For as long as I can remember, one of my favorite jokes has been, “I’m not a prophet. Nor am I the son of a prophet. In fact, I work for a non-profit organization!” Obviously, it works better verbally than in print.
As we head into Christmas, one of the greatest evidences for Christianity is the number of prophesies that Jesus fulfilled when He came as a child and the many more He fulfilled throughout His life and ministry and, of course, in His death and resurrection. Over the years, I heard countless times, “Jesus fulfilled over 200 prophesies!” But no one ever provided the data on the many referenced prophesies. Clearly, that’s a lot of evidence, and presenting it in an easy-to-understand format is challenging – especially to children – and so we are forced to simply ask our audience to “trust us” on this bold claim.
Last year, when writing the Angel Sightings series for it Bible Curriculum, I finally decided “trust me on this” wasn’t enough. I wanted to SHOW MY KIDS the prophesies that Jesus had fulfilled, but I wanted to do it in a fun and easy-to-digest manner.
I had no idea how big a project I had bitten off!
I dove into the Bible (and the Internet) and began to collect hundreds of prophesies of Jesus and their fulfillments. For each one I wanted a Scripture that both PREDICTED IT and SHOWED IT FULFILLED. I ended up choosing 100 that I felt were child appropriate. (I left out the slaughter of children by Herod, for example, that Jeremiah foretold.)
The result is 100 Prophesy Trading Cards. To be clear, I don’t give every child all one hundred cards. I give each child 5-6 cards, but
they understand that every child in the room has a handful of cards and each of them has on it an Old Testament prophesy about Jesus and a New Testament verse telling where or how it was fulfilled in Jesus! I underestimated how excited the children would get about this. They were sharing cards, trading cards and many were asking me for extras when they saw that I had more that I hadn’t even passed out. A few parents contacted me during the week asking if they could get the entire deck of cards for their family! Parents told me they had never had a resource that so clearly and simplyshowed how many prophies were fulfilled by Jesus and that it strengthened their own faith.
Let me encourage you to use the 100 Prophesies of Jesus to encourage your children and families this year with how AMAZING Jesus is and to use it as a tool to talk about Jesus with their family and friends as a unique way to share their faith during this season.
