Jesus Christ: The Son of Man

4. Jesus: The Prophecies Fulfilled

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In this chapter, we'll be looking at a handful of prophecies that Jesus Christ fulfilled.

Jesus was foretold by over three hundred prophecies, all scattered throughout the Old Testament in cases where God revealed to people of his choice that the man who would restore all humanity to himself was coming.

Before we dive, in, an interesting stat I gleaned from a CBN article:

Mathematically speaking, the odds of anyone fulfilling this amount of prophecy are staggering. Mathematicians put it this way: 1 person fulfilling 8 prophecies: 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000. 1 person fulfilling 48 prophecies: 1 chance in 10 to the 157th power. 1 person fulfilling 300+ prophecies: Only Jesus!

Check out this link to get an overview of a number of these fulfilled prophecies: http://jesusplusnothing.com/jesus66books.htm

We'll be focusing on just a few of the prophecies fulfilled by Jesus, namely:

· The Messiah would be born of the seed of woman.

· He would be a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

· He was illustrated in the life of Joseph.

· He was exemplified in the life of Isaac.

The Seed of Woman

According to Genesis 3:15, the Messiah- the Saviour of humanity-would be decidedly human, and would descend from the lineage of the original sinners, Adam and Eve.

The Messiah functions as the mediator between God and humanity. A mediator is one who intervenes between two persons who are at variance (divided) with a view to reconcile them. A mediator also can also be defined as an ambassador, one who acts as a medium of communication between two parties. (Paraphrased from Easton's Bible Dictionary)

We know that our sin separates from God and allies us with the devil. God creates a solution to our problem in the person of the Messiah.

The Messiah couldn't have mediated for humanity if he himself wasn't human.

"Because God's children are human beings-made of flesh and blood-the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of the devil, who had the power of death. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but Abraham's offspring.

For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people." Hebrews 2:14-17

And he couldn't have mediated humanity to God if he wasn't God (we established in the previous chapter that Jesus is God the Son).

Both eternal humanity and divinity are absolutely necessary for the purpose of the Messiah, which is restoring humanity to God. If you take away either one of these natures, Jesus ceases to be the Savior of the world.

Jesus is the only one who is both God and man, and who has died in place for all humanity, so that we might live through him. This is why he says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me." (John 14:6)

This unquestionably contrasts a doctrine of Jehovah's Witnesses, who claim that Jesus was created by God as the archangel Michael before the physical world existed and is a lesser-but still powerful-god. This takes away the God-nature of Jesus, and is thoroughly unbiblical.