"That Jesus was crucified [under Pontius Pilate] is as certain as anything historical can ever be" ~ Liberal Scholar John Dominic Crossan.

There is a unique "Isaiah Argument" for Christianity that exists for no other religion. Isaiah was a Hebrew Prophet in the Royal Court of King Hezekiah. He delivered various prophecies about the future, especially about the Messiah, and what this Messiah would do when He came.

1. Isaiah 53 is one single passage that has probably led to Millions accepting Christ because it such a Clear Prophecy about Him that pre-dates His Birth:

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"3 He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity, and as one from whom others hide their faces; he was despised, and we held him of no account. 4 Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases, yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. 
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter; and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. 8 By a perversion of justice he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future? For he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people."

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This is a Clear Prophecy that the Messiah will offer Himself as a Sacrificial Lamb for the sins of His People. Only Jesus Christ has ever done this.

Here is a Video about this with some 4 MN views from Tree Life of Ministries in Israel itself. It is in Hebrew, but there are English sub-titles.

https://youtu.be/cGz9BVJ_k6s

2. This also shows the Pharisaic/Rabbinic conception of the Messiah is wrong: Although some Pre-Christian Rabbis got it right, that the Messiah would suffer, after Isaiah 53 caused such great controversy that many became Christian because of it, because it was evidently fulfilled in Jesus Christ, some began to deny the Messiah would suffer and die for our sins, and instead claimed this Prophecy was referring to the Nation of Israel. Even a slight knowledge of Isaiah suffices to refute that: Isaiah says the Servant is Righteous and Innocent and suffers for the sins of His People. Right from the beginning of Isaiah, however, the Prophet says the people most certainly are not righteous and sinless, but fallen and sinful! Hence, the Servant is not the people themselves, and that is a Pharisaic/Rabbinic Sophism which Christianity has often answered before.

See Isaiah 1:4 for e.g.: "Woe, sinful nation, people laden with iniquity, offspring who do evil, children who act corruptly, who have forsaken the Lord, who have despised the Holy One of Israel, who are utterly estranged!"

Lol, easiest false argument to ever knock down. Granted that the people are a sinful nation, therefore, and the Messiah is an Innocent Victim suffering for their and the world's sins, it clearly follows that the Servant/Messiah is not the people themselves, but the Messiah who dies for the sins of His people. Next, the Messiah is not Israel, but a Son of Israel, whose mission/vocation is to gather in the Gentiles/non-Jews, and bring God's Salvation to the ends of Earth. Isaiah 53 is actually the 4th of 4 Suffering Servant Passages in Isaiah, and this is clearly stated in an earlier one, Isaiah 49: "5 And now the Lord says, who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob [Israel] back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him, for I am honored in the sight of the Lord, and my God has become my strength— 6 he says, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

The Messiah is someone who has to spread God's Message of Salvation to every Nation, as Jesus Christ alone has clearly done in history; there were other false messiahs in Jesus Christ's time, some of them are mentioned in Acts and by Josephus, but neither of them did these 2 things.

3. Why this Prophecy is evidence for Divine Omniscience: So, as mentioned, only 2 things are taken for granted here (1) That Jesus Christ truly was crucified, which even Crossan says is as certain as a historical fact can ever be. (2) That Christianity did spread throughout the world, bringing the message of salvation from the God of Israel and His Suffering Messiah, exactly as the prophecies of the Servant in 49 and 53 require.

So, how did all this come about? Just a "chance" fulfilment as usual? Gotta love that chance. Rather, since it's extremely unlikely Jesus Christ could ever have known that the True Messiah was supposed to die and sacrifice Himself for our sins - as most of the Rabbis have held otherwise - unless in fact He were the True Messiah and Son of God and, even having done that (as Crossan and others acknowledge He did), could never have ensured that His Message would live on and reach the farthest ends of the Earth, as it had to per Isaiah 49, and as it actually has in history, then that's further evidence of Christ's Omniscience and Omnipotence. He was able to foretell these things and then bring it about because He was God.

Thoughts?

Poppycock.

I have a much simpler explanation, Nishant:

The writers who composed the Gospels deliberately wrote fictional scenes based on the Old Testament to make it appear that prophesies were fulfilled.

Bible is not history but a collection of fairy tales.

Wall o text
How unsurprising
Content? : Clear lack of linking atheism to Marxism.

The impressive part of the post: John whoever thinks the crucification of JC is a fact. Dude, I'm SO impressed. 🥱

He keeps using that sentence across threads, lol, like he's trying to cast a magic spell...but I'm pretty sure that we're much more certain things went tits up in pompeii.

(July 23, 2023 at 1:02 am)Fake Messiah Wrote: Bible is not history but a collection of fairy tales.

No,  it is a collection of a range of lies, all very low low class, chosen annd assembled with very specific and very self serving propaganda agenda in mind.

In Case for Christ, Lee Strobel recounts how Louis Lapides, who was a Devout Jew prior to reading Isaiah 53, reacted upon reading it. He was amazed! He ended up becoming a Christian. Messianic Prophecies have led Millions to Christ over the Centuries. They will show Atheism to be false.

Astreja, that cannot be because the only thing this prophecy requires to have happened is the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ under Pontius Pilate, a fact virtually universally admitted, even by Atheists and Liberals. The quote from John Dominic Crossan was to establish that. Even Cornelius Tacitus, the distinguished official biographer of the Roman Emperor Tiberius, frankly says that Christ was killed under their governor Pilate.

Here is the Excerpt from Case for Christ on Isaiah 53 and Lapides:

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though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.... For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. Isaiah 53:3-9, 12 Instantly Lapides recognized the portrait: this was Jesus of Nazareth! Now he was beginning to understand the paintings he had seen in the Catholic churches he had passed as a child: the suffering Jesus, the crucified Jesus, the Jesus who he now realized had been "pierced for our transgressions" as he "bore the sin of many." As Jews in the Old Testament sought to atone for their sins through a system of animal sacrifices, here was Jesus, the ultimate sacrificial lamb of God, who paid for sin once and for all. Here was the personification of God's plan of redemption. So breathtaking was this discovery that Lapides could only come to one conclusion: it was a fraud! He believed that Christians had rewritten the Old Testament and twisted Isaiah's words to make it sound as if the prophet had been foreshadowing Jesus. Lapides set out to expose the deception. "I asked my stepmother to send me a Jewish Bible so I could check it out myself," he told me. "She did, and guess what? I found that it said the same thing! Now I really had to deal with it."

 THE JEWISHNESS OF JESUS Over and over Lapides would come upon prophecies in the Old Testament-more than four dozen major predictions in all. Isaiah revealed the manner of the Messiah's birth (of a virgin); Micah pinpointed the place of his birth (Bethlehem); Genesis and Jeremiah specified his ancestry (a descendent of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, from the tribe of Judah, the house of David); the Psalms foretold his betrayal, his accusation by false witnesses, his manner of death (pierced in the hands and feet, although crucifixion hadn't been invented yet), and his resurrection (he would not decay but would ascend on high); and on and on . Each one chipped away at Lapides' skepticism until he was finally willing to take a drastic step. "I decided to open the New Testament and just read the first page," he said. "With trepidation I slowly turned to Matthew as I looked up to heaven, waiting for the lightning bolt to strike!" Matthew's initial words leaped off the page: "A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham ..." Lapides' eyes widened as he recalled the moment he first read that sentence. "I thought, Wow! Son of Abraham, son of David-it was all fitting together! I went to the birth narratives and thought, Look at this! Matthew is quoting from Isaiah 7:14: 'The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son.' And then I saw him quoting from the prophet Jeremiah. I sat there thinking, You know, this is about Jewish people. Where do the Gentiles come in? What's going on here? "I couldn't put it down. I read through the rest of the gospels, and I realized this wasn't a handbook for the American Nazi Party; it was an interaction between Jesus and the Jewish community. I got to the book of Acts and-this was incredible! - they were trying to figure out how the Jews could bring the story of Jesus to the Gentiles. Talk about role reversal!" So convincing were the fulfilled prophecies that Lapides started telling people that he thought Jesus was the Messiah.

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Sure, that's it. Magic book miraculously made someone who already believed in god..believe in god.

Rather, someone who did not believe in Jesus Christ as the True God, upon seeing the Amazing Proofs of His Divinity and Omniscience, by the help of God's Grace and his free will surrender to the Holy Spirit, came to confess that Truth. As St. Paul said: "Therefore I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, "Jesus be cursed," and no one can say, "Jesus is Lord," except by the Holy Spirit. There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord." (1 Cor 12:3) God Bless Louis Lapides. His life is a testimony to Christ, and what Christ is doing for His Jewish People. Unless chance is your god, you should realize these prophecies couldn't have been fulfilled by chance. Crucifixion hadn't even been invented yet, when David and Isaiah spoke of Christ being pierced in the hands and feet, and in time, He was. For us and for our sins, that all who believe in Him and are baptized may receive the remission of all their past sins and go to Heaven if they just avoid mortal sin in the future. Christ's Blood has made forgiveness possible, and Isaiah bears witness to the fact that the Messiah's Sacrifice washes away sins.