The Christ in Prophecy: How Scripture Foretold Jesus’ Life and Mission
Explore the fulfilled prophecies that affirm Jesus as The Christ, the Prince of Peace, and discover the compelling evidence for faith in God’s divine plan.
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“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord”
Examining Prophecies Fulfilled
The name Jesus Christ gets thrown around sometimes.
While playing golf, someone might shank their shot, and the first thing out of their mouth is, “Jesus Christ.” However, this isn’t said with reverence; it’s said dismissively and even in a demeaning way; it’s almost used as an expletive.
The name “Christ” is not Jesus’ second name. It’s actually a fulfillment of prophecy, and it’s deeply significant for us. Scripture teaches that He fulfilled the office of prophet, priest, and king. He fulfilled prophecies some thousands of years ago that predicted Jesus would be Christ, the Messiah. [READ MORE: Exploring the Significance of Jesus as The Christ]
But didn’t other people in history predict things about the future? Nostradamus predicted the future, right? However, Nostradamus also wrote in broad, general, and vague terms. What makes Scripture unique is that it is specific and detailed:
Prophecy: “Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped. The lame will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the dumb will shout for joy.” Isaiah 35:5,6a
Fulfillment: “And Jesus was going about all the cities and the villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness.” Matthew 9:35 (see also Matthew 9:32, 33, 11:4-6; Mark 7:33-35; John 5:5-9; 9:6-11; 11:43,44,47.)
Prophecy: “…They pierced my hands and my feet.” Psalms 22:16 (see also Zechariah 12:10).
Fulfillment: “And when they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified Him…” Luke 23:33 (see also John 20:25)
Prophecy: “They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing, they cast lots.” Psalm 22:18
Fulfillment: “The soldiers, therefore, when they had crucified Jesus, took His outer garments and made four parts, a part to every soldier and also the tunic; now the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece. They said…’Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, to decide whose it shall be…’” John 19:23,24
Prophecy: “And it will come about in that day, declares the LORD God, ‘That I shall make the sun go down at noon and make the earth dark in broad daylight.’” Amos 8:9
Fulfillment: “Now from the sixth-hour darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour.” Matthew 27:45
Prophecy: “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days.” Micah 5:2
Fulfillment: “…and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet: And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’” Matthew 2:4-6
All of these were written hundreds of years before the Messiah came. How can you explain the specificity?
I grew up going to church; however, the church I was raised in lacked any form or exposure to genuine belief. That led me to a lot of what I would call reductionistic caricatures of Christ and Christianity. I was around a lot of highly religious people, but I found Christianity unattractive and unappealing. They seemed superstitious, delusional, uneducated at times, and irreconcilable with science, and that bothered me.
It wasn’t until I got around two guys in college who were Christians. We played intramural sports together, and they always carried themselves differently. Although I never went, they would invite me to Bible studies. We would often talk about Jesus in very casual conversation. It was almost as if we were talking about the ballgame.
Months later, when I was home on a holiday break, Christ moved in me, and something metaphysical happened in my life. When I use the term metaphysical, I'm not talking about the School of Metaphysics as it relates to philosophy. What I mean by metaphysical is the prefix meta— which means beyond. Something beyond what is physical happened to me. I was alone in my bedroom, and I came to know the person of Jesus Christ.
Sometimes, when God can't get to you through your mind, He'll get to you through your heart. But when God gets to you through your heart, suddenly, you grow in the context of your mind catching up.
The Proof Around Us
I was on an anniversary trip to Rome with my wife and saw many monumental artifacts of ancient history. Carved into stone, I saw names like Caesar, Herod, and Tiberius. I had just read Luke 3:1, which states, “Now it was in the fifteenth year in the reign of Tiberius Caesar.”
Before that, we were in Paris at the Louvre Museum and saw many artifacts from Egypt, including those of the Pharaohs. While touring the museum, the only thing I could think of was how much the Bible is in harmony with secular history. It makes things stick out to me.
Another example is human DNA. To give you a quick version, I will quote an article from EveryStudent.com. You can read the footnotes there to follow up on every claim or quote.
Dr. Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project (that mapped the human DNA structure), said that one can “think of DNA as an instructional script, a software program, sitting in the cell's nucleus.”
DNA comprises four chemicals: A, T, G, and C. Much like the ones and zeros in computer code, these letters are arranged in the human cell like CGTGTGACTCGCTCCTGAT and so on. The order in which they are arranged instructs the cell’s actions. What is amazing is that within the tiny space in every cell in your body, this code is three billion letters long!
Dr. Collin said this to help us grasp how awesome this concept is: “A live reading of that code at a rate of three letters per second would take thirty-one years, even if reading continued day and night.”
Consider that from the perspective that you have 28 to 36 trillion cells, and in every cell, there’s a DNA strand that’s 3 billion letters long.
Now, imagine you’re walking on the beach, and you see someone has written something in the sand. The waves didn’t wash that over the sand in such a clear manner. A human with intelligence had to write those words in the sand.
Had it been a three-billion-letter sequence in the sand made up of granules of sand that just so happen to perfectly arrange themselves in a way that not only are ordered and sequenced properly but somehow birth life? You would reason that this can only be done by someone with super intelligence.
So here’s a thought to ponder:
Christians believe in the virgin birth.
Atheists and agnostics believe in the virgin birth of DNA.
Choose your miracle.
We hold onto our beliefs because we generally reflect how we want life to be rather than how life really is. It’s what’s been called irresponsible disbelief.
“Many bright men and women often choose to disbelieve in something without any significant commitment to an investigation of that disbelief by way of sound reasoning and careful examination of the evidence. We stubbornly hold on to our beliefs because they generally reflect how we want life to be rather than how life really is. It’s what I call ‘irresponsible disbelief.’” Dallas Willard, the late Philosophy Professor at the University of Southern California (emphasis added)
Several years ago, there was an explosion of books and YouTube videos featuring lecturers of what was then called The New Atheism.
People like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins weren’t saying anything new, but their ideas could now be packaged and shared with the masses because YouTube and social media afford everyone a platform to express their ideas and philosophy.
Yet, like similar movements in history, the New Atheism doesn’t have the same traction as it originally did.
But if you search for metaphysical things happening on the campus of Asbury University in 2023. Some 40,000-50,000 people come from around the nation and other college campuses. It happened because something was happening that you couldn’t rationally explain.
While the Asbury revival saw many students come to know Jesus Christ, it wasn’t isolated to that one campus. There are reports of similar metaphysical experiences coming out of Auburn University, Cedarville University, and Texas A&M in Corpus Christi.
Experiencing the Prince of Peace
Andrew Klavan, a Jewish-American writer who went from atheist to agnostic to Christian, said this after becoming a believer.
“I’m much more at peace, much more able to do what needs to be done without a lot of grief about it. Plus, I’m virtually fearless. It’s almost comical. I don’t mean I’m base jumping without a parachute or anything, but when it comes to doing what I know is right, saying what I know has to be said, I do it without hesitation and – even when a lot of people say very nasty things about me, which they do – I feel perfectly cool about it. I was never a wilting flower or anything. I was always a scrappy guy. But now there’s a lot less belligerence to it. I don’t have anything to prove. I just want to do what I was created to do, write what I was created to write.”
But what about Alan Sandage? He was a prolific astronomer and converted to Christianity later in his life, stating, "I could not live a life full of cynicism. I chose to believe, and a peace of mind came over me.” Aren’t we all looking for that in some manner?
The Messiah is the Prince of Peace. Peace is a person, and His name is Jesus. You have a Creator, and He loves you.
If you’re searching for that, I want you to consider taking a holy love dare—tell God, “If you’re real, I’m asking you to show me.” That doesn’t mean He’ll light up the sky with fireworks, but if you’re willing to be intellectually honest and investigate, just ask God to reveal Himself to you.
The popular verse John 3:16 shares, “God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but you have a brand new life.” That’s the kind of life that Andrew Clavin and Alan Sandage are talking about a life where you have peace, but there is meaning and purpose in Christ.
In God, you have a new life that starts now and continues forever. To those who receive Him, He gives them the power to become children of God. When Jesus hung on the cross, He said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:24). They didn’t understand that they were being dismissive of Christ or trivializing the Messiah. But even in that moment, Jesus asked God to forgive them. He’s a forgiving God who’ll forgive all of your sins. He will give you a brand new life from the inside out if you can humble yourself and come to Him in faith.
TL;DR:
Jesus as The Christ fulfills detailed prophecies written centuries before His birth, affirming His identity as Messiah, Prophet, Priest, and King.
From His lineage to His miracles and crucifixion, Scripture aligns with historical events, offering profound evidence for faith.
Beyond prophecy, countless lives, from skeptics to believers, testify to the peace and purpose found in Christ.
Seek Him, and experience the transformative power of faith and forgiveness.
