God’s story … epic, life  changing!

No screenwriter had ever attempted what God accomplished.

He wrote a saga that still staggers. It’s been talked about and acted out by millions over hundreds of years. That story makes free men out of slaves, What began as a story of redemption in his own heart is hinted at immediately after Adam and Eve entered earth’s story. In reference to a future Messiah crushing the head of the garden’s serpent, we began looking forward.

The story was added to little by little by many other writers, but always pointing specifically to the focal point of the story. God was sending his Son into the world to show us He was serious about his relationship with us!

And so we’re told where He was to be born – Bethlehem Ephrathah – by the prophet Micah 700 years before it happens. (Micah 5:2) Next, 600 years before the birth of Jesus, Daniel tells us when it is to happen. (Daniel 9:25)

Isaiah, writing 700 years before it is to occur, tells us the astonishing fact that He will be born to a virgin. (Isaiah 7:14) And it’s not just his birth that’s foretold. King David, Amos, Isaiah and Zechariah among others tell us in detail about his death. They prophesy that He will be crucified with pierced hands and feet. This detail given hundreds of years before crucifixion was Rome’s chosen method of execution.

We’re told about his clothes being divided by men throwing dice for them. We are informed that contrary to custom, Jesus would not have his bones broken to hasten his death … what his last words will be … that darkness would cover the event in the middle of the day and that he would be betrayed by a friend for thirty pieces of silver!

What kind of Screenwriter could conceive and publish such a book that would contain supernatural and impossible detail many centuries before they are to take place?

How does anyone foretell the birth of a baby 600 years before the birth and include the city … a place 70 miles from where the parents live? How do you get an emperor to demand travel that puts the birth in the place forecasted six centuries prior to the event? How does someone ‘arrange’ to be born in a specific family? How would someone ‘arrange’ their own death and the manner it is to take place?

The mathematical probability of one man fulfilling just eight of those preposterous prophecies is 10 to the 17^th power. Want to see that number? 1,000,000,000,000,000,000. The fact is, there were far more than eight prophecies that Jesus fulfilled … to the letter!

So what does that mean to us this week? It means that we are celebrating without question the greatest story ever told. It means that God can be trusted. It means that He was so intent on reconciling us to Himself that He proved it in irrefutable ways, many times over.

And the very best news? You’ve been written into that story!

“God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son

into the world so that we might have eternal life through him.

This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us

and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.”

I John 4:9,10 New Living Translation

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