How does prophecy prove the Bible's divine origin?

Sharing the gospel or conveying spiritual truth to someone who believes the Bible is divinely inspired is one thing. It is an entirely different thing when someone questions or rejects Scripture’s authority based on the number of religious books that make the same claim.

Therefore, how do we establish the Bible as God's only divinely inspired manuscript so people accept the validity of its gospel message? One main way is through prophecy.

When the Bible was written, approximately 27% of its contents were prophetic*. In other words, God inspired its writers to record hundreds of future occurrences in advance. This percentage is staggering because it encompasses over one-fourth of the Bible!

Furthermore, no other religious book—past, present, or future—contains even one verifiable fulfilled prophecy. Yet the Bible contains over 1,800 precise and detailed prophecies about people, places, and incidents, and many have been fulfilled, converting them from revelations to verifiable, historical facts. (Click here for a list of fulfilled prophecies.)

Even more significant are the 300+ prophecies in the Old Testament that referred to the coming Messiah who would save people from their sins. Incredibly, each of these 300+ revelations was fulfilled in one person—Jesus Christ, who was born 400 years after the Old Testament was completed.

Why are prophecies about Jesus important to share with someone who questions or rejects Scripture’s divine origin? The answer is that they sharply disprove the notion that the Bible is one of many religious books and authenticate its divine origin using the science of probability:

In his book Science Speaks, Peter W. Stoner calculated the likelihood of a single individual fulfilling only 8 of the 300+ Messianic prophecies cited. He determined that number to be 1 in 10 to the 17th power, which is 1 in 100 quadrillions.

To put this probability into a relatable analogy, it would be like filling the entire state of Texas two feet deep with silver dollars, marking one of the coins with a red “X,” stirring the whole mass thoroughly, and then having a blindfolded person go anywhere in the state and choose one silver dollar, and the coin they picked was the one marked with the red “X.”

This analogy expresses a “1 in 100 quadrillion” chance of success. It also conveys the same probability the Old Testament prophets would have for 8 of their prophecies to be fulfilled in one individual using their own wisdom rather than God’s divine inspiration. Therefore, according to Peter Stoner, “the fulfillment of these eight prophecies alone proves that God inspired the writing of those prophecies to a definiteness, which lacks only one chance in 10 to the 17th power of being absolute.”

Peter W. Stoner took it a step further by calculating the likelihood of one person fulfilling only 16 of the 300+ Messianic prophecies cited. The plausible number increased to “1 in 10 to the 45th power,” which is 10 with 45 zeros after it.

When he mathematically computed the probability of one person fulfilling 48 of the 300+ Messianic prophecies cited, the figure jumped to “1 in 10 to the 157th power, which is 10 with 157 zeros after it, or “1 in 10 unquinquagintillion.”

Yet, all 300 Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah were fulfilled in one individual: Jesus Christ! This truth is not surprising, given the all-knowing, all-powerful God of the universe inspired men to record these facts hundreds of years before Christ’s birth (Isaiah 46:9-10).

I encourage you to share this remarkable and profound information about biblical prophecy with those who question or reject Scripture’s authority to help them see its divine origin. I also urge you to communicate these truths with those who believe other religious books are inspired—using the science of probability to refute their claims.

*Payne, J. B., The Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy, Baker Pub. Group, 1980, p. 675.