When playing Craps you have to roll a 7 or 11 on the dice to win. If you roll a 2, 3, or 12 you lose. If you roll a 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, or 10 you have set the point and the point has to be rolled again before a 7 to win. The probability of rolling a 7 or 11 are 22.22% on your first roll. There is an 11.12% chance of rolling the 2, 3, or 12 and an 66.66% chance of rolling the point numbers.

You go to Vegas and roll dice, it comes up 11. There are 36 possible combinations on a fair pair of dice and only two ways of getting an 11 (a 6 on the first die and a 5 on the second, or a 5 on the first die and a 6 on the second). This means you have a 2 in 36 chance of rolling an 11. That is a 5.555555% of getting an 11. You win.

You roll again and you get another 11. That is 4/144 or 2.7%. The table cheers. You roll again, and again you roll an 11. The camera you did not notice is turned towards you, as are the three other cameras in the room. You roll again – it comes up 11. That is four times in a row. As you take the dice and begin to your roll a man comes to the table to watch. For the fifth time you roll an 11. As the table again cheers and more people gather around the man standing next to you (who works for the casino) picks up the dies you had just thrown. He looks them over, balances them in his hand, holds them up against the light. He drops them, they come up 5. He drops them again, and they come up 8. Satisfied, he hands them back to you. You roll for your sixth time and they land on 11. You get them again, you roll and they once more, for the seventh time, land on 11. How many more times would they have to land on 11 before everyone begins to think the dice were fixed, or before the table closes? There comes a point when the odds are so improbable that we would have to consider them impossible unless some other agent is a work.

In the 1950’s a professor of Mathematics and Statistics, Peter Stoner, at Pasadena College considered the odds of Jesus Christ accidentally fulfilling eight Messianic prophecies. For example, we are told that the Messiah would come from the tribe of Judah (Genesis 49:10). There are 12 tribes so the chances would be 1 out of 12. Here are the eight passages Stoner considered, the probability of each:

Micah 5:2 Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem.

The average population from Bethlehem from the time of Micah until 1958 (when Stoner did his work) was 7,150/2,000,000,000 or 2.8×10 to the 5th power.

Malachi 3:1 A messenger would prepare the way for the coming Messiah.

Stoner estimated it would be 1 in 1,000 (a very conservative estimation).

Zechariah 9:9 Messiah would enter Jerusalem as a king riding on a donkey.

Stoner gave this a 1 in 100 chance (again, a very conservative estimate).

Zechariah 13:6 The Messiah would be betrayed by a friend and suffer wounds in His hands. This is also seen in Psalm 22:16.

Stoner set the probability of this as 1 in 10 to the 3rd power.

Zechariah 11:12 He would be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver. This is what the Gospels tells us happened when Judas betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver.

Here again Stoner set the odds at 1 in 10 to the 3rd.

Zechariah 11:13 After receiving the bribe this man out of all the men in the world at that time returned the money which was used to purchased a potter’s field.

This was given 1 our of 10 to the 5th power change of happening (or 1 in 10,000).

Isaiah 53:7 The Messiah was to remain silent while accused, oppressed and afflicted even though He is innocent.

Estimate: 1 in 1,000.

Psalm 22:16 His hands and feet were to be pierced. This verse is referenced above as well. At the time this was given crucifixion was not a method of known in Israel as a form of the death penalty.

Stoner gives this a 1 in 10 to the 4th.

Applying all of these probabilities together the number rounded off that Jesus could have by accident fulfilled these Messianic prophecies as 1 in 10 to the 28th power. If you take that number and divide it by the number of people who have lived since the time of these prophecies that gives the probability of 1 in 10 to the 17th. Or 1 chance in 100,000,000,000,000,000 (that’s one in one hundred quadrillion!)

But Jesus did not fulfill just 8 prophecies regarding the Messiah. There are hundreds. Here is a list of 351 Old Testament Prophecies that are recorded in the New Testament that have their fulfillment in Christ. https://www.newtestamentchristians.com/…/351-old…/

If Jesus fulfilled just the above 8 verses, just looking at the odds, we would say the “game was fixed.” But who could do such a thing except for God? To disprove the odds one has to find excuses for not only these 8 verses but for all 351. At which point such denial seems to be a greater form of faith than accepting them.