Verse 22 of Matt 1 mentions a reference to Isaiah. It started me thinking about how I have always heard that Jesus fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament about a Messiah for the Jews. Off to Google to find this, and much more describing each one in detail, so as you read down through them you realize that this is not just some air-filled statement, but has merits for proof in the Bible:

“There have been described in the Old Testament 300 prophecies of the first coming of the Messiah and 500 of the second coming, all of then made hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus and fulfilled to the letter in Jesus Christ, the Messiah.

George Heron, a French mathematician, calculated that the odds of one man fulfilling only 40 of those prophecies are 1 in 10 to the power of 157. That is a 1 followed by 157 zeros. Compare it to this; your odds on winning the state lottery are 14 followed by 6 zeros.

Another mathematician, Dr. Peter S. Ruckman, claims the odds of being fulfilled only 60 of them by the only person who claimed to be the Son of God, and who died on a “tree” on Calvary, and who rose the 3rd day are astronomical!… not just one in one trillion, but one out of ten to the 895th power. That is a one over a one followed by 895 zeros.”

Those are some odds! Of course, if it all was God’s plan to start, then it was really not by chance or odds at all….was it 😉

(BTW, here is a list I found: http://www.teachinghearts.org/dre17hdan09b.html)