Hope for Your Heart: Finding Strength in Life's Storms (15 page)

Unlike Harper, many on the
Titanic
placed their trust in false hope . . . in
Titanic
’ssupposed safety . . . in the belief that more lifeboats were unnecessary . . . in the overblown reassurances of the ship’s company. More than likely, many of the wealthy on the maiden voyage had a false sense of security in their own invincibility.

But all that false hope was just that—false—and the ship went down. By contrast, John Harper knew where true hope was found. He, too, undoubtedly considered the ship seaworthy and safe. But that night his actions showed that he placed his eternal trust not in the maker of the ship but in the Maker of the seas.

Harper’s focus while in the dark freezing ocean was not on this temporal life but on eternal life. His destination was certain, his trust assured, and he wanted others to share that peace-filled promise of eternal life. Until his dying breath, Harper offered the message of hope to all within the sound of his voice.

Many have asked, Why would Harper sacrifice his life for someone considered “unsaved”? How could he have such absolute assurance in Christ? Couldn’t he have had misplaced hope? To answer these questions, we will consider the events that occurred after the crucifixion of Christ, the One in whom John Harper trusted so completely.

Many had confirmed the faith-shattering fact: Jesus was dead. The faithful few had personally seen His arrest, crucifixion, and burial . . . had seen soldiers pierce His body with a spear . . . had seen Him lowered from the cross and taken away. They witnessed His body being wrapped in burial cloths and sealed in a tomb.

Believers all across the city huddled together in shock . . . in sorrow . . . with a mixture of confusion and disillusion.

Three days later, two of His grief-stricken followers were walking to a nearby village. The dusty road on that seven-mile stretch must have seemed much longer that day. Their hearts were heavy with sorrow and full of uncertainty now that Jesus was gone . . . and with Him all of their hopes.

As the two men walked, how could they reconcile the claims of Jesus with His catastrophic death? A gut-wrenching question (How could God die?) haunted them.

A fellow traveler joined them, asking, “What are you discussing?”

One answered, “Are you only a visitor to Jerusalem and do not know the things that have happened there in recent days?”

“What things?” he asked.

They poured out the heart rending story.

About Jesus of Nazareth . . . He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place.
⁷

The not-so-subtle implication? “We had
hoped
. . . but now He’s dead, and our hopes died with Him.”

But there’s a strange twist to this story, the pair tells the traveler—some women went to His tomb, only to find the stone rolled back and Jesus’ body missing! They said angels told them Jesus was
alive
.

The men continued, “Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.”
⁸

The confusion was unsettling: Was Jesus dead? Was Jesus alive? “If only we could
see
Him.”

The hope of these troubled travelers was limited to what they could see. And what had they seen? They saw Him die! They did not see Him alive again, despite the women’s accounts to the contrary. Based on the “evidence,” how could they believe anything but the worst? How could they ignore the facts? How could they continue to have hope?

Living in our material world conditions us to rely on our five senses as a filter for truth. We commonly reject what we cannot weigh, measure, and describe. Yet the inseparable companion of Christian hope is
faith
, which doesn’t operate by sight or sound or any other properties detectable by our physical senses.

Holocaust survivor Corrie ten Boom put it this way: “Faith is like radar that sees through the fog, the reality of things at a distance that the human eye cannot see.”
⁹
At times, however, our “radar” doesn’t work . . . our faith begins to falter. It happens to all of us, just as it happened to the disciples. Sometimes the night seems too dark, the fog too dense, and the despair feels too deep.

These two distraught disciples experienced such a moment. But can you imagine what those men must have experienced that day when they heard what they were told by their fellow traveler, who actually was
the resurrected Jesus
?

In essence He said, “Why are you so slow to believe all the prophecies about me?”

“How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.
¹⁰

Make no mistake, the central figure in all of Scripture is
Jesus
. The awe-inspiring story of human redemption has been likened to a scarlet thread woven throughout the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. And even before the foundation of the world, it had been determined that Jesus would be the Savior of the world.

No one can refute that a man named Jesus was born in Bethlehem . . . grew up in Nazareth . . . was crucified and buried in Jerusalem. Both Jewish and Roman historians verify the authenticity of His existence as well as His identification as a prophet and a teacher. When it comes to controversy surrounding Jesus Christ, it’s not His humanity that’s called into question,
it’s His claims to deity
.

Jesus repeatedly identified Himself as the Jews’ long-awaited Messiah . . . the Christ . . . the very Son of God. But words . . . and an empty tomb . . . have been insufficient evidence for skeptics down through the centuries. Even incredible miracles recorded in the historically reliable Bible don’t seem to impress determined doubters.

But one area of study should make
every
skeptic stand at attention. A great body of evidence exists, fully supporting Jesus’ claims to be the Messiah (which means “the Anointed One”), sent by God the Father to redeem the world from sin.

Contained within the pages of the Bible are hundreds of messianic prophecies . . . information foretold centuries before the Messiah’s birth . . . all pointing directly and
only
to Jesus.

What’s more, every single messianic prophecy has been fulfilled, which means the evidence is indisputable that Jesus is precisely who He says He is.

“Are you aware of the astronomical odds of one man fulfilling all of these hundreds of prophecies? What are the odds . . . mathematically . . . of someone fulfilling just eight messianic prophecies?” This was a question mathematician Peter Stoner explored with his students at Pasadena City College.
¹¹
Here’s what they discovered:

1.
The Messiah would come from the tiny town of Bethlehem
(see Matt. 2:1)
.
Over seven hundred years
before
Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the prophet Micah predicted, “You, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from old, from ancient times”(Mic. 5:2).

How many men could have possibly fulfilled this prophecy by having been born in Bethlehem? What are the odds of
any one man
being born in Bethlehem? To answer this question, divide the average number of residents of Bethlehem by the average population of the earth from the time of Micah to today.

The earth’s population has averaged under two billion people, while Bethlehem’s population has averaged about 7,150. Therefore, statistically speaking (in round figures), 1 man in 7,150 divided by 2,000,000,000 (or 1 man in 2.8 x 10
⁵
) could have fulfilled this prophecy. So, for
a particular man
to have been born in Bethlehem, the odds are 1 in 280,000.

2.
The Messiah would have a forerunner
(see Matt. 3:11)
.
Over four hundred years
before
Jesus was born, the prophet Malachi predicted (giving the Lord’s words), “See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me”(Mal. 3:1).

The question then becomes, of all the men born in Bethlehem, how many have had a forerunner as described in this prophecy with a specific mission and message from God? What are the odds of
any
man
from Bethlehem with a forerunner? Let’s employ an
extremely
conservative
estimate: The odds are 1 in 1,000. (The total for these two prophecies now stands at 2.8 x 10
⁸
= 1 man in 280,000,000.)

3.
The Messiah would enter Jerusalem as a king riding on a donkey
(see John 12:15)
.
Around five hundred years
before
Jesus was born, the prophet Zechariah predicted, “See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey”(Zech. 9:9).

Now consider: Of all the people who have ever lived, (1) how many were born in Bethlehem, (2) were preceded by a dynamic messenger from God, and (3) entered Jerusalem as a ruler riding on a donkey? Or let’s simply ask, “How many kings—
born anywhere
—have ridden into Jerusalem on a donkey?”

What are the odds? To be extremely,
extremely conservative
, let’s say the odds are 1 in 100. (The total for all three prophecies now stands at 2.8 x 10
¹⁰
= 1 man in 28,000,000,000.)

4.
The Messiah would be betrayed by a friend and wounded as a result
(see Luke 22:47–48)
.
“One shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends”(Zech. 13:6 kjv).

This prediction raises the question, “One man in how many from Bethlehem rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and was then betrayed by a friend, with the result that his hands were wounded”? What are the odds?

Though most betrayals by close friends don’t result in physical wounds, an
extremely conservative
estimate would be: The odds are 1 in 1,000. (The total for the four prophecies now stands at 2.8 x 10
¹³
= 1 man in 28,000,000,000,000.)

5.
The Messiah would be betrayed for exactly thirty pieces of silver
(see Matt. 26:15)
.
“They paid me thirty pieces of silver”(Zech. 11:12).

What are the odds that this messianic prophecy could name
the
precise amount
. . . especially when it could have been
any amount
? For the Messiah’s betrayer to be paid
exactly
thirty pieces of silver . . . not gold or anything else . . . let’s say, being
extremely conservative
, the odds are 1 in 1,000. (The total for the five prophecies now stands at 2.8 x 10
¹⁶
= 1 man in 28,000,000,000,000,000.)

6.
The Messiah’s betrayer would throw down his blood money in the temple,
and it would become the potter’s possession
(see Matt. 27:3, 10). “The Lord said to me, ‘Throw it to the potter’—the handsome price at which they priced me! So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord to the potter”(Zech. 11:13).

What are the odds that one man in how many would be betrayed for thirty pieces of silver that were thrown down in the temple and eventually became the possession of the potter? To be
extremely conservative
, the odds are 1 in 100,000. (The total for all six prophecies now stands at 2.8 x 10
²¹
= 1 man in 2,800,000,000,000,000,000,000.)

7.
The Messiah would be an innocent, beaten man whose life is on the line,
yet he would remain silent when offered a chance to defend himself
(see Matt. 26:63, 67–68). Interestingly, seven hundred years
before
Jesus was born, the prophet Isaiah presented an amazing profile of the Messiah, including this prediction: “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. . . . He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth”(Isa. 53:7, 9).

What are the odds that an innocent man who is oppressed, afflicted, and on trial for his life would not open his mouth to defend himself in spite of his innocence? To calculate the likelihood for this very unlikely chain of events, let’s make an
extremely conservative
estimate: The odds are 1 in 1,000. (The total for these seven prophecies now stands at 2.8 x 10
²⁴
= 1 man in 2,800,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.)

8.
The Messiah would be crucified
(see Luke 23:23)
.
Imagine that ten centuries before the birth of Jesus, a messianic psalm was written predicting the manner of death that the Messiah would experience, specifically detailing the anguish of crucifixion, although that form of death had not yet been devised. Psalm 22:14–16 reads, “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint . . . a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet.”

Realizing that crucifixion was a later invention (around the fifth century b.c.) and that only a very small percentage of the population was actually crucified, what are the oddsthat any man would have died of crucifixion? To be
extremely conservative
, the odds are 1 in 10,000. (The total of all eight of the prophecies finally stands at 2.8 x 10
²⁸
= 1 man in 28,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.)

Ultimately, Peter Stoner calculated the likelihood of
any one man
living from the time these eight predictions were made down to the present day and fulfilling all eight predictions to be 1 in 10
¹⁷
or
one
chance in a hundred million billion
.

He likens the odds to placing a hundred million billion silver dollars across the state of Texas, a quantity that would be enough to cover it two feet deep from north to south and east to west. Then suppose a blindfolded man reaching down into the sea of silver dollars would, on his first attempt, pick up one . . .
the only one
. . . that had been specially marked. Those are the odds!

9.
And what are the odds of the virgin birth
. . . Isaiah’s prediction that the Messiah would be born of a virgin, without the seed of a man (Isa. 7:14; see Luke 1:26–35)? The odds are unimaginable.

10.
Likewise, what are the odds of the Resurrection
. . . the fulfillment of David’s prediction that the Messiah would rise from the dead, never to experience death again (Ps. 16:10; see Luke chapter 24)? The odds are incalculable.

The only person who has fulfilled all these prophecies and thus revealed
the true identity
of the promised Messiah is Jesus of Nazareth. As John the Baptist declared when he first saw Jesus, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29 esv).