Colby

I guess this question is more directed towards athiests. How do you feel/explain about passages written in the old testiment that prophecize the comming and crucifiction of jesus and/or events taking place today?

http://www.100prophecies.org/


I would appreciate to see what you think.

thanks

Johnny Skeptic

Just pick one of the prophecies and let's discuss it. Of course, even if the God of the Bible can predict the future, there are not any good reasons for anyone to accept him. It is my position that at best, the God of the Bible is bi-polar and/or mentally incompetent.

Colby

Bible passage: Deuteronomy 28:65-67
Written: perhaps 1400 BC
Fulfilled: 1940s, 1930s, 135 AD, 721 BC, etc.
In Deuteronomy 28:65-67, the Bible said that the people of Israel would be scattered among nations and persecuted. They were exiled and scattered from their homeland in ancient times by the Assyrians, Babylonians and Romans. The exiles were intensely persecuted in Europe and Russia during the Crusades and Pogroms.

During the Holocaust of World War II, the Nazis killed about one-third of the world’s population of Jews. The Nazis called it "The Final Solution" and their goal was to kill all Jews. Winston Churchill, a former prime minister of England, said: "The Final Solution is probably the greatest, most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world."

During the mid-1900s, many Jews sought to relocate from Europe to the most distant countries in the hopes of outrunning the expansion of Nazi Germany. This led to new influxes of Jews to North and South America, Australia and even China.



how do you feel he is "bi-polar and/or mentally incompetent"?

Gooch's dad

There is no good evidence that Deuteronomy is any older than about 800 or 900 BCE. 1400 BCE is just laughable.

So "they will be persecuted" is the best prophecy from the old testament that you can come up with? Wow. Kind of lame.

patchy

Go to Tyre, and ask the question from there. Oh, wait, Tyre isn't there, as foretold by prophecy. Oh, wait, yes it is. What's that tell you?

Y.B

Not a single one of those prophecies (or, in many cases "prophecies") is about Jesus - except if you stretch your imagination enough.

Ever wonder why Jews are still Jews?

WWJD4aKlondikeBar

How do I feel about vague prophecies being fulfilled? Well, if you predicted today that a black dog will rule the east (words imagined at random) then I'm sure it will eventually come to pass that someone can construe this "prophecy" to be true because black is everywhere, a dog could be represented in many ways and sure enough everything is east of something. Call me underwhelmed.

diana

Hi, Colby.

Do you also assert Moses wrote it?

You'll find much opposition to these things among biblical scholars. I mean, you'll find opposition to the "facts" you accept. One requirement of prophecy, as I'm sure you know, is that it must be uttered before the fulfillment in question takes place. Your first burden of proof is to debunk biblical scholars who simply accept a far more recent dating of Deuteronomy.

After that, you might consider whether the passage in question may have been an interpolation, so as to be one step ahead of your detractors.

As far as I know--not that I've studied the subject lately--the Pentateuch was "discovered" during the reign of King Josiah, at a time that the COI were already scattered and persecuted. Josiah used the "discovered" books as a political tool. (I'm certain someone will correct me if I'm off-base here, and I thank them in advance. I wouldn't want to mislead you.)

I'm curious: what do you do with the apparently unfulfilled prophesies of Jesus, such as his promise that he would come again in the lifetime of some of the people he was talking to? That one seems pretty cut and dried to me, but perhaps you have a different take on it.

Oh...and somewhat relevant to your post: I just found a great quote. "The Jews are a nervous people. Nineteen centuries of Christian love have taken a toll." (Benjamin Disraeli)

d

Jack the Bodiless

All of the "prophecies" relating to the re-emergence of Israel were written around the time of the Babylonian Captivity, and refer to the ending of that period of exile. Not one of them relates to the events of 1948 and so forth.

Indeed, the re-emergence of Israel, supposedly so hugely significant in "end-times" mumbo-jumbo, is mentioned nowhere in the Book of Revelation, the one book of the Bible that's supposed to be all about the "end-times".

Jack the Bodiless

Incidentally, while I haven't yet gone through all of "100 prophecies", I have noticed that it fails the "Isaiah 7:14 virgin-birth bullshit test". No competent apologist would cite Isaiah 7:14 as an example of a fulfilled prophecy, because there are so MANY problems with this that citing it is a sure sign of fundamentalist delusion:

#1. The word "virgin" does not appear in Isaiah 7:14 (in the original Hebrew): it is a mistranslation in the Greek Septuagint, later exploited by the author of Matthew.

#2. The context makes it quite clear that this was a sign to King Ahaz, some seven centuries earlier. It was apparently "fulfilled" in the next chapter.

#3. There is no independent confirmation that Jesus WAS born of a virgin! Indeed, if this could be proved, it would be sufficiently miraculous in itself to make a "prophecy-fulfillment" superfluous.

Many apologetic sources mention objection #1 in passing (noting that a "young woman" was generally expected to be a virgin), fudge objection #2 with the invented doctrine of "dual-fulfillment" (there is no evidence of such a doctrine in Judaism, it was invented by Christians to excuse Matthew's antics), and mentally blank-out objection #3 altogether: of course Jesus was born of a virgin, everyone knows THAT!