The Logic of Faith
(2)
Prophecy - General Principles |
Introduction
The Bible claims that all its words are inspired by God.
One piece of evidence that would support this claim would be
if the Bible contained information that could not have been
known to the people who wrote it, but which is nevertheless
known to be true by others later. One particularly
spectacular kind of information of this kind is fulfilled
prophecy.
Principles of Predictive Prophecy
A predictive prophecy is a description of an event which
has not happened at the time it was written down. Provided
that there is a reasonable time lapse between the prophecy
being given and its fulfilment it would not be possible for
the prophet to have known what would happen, and the
prophecy could be taken as evidence that the information in
the prophecy came from some higher agency than the prophet's
own mind. As such it is evidence of inspiration of the
prophet's message.
The Bible contains a passage which tells us that
fulfilled predictions will be a hallmark of a prophecy from
God:
Deuteronomy 1821-22
And if thou shalt say in thy heart, How shall we know
the word which the LORD hath not spoken? When a prophet
speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing doth not
follow, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the
LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it
presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.
This passage tells us that prophets of God will be able
to produce fulfilled prophecy as evidence that their message
is from God, and that this test can be used to decide who is
and who is not a real prophet from God (there is another
test in Deuteronomy 13).
Requirements for Predictive Prophecy
For a prophecy to be of any use in determining whether a
document is from God, the predictive material in it must
fulfil the following conditions:
- It must be specific. This
means that it must refer to a recognisable event or set of
events which can be observed rather than to a general
feeling or trend. Thus a prophecy which states that in
general people will be happier cannot be used to verify a
document as it is not sufficiently specific.
- It must be detailed. The
prophecy must contain detail which identifies uniquely to
what or to whom it applies. Without this detail it is
difficult to decide whether the prophecy has been
fulfilled.
- It must be unambiguous.
This is an important part of a valid prediction. If the
prophecy needs to be decoded before it can be understood
it cannot be used as a test for inspiration as a different
method of decoding or interpreting it would lead to a
different prophecy.
- It must be falsifiable.
This means that there must be a possibility that the
prophecy would go wrong. A prediction that (for example)
"one day king Solomon will die" is not of use as everyone
dies. Similarly a prophecy that "the city Jericho will be
rebuilt" is not falsifiable on its own as, if Jericho is
not rebuilt, one can simply say "wait a little longer".
- It must have been written before
the events it describes were planned. If this is not the
case the prophecy could easily be given without divine
aid.
- It must be fulfilled. A
prophecy which is yet to be fulfilled may be of interest
to those seeking to know the future, but is of no use in
deciding whether a particular document is inspired by God.
Two Examples
These characteristics can be found in many Bible
prophecies. For example, consider two prophecies from the
Old Testament:
Psalm 2216
For dogs have surrounded me: the assembly of the wicked
have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.
This prophecy of the crucifixion of Jesus was written by
David about 1,000 years before it occurred. Certainly it was
written long before the death of Jesus, as it appears
in a scroll of the Psalms found among the Dead Sea Scrolls
and copied in about 100 BC. This fulfils the last two
conditions. It is specific; it describes an action
involved in Jesus' execution (the piercing of his hands and
feet which took place when the nails were driven in). This
detail makes it falsifiable; if Jesus had died of old
age or by strangulation, for example, the prophecy would
have failed. It is also particularly convincing because
death by crucifixion was not invented at the time when David
wrote the Psalms.
A second example is from the prophecy of Micah and again
prophesies part of the life of Jesus:
Micah 52 But
thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou art little
among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he
come forth to me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose
goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.
This prophecy was also written some centuries before
the time of Jesus. However, it has now been fulfilled and is
a testimony to the inspiration of Scripture. It is
specific; not only does it mention Bethlehem, it
indicates which of the Bethlehems this one was: the one in
Judah.
Statistical Survey
According to one survey of biblical predictions, the
Bible contains 8,352 verses of predictive material out of a
total of 31,124 verses, or 27% of the total. Of these, 1,556
verses (19% of the predictive verses) relate to events at or
after the time of the return of Jesus, leaving 6,796 verses
predicting events which could already have happened. All
of these have been fulfilled: a 100% success rate.
The predictive prophecies cover 1,817 events. This is a
remarkable degree of accuracy in prediction, far higher than
one might expect by chance predictions.
Further Examples - Prophecies of the
nations
One kind of prophecy that appears in the Bible predicts
the fate of the various nations in the Bible area. Here is a
summary of a few of these prophecies.
Ammon
Ezekiel 252
Son of man, set thy face against the Ammonites, and
prophesy against them...
Ezekiel 257
Behold, therefore I will stretch out my hand upon thee,
and will deliver thee for a spoil to the nations; and I
will cut thee off from the people, and I will cause thee
to perish out of the countries: I will destroy thee;
and thou shalt know that I am the LORD.
Ammon was to be destroyed from among the nations. This
happened when it was invaded by the Nabateans in the first
century BC.
Assyria
Nahum 11 The
burden of Nineveh...
Nahum 19 What
do ye imagine against the LORD? he will make an utter
end: affliction shall not rise up the second time...
Nahum 213
Behold, I am against thee, saith the LORD of hosts, and I
will burn her chariots in the smoke, and the sword shall
devour thy young lions: and I will cut off thy prey from
the earth, and the voice of thy messengers shall no
more be heard.
The Assyrian empire fell suddenly in 612 BC when Nineveh
was sacked by the Babylonians with the Medes and Scythians.
The river Tigris was diverted to cover the ruins of Nineveh.
The site was buried for many centuries until it was
discovered by archaeologists in the nineteenth century. The
Assyrian empire has never risen again.
Babylon
Isaiah 1319-20
And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the
Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom
and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither
shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation:
neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall
the shepherds make their fold there.
The Babylonian empire was superseded by the Persians and
the glory of Babylon gradually faded away until the city
became a ruin in the desert. It has never been rebuilt,
although there have been several attempts to do so.
Edom
Obadiah 11
The vision of Obadiah. Thus saith the Lord GOD concerning
Edom; We have heard a rumour from the LORD, and an
ambassador is sent among the nations, Arise ye, and let us
rise up against her in battle.
Obadiah 19-10
And thy mighty men, O Teman, shall be dismayed, to the end
that every one of the mount of Esau may be cut off by
slaughter. For thy violence against thy brother Jacob
shame shall cover thee, and thou shalt be cut off for
ever.
By 500 BC Edom had ceased to exist as a nation. The
Idumean tribes were pushed out by the Nabateans and many
Idumeans went to live in Judea. Edom has never been restored
as a nation.
Egypt
Ezekiel 2914-15
And I will bring again the captives of Egypt, and will
cause them to return into the land of Pathros, into the
land of their habitation; and they shall be there a base
kingdom. It shall be the basest of the kingdoms; neither
shall it exalt itself any more above the nations: for I
will diminish them, that they shall no more rule over
the nations.
Egypt has declined in power and has never again reached
the superpower status it enjoyed in Bible times.
Moab
Zephaniah 29
Therefore as I live, saith the LORD of hosts, the God of
Israel, Surely Moab shall be as Sodom, and the children of
Ammon as Gomorrah, even the possession of nettles, and
saltpits, and a perpetual desolation: the remainder
of my people shall lay them waste, and the remnant of my
people shall possess them.
Moab was completely destroyed.
Philistia
Amos 18 And
I will cut off the inhabitant from Ashdod, and him that
holdeth the sceptre from Ashkelon, and I will turn my hand
against Ekron: and the remnant of the Philistines shall
perish, saith the Lord GOD.
After 165 BC the Philistine cities had become Greek and
the Philistines were no longer in them. The cities were
overrun by the Maccabees in the late second century BC.
Phoenicia
Zechariah 93-4
And Tyre built herself a strong hold, and heaped up
silver as the dust, and fine gold as the mire of the
streets. Behold, the LORD will cast her out, and he will
smite her power in the sea; and she shall be devoured
with fire.
Tyre was finally destroyed by Alexander the Great, and
Sidon by the Persian Artaxerxes III.
Israel
Jeremiah 3011
For I am with thee, saith the LORD, to save thee:
though I make a full end of all nations where I have
scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee:
but I will correct thee in measure, and will not leave
thee altogether unpunished.
Jews have been scattered into all the world and
regathered in part twice since this prophecy was written.
They have endured 20 centuries of persecution and repression
but they still exist.
Conclusion
The Bible has predicted the fate of every one of the
nations surrounding Israel, and done so correctly. The
probability of predicting the survival or otherwise of these
nations by chance alone is 1 in 2 to the power of 9 (29),
or one in 512. In fact the predictions contain other
information and are therefore more unlikely to be fulfilled
by chance. This suggests that some intelligent power is
behind the prophecies of the Bible.
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