How did we ever live before there were microwaves, cell phones, and google? In preparation for this article, I relied heavily upon the last one, but to my surprise, I came up empty. I googled, "How many Old Testament prophecies where fulfilled in the Old Testament?" After scrolling down through several pages of google results to my search, all I ever saw was something along the lines of how many prophecies in the Old Testament were fulfilled in the life of Christ. That is a very worthy study, of course, and it can be said that Jesus Christ lived during the era of the old covenant ("He was born under the law," Galatians 4:4), so what I retrieved was not off the mark from what I googled.
But more pointedly, what I wanted to find was a list of prophecies that were made in the pages of the Old Testament that were fulfilled in the pages of the Old Testament, or were fulfilled in the era of the Old Testament leading up to Christ. I did not find any paper, article or research that had been done with that specific topic in mind. I am sure there is one somewhere, or possibly several, but here goes my hurried attempt to give a very partial list of the numerous prophecies that were made somewhere in the Old Testament pages, and were fulfilled somewhere else in the pages of the Old Testament.
In Genesis 6:3, God said that there would be a 120 year period of time before He would judge the world. That was fulfilled in the very next chapter when the flood waters drowned every living creature, except those eight humans inside Noah's floating zoo. In Genesis 15:18-20, God told Abram the geographical parameters that his descendants would occupy. 1 Kings 4:20-34 we read of the vast extension of Solomon's kingdom that is a direct fulfillment of Genesis 15. In Genesis 18 God said that Abram and Sarah would have a son in their old age, and in Genesis 21 Isaac was born. Earlier God had told Abram in Genesis 15:13 that his descendants would be strangers in a foreign land for 400 years, and surely everyone is familiar with the story behind the book of Exodus.
The plagues visited upon Egypt were all first words spoken by God through Moses to Pharaoh, and all those plagues became reality just as God had said. God even used a Balaam, and a donkey before him, to speak the truth. His four prophecies in Numbers 23 and 24 were all lived out in the pages of the Old Testament. The conquests under Joshua were fulfillment of what had God promised to the Hebrew children. The birth and life of Samson in the book of Judges were foretold by God to the wife of Manoah.
In 1 Samuel 2, God initiates a prophetic judgment against Eli's household, and everything came to pass, including the death of Eli's sons on the same day (1 Samuel 4). The prophet Samuel told disobedient King Saul that his kingdom would not continue and that God would raise up a man after His own heart. Such was fulfilled in the death of Saul, his household and the beginning of the reign of King David, all fulfilled within 40 years.
The prophet Nathan in 2 Samuel 12 confronted David after the incident involving Bathsheba and Uriah, and he told him a series of prophecies that were headed his way, such as unending violence in his household, his newborn would die, which did occur in the same chapter, and a son would cause an insurrection, namely Absalom. All those prophecies came to pass, again within the pages of the Old Testament.
After Elijah in 1 Kings 21 told Ahab of his future, he then told the wicked queen Jezebel what awaited her. True to form, the prophecies about Ahab came to pass, and in 2 Kings 9 we read of how Jezebel died, just as God had said. Along came King Jehu, and through him God fulfilled many earlier prophecies. A chapter earlier in 2 Kings 8, Elisha had foretold an incredulous Hazael that he would become king, and that he would wreak havoc upon Israel.
The prophecies are too numerous to mention about all the times God had said that the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah would meet their demise, first by the hands of the Assyrians and then by the Babylonians. The Old Testament prophets carried those messages of dire warning. Jeremiah 25:11 and Jeremiah 29:10 both state that the exact time of the bondage to the Babylonians would last 70 years, and so it was to the exact year. (Daniel 9:1-2). The prophecies are also too numerous to mention about all the times God had said that he would restore the Hebrew children back to the land after their exile. One example is in Isaiah 44:28-45:1,where God even names the king-yet-to-be-born who would do the Jewish people a big favor, fulfilled in Ezra 1:2-4, 6:3-5.
In the book of Isaiah, such as in 16:14, 20:3, 21:16, 23:15, and 37:30-35, we read of how God would act in human history regarding different nations and people groups within a specified period of time. All those were fulfilled within the era of the Old Testament. The book of Daniel is the revealing of God's schedule of events that would come to pass during the four successive world empires leading up to the Messiah Himself. Just reading Daniel 10 and 11 should cause our heads to swim, because there we are told in exact detail the upcoming stratagem of warring kings that would ensue in the Greek empire as it effected the Jewish homeland. Someone has calculated over 100 details of prophecies are made here, all of which played out in the course of history within the Old Testament time period.
We can add all the prophecies made about the coming of the Messiah, which google does provide, and we end up with a large amount of prophecies made in the Old Testament that were fulfilled in the Old Testament time period. So where does this all lead us? For our purposes right now, it leads us to the story of Esther and Mordecai, two brave Jewish cousins whom God used to prevent a Jewish holocaust long before there was a Hitler.
In Esther 3, Haman, an Agagite, a descendant of King Agag the Amalekite, hatched a plan to destroy all Jews throughout the entire Persian kingdom on the 13th day of the 12th month. I would consider this to be a very significant event. Not even Hitler and Stalin could have pulled off this plan, but Haman could. There were no Jews living in New York City or Chicago or Miami or Rio de Janeiro or Toronto or London during Haman's time, if you get my drift. Practically all Jews were confined within the borders of the vast Persian empire. They were conveniently fenced in, powerless against Haman's evil conspiracy. In Esther 8 and 9, as the story of Esther unfolds, we see how this holocaust was prevented by God's providential intervention. Instead, 75,000 enemies of the Jews were killed. It was such a dramatic rescue and such an earth-shattering historical development that Jews since then have celebrated the feast of Purim, as a celebration of their deliverance from extermination.
Imagine for a moment if Haman were successful. If all Jews were killed, then how would the Messiah be born--the Lion from the tribe of Judah (which with all other tribes would be extinct), the Son of David (whose family line would be extinguished), the promised Seed of woman who would crush the head of Satan (Genesis 3:15)? Haman was not acting alone, anymore King Herod was acting alone when he ordered the slaughter of the innocents (Revelation 12). Satan was the director-producer of this real life drama.
Of course, God would not allow Haman or anybody else to be successful. God's prophecies would come true, and man and Satan could not prevent the inevitable. Satan is the Big Loser.
Here is where we are going. Considering the vast number of prophecies made in the Old Testament about all sorts of things--some we may esteem more important than others, but regardless, God made those prophecies--and considering the long list of prophecies made that were fulfilled during the Old Testament itself, should it not surprise us if Haman's scheme of Jewish extermination and God's deliverance from it were not somewhere prophesied earlier in Scripture? Let me state it in another way. Why would God completely not mention anywhere else in the Old Testament what would later happen in the book of Esther, since it would involve the entire Jewish people, their destiny and the future Messiah? You mean to tell me that God made no prophecy at all about what Haman would conceive and try to carry out, that God just skipped over talking about the possible elimination of His entire chosen people?
This to me is a very, very significant point. It is not the only point, but it is a point worth making, that I would tend to think, considering God's long string of prophecies made in the Old Testament, that somewhere in the Old Testament, prior to the time of Esther, God would prophesy about what would come down the road. That was God's method of operation over and over again--He would foretell His people what would happen to warn them, to prepare them and to assure them. God told His people ahead of time about the fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C., but most Jews escaped the clutches of death then. The Babylonians didn't want to kill all the Jews anyway. In Haman's case, though, he did not want one Jew to be left alive. And God would not prophesy about that, but He would about 586 B.C.?
This lays the groundwork for us to look in the next article at the place where God did prophesy about the extremely serious series of events that would play out in the book of Esther.
Yours in Christ,
Chris
