For various reasons, it can be difficult at times for people to keep their word. Additionally, people sometimes refuse to keep their word even though they could. Our culture has grown a generation of people who barely know what it means to be a “person of your word.” It seems the days are gone when a simple handshake insures a promise kept.
Despite the instability of human nature, I assure you that God keeps His Word. Given the nature of His being, it is impossible for God to change or go back on His Word. For God to be God, He must be perfect. For Him to change His mind or go back on His Word would mean He could somehow possibly improve through a change. God cannot improve. He is infinite and holy. If you posit anything other than a perfect God, you no longer have God. You have someone or something less than our true, self-sustaining, perfect God.
The God of the Bible keeps His Word. We observe that He has kept His Word against all odds throughout history to date. Namely, Jesus has already fulfilled approximately three hundred prophecies concerning Him. I will give just two examples. As I describe the examples, bear in mind that the Bible is not really one book. It is, in fact, a collection of sixty-six books written over a period of 1,500 years by more than forty human authors on three continents and in three languages. This is a vital fact to remember when we discuss fulfilled prophecy.
Micah, the prophet, wrote circa 700 B.C. He prophesied that the Messiah would be born in the obscure town of Bethlehem (chapter five, verse 2). Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the first century A.D. (Matthew 2:1-7). This prophetic detail proved accurate, though the span of time between prediction and fulfillment was 750 or more years.
David prophesied in Psalm 22:16 that the Messiah would be crucified. Though crucifixion did not yet exist at the time of David’s writing (circa 1000 B.C.), the prophecy was fulfilled more than one thousand years later!
The examples above are just two of more than three hundred that could be mentioned. Keep in mind how difficult it is to predict details of the distant future. If I were to predict rain tomorrow and you actually encountered raindrops, you might not think me too amazing. However, if I were to predict rain on the afternoon of April 12 in the year 2053 and it actually happened, you might say, “Wow! Shelli is amazing!” But what if I correctly predicted rain on April 12, 2053, in a 12.5 mile radius of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, at exactly 4:09 in the afternoon for seven minutes and thirty-two seconds? Then you might proclaim, “That Shelli has supernatural ability!” In other words, the more details I add and the longer the time frame spanned, the more difficult – against the odds – the correct prediction of the future becomes.
The God of the Bible has made more than three hundred detailed prophecies concerning His Son, Jesus Christ, which have already come true. Lee Strobel has nicely outlined in his book, The Case for Christ (Student Edition), the findings of Dr. Peter Stoner. Dr. Stoner and some of his students worked to calculate the mathematical probability of fulfilled prophecy. It has been estimated that the probability of Jesus fulfilling in His earthly lifetime just eight of the Biblical prophecies about Him is one in 10 to the seventeeth power. That is a chance of one in one hundred million billion! To better visualize these astronomical odds, picture the following scenario.
Pretend that we cover the surface of the entire earth with 1.5 inch square tiles. We cover not just the state of Wyoming in these small tiles – not just the land surface of North America – but we coat every inch of land on the entire planet. We decide at the outset to mark the underside of just one of these tiles with a gold star. Then, much to his chagrin, we send a young man out to roam the seven continents for the rest of life. As he nears one hundred years old, we ask him to bend over – wherever he now happens to be located – and pick up one of the tiles. The chance of him selecting the only tile marked with a gold star is one in one hundred million billion!
As you begin to grasp by the above example, the chance of Jesus fulfilling just eight of the prophecies about Him defies all odds. Consider that the chance of him fulfilling forty-eight prophecies grows to a staggering one in 10 to the power of 157! This would be like choosing one particular electron out of all the known electrons in all the known mass of the universe! God certainly keeps His Word against all odds.
As if all of this is not exciting enough, we now use God’s track record to remind ourselves that He will continue to keep His Word against all odds. Despite the daily routine of life and all its problems, despite the fact that so many people cannot possibly believe it’s true, and despite the fact that even many Christians do not consider it a vital part of everyday thinking; God will keep His Word on the second coming of Jesus just as He has kept His Word on Jesus’ first coming to earth. The three hundred prophecies that have already been fulfilled by Jesus’ first invasion into space and time inspire us to know that He is coming back again to fulfill all the Bible’s truth!
Here is one thing God has told us about Jesus that we are yet to see: “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever” (I Thessalonians 4:16-17, NIV). Can you even imagine this scene? Thank God for the day when we will rise with new, glorified bodies to be with our Lord in the New Heavens and New Earth! Does this sound too good to be true? Remember, God fulfills His Word though it seems impossible.
Or how about the fact that God has promised the following historical event? “Look, he [Jesus] is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be! Amen. I [Jesus] am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, ‘who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty’” (Revelation 1:7-8).
If God has kept His Word against all odds – and if He is perfect and immutable (changeless) – then certainly He will keep His Word now and in the future. I trust today the God who said in the first century A.D., “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5b).
Do you believe in the God of the Bible? Pour over Isaiah chapter forty. Refresh your confidence in God’s unchanging and holy nature. If He is truly God, then He can do nothing other than keep His Word. History and mathematics demonstrate His ability beyond the natural realm to be faithful to His promises.
Trust Him for today and tomorrow, for He has a proven track record!
