Johnny Skeptic

As badger3k said, and a number of Bible commentaries to boot, the Babylon prophecy is multi-stage and thus can never be fulfilled unless all of it is fulfilled, the last part being God's final judgment upon mankind. As I said in my previous post, "If Lee will not concede defeat, I will ask Dr. Robert Price to contact several Bible commentaries and several leading Christian scholars of Lee's choosing. Bob often conducts research for me. What about it, Lee?"

lee_merrill

Hi everyone,

Well, I should have been clearer in my opening statement, certainly I didn't mean that these predictions have been completely fulfilled! By "has been, and is being fulfilled," I meant that the prophecy has held up, up until the present time.

Well, I can't prove that I existed 10 seconds ago! I can offer evidence, though, and Babylon being a swamp for most of the time after Alex is evidence that flocks weren't kept there. And as I recall, I did post a link about Babylon becoming a swamp, such evidence is plentiful, and Sauron even mentioned it.

But again! I am defending "not rebuilt or reinhabited," you invited me to pick a prophecy to defend, and that was the prediction I selected, and am setting out to substantiate.

Yes, I agree, prophecies in Scripture are often fulfilled in several completely different ways (Isa. 7:14, is another such example), and this would make them more evidently supernatural, and this does not require all the fulfillments to happen at once.

I actually agree with these commentaries, here, the Babylon prophecy is about Babylon, and also about a (yet future) world judgment...

No, I want to debate the topic of the debate, I was challenged to pick a prophecy to defend, and I picked one!

Now I agree that all aspects of any prophecy must be fulfilled, and yet I did not choose to pick a whole prophetic passage, and defend every aspect of it.

And that is not what I am claiming, my claim here is that Babylon has not been rebuilt or reinhabited, and that it never will be rebuilt or reinhabited.

We have to know if these 1000 people were living in the ruins of the city of Babylon, though. I expect they weren't. I agree that uninhabited is more difficult to prove, and also that it is easily falsifiable, as is rebuilding, which is why I pick these predictions!

We don't have to argue about this, simply rebuild and reinhabit Babylon, or Petra, and I will concede that the Bible is not what it claims to be, the word of an omnipotent God.

And yes, people could deny it, or make excuses, but not convincingly, not with such a clear prediction, and such a solid refutation, with a city on the map, and you can move in...

Regards,
Lee

Johnny Skeptic

All of the prophecy has not held up until the present time. Various Bible commentaries state that the prophecy is multi-stage, as opposed to your attempt to make it single-stage, and that the final stage has not happened. If someone made a prediction that the stock market would reach 5,000 by a certain date, 7,000 by another date and 10,000 by another date, unless all three happened, his prediction would not have been accurate.

Most of the time is not good enough. You need to provide a reasonably accurate date when Babylon became a swamp and how long it remained a swamp. If you posted a link about Babylon becoming a swamp, I would like to have the link, and please post what Sauron said about it.

You have not adequately proven that shepherds have never grazed their flocks in ancient Babylon after it was destroyed.

There is in fact nothing evidentially supernatural about the Babylon prophecy at all. The only part of the prophecy that has been fulfilled is the part that it would be destroyed, which could easily have been written after the fact. As long as the earth is here, the part of the prophecy that says that Babylon will never be rebuilt can never be fulfilled. Unless that happens, there is always a chance that a future generation will be able to accomplish what a past generation could not accomplish. Each succeeding generation has its own desires and abilities, and you need not limit the possible accomplishments of future generations based upon the accomplishments of past generations. The part of the prophecy that mentions God’s final judgment upon mankind has not been fulfilled.

Well, the future part of the prophecy has not happened, so all of the prophecy has not been fulfilled.

The part that you chose to defend is indefensible for the reasons that I previously stated.

Where is your evidence? You are the claimant.

That is correct, and you haven’t proved it.

It might have already been falsified in ancient times regarding shepherds grazing their flocks there. It is up to you as the claimant to prove otherwise. Today, it would be easy for Iraqis to graze flocks at the site of ancient Babylon for a year or two in order to disprove the prophecy, in which case if you will keep your word you will give up Christianity, and if you do, don’t expect any company. If most or all Christians would make the same promise that you did that you would give up Christianity if the prophecy was disproved, the Iraqis would immediately grow grass and send some flocks of animals to graze there for an extended period of time. In addition, they wouldn’t have to spend a penny on the project. Skeptics from all over the world would be more than happy to fund it.

Rebuilt or reinhabited does not apply to the grazing of flocks, and the grazing of flocks would be easy for Iraqis to accomplish.

Yes, and animals can graze there too, and quite easily at that. You speak of the present, but you cannot possibly account for what will or will not happen for millennia to come based upon what has happened in the past.

You speak for the Iraqis, but have you interviewed any of them at all? I doubt it. Are you not aware that in their opinions the Bible has already been disproved numerous times and has no further need of being disproved?

cajela

You know, I'm not enjoying this thread as much as the Tyre one. Lee, do you think you could claim that Babylon never existed, or was sunk under the sea, or that there's never been any sheep in the middle east, or something, so Sauron can post some interesting archaology? I want pictures and a spot of lite fluffy education here. Thanks.

John A. Broussard

While one can quarrel over whether or not Babylon is or has been rebuilt, there's no arguing with Joshua stopping the sun from moving. You have said he didn't do that. Isn't that enough to make you, "concede that the Bible is not what it claims to be, the word of an omnipotent God,"?

lee_merrill

Hi everyone,

Well, here we read: "In 689 BC, Babylonia again revolted, but Sennacherib responded swiftly by opening the canals around Babylon and flooding the outside of the city until it became a swamp, resulting in its destruction, and its inhabitants were scattered." And here was the exchange with Sauron:

Now I'm not sure when the swamp was drained, or filled, but Jeremias has this quote:

"In the time of Strabo (at the end of the 1st century B.C.), the site was in ruins. Jerome (5th century A.D.), learned that Babylon had been used as a wild game park for the amusement of numerous Persian dignitaries (McClintock and Strong, 1969, 1:596). In the 5th century A.D., according to Cyril of Alexandria, due to the bursting of canal banks, Babylon became a swamp (The Old Testament in the Light of Ancient East by Alfred Jeremias, 1:294)."

So apparently it has been a swamp whenever the canal banks were down.

Why did you invite me to pick a prophecy, then, may I ask? I am not setting out to prove every point in every prophecy about Babylon here...

Yes, I agree, and I was not claiming complete fulfillment. Now let's move on...

And you are claiming that they did reinhabit Babylon, are you not? Thus you must present evidence as well. As far as evidence, I would refer to the picture that was mentioned on the first page with the caption "Amidst the ruins of ancient Babylon, children look to the future," which means the ruins there are those of ancient Babylon, not of recent villages.

It's not inhabited now, though, and the way to invalidate this prophecy in an undeniable way would be to fill it with inhabitants.

That would be fine, please mention this to them, and then we will see what turns out...

Well, we can't have it both ways, though, either they would be eager to do this, or they would not.

As the game show hosts have it, "I'm sorry ... no." Fluffy education, though, well, I could try and post some facts about sheep! There are enough breeds of sheep to fill the whole alphabet, several times, for instance...

Well, let's stay on topic! But I hold that Joshua prayed, and the motion of the sun in the sky stopped. And that Saddam tried to rebuild Babylon, and he stopped, too...

Regards,
Lee

Johnny Skeptic

Lee, you did not reply to my preceding arguments. Please do so.

Regarding Babylon becoming a swamp, who would have wanted to rebuild it in a swamp? Your arguments would in fact be better if Babylon had not been a swamp. The capital city of Baghdad was built in 762 A.D. on the Tigris River. It replaced the ancient capital city of Babylon, which was built on the Euphrates River, and if the site of ancient Babylon was a swamp at that time, then it would have only been natural that no one would have wanted to rebuild it there. You said that 1) people have tried to rebuild Babylon, and that 2) it became a swamp, so are you actually saying that people tried to rebuild Babylon in a swamp? If Babylon had not become a swamp, why do you rule out a reasonable possibility that it would have been rebuilt?

Sauron

I'm traveling in Wash. DC at the moment with only limited access to the internet, and no access to books or documents. I'll deal with the rest of Lee's nonsense when I get home this weekend. Oh, and cajela - I do have some interesting archaeology and history about Babylon, but I'm waiting on lee to support *any* of his points.

Back to the matter at hand. I wanted to point out this one item that lee stated above, and I have a request in for the moderators to split this thread accordingly.

Briefly, lee_merrill is just parroting Josh McDowell here; this is one of his claims from Chapter 11 of "Evidence that Demands a Verdict." It may also interest lee to know that McDowell dropped most of Chapter 11 from ETDAV in the recent printings, likely as a result of having so many historical mistakes pointed out to him over the years. It certainly took him long enough; it went through several printings before the message finally sunk in and the embarrassment got to be too much. A man after lee's own heart, clearly.

Why does any of this matter?

Lee's comment above is just more proof that he has been reading Josh McDowell's ETDAV. Why do I say that? Because the capital of ancient Edom was not Petra at all; it was Bozrah, modern day Buseirah in Jordan. Petra was the capital of the Nabatean Arabs, a group of people who didn't even exist in that area at the time that the prophecy was uttered.This oft-quoted mistake about Petra is found all over the internet; homespun would-be apologists quote it time and time again. McDowell is apparently the origin of this ridiculous cock-up.

So lee: if you really want to discuss this, fine. But start a new thread for Edom/Petra, because the evidence there for failed prophecy is even greater than for Babylon. :rolling: :rolling: :rolling:

Amaleq13

Lee,

If you do decide you want to start a new thread on Edom/Petra, I can split out the two or three references in this thread to that one. Let me know.

Amaleq13, BC&H moderator

lee_merrill

Hi everyone,

I did respond to your questions and statements, though, and await your replies.

I agree! Thus the prophecy at this point would be probable, not improbable. Then when the swamp was no more, and someone attempted rebuilding, and failed, then the prophecy becomes improbable, as far as being a lucky guess.

Well, this site at Brown University says "Little is known about the Edomites at Petra itself... The next chapter of history belongs to the Persian period, and it is posited that during this time the Nabataeans migrated into Edom, forcing the Edomites to move into southern Palestine." So "little" is not nothing, and there are apparently indications that way, and the Nabateans not existing at the time of the prophecy then is not disproof of the prophecy.

Someone should tell Brown University, then.

In view of the above quote by Sauron, and the unending stream of such language in his every comment, and a tendency I have noticed towards depending on assertions, while accusing others of relying on assertions, I am not eager to discuss with Sauron, in two threads.

So I would be willing to discuss Edom/Petra with other people, if they open such a thread...

Regards,
Lee