number beyond comprehension. 23 In other words, the odds that the following things could have happened by chance is 1 in 100 quadrillion: A man who was born in Bethlehem would have a prophet go before him and prepare his way, that he would be a ruler who entered Jerusalem on a donkey, be betrayed by a friend and that betrayal would result in wounding his hands; that he would be betrayed for exactly 30 pieces of silver, and those 30 pieces of silver would later be thrown on the Temple floor and used to buy a potter’s field; when on trial for his life—though innocent—he would make no defense, and he would be one of the few men in all of history who was killed by crucifixion. The odds of all of that happening to any man are 1 in 10 17 .
To give you a sense of how large a number one hundred quadrillion is, consider this: if you had 100 quadrillion dollars, and you spent 1 million dollars every second of every day, it would take you 3,168 years to spend all of that money.
Or, if you stacked $1 dollar bills on top of each other, 100 quadrillion dollars would make 73 separate stacks of bills stretching the 93 million miles from earth to the sun (pretending that the heat of the sun didn’t incinerate the paper bills). Let’s say that somewhere in those 73 stacks is a single dollar bill marked with a black “X”. Imagine a ladder that leans up against those stacks of bills and stretches all the way to the sun. Now, get on that ladder and start climbing. Stop anywhere you want along the 93 million miles and pull a single bill from any one of the 73 stacks. The chances that you will pick the one dollar bill with a black “X” on it are the same chances that any man could have accidentally fulfilled eight of the prophecies that Jesus fulfilled as the Messiah.
One hundred quadrillion is an absurdly large number. When you consider that Jesus fulfilled hundreds of prophecies—not a mere eight—you begin to understand what a testimony to the inspiration of Scripture Jesus’ life truly was (in addition to certain proof that He is the Messiah).
Other prophecies in the Bible predicted events unrelated to the Messiah that were also fulfilled historically. For instance, about two hundred years before Cyrus, king of Persia, was born, the prophet Isaiah said that God would raise up a Gentile king named Cyrus who would facilitate the rebuilding of the Temple (Isaiah 44:28)—and that is exactly what happened (2 Chronicles 36:22).
Another prophecy arose when Jeroboam, king of Israel, was offering sacrifices to a demon god and a prophet stood before the altar and cried, “O altar, altar, thus saith the LORD; Behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name; and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men’s bones shall be burnt upon thee” (1 Kings 13:2). About three hundred years later, the prophecy was fulfilled by the righteous king Josiah (2 Kings 23:15-20).
By the time Josiah was born, the nation of Israel had fallen far from God. The ten northern tribes in Israel had already been led into captivity by Gentiles, but the southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin where still in existence. Josiah was king over both tribes, but he only learned how far they had strayed from God after a copy of the book of the Law was found in the Temple—most likely a copy of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible), written by Moses (2 Kings 22:8). After reading the Old Testament scriptures, Josiah became convicted about the condition of the kingdom and set out to restore righteousness. He put a stop to pagan worship and then he dug up the graves of the false prophets and burned their bones on the very altar on which Jeroboam had sacrificed to idols. You can’t get any more specific than that.
No book written by a human has prophesied events hundreds of years in advance down to every last detail. The supposed prophecies of people like Nostradamus are so vague that