MIRACLES DON'T EXIST... OR DO THEY? THE SKEPTIC'S JOURNEY PART 3
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
[Skeptic] I don’t believe in luck. I don’t believe in karma, and I certainly don’t believe in miracles or prophecies!
[David] This is part 3 of “The Skeptic’s Journey”, a true story of an atheist’s multi-year search for truth. This disbeliever wanted to understand this world, how it was made and how mankind came to be. He also wanted to dispel the “myths” about a God who was responsible for all of this.
[David] The skeptic preferred anonymity for this video series, so we are using others to portray him, but the words used throughout this series are his exact words. This is his story… his journey.
[Skeptic] Like I said in Part 1 of my journey, I just couldn’t accept the miracle of the creation account captured in the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. It was too much to swallow without any proof. But in Part 2, I realized that Science doesn’t currently have a single concrete answer yet… so I decided to look further into the Bible, mostly to prove that there are no facts can be verified in support of the Bible’s miraculous claims.
[Skeptic] I learned that Genesis is just one of 66 books in the Bible. If Genesis is the story of how God created the universe, the rest of the Bible attempts to explain why God created the universe and that He wants to have a relationship with humanity.
[Skeptic] You know what I found? Apart from Genesis, the rest of the Bible is full of additional, absolutely crazy claims that we can actually investigate.
[Skeptic] Before I explain, we need to separate the Old Testament, the books of the Bible written before the birth of Jesus, from the New Testament, the books of the Bible written after the birth of Jesus.
[Skeptic] Broadly speaking, I discovered the Old Testament (which can get pretty boring in some sections) primarily tells the story of God’s relationship with mankind and makes the case that humanity needs a Savior.
[Skeptic] While the New Testament tells the story of this Savior, defined as a person named Jesus of Nazareth, and the relationship that God, or Jesus, wants to have with us.
[Skeptic] I then learned that the Old Testament contains over 300 prophecies, or predictions, about this future Savior, Jesus. I thought this was a great subject matter to investigate and was hopeful that I would be able to debunk this entire charade once and for all.
[Skeptic] What are these prophecies? Well, I have to admit, they are quite perplexing. They predict Jesus’ entire life, and many of them are very specific. The prophecies predict:
- When Jesus will be born. That He will be a descendent of Abraham and King David. That a star will announce his birth. That he will be born in Bethlehem.
- That the children of Israel will be murdered in an attempt to kill him. That he will go to Egypt and then come back to Israel. That he will settle in Nazareth when he returns from Egypt.
- That he will perform miracles of healing the blind and the lame. That he will be called both the “Son of God” and “Son of Man”.
- That he will ride into Jerusalem on a donkey, and he will be the subject of a murderous plot. That he will be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver. That he will be crucified with his hands and feet pierced and they will cast lots for his clothing. And that he will rise from the dead as the Savior of the world.
[Skeptic] Believe it or not, that list was less than 20 of the “more than 300” Old Testament prophecies about Jesus, all of which appear to be validated in the New Testament. To me, this just doesn’t seem possible.
[Skeptic] In fact, it’s crazy! It would be an absolute miracle for these extremely specific predictions to come true. So, where did this leave me in my thinking? Ready to accept Jesus as Savior? Not a chance.
[Skeptic] Being the never-ending skeptic that I am, I was not 100% convinced that the Old Testament writings with all those predictions were written prior to the life of Jesus. We’re talking about documents that are thousands of years old. I concluded that they had to be written, or altered, after his life.
[Skeptic] Well, in 1946, by the Dead Sea of Israel, archeologists discovered an entire set of ancient manuscripts called the Dead Sea Scrolls… a complete and accurate copy of the Old Testament, that was carbon dated by two independent, non-Christian scientific teams in the 1990’s… and astonishingly, both teams determined the scrolls were written before the birth of Jesus.
[Skeptic] The apparent “miracle” of these prophecies coming true certainly piqued my interest, and actually caused me a lot of confusion. I still wonder whether Jesus and his parents modeled his entire life around these prophecies as a hoax? Is that even possible?
[Skeptic] In the meantime, I suppose I will further investigate the other alleged miracles of the Bible, as well as this person, Jesus, whom these 300 prophecies were written about.
[David] Do you believe in miracles? No matter where you stand on the spectrum of belief, I encourage you to continue with us in viewing The Skeptic’s Journey, a true story.
[David] Thanks for watching. If you liked this video, please let us know. Click here to subscribe to our channel and here to continue watching The Skeptic’s Journey. As always, you can help us produce more videos like this by making a tax-deductible donation to our ministry at ChristianyEngaged.org.
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