So if a guy wasn't prone to hearing voices heard a voice, the odds of hearing a voice with a call to action in that particular time out of his entire life is about 1 in 26 years. There are 365.25 days a year and at the time I was 26yrs old = 9500 days I lived.
I felt guided to a church I no longer attended and my dad was there. He is the grounds keeper and maybe is there twice a week for 3 hours. 6 hours that he is there/ (24hrs a day 7days in a week) = 1/28 chance my dad would be there. The way probabilities work is that you multiply them. So just hearing a voice and my dad being there is 1/9500* 1/28 or 1/266000 chance I'd hear a voice and my dad would be there at my destination. There is probabilities I am missing about even being guided to that location.
Now what are the probabilities that the words that were spoken to me would be the title of the Bible. Assuming two words spoken, we find from an Oxford dictionary that there are an estimated 170,000 words in the English Langage. Link: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/how-many-words-are-there-in-the-english-language/
My vocabulary is smaller than the full 170,000 words. And we're determining the chance I just thought to myself words I knew. So lets say I conservatively know 50k words. I went to fancy schools so I probably know more than that. I just don't use big words because people don't always know them, and I want to communicate effectively. So the odds of the two words spoken to me to be "Good News" are 1/50,000 * 1/50,000 or 1 in 2.5 mil any two words matching the exact Bible title my church was using.
Now we have to multiply that by the chance of being spoken to with a call to action and my dad being there which we had earlier at 1/266000 chance. 1 in 2.5 mil multiplied by 1/266000 = 1 in 665,000,000,000 chance that I would be spoken to on any given day with a call to action and those words to be the words of the Bible in a church I didn't go to in like fifteen years. I did not know another name for the Gospel was Good News at this time.
The only conclusion is that it was God. The other miracles I have that also defy odds reinforce this.
Final calculated odds: 1 in 665,000,000,000 or more that I would be spoken to on one day, that my dad would be at the church and that the exact two words spoken to me would be the title of the Bible. This does not calculate the odds that I was divinely guided to the right place. Nor the odds of that Bob Marley song come on that I willed/prayed for. If that was added in, the odds would be even less likely of it being by coincidence by thousands.
The Miracle:
August 21rst, 2003:
I was down Pittsburgh, finishing up a day of work at Carnegie Mellon as I was working as a computer consultant for the Career Center. It was a pretty cool job. I'd write some software, modify hardware, or just do some light work such as deliver mail. I felt pretty much complete, after having a long hard time in school. To finally be working was a great feeling. I decided to go out for Sushi. At the Sushi place, I was seated in front of an aquarium where a single fish swam. I thought on the situation that there was a specimen of beauty in front of me, yet I'm going to be eating fish soon. There was music playing which I think was Japanese. I finished my food and tipped the waitress. Before I left, I wished a Bob Marley song would play. The next song on the radio was a Bob Marley song. I thought that was pretty cool. So I left, and was walking back to work to check in and see if anyone needed anything. While I was walking over a bridge, I heard God say to me,"Good News". It was like a whisper, but it came with authority. I had to understand what it meant. I felt compelled to go straight to my car and drive. When I was driving I felt as if I should go towards home, and while I was driving, I felt unable to turn my eyes to look at billboards or be distracted from the road. I had an effect similar to tunnel vision where everything but what was necessary for driving was being filtered out. Eventually I passed my old Presbyterian church that I went to when I was young, but haven't for several years. My dad was there doing maintenance on the graveyard. I felt this is where I needed to go. I stepped inside the church and my dad and I talked. We held hands while talking and our arms were trembling. I don't think I mentioned being told the,"Good News". He went upstairs and brought down a Good News bible for me.
,James W Sager III
Some things I took away from this experience:
#1 God is real, Jesus is Lord
#2 The Bible is God's infallible word, and that he guided the translators perfectly to copy it.
Main odds calculating page.
www.goodnewsjim