Unbeliever

Yes, Ezk 36:24, 37:21, and Jer 31:4 claim that Israel will once again have their own land. But Amos 5:2 says:

"The virgin of Israel is fallen; she shall no more rise: she is forsaken upon her land: there is none to raise her up."

Now I may be wrong, but isn't it pretty easy to have fulfilled prophecy when opposite scenarios are predicted? Or is it your contention that the Jer and Ezk verses refer to the modern state of Israel, while Amos is refering to the ancient kingdom of Israel?

And while I'm at it, I would like to add something concerning the criteria for evaluating prophecy (biblical or otherwise). In addition to the criteria provided by Diana (and refered to in her post of 2/27/03) in her article Why Psalm 22 has nothing to do with Jesus' death, there are 5 criteria provided by Douglas E. Krueger in his book, What Is An Atheist?

A genuine prophecy must satisfy these 5 criteria:

1. The prophecy must be clear, and it must contain sufficient detail to make its fulfillment by a wide variety of possible events unlikely.
2. The event that can fulfill prophecy must be unusual or unique.
3. The prophecy must be known to have been made before the event that is supposed to be its fulfillment.
4. The event foretold must not be of the sort that could be the result of an educated guess.
5. The event that fulfills a prophecy cannot be staged, or the relevant circumstances manipulated, by those aware of the prophecy in such a way as to intentionally cause the prophecy to be fulfilled.

Can anyone provide any alledged prophecies that fulfill these (and Diana's) criteria?

Magus55

Those criteria are his opinions. Who said prophecy has to fall under those criteria? Him? Um yeah, ok... And of those criteria, number 2 is the only one you could question about Ezekial 36-37, it fits the rest.

Justin70

Magus, since you don't agree with the above criteria for prophecies I would really like to know your own PERSONAL criteria. Please make it a clear and 'to the point list'. I'd really like to know.

Answerer

Excluding the mass Chinese and Indians from your list as well as some non-christian and non-muslim sympathizers, I seriously don't think majority of the world hate Jews. Sorry to disappoint you.

Unbeliever

As would I.
Unless we can agree on what criteria alledged prophecies must satisfy, we will just be arguing in circles. So, Magus, perhaps you could propose a set of criteria that we could discuss, and try to reach agreement on. Although I would also like to know exactly what you don't like about the ones above. Are they simply too strict, so that you don't have enough wriggle room? Considering the extraordinary nature of the claim of fulfilled prophecy, I think the above criteria are quite sensible.

malookiemaloo

What about the one saying Egypt would always be 'low among the nations'. Seems to me that has been pretty well fullfilled. Or was that not too difficult to predict?

Hold on.........it might have been France.





m

Gooch's dad

Hey, mal, do you mean Ezekiel 29:14-15, which says that Egypt "Shall be the basest of all the kingdoms, niether shall it exalt itself any more above the nations: for I will diminish them, that they shall no more rule over the nations."??

Interesting, that very verse is one listed in the Skeptics Annotated Bible as a failed prophecy, with this note:

"But Egypt remained an important and often powerful nation. During the Tulunid dynasty (868-905 CE), for example, Egypt was the center of a small empire and conquered Syria."

Oops!

The list of prophecies relating to various towns being lain waste, unoccupied, or converting to Judaism is pretty funny. I like Jeremiah 49:33 which predicts that nobody will ever live in Hazor again, but dragons will occupy the place! I gather that people still live in that town, but I don't think there are too many dragon sightings.

Cheers,

-Kelly

Magus55

Stop using the SAB as proof of your claims. I've been through it and its the dumbest thing iv'e ever seen. First of all it is beyond biased, and second, they take whatever the heck they want from the Bible, stick it on the site and say this is a contradiction! Even though its been defended. The SAB is a load of crap, stop using it.

Gooch's dad

Magus55, would you like some cheese and crackers with that whine?

Yeah, the SAB does have some howlers. However, the ones I just mentioned are sound examples of failed prophecies. If you think otherwise, then demonstrate exactly where I or the SAB folks made an error.

Magus, this thread is pages and pages long, and you have yet to provide a fulfilled prophecy! More to the point, you still don't seem to recognize that the gospel accounts are not accurate eyewitness accounts.

And no, just because they have some bits of geography and history correct, doesn't make them entirely correct. For some more reading on this subject, try

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...threadid=47608

Did you continue reading the thread about "Jesus' miracles"? Are you going to answer? Did Vespasian cure people of blindness or not? Please answer.

Oh, you're going to bring up the bit about the disciples being martyred for their beliefs. First off, which ones exactly were martyred, and what is your source for this claim? Secondly, as you've been told many times, dying for a belief doesn't make it true (hint: Heaven's Gate cult, Jim Jones, David Koresh, etc)

Magus, we're still waiting for that 'fulfilled prophecy'.

vtran31

Interesting, that very verse is one listed in the Skeptics Annotated Bible as a failed prophecy, with this note:

"But Egypt remained an important and often powerful nation. During the Tulunid dynasty (868-905 CE), for example, Egypt was the center of a small empire and conquered Syria."

Well he didnt say when. Is CE AD by the way?