The Mathematics of Good Friday

In this Illustra video of a
true story, the numbers turn
an atheist to faith in Jesus Christ

He’s still preaching Jesus Christ. Lee Strobel, a former atheist reporter, knew all about evidence. In his career, he had routinely reported court cases for the Chicago Tribune, where ‘smoking gun’ evidence was often sufficient to convict or exonerate a suspect.

A hardened atheist, Strobel had dismissed the story of Jesus— that was, till he decided to dive in and do an exhaustive study of the evidence that Jesus had died by crucifixion and rose again from the dead. He would apply the same principles of evidence he knew from his courtroom experiences.

Illustra’s documentary The Case for Christ describes Strobel’s reaction to what he found. In his research, Lee Strobel uncovered many historical and scientific facts that gradually wore down his skepticism.

This excerpt shows the smoking-gun evidence that finally collapsed his doubts about Jesus, leaving him with only one choice: follow the evidence where it leads.

Watch it here:

Below we will reproduce the passage from Isaiah 53, written eight centuries before Jesus was born.* If you were to read this on a plain piece of paper with no context, who would you say it was talking about?

See also our article “What makes Good Friday so good?” from 19 April 2019.

Isaiah 53
1 Who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant,
And as a root out of dry ground.
He has no form or comeliness;
And when we see Him,
There is no beauty that we should desire Him.
3 He is despised and rejected by men,
A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
4 Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way;
And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He opened not His mouth;
He was led as a lamb to the slaughter,
And as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
So He opened not His mouth.
8 He was taken from prison and from judgment,
And who will declare His generation?
For He was cut off from the land of the living;
For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.
9 And they made His grave with the wicked—
But with the rich at His death,
Because He had done no violence,
Nor was any deceit in His mouth.
10 Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him;
He has put Him to grief.
When You make His soul an offering for sin,
He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days,
And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.
11 He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied.
By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many,
For He shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great,
And He shall divide the spoil with the strong,
Because He poured out His soul unto death,
And He was numbered with the transgressors,
And He bore the sin of many,
And made intercession for the transgressors.

*The great Isaiah Scroll from the Dead Sea Scrolls (copied by a scribe between 150 – 100 BC) contains this chapter, proving it predates the birth of Christ. Isaiah wrote between 740 and 700 BC. Even liberal historians admit this chapter was written no later than 480 BC. On the Isaiah Scroll, there is no evidence of a break, indicating that the scribes at Qumran understood Isaiah to be a single book by a single author, not a composite, as some liberal critics allege.