Are there ANY Bible prophecies that indisputably came true?

by nicolaou 81 Replies latest watchtower bible

  • EverAStudent
    EverAStudent

    The original poster asked, “Are there ANY Bible prophecies that indisputably came true?” Of course, by the time the hidden rules of the presupposition game were slowly revealed by the skeptics, the answer seems to be, “no.”

    The hidden rules of the presupposition game are:

    1. If a prophecy was made in one book of the Old Testament and fulfilled in another book of the Old Testament it must always be assumed that the prophecy was a recent edit added after the fact (about 400 BC) and did not exist in the first writing of the book.
    2. If a prophecy was made in the Old Testament regarding the future Messiah (e.g. virgin birth, born in Bethlehem, died via crucifixion, resurrected from the dead) then whenever the New Testament demonstrates that Jesus fulfilled that prophecy it must be assumed that the gospel writer invented those details about Jesus and that they never actually happened to Jesus.

    In short, the hidden rules of the presuppositionalists guarantee that no biblical prophecy can ever be accepted as valid prophecy. Worse, it makes every Old Testament book of the Bible a fabrication filled with falsehoods and every New Testament apostle that wrote a letter or endorsed a gospel account to be a flagrant liar.

    Virtually the entire Christian faith is dependent on the truths that Jesus was born of a virgin, was born in Bethlehem, lived a perfect life, died a sacrificial death, and resurrected from death to life. Since all those events were first prophesied in the Old Testament about the Messiah, it means that either Jesus fulfilled them all and was the Messiah, or, every foundational aspect of Christianity is a brazen lie and never happened.

    In other words, if one accepts that Jesus did live a perfect life, and/or died a sacrificial death via crucifixion, and/or resurrected from death to life, then you have “personal proof” that at least five Old Testament prophecies absolutely were fulfilled.

    Opposite that, if one accepts that the gospel writers and the apostles all lied in their writings about such things as Jesus being born of a virgin, Jesus being born in Bethlehem, His perfect life, His sacrificial death by crucifixion, and His resurrection to life, then EVERY aspect of Christianity is false and immoral; all of it having been based on falsehoods. There can be nothing good or wholesome in the Christian religion in such a case for it is all comprised of deceit, errors, and intentional mis-directions.

    Now, if every Bible prophecy is a fabrication and was never made in real human history, then God never revealed Himself in it or through it, ever. For example, Abraham could never have encountered God because God always prophesied the future (including a son and a nation) to Abraham on every encounter. Certainly Moses never encountered God because at the burning bush God supposedly prophesied that Moses would lead the nation out of Egypt into the promised land originally granted to Abraham (a prophecy later fulfilled by Joshua).

    Kind David was given a future-telling prophecy that his lineage would rule Israel for eternity and would save all the world from their sins. That too had to have been a lie, a fake future-telling prophecy, a fabrication added to the scrolls by devious scribes in 400 BC.

    And the worst part, there never was a promised Messiah. Every promise of a Savior/Messiah in the Old Testament was a future-telling prophecy. Every one. If all of those prophecies were recent edits by sneaky Jewish scribes in 400 BC and were not made by the original prophets who first wrote the books, or, if they were never fulfilled by anyone, including Jesus, then the world never did have a Messiah from the line of David. No Messiah means no sacrifice was made for sins. No sacrifice for sins means no forgiveness and no salvation. None.

    That about sums up the two choices:

    1. Every patriarch in the Bible is a liar for having claimed an encounter with God and having claimed to have been given a future-telling prophecy regarding a promised land, a great nation, or a coming Messiah, thus, all of Judaism and all of Christianity are a giant conspiracy of uncounted liars covering a span of four thousand years.
    2. The prophecies were presented to the original patriarchs just as the Scriptures report them and Jesus is the fulfillment of every one of the prophecies just as the gospels, apostles, and eyewitnesses have reported.

    Which choice is backed by the best evidence and is more plausible? If you have a presupposition that everything supernatural is impossible, you will choose option one. If you presuppose a living personal God who loves His creation and has communicated with it, option two may have some appeal for you.

    As for me and my house, we have chosen to believe in the Lord.

  • Chalam
    Chalam

    However, the bible does NOT read like that. Instead it is vague and open to a thousand different interpretations.

    What?! Maybe you should read this verse again.

    Ezekiel 11:17 (New International Version)

    17 "Therefore say: 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will gather you from the nations and bring you back from the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you back the land of Israel again.'

    The Jews had no homeland for 2000 years, they were scattered over the whole earth. Now they have Israel again and the are returning to it in droves.

    John 20:29 (New International Version)

    29 Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

    You may not like His book or literary style but it contains predictions from beginning to end, some to incredible detail, the majority which have already been "come to pass". I can only concluded that the rest are going to happen.

    Blessings,

    Stephen

  • Leolaia
    Leolaia

    My point is that the paraphrase itself creates after the fact the very prophecy that is supposed to have been fulfilled. The alleged prophecy states that "they took the thirty silver pieces ... and they gave them to the potter's field", which is supposed to find fulfillment in the Temple officials using the money returned to them to purchase a potter's field. But what is found in the OT is only the raw material for this "prophecy". Jeremiah 18 says something about a potter but nothing else relevant, the separate story in Jeremiah 32 concerns the purchase of a field but it is not a potter's field nor is its price thirty pieces of silver (although the prophet places the deed into an earthenware pot), Zechariah 11 concerns the shepherd casting thirty pieces of silver "to the potter" / "to the treasury" (one of which is a corruption of the Hebrew) but says nothing about a field nor the purchase of a field. It is only when these unrelated elements are brought together into a synthesis that we have anything resembling the "prophecy" cited in Matthew. It was the author of Matthew who created this synthesis; it doesn't exist in the original OT passages. There is nothing in the OT about the purchase of a potter's field with thirty pieces of silver, as claimed by the evangelist. The question is not that the evangelist failed to quote with word-for-word precision; the problem is that the evangelist is here creating something new that didn't exist before, the very thing that he wants to cite as an old prophecy. He unintentionally makes the Temple officials fulfill a prophecy that hadn't even been written yet.

    Yes, the evangelist identified the 30 pieces of silver and the potter reference as a Messianic prophecy within an ancient parable from Zechariah. In fact, the passage is very striking: "I said to them, 'If it is good in your sight, give me my wages; but if not, never mind!' So they weighed out thirty shekels of silver as my wages. Then the LORD said to me, 'Throw it to the potter, that magnificent price at which I was valued by them.' So I took the thirty shekels of silver and threw them to the potter in the house of the LORD." (Zechariah 11:12-13)

    Again, this is much less impressive than it seems. The passage is striking only because it is used as a source by the evangelist. As I discussed in detail in my post above, the evangelist's use of this passage is inconsistent with the structure and conceptual framework of the parable; he superficially employs only a couple of motifs and ignores the rest. As soon as one examines the overall context and meaning of the passage, it is impossible to sustain the evangelist's interpretation over the entirety of the passage without running into a myriad of absurdities.

    Interestingly, per your other point Leolaia, not only were the 12 apostles supposed to be shepherds over the fledging Christian church, and Judas turned out to be a loser of a shepherd, but his sherpherd's position was replaced by another in Acts 1:26.

    This doesn't address the meat of my point; Jesus himself is the "sheep" in Matthew's limited application of the parable, not "the fledging Christian church". If we are to be consistent and respect the plot and structure of the parable, Judas is supposed to be the shepherd over Jesus; he is supposed to be paid by the Temple clergy to take good care of Jesus, feed him well and make sure that Jesus does not stray from the straight and narrow. But Judas is lazy and his rulership over Jesus is irresponsible and oppressive. Judas then goes to the Temple clergy to receive his pay but he knows that he doesn't deserve it; the money he receives is supposed to reward him for looking after Jesus' needs. The priests pay him anyway and Judas returns the money to the treasury, as it was foretold. Then Judas is replaced by another shepherd who turns out to be just as lazy and incompetent in taking care of Jesus. This second shepherd is Jesus himself. And God gives his judgment on this worthless shepherd and Jesus is arrested and all his disciples (now the "sheep", whereas formerly the "sheep" was Jesus) scatter, as it was foretold. And then after defeating all the Gentile nations in the day of great battle, God gathers the scattered disciples back together in Jerusalem and everlasting peace is established forevermore.

    This adheres rather poorly to the plot of the passion narrative because the evangelist is only interested in a few verbal similarities; the overall passage follows its own rather different plot. Judas did not have a supervisory role over Jesus as his "king", he was not paid by the Temple priests to care for Jesus, he was not replaced by someone just as incompetent as himself, Jesus was not a lazy and incompetent shepherd over his disciples, etc. Matthew just took what he needed and ignored the rest.

  • snowbird
    snowbird

    Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge!
    We're fulfilling this prophecy right now.

    Snowbird, that's not a prophecy, it's more of a command.

    Okay, Mister Poppers, a prophecy, to me, is anything foretold in advance.

    I was trying to keep a positive spin on things, but how about this?

    Genesis 3:16 He told the Woman:
    "I'll multiply your pains in childbirth;
    you'll give birth to your babies in pain.
    You'll want to please your husband,
    but he'll lord it over you." MSG

    Ask any woman if that prophecy dictum has been fulfilled!

    Sylvia

  • Chalam
    Chalam

    Here's a similar one

    Genesis 6:3 (New International Version)

    3 Then the LORD said, "My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years."

    Stephen

  • Mary
    Mary

    Yes, here's one:

    Jeremiah 25:27: "‘This is what Jehovah of armies, the God of Israel, has said: "Drink and get drunk and puke and fall so that YOU cannot get up because of the sword that I am sending among you."

    I'm pretty sure that was fulfilled in this guy:

    I defy anyone here to prove otherwise.

  • snowbird
    snowbird

    LOL LOL LOL !!!

    Sylvia

  • isaacaustin
    isaacaustin

    Yes! I can think of one fulfilled directly by the GB:

    Matt 15

    7
    Hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy about you when he said:
    8
    'This people honors me with their lips, 5 but their hearts are far from me;
    9
    in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts.'"
  • nicolaou
    nicolaou

    See, on Bonfire Night I can light the fireworks and retire to a safe distance too!

  • mkr32208
    mkr32208

    No, it's all a bunch of ridiculous crap.

    Saying 'take charge and reproduce' is a prophecy? Wow thats not stretch at all is it?

    Ok here you go, there will be wars in the future! At some point there will be a leader in the world named 'Gary.' Politicians will continue to be corrupt. People will have SEX! Gays will get the right to marry at some point...

    We can gussy those 'prophecies' up with all the flowery language we want doesn't change the fact that they are stupid...

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