christ,”58 prophecy has been given to lead us to Christ by telling us of His coming.

After His resurrection from the dead, Jesus met two of His disciples on the road to Emmaus.  During that encounter, Luke 24:27, 32 says,

Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures . . . [The disciples] said to one another, “Were not our hearts burning within us while He was speaking to us on the road, while He was explaining the Scriptures to us?”

My hope is that this article would help you to have the same response as you read about Jesus in the Old Testament.

 

 

1. Millard J. Erickson, The Concise Dictionary of Christian Theology (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2001) 162. [↩]
2. Lewis Sperry Chafer, Systematic Theology, Vols. 7 & 8 (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 1976) 257. [↩]
3. J. I. Packer, Concise Theology (Carol Stream, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1993) 102. In the words of J. I. Packer, “Prophecy involved prediction (foretelling), but usually this was done in a context of declaring God’s warnings and exhortations to his covenant people here and now (foretelling).” [↩]
4. J. Dwight Pentecost, Things to Come: A Study in Biblical Eschatology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1964) vii. [↩]
5. Josh McDowell, More than a Carpenter (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1977) 102. [↩]
6. Quoted in More than a Carpenter, 108. [↩]
7. Or, to be more accurate, some of them came true and some of them are yet to come true.  Some of the prophecies concerning Jesus refer to His second return to the earth which has not happened yet. [↩]
8. John MacArthur, The MacArthur Bible Commentary (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2006) 595. [↩]
9. There is no sub-script in Psalm 2 telling us who wrote it but Acts 4:25 ascribes it to King David. [↩]
10. Peter C. Craigie & Marvin E. Tate, Psalms 1-50 in Word Biblical Commentary, Second Edition (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2004) 68. [↩]
11. Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old & New Testament Words, ed. by William D. Mounce (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006) 986. [↩]
12. Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Dictionary, ed. by Ronald F. Youngblood (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1995) 826. [↩]
13. Ibid. [↩]
14. For a full discussion of the term “begotten” or “eternal generation” as it is also called, see John Frame’s The Doctrine of God (Philipsburg, N.J.: P & R Publishing, 2002) 707-714. Also see “The Deity of Jesus Christ” in this edition of JTST. [↩]
15. The MacArthur Bible Commentary, 755. [↩]
16. The Book of Isaiah, Volume 3 (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1972) 342. [↩]
17. Matt 23:27. [↩]
18. Matt 8:20. [↩]
19. Matt 9:34. [↩]
20. Jn 8:48. [↩]
21. Matthew 27:20-23 says that at Jesus’ trail before Pilate: “The chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas and to put Jesus to death. But the governor said to them, ‘Which of the two do you want me to release for you?’ And they said, ‘Barabbas.’ Pilate said to them, ‘Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?’ They all said, ‘Crucify Him!’ And he said, ‘Why, what evil has He done?’ But they kept shouting all the more, saying, ‘Crucify Him!’ [↩]
22. Lk 23:46. [↩]
23. This can be seen in that, after His death, “one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out” (Jn 19:34). [↩]
24. Matt 27:38. [↩]
25. For more on this, see Stephen Caveness’ article, “God Killed Jesus” in Issue 5 of JTST. [↩]
26. John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah: Chapters 40-66 in The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998) 386. [↩]
27. Ibid., 386-387. [↩]
28. The moment pleased God in the sense that it was His plan all along to punish His Son in the place of sinners. It did not please God in the sense that He enjoyed it or relished in the opportunity to punish His Son. [↩]
29. 2 Corinthians 5:18-19 talks about this when it says, “Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.” [↩]
30. Rom 3:26. [↩]
31. Romans 5:18-20 says, “So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.” [↩]
32. Minus the virgin birth and the resurrection and a few other important aspects. [↩]
33. Daniel in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Volume 7 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1985) 8. [↩]
34. The MacArthur Study Bible, 947. [↩]
35. For more information about these kingdoms and how they are seen in this passage, see John Walvoord’s Daniel: The Key to Prophetic Revelation (Chicago: Moody Press, 1071) 145-177. [↩]
36. Technically, Jesus will come during a revised version of the fourth beast: the Roman Empire. To quote from John Walvoord, “In a similar way, in his prophetic vision, Daniel takes human history up to the first coming of Christ when the Roman Empire was in sway, and then leaps to the end of the age when, in fulfillment of prophecy, the fourth empire will be revived and suffer its fatal judgment at the hands of Christ at His second coming to the earth. This interpretation, though not without its problems, allows an accurate and detailed interpretation of this prophecy and is genuinely predictive” (Ibid., 170). [↩]
37. Acts 1:11. [↩]
38. The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, Volume Five (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1978) 485. The few times where this expression was used by someone other than Jesus are John 12:34; Acts 7:56; Hebrews 2:6; and Revelation 1:23; 14:14. [↩]
39. Ephesians 2:1-2 says, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.” [↩]
40. Isaiah 6:3 says that “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts, The whole earth is full of His glory.” [↩]
41. Heb 4:15. [↩]
42. Jn 10:30; Col 2:9. [↩]
43. In John 14:7-9, Jesus affirmed that He was of the same nature as God and went so far as to say, “If you have known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.” Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father?’” [↩]
44. The MacArthur Bible Commentary, 1949. [↩]
45. F. Duane Lindsey, Zechariah in The Bible Knowledge Commentary, Volume One (Colorado Springs, Col.: Victor, 2004) 1545. [↩]
46. There has been a lot of discussion throughout the years as to what it means for God to save “Israel.” Since God only saves sinners who place their faith in Christ and repent, this verse obviously cannot mean that the Lord will save every individual Israelite regardless of whether they believe in Jesus or not. It must refer to the Lord preserving the Jewish race unto the end and His saving a large number of them during the Tribulation (see Rev 7:4-8).  For more information on this, see Barry E. Horner’s Future Israel: Why Christian Anti-Judaism Must be Challenged (Nashville, Tenn.: B & H Academic, 2004). [↩]
47. Ez 36:26. [↩]
48. Revelation 7:4-8 describes this day when it says that 144,000 Israelites will be saved during the Great Tribulation. Specifically, it says that 12,000 will be saved from each of the 12 tribes of Israel: Judah, Reuben, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Manasseh, Simeon, Levi, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin. [↩]
49. Kenneth L. Barker, Zechariah in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Volume 7, 683. [↩]
50. Italics mine. [↩]
51. J. D. David, Davis Dictionary of the Bible, Fourth Revised Edition (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1956) 155. [↩]
52. Isaiah 53:5 says, “But He was pierced through for our transgressions . . .” [↩]
53. 2 Cor 7:10. [↩]
54. Hal Lindsey & Carole C. Carlson, The Late Great Planet Earth (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1970). [↩]
55. This information is found on the Front and Back Cover of The Late Great Planet Earth. [↩]
56. The first book to come out in the series was Left Behind (Carol Stream, Ill.: Tyndale House, 1995). [↩]
57. This information is found on the Front and Back Covers of various books in the series as well as at the www.leftbehind.com website. [↩]
58. Gal 3:24. [↩]