The one, significant identifier of a true prophet is that they must be 100% correct, 100% of the time.  Anything else and they’re just guessing.  This is one of the unique attributes of the Bible – the more than one-thousand prophecies it includes are ‘right on the button’ every single time!

In order to prophesy, one must be able to view events from outside of the normal two-dimensional timeframe in which humans exist.  The Bayeux Tapestry illustrated above is some 70-metres (230-feet) long.  Created sometime between 1066 and 1077, its embroidered image tells the story of the Norman invasion of England from beginning to end.

We can look at the tapestry and view its message linearly, from beginning to end.  We can also stand at a distance from it and view it as a whole, but we humans can only view the message looking backward in time.  When King William started his plans for invading England there was no way he could know what the eventual outcome would be.  William was constrained by living in a two-dimensional world.

God, on the other hand, exists outside of time.  Time is a construct God created for the benefit of us humans and our limited understanding.  To simply describe God as ‘eternal’, which He is, is to put a significant limitation of how we perceive His existence.  God lives outside of time in a continual state of ‘present’.  In the Bible, we get a glimpse of time and creation, our existence, from God’s perspective.  God’s tapestry is different from the Bayeux Tapestry, it illustrates the future as much as it does the past.  From God’s vantage point there is no essential difference between events that have happened in the past and events [from a human viewpoint] that will happen sometime in the future.  All events exist in a singular ‘now’, even though God relates events to us in a past-present-future timeframe.

Some Bible scholars suggest there are more than 300 individual prophecies concerning Jesus, some being a little vaguer than others. Virtually all Bible Scholars agree on the 55 specific prophecies concerning Jesus’ birth, ministry, death and resurrection and His role in the church.

How is one able to ‘prove’ that these are real prophecies?  Because we have tangible, historical evidence.  Included amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls is a complete scroll of the Book of Isaiah, transcribed [copied] by the Essenes people, some 200-years prior to Christ’s birth, and contains many individual prophecies.

How specific, and what are the odds, of so many prophecies being fulfilled – ever – let alone in a single individual prophecy.  In the Book of Micha, a prophet who lived approximately 750-years BC, he states that the Messiah [Jesus] would come from Bethlehem.  Consider the odds of predicting a specific person’s place of birth, 750-years from now, out of all the thousands of towns and villages worldwide.  The odds of such a prediction are not one-in-one (right or wrong), rather the odds of a single prediction such as this are astronomical.  Now, start multiplying the odds of countless, specific future events.  Science has not created numbers sufficiently large to describe such odds.  Imagine dropping several hundred, 10-sided dice from the top of a building and having each one land with the number 7 facing upward.  Well, such a scenario does not begin to scratch the surface of biblical prophecy probability.

Even in our time, we continue to see detailed prophecies fulfilled.  In Isaiah 66:7-8 we read, “Who has ever heard of such a thing? Who has ever seen such things? Can a country be born in a day or a nation be brought forth in a moment? Yet no sooner is Zion in labor than she gives birth to her children.” and then on May 14, 1948, the country of Israel [Zion] was reborn.  In fact, there are at least ten prophecies relating to the establishment of Israel in 1948.

What are the odds of all remaining prophecies being fulfilled?  Based on God’s current track record, the odds of fulfillment are 100%.  Are you equipped and ready for when they happen?

But the wonder, the real wonder, of grasping the significance of living ‘Beyond Space and Time’, as Ray C. Stedman writes in his book, God’s Final Word – Understanding Revelation, is this:

“Notice the phrase: The Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world.” Revelation 13:8.  This statement confirms again that time is not a factor in eternity.  The death of the Lamb actually took place in time, on earth, at a specific date on the calendar – yet it is reckoned here as an eternal event which has meaning for people who have lived ever since the beginning of time. That is why an Old Testament saint such as Abraham could be born again by grace through faith just like a New Testament saint – even though the tree which would be hewn into the cross of Christ had not even been planted in Abraham’s time!  The death of Christ was an event fixed at a particular set of coordinates in space and time – yet it is also the summit of God’s eternal program, utterly transcending both space and time.  Thus the cross casts a shadow over all creation.”

In relating all of this, I would not presume to boast that I have more than an inkling of God’s perspective on time – except that which I can glean from the Good Book.