Acts 17:1-3
Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. 2 And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, 3 explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.”
Paul had a “go to” way of sharing the Gospel: He would go into the synagogue on the Sabbath and reason with people from the Old Testament scriptures, explaining and proving the death and resurretion of Jesus. He was either: very confident in his ability to debate, very confident in the Pharisee’s inability to debate
, or so confident that the Old Testament pointed to Jesus,
that he knew it was a slam dunk!
Peter Stoner, in his book Science Speaks:
“Let us try to visualize this chance. If you mark one of ten tickets, and place all of the tickets in a hat, and thoroughly stir them, and then ask a blindfolded man to draw one, his chance of getting the right ticket is one in ten.
Suppose that we take 10^17 (1 Quintillion) silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. They will cover all of the state two feet deep. Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state.
Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up one silver dollar and say that this is the right one. What chance would he have of getting the right one? Just the same chance that the prophets would have had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man, from their day to the present time, providing they wrote using their own wisdom.”
Outside of God Himself directing the writers of the Bible, and then God Himself coming in human flesh to fulfill those writings, this would be impossible.
Micah 5:2
But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah,
who are too little to be among the clans of Judah,
from you shall come forth for me
one who is to be ruler in Israel
Malachi 3:1
I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me
Zechariah 9:9
Behold, your king is coming to you;
righteous and having salvation is he,
humble and mounted on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
Zechariah 13:6
And if one asks him, ‘What are these wounds on your back?’ he will say, ‘The wounds I received in the house of my friends.’
Zechariah 11:12
Then I said to them, “If it seems good to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them.” And they weighed out as my wages thirty pieces of silver.
Zechariah 11:13
Then the Lord said to me, “Throw it to the potter”—the lordly price at which I was priced by them. So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord, to the potter.
Isaiah 53:7
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
Psalm 22:16
For dogs encompass me;
a company of evildoers encircles me;
they have pierced my hands and feet
At the VERY LEAST, finding those 8 prophesies in 1 person, is like finding a single half dollar in a 2 foot deep pile, the size of Texas. And there are 290+ MORE prophesies like those in the Old Testament, that all point forward to Jesus Christ, the Messiah, God in human flesh who gave his life in the place of yours.
Paul WAS proving Jesus as the Messiah, but he was also opening their eyes to the personal nature of God and showing God’s heart to win people back to himself through Jesus’ death and resurrection.
And as a result of these 3 Sabbath days of preaching in the synagogues, it says in the next verse:
Acts 17:4
4 And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women.
The important thing here is the life change! Just like Lydia in Acts 17.
Acts 17:14-15
14 One of those listening was a woman from the city of Thyatira named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth. She was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message. 15 When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. “If you consider me a believer in the Lord,” she said, “come and stay at my house.” And she persuaded us.
