What are the odds that God’s plans will come to pass? Astounding? You’re not even close!

It happened in a Major League baseball game in 1957 with Phildelphia Phillie’s batter Richie Ashburn at bat. He hit a ball out of bounds and into the crowd which hit Alice Roth in the face and broke her nose. As she was being attended to, Ashburn fouled the next pitch into the stands and once again it found poor Alice… and it hit and broke her leg.

And what about the man whose property was hit by meteorites six times in the years he lived there. Each piece was independently inspected by the authorities who determined their validity. The odds of this happening to one man was 1 in 20,000,000,000,000! But it happened.

Now what are the odds of someone naming a person and the city they’ll be born in, 700 years before it will occur? Or how about if someone predicted the manor of a particular person’s death when that method of execution won’t be known for several hundred years? How does anyone have knowledge of things done at a death that will not happen for centuries, from type of execution, the knowledge that soldiers would gamble for his clothes, or that those same soldiers would break the legs of the two being executed on either side of Him?

Of course, we’re talking about Jesus. The statistical odds of Jesus being born in Bethleham (Micah 5:2) was arrived at by determining the average age population from the time of Micah to the present, then dividing it by the average population of the earth during the same period. The odds? Only one chance in 300,000. Next the scholars took just eight Messianic prophecies being fulfilled in just one man (Jesus) and it was 1 chance in 10,000,000,000,000,000

There is not a scientist alive today that would call those odds even remotely probable, let alone possible.

Now let’s put 48 well-known prophecies about Jesus given centuries before, and what you ask, are the odds of just One Man fulfilling all of them exactly as predicted? (Don’t attempt to memorize this number… it will hurt you!)

One chance in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. (a -1- with 157 0’s after it.) If this number were silver dollars, they would cover Texas entirely to a depth of over two feet. With just one coin marked in black, what are the chances of someone blindfolded and told to walk around until he stopped and picked up the one with the mark?

So the next time you’re frightened, confused, hopeless…you need more than a ‘predictor,’ or a good set of odds in your favor… you need to put your complete trust in the only One who can beat any odds.

“Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible,

but with God all things are possible.” Matthew 19:26 NIV