cass256

Can a prophecy happen after the fact? I mean, can you have the experience and then afterward get have an inspired message and not realize that it was related to an earlier occurance? I guess Athiests do not believe in inspired messages, but for the ex- christians who may still believe in a higher powers.
As an Example. Paul sees a light in the sky and makes claims it said it was jesus. Then he is later inspired to write

If he had that message prior to his light in the sky experience would he have taken for granted the light was who it claimed to be?


just a thought. If that was not jesus, but the big S, could that be considered prophecy fulfilled? ...something meant to be reflected on by us later down the road, when we are questioning beliefs?

cass256

Something less backwards , something I have always gotten stuck on as wether it was meant to be prophecy, ties several passages together. It centers around the description of Elijah

then from the last page of the Old testament


Then the description of john the Baptist
and a prophecy of Zecheriah
ya have to say hmmm.. How many prophets wore hairy garments to give a look like Elijah?

Then you have the discrepency between what jesus and john claimed.

then John's claim


So possibly a prophecy about a future deception, fulfilled in the time of john and jesus? It would mean there is still Elijah to come before the dark and dreadful day of YaHWeH If you believe in the prophecy... and then there's that little matter of the law.. was the prophecy saying the full law was to be kept until Elijah comes...?

Half-Life

After reading the book of Psalms I have concluded that this is not a prophecy about Jesus. It is easy to read the ONE sentence and say wow that is amazing. But once I finally read the whole book of psalms, something occured to me. Is everything in Psalms a prophecy or just the thngs we theists would like to pick and choose?
Psalm 22:
2 O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.

Is this a prophecy about Jesus? Did Jesus really believe God did not hear him in the daytime?

12 Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round.

I don't recall anything with Jesus being about bulls.

Psalm 22 is a Psalm To the chief Musician upon Aijeleth Shahar, A Psalm of David.

How can this book be a prophecy?

I have come to the conclusion that these prophecies are too vague when actually reading the whole book in its entirety.

Now, the prophecy would make the most sense i it was written with indisputable fact. for example, if God wrote the Bible literally he should have wrote a book called "The Prophecies of the Messiah" In this book he should have described the whole life of Jesus in great detail and exactly what would happen. He could have written "The Romans will crucify him through the wrists" and so on and so forth. There would be no debate if this was the case. Atheists would not be quibbling over prophecies and theists wouldn't have to reach for vague prophecies.

What do you think of this? Do I make sense?

Source

http://www.carm.org/kjv/Psalms/Psalm_22.htm

Kosh

And so it begins....

Glad you started paying attention!

Half-Life

8 Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.

Now, I remember reading that there was something written about Jesus' bones not being broken.

Now, if the Psalms are a prophecy of Jesus, this indicates that his bones wee broken. But, since Jesus' bones were not broken, none of us say "Well this prophecy was not fulfilled by Jesus." We simply do not mention it. It seems to me that all of the theists (including me which I was gultiy of doing too) were shifting through the OT and saying "Oh look, this can be applied to Jesus." But, how much better of a prophecy would it have been if God wrote "One day there will be a man named Hitler and he will murder 6,000,000 Jews in the Holocaust. He will then kill himself with a gunshot."

How many atheists would dispute this? Nobody would as this would be clear as day. But, there are no clear as day prophecies which can be referred to Jesus except for maybe the one about the Virgin birth.

Kosh

Well, I think you need to dig a little deeper. There's an article on the "virgin" birth prophecy in the library, and it's been discussed to death here.

Skeptical

It's been discussed in depth before, but there are several problems with the virgin birth "prophecy":

1) It's not a prophecy at all really, read in context it clearly is referring to the present time of the author and to something that is about to happen quite soon, not at some far future time

2) The translation as "virgin" may in fact by incorrect, it may instead signify "young woman", which makes the reference in Mat rather silly

3) There's nothing in the context to indicate its about the Messiah at all. If you read on into verses 16 and 17 it starts talking about the King of Assyria coming before the "boy" knows right from wrong, doesn't sound like Jesus

4) Even rejecting all of this, the simple fact is that nowhere in the NT is Jesus called "immanuel", which means it's either not a prophecy about the messiah (if Jesus was the Messiah) or the messiah hasn't arrived yet and Jesus wasn't the messiah

The virgin birth story is far too common in the Pagan mythologies of the day to be considered a real prophecy about Jesus anyway. It's also telling that Mark, the progenitor of Mat, didn't consider Jesus' birth story important enough to write anything about it. It was common practice during this period to attribute all sorts of "wonder" stories to revered leaders, including miraculous birth and death stories, so it's much more likely that Mat was grafting stories about Jesus' lineage and looking for "prophecies" in the OT to support him.

More than likely the autor of Mat probably didn't know the first thing about Jesus' lineage. It was only later after the end of the world did not arrive after Jesus' death that the Christian communities found it necessary to graft more and more legendary stories onto Jesus and link them to the OT to "prove" he was the messiah since he failed nearly every traditional Jewish criteria for the messiah. (he was Jewish and might have been "of the line of David", but that's about it)

You can read more about the problems with this "prophecy" here:

http://www.infidels.org/library/maga.../2virgi93.html

And please don't post something about "double fulfillment".