Nearly a third of the world, 2.2 billion people, profess to be Christians. This week marks the time of year when these many billions will reflect on and celebrate Easter. The prophecies fulfilled in history— especially found in Isaiah 53—denoted a significant piece of evidence that persuaded me that Christianity is true.

In my exploration of the evidence for Christianity I stumbled upon the following in the book of Isaiah:

Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

 Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

 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 its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
 By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
Yet who of his generation protested?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was punished. 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.

Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. After he has suffered,
he will see the light of life and be satisfied;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors. (Isaiah 53)

When I read this, I wondered if it could have been written after the events in the first century. With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 was a scroll of the book of Isaiah. It was written in the 2^nd century B.C. Here was evidence, written hundreds of years before the crucifixion, testifying Messiah would:

1. Be spurned and rejected
2. Bear the sins of the people
3. Killed with the wicked
4. Buried in a rich man’s tomb
5. Make intercession for the transgressors
6. Silent before his accusers
7. Rise from the dead

May all who read this know that there are scores of other prophecies Jesus fulfilled as Messiah in the Hebrew Scriptures. Take heart this week as we celebrate the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He is the Passover lamb killed in our place who has also conquered death and the grave. The Easter story is not a cleverly devised tale, but a historical reality upon which we can rest.