Mathematical Odds

      M.B Bleecker (Jan. 25, 1903 October 19, 2002, was an engineer who invented a helicopter prototype and the ram jet engine. He was also a Christian who self-published a little book entitled, “An Engineer Evaluates the Bible.” I picked up a copy when I was visiting a church in New Jersey where he lived.

There are about three hundred prophecies concerning the Messiah Jesus interwoven throughout the Old Testament. Mr. Bleecker and a friend counted them and found that some of them are repetitions of the same prophecy. For example, the prophecy concerning Jesus being from the line of David is repeated about fourteen times. The prophecy that tells us that the Messiah is to be born in Bethlehem is repeated five times. They found that the number of non-repeating distinct prophecies is about one hundred and ninety. We need to take into consideration that Mr. Bleecker was an engineer, not a Bible scholar, so he may have missed some of them. However, He took one hundred and fifty of the remarkable, non-repeating prophecies that Jesus fulfilled and calculated the odds of His fulfilling those prophecies. The odds of one man fulfilling one hundred and fifty prophecies in one lifetime are one in –

1,039,851,278,722,473,896,502,516,467,047,788,121,009,514,090,594,304

The odds of Jesus fulfilling just eight of them in His lifetime are one in -

100, 000, 000,000,000,000

I’m not a mathematician or an engineer, so I can’t define these numbers for you in millions, billions or trillions, I don’t have a clue. But what I do know when I look at these amazing figures is that God, The Ultimate Mathematician, has given us the numbers that point the way to the miracle of Messiah Jesus.

My mouth shall show forth Your righteousness and Your salvation all the day, for I know not the numbers thereof. – Psalm 71:15

Copyright 2009 by H.D. Shively

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