Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

So this is what the Sovereign Lord says:
“See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone,
    a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation;
the one who relies on it
    will never be stricken with panic.

• Isaiah 28:16

“Because this people has rejected
    the gently flowing waters of Shiloah
and rejoices over Rezin
    and the son of Remaliah,
therefore the Lord is about to bring against them
    the mighty floodwaters of the Euphrates—
    the king of Assyria with all his pomp.

• Isaiah 8:6-7a

The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone;

• Psalm 118:22

I told them, “If you think it best, give me my pay; but if not, keep it.” So they paid me thirty pieces of silver.

• Zechariah 11:12

He has filled me with bitter herbs and given me gall to drink.”

• Lamentations 3:15

“And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son.

• Zechariah 12:10

After two days he will revive us;
    on the third day he will restore us,
    that we may live in his presence.

• Hosea 6:2

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord,
    “when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch,
a King who will reign wisely
    and do what is just and right in the land.

• Jeremiah 23:5

“I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness;
    I will take hold of your hand.
I will keep you and will make you
    to be a covenant for the people
    and a light for the Gentiles,
to open eyes that are blind,
    to free captives from prison
    and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.

• Isaiah 42:6-7

“He is to be the precious cornerstone. Is. xxviii. 16.
“He is to be a stone of stumbling and offence. Is. viii. Jerusalem is to dash against this stone.
“The builders are to reject this stone. Ps. cxvii. 22.
“God is to make this stone the chief cornerstone.
“And this stone is to grow into a huge mountain, and fill the whole earth. Dan. ii.
“So He is to be rejected, despised, betrayed, (Ps. cviii. 8), sold (Zech. xi. 12), spit upon, buffeted, mocked, afflicted in innumerable ways, given gall to drink (Ps. lxviii.), pierced (Zech. xii.), His feet and His hands pierced, slain, and lots cast for His raiment.
“He will rise again (Ps. xv.) the third day (Hosea, vi. 3).
“He will ascend to heaven to sit on the right hand. Ps. cx.
…
Predictions.—It was foretold that, in the time of the Messiah, He should come to establish a new covenant, which should make them forget the escape from Egypt (Jer. xxiii. 5; Is. xliii. 16) that He should place His law not in externals, but in the heart; that He should put His fear, which had only been from without, in the midst of the heart. Who does not see the Christian law in all this?”

• Blaise Pascal, Thoughts (portions of thought 727, thought 729)

When I looked at these thoughts of Blaise Pascal, I thought there was no way this would be hard to write about.  But Blaise Pascal lived in the 1600s.  He was French.  He was Catholic.

To get from his Catholic Latin Vulgate to the NIV, and then there are typos, how do you find the right verse?  The Pascal book that I pulled the quotes from was printed nearly one hundred years ago and it is an English translation of what Pascal had written.

So, you will see a few Bible references next to Pascal’s statements of Bible verses that do not exist.  But the statements that Pascal made are in the Old Testament somewhere.  As an example, the drinking of gall was in Lamentations rather than Psalms.

But the point is that in the 1600s with no great preponderance of commentaries to help him, Blaise Pascal produced a list of Messianic prophecies that all come true in Jesus Christ.  Lee Strobel, in one of his books, said that the odds of that happening were one in trillions of trillions of trillions, or something along those lines.

But I like Pascal’s conclusion of thought 729.  “Who does not see the Christian law in all this?”

I might have phrased it “seeing Christ” in all this, but he seriously sought after the Lord.

As God told Solomon, if you humble yourselves, pray, truly seek God, and turn from your sin, God will hear your pleas.  He heard the pleas of thousands of years of believers, and He already had a Savior, His Son, ready before any of those pleas were uttered.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.