Mace

The other day in English I as we were discussing Golda Mier, the founder of modern day Israel, we launched into Bible Prophecy. My teacher seemed to support it, not sure, though. He stated how interesting it was how the Bible predicted that the other son of Abraham who founded the Palenstinians (spelling) would have no place to go. "How interesting is it that that is coming true in these days? The Israelites have the Palenstinians' (spelling) home, and the Muslims have no where to turn."

Everyone kind of agreed and I spoke up trying to disprove it. "That's from a certain view, though," I said. But everyone here knows that that's a weak and unreferenced arguement.

Is there any way to debunk the fact that this prophecy of the Bible is--from many views--coming true today in the Crusades of Israel?

show_no_mercy

I can make predictions too:

"It's going to rain on some day somewhere for 5 days in a row between now and 2210"

steamer

Thats interesting, does the bible say specifically. "Abraham who founded the Palestinians would have no place to go"

If I say "George, the leader of the Americans, will have no place to go" won't there be some context in which I am correct?

BruceWane

Israel didn't just happen to pop up in the middle east in 1948 all on its own.

Israel was established and is maintained in its current location largely by the power of the coalition of zionist jews and the religious right. Without this coalition, Israel would still be acknowledged to be a soveriegn nation, and would retain the right to remain so, but they wouldn't get NEARLY the level of financial and military support that they have recieved and continue to recieve.

Israel is supported by the religious right BECAUSE of what the bible says - in other words, mere humans have endeavored to fulfill the "prophesies", because it appears that god wasn't gittin' 'er done on his own.

So, if somebody wants to claim that Israels current existence validates the bible, point out that Israel was exists largely because of people who said "the bible said this will be so, so we must MAKE it so." That is not a "prophesy fulfilled", that is a "self-fulfilling prophesy".

Now, if the bible had predicted that a hurricane would practically wipe out New Orleans in the year 2005, THAT would be a prophesy fulfilled.

Ebonmuse

Er, the Muslims have plenty of places to live. Every country in the Middle East other than Israel - Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia (which contains the two holiest cities in Islam, Mecca and Medina) - is either an Islamic theocracy or overwhelmingly Muslim-populated or both.

The Jews returned to Israel because the Bible said they would. Self-fulfilling prophecies are hardly miraculous.

FarmMama

There are many threads in BC&H relating to biblical prophecies:

A simple invalidation of the Tyre prophecy

Fulfilled Prophecy

Bible Prophecies Fulfilled by Jesus

The prophecy of the 'restoration of israel'?

Bible prophecies--a critique

The Archaic Text of Ezekiel 36-39 (the order of end-time prophesies)

Magus55: take the Prophecy Challenge!

MrWhy

Does "the other son of Abraham" mean that specific individual in his life, or his children, or his childrens children, or some people hundreds of years later? Is there more to the prophecy? If not, how do you know who or when? Looks like you are just searching through stories and history to find some vague relationship.

Prophecies always lack specific detail, and require creative interpretation of the scripture in order to match any current event. They never include specific dates, places or people. There can be much debate about the original meanings of words and identification of places.

Which is more likely:
1. Any similarity with current events is a coincidence.
2. A supernatural entity knew the future and revealed it to someone writting scripture stories.

Prophecies are a device to convince people that scripture is the word of a god, because accurate specific prophecies are the only thing that would require supernatural knowledge. Anything else could have been written by mortal humans.

TomboyMom

Can you recall/supply the original bible passage? That would help.

Julian

WinAce had all this prophecy stuff figured out and left us the instructions for how to make your very own:

http://users.rcn.com/rostmd/winace/proph4dums/

Julian

Cthulhu

Ah WinAce...What a great loss.

A great quote from Blade runner comes to mind...

The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long - and you have burned so very, very brightly.

I miss his whit here.