Jesus is "Unique" Part 1

JESUS IS “UNIQUE” [part 1]

One very outstanding aspect of Jesus' life is that many detailed predictions and prophecies were made about Him by ancient prophets in the Old Testament, many centuries before He was born. Some contain specific details regarding His birth, life and death, that no other mortal man could possibly have fulfilled! The discovery of hundreds of ancient Old Testament manuscripts by archaeologists during this century, has proven without a doubt that these prophecies were indeed written centuries before Jesus was born.

Here a sample of the kind of specific predictions we're talking about:
In 750 B.C., the prophet Isaiah made the astounding prediction that "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel."-- Isaiah 7:14. Seven-and-a-half centuries later, in Israel, a young virgin girl named Mary was visited by the angel Gabriel, who announced to her that she would bear a Son Who would be called Emmanuel, which means "God with us." The books of the Bible which were written after Jesus came to Earth, the "New Testament", tell us that, "Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” And the angel answered, `The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God!'"-- Luke 1:26-35.
So, even the very beginning of His life on Earth--His conception and birth-- was not only unique, but miraculous, because the simple and humble young girl who became His mother had never slept with a man! In fact, the Bible tells us that the news of her pregnancy were so shocking to the young man to whom she was engaged to be married, Joseph, that when he learned about it, he promptly decided to break off the engagement and cancel the wedding!--Until the angel of the Lord appeared to him also, and instructed him to stay with her and rear and protect the very special child that she was carrying. [Matthew 1:19,20]

800 years before Jesus was born, the prophet Micah foretold the exact village where the Messiah was to be born:
"But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.."-- Micah 5:2
Although His earthly parents lived in a town named Nazareth, 100 miles to the north of Bethlehem, a decree from Rome demanded that all families return to their ancestral homes to register for a worldwide census. The decree came just as Mary's child was due to be born.--Thus God used a Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus, to help bring about the fulfillment of Micah's prophecy. Joseph and Mary journeyed to Bethlehem, and upon their arrival, Mary went into childbirth, and as we are informed by the Gospel of Matthew: "Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea…" (Matthew 2:1) - just as the prophet Micah predicted.

Jesus Himself said, "Before Abraham was (.), I AM."-- John 8:58, which confirms Micah's prophecy about the Messiah in the last part of Micah 5:2: "whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting." Abraham is the forefather of the Jews and Arabs, who lived about 2,000 years before Jesus was born to Mary. So Jesus was referring to His preexistence with God before His life on Earth in the form of a man. [John 1:1]

Though born in Bethlehem, Jesus grew up in Nazareth. In His first public address there, He openly declared that He indeed was the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies regarding the Messiah. When attending the local house of worship, the local synagogue, He stood up before the crowd and read a prophecy from the book of the prophet Isaiah. In the passage, Isaiah predicted that the Messiah would be anointed with the Spirit of God: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. …This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. "-- Luke 4:18-21.

In 487 B.C., the Prophet Zechariah predicted: "And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver."-- Zechariah 11:12.
On the night that Jesus was arrested by His enemies, the New Testament tells us that, "Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests,
And said unto them, What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver."-- Matthew 26:14,15.
Just imagine!--Over five hundred years before the event took place, God's Prophet, Zechariah, predicted the exact "price" that Jesus' enemies would pay to His traitor disciple, Judas! In the next verse of Zechariah's prophecy, he goes into even more astounding details:
"And the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD."-- Zechariah 11:13.
The New Testament tells us that, "Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself. And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in.."-- Matthew 27:3-7. The 30 pieces of silver were literally cast "to the potter in the house of the LORD"!--Just as Zechariah predicted 500 years earlier!

[continue in part 2]