Toto

Are you claiming that Israel's victory in 1948 showed supernatural intervention? The Arab states were well armed but not so well organized. But the motive for the Jews to fight for that piece of land, and for the Western nations to support it, was that they had all read the Bible. How is this not evidence of self-fulfillment?

In short, this is not the sort of prophecy that proves anything.

If the Jews had lost that war, Biblical scholars could have found that prophesied in the Bible too.

lcb

toto, a deal with you, I will try to finish the book you recc. by Callahan if you will study in detail the order of battle and military actions of the jews in defending the arab attacks. lcb does not have a dog in this fight personally, lcb really is neutral. it does seem a slippery slope to say that anytime a prophecy appears to be accurate that it was self-fulfilled. parade of horribles: "in the latter days there shall be plagues and pestilences.."(so homosexuals and intravenous drug users read the Bible and decide to engage in high risk behavior which spreads the Aids virus and cause a pandemic which kills hundreds of millions of people from plague and pestilence...in order to fulfill that Bible prophecy...)in a debate what is sauce for goose is sauce for gander...you haven't proved that, historically, the restoration of Israel was self-fulfilling. The Christians i'm afraid are winning this round so far.....

philechat

Wrong again. Did you remember the bubonic plagues? The epidemic of syphilis? Of chlorea? The bubonic plague wiped out 1/4 of European population, and half in certain Asian countries. Epidemic diseases are common throughout human history, and AIDS is not an isolated case.

Why wasn't the bubonic plague one of the events preceeding the Apocrypse?

[ July 26, 2002: Message edited by: philechat ]</p>

Peter Kirby

lcb writes: one, remember i am a debater and lcb is neutral here. . . . So, i am afraid the Christians win this round of the debate-at this point.

lcb writes: lcb is neutral in this debate, but I give this round so far to the Christians.

lcb writes: lcb does not have a dog in this fight personally, lcb really is neutral. . . . The Christians i'm afraid are winning this round so far.....

Exodus 20:16. "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour."

Mark 8:38. "For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him shall the Son of man also be ashamed when he shall come in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."

William Shakespeare. "Methinks thou dost protest too much."

best,
Peter Kirby

philechat

More on 100 prophecies:

1. There are too many repetitions among these prophecies, and therefore there are less than 100 prophesies total.

2. Many prophesies are self-fulfilled, especially when both Bible-based religions are no longer in emnity with one another.

3. There are more prophesies unmentioned. The Bible is something like 2000 pages, and it would not be surprising if some of the conjectures pronounced by the prophets were correct.

4. The Jews had been historically particularly exclusivistic, when compared to the gentle indifference and tolerance of the Pagans. The religion's exclusivity/clannish quality promotes its survival, and thus Judaism was "selected" when compared to paganism. Christianity survived and persisted for the exact same reason (with countless persecution of both Pagans and Jews).

5. The Bible did not prophesize anything about the non-Christian world, where the Bible was considered irrelevent (anything about Mongol expansion? Death of 9/10 of Native Americans by European diseases? The significant Japanese contribution to WW2?) Since the prophecy works only in the Judeo-Christian context one could argue for self-fulfilling prophecies done by both Jews and Christians.

Toto

Why do the Christians win if the Jews reestablished the state of Israel? Why not become Jewish? There are no Christian prophecies involved here.

I have read enough about the Israeli wars. They won, if you call claiming a small sliver of what used to be Israel with barely defensible borders and no oil to be a win. There is no evidence that God was on their side.

And plagues and pestilence are always with us. That's not a self-fulfilling prophecy, just a no-brainer. It's like predicting that there will be earthquakes in California next year.

There is so little about your thinking that makes sense, the Board has decided that you are not being honest. Are you Jehovah's Witness? Why not come out and say it?

Bracer

Ooo, prophecies! I love these things. Here’s a good one: ca. 426CE, in what is today modern Honduras, a Mayan ruler named Yax K'uk Mo' rose to power and held onto it with a tenacity unseen in the Mayan world, consolidating all the rival warlords under a single king for the first time.

This was partially due to his good fortune at seizing control in the first year of the Ninth Baktun. Each Baktun was a period of nearly 400 years according to the Mayan calendar, and much like our modern millennia, the turn of each Baktun was thought to be a period of upheaval and change. Even better, for various astrological reasons the Mayans believed the Ninth to have special divine significance, favored by the gods. Yax K'uk Mo' was, apparently, no fool, and used this little quirk of fate (as well as a knack for military conquest, let’s be fair here) to establish himself as ruler and call upon divine provenance to support his right to do so.

Thus, Yax K'uk Mo' founded a dynasty that passed down through 16 generations of his direct descendants, reaching the height of its power around 750-770CE. However, by ca. 800CE, an exploding population and internal political struggles had torn the kingdom apart. After the death of Yax Pasah in 820CE, a would-be successor whose named is lost to history tried to continue the line, but evidence shows that the city was sacked, burned, and abandoned by 822. Incidentally, this is the exact year of the end of the Ninth Baktun -- precisely as Yax K’uk Mo’ himself had foretold.

So everybody -- Praise Itzamna! Praise Ixchel! Let us make a sacrifice of 100 hearts! Burn the feathers of the sacred macaw! Fall down in supplication before the Bacabs of the North, South, East, and West, the giants who hold up the sky!

Eh, or maybe not...

Kosh

perhaps lcb, the great debater, could take a moment to learn how to use the SHIFT and RETURN keys on his computer.

Then next, we can start on paragraph composition...

lcb

ooooh! i pissed off all the theists on the theist board and then came here and i guess i am pissing off all the non theists too. The theists didnt like it when i found their weakest link and hit a nerve either! I didnt realize you all would be so "Emotional"! Its just a conversation!

Toto

You are annoying because what you think is the weakest link is not very weak at all, and you have not come up with a good reason to think that it is weak. You just say "isn't this unusual?" We say no, it's not. Then you say "The Christians win this round" without responding to any of my points.

If you want to continue this, answer these questions:

Why do you think it is significant that some things that appear to be prophesied in the Old Testament happened? Is this a point in favor of Christians or Jews?

If the modern state of Israel had not won the war in 1948, aren't there Bible verses that would appear to predict that?

Are you aware of how many times the end times have been prophesied based on the Bible, and the end of the world has not happened? Does this indicate to you that there is some problem with Bible prophesies?