THIS WAY, THAT WAY, OR YAHWEH?
Why should you believe in the "Christian" God? - Part 3
We have now reached the final part of the argument for the Christian God. If you haven't read Parts 1 and 2, it is extremely important that you read those first, because they establish the foundation for the arguments you will hear in Part 3.
The Divine inspiration of the Bible
Let's talk about time. None of us ever have enough of it. We all view it differently depending on our age and circumstances. The movie "Star Trek: Generations" described time in two ways, once as a "predator, stalking you", and later as a "companion" that accompanies you on your journey through life.
What do these two interpretations have in common? Both of them assume that we are always subject to time. Time may be stalking us throughout our lives, or it may be our companion, but it's always there. We can't escape it. It always limits us. For instance, we can look into the past, but we can never look into the future. Even when looking into the past, we are limited by what we can recall in the present (either through our own memory or by what someone wrote down in the past). We'd all love to be able to escape the confines of time just for a little bit, if only to get a quick glimpse at who we are going to marry, what our job will be 10 years from now, when we'll be able to retire, what stocks will be hot in a few decades, or whether the Red Sox will ever make it back to the World Series.
Unfortunately, we can't know any of these things in advance. We're stuck by the limits of time and we can never escape. After all, remember from the very first article that time is part of our universe. General Relativity showed that time space and matter were all related. Like time, we also are part of the universe. We're stuck in time's arena. So I guess we just have to deal with it.
But wait a minute. We also learned something else about time. Yes, time is a part of our universe, but just like everything else in the universe it was created at the Big Bang. We learned that in order to create the universe, God had to be able to exist outside the universe. If time exists within the universe, but God can exist outside the universe, that means God (unlike us) is not limited by the confines of time. Of course, this makes perfect sense. After all, if God created time, how can He be subject to it? If God is not subject to time, He should be able to tell us what happened in the past, what is happening now, and what will happen in the future.
What does this have to do with the Bible? Well, it shows that God has the ability to tell the future. Now before you go rushing off thinking that I am granting validity to every street corner psychic, remember the reason why God can do this. The only reason God is able to escape the confines of time is because He can and/or does exist outside our universe. Unless you know anyone else who can exist outside our universe, I think this is a privilege reserved only for God.
So God can tell the future, and as far as we know, He is the only being who can accurately tell the future.1 If God, and only God can tell the future, then that gives Him a tool to prove that He is really speaking to us. All God would have to do is make some predictions about the future, and when they came true we would know it was really God speaking. That is precisely what He did in the Bible. God made innumerable predictions (through the authors of the Bible) that have continuously been coming true with startling accuracy. The "prophecies" cover both the religious and the secular realms. The logic is simple. If only God can tell the future, and the Bible accurately predicts the future (often enough that it can't simply be "getting lucky"), then the Bible must have been written (or "inspired") by God Himself. If God wrote the Book, then we can be comfortable in believing what it says about the nature of God. After all, God is obviously qualified to tell us about Himself.
So does the Bible have enough examples of fulfilled prophesy for us to say it was definitely written by God? The answer is, "Yes, and then some." Before we look at specific prophecies, let me briefly explain my criteria for including a prophesy in this article.
First of all, the prophesy could not have been fulfilled in the same book in which it was made. The Bible records a lot of incidents (during the course of a single narrative) in which a prophecy is made and then subsequently fulfilled. For example, in Genesis 40:19, Joseph told Pharoah's baker. "Within three days Pharoah will lift off your head and hang you on a tree." This prophecy was then fulfilled only three verses later. While this can make an interesting story, it's not going to convince anyone of the divine inspiration of the Bible. Why not? Because if the prophecy was already fulfilled before the book was written, how do we know the so-called "prophecy" was actually ever made? The author could have just taken some event then after the fact claimed that someone predicted it ahead of time. We would have no way to independently verify this. So in order for me to include a prophecy in this article, the fulfillment of that prophecy has to be recorded either in a later book or by outside historical evidence.2
Second, the subject of the prophecy had to be pretty darn clear. Nostradamus is famous for this. He'd write something so vague that you probably couldn't even discern his grammatical structure, then after the fact somebody would take some historical event and try to "fit it in" to something Nostradamus "predicted" long ago. The so-called prediction of Hitler is a classic example. If you actually read the "prediction", it bears virtually no resemblance to historical fact. In order for me to include a prophecy, it couldn't be vague. I didn't rule out the use of symbolism entirely, but if symbols were used, the context had to provide what the symbols stood for pretty clearly.
Third, I didn't include any prophecies regarding the Messiah. This isn't because there is anything wrong with using those prophecies. Most of them even fit the two criteria I've outlined above. Rather, the only reason I don't include them here is because I have an entire separate article devoted to those prophecies.
Fourth, even after limiting the prophecies by these three criteria, I still unfortunately had to cut them down simply for space. Again, I could write an entire book on Biblical prophecy, but that isn't the intention of this article. The mere fact that I still had to leave prophecies out even after whittling them down by these criteria should give you an idea of the sheer number of fulfilled Biblical prophecies. I will list enough prophecies to make my point clear, and I'll try to refer you to even more. But if you truly want to do an in depth study of the innumerable Bible prophecies that have been fulfilled, I encourage you to consult some good books on the subject.
Now let's take a look at some of these prophecies. In order to keep from unduly influencing you, I will always present the text of the prophecy first. That way you can read what the Bible says and draw your own conclusion about what it refers to before you read my "take" on it.
Babylonian domination of Judah
"This whole country [Judah] will become a desolate wasteland, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon seventy years. But when the seventy years are fulfilled, I will punish the king of Babylon and his nation, the land of the Babylonians, for their guilt," declares the Lord, "and will make it desolate forever."
Jeremiah 25:11-12
This prophecy provides a really good starting point for us, because it illustrates my points pretty well. Ask yourself what you think this prophecy says. Is it some vague, meaningless assertion like those of Nostradamus? When you read it, what did you think it meant?
Before we explore it further, let me give you a brief history lesson that will help you understand this prophecy and some of the later ones in context. In 930 B.C., the nation of Israel was divided into two separate kingdoms. The northern kingdom continued to be called "Israel" while the southern kingdom was known as "Judah". In 722 B.C., the Assyrian Empire conquered the northern kingdom, and many of the Israelites were removed from Israel and exiled to Assyria. Only the southern kingdom (Judah) remained. Later, the Assyrian Empire gave way to the Babylonian Empire, the new power in the area.
So with that in mind, what do you think this prophecy says? It's pretty clear. The one remaining kingdom, Judah, is going to be overthrown by the Babylonians, and its people will have to serve Babylon for seventy years. After seventy years, the Babylonian Empire will fall. It's really not that complicated. Bible prophecies generally aren't open to a lot of interpretation. Some of them are, but a lot are just like this one, pretty darn straightforward.
So did it happen? Yes it did. Jeremiah wrote this prophecy sometime between 626 B.C. and 586 B.C. In 609 B.C., Babylon captured the last Assyrian king and officially became the dominant power in the region. Judah had previously been a vassal kingdom to the Assyrians, so with the takeover by the Babylonians, they officially became subject to the Babylonian Empire in 609 B.C.
Once the Babylonians had control, they started deporting Jews from Judah to other Babylonian territories. Finally, in 586 B.C., the Babylonians captured Jerusalem and destroyed it.
Now Jeremiah would look pretty stupid "prophesying" things that had already happened, so it's probably safe to say he made this prophecy before the Babylonians conquered the Assyrians in 609 B.C., but let's play the skeptic. Let's assume that Jeremiah waited until after the Babylonians took over, then went around telling people he predicted it so he would look good. After all, Jeremiah was still alive when the Babylonians became rulers over Judah, so he theoretically could have written this part of the prophecy in hindsight.
But there's one little problem with that theory. Jeremiah also prophesied that Babylonian rule would only last seventy years, at which time their empire would fall. In 539 B.C., Cyrus, a Persian king, conquered Babylon and put an end to the Babylonian Empire (the Persian Empire became the dominant power). Now I'm no math expert, but I can subtract 539 from 609 and realize the difference is 70 years, just like Jeremiah claimed. Cyrus subsequently allowed the Jews to return to their homeland and rebuild the Temple. The problem for the skeptic is that Jeremiah was long dead before these seventy years were up, so that portion of his prophecy could not have been made in hindsight. Yet it still came true perfectly.
Isaiah also made prophecies about the fall of Babylon. He wrote between 701 B.C. and 681 B.C. The Babylonian Empire didn't even exist yet at the time Isaiah wrote. When he was alive, Judah was still subject to the Assyrians. Still, he wrote the following prophecies:
Babylon, the jewel of kingdoms, the glory of the Babylonians' pride, will be overthrown by God like Sodom and Gomorrah.
Isaiah 13:19
"I will rise up against them," declares the Lord Almighty. "I will cut off from Babylon her offspring and descendants," declares the Lord. "I will turn her into a place for owls and into swampland; I will sweep her with the broom of destruction," declares the Lord Almighty.
Isaiah 14:22-23
Remember that Isaiah not only died before Babylon fell, but he died before the empire even formed! So these statements could not have been made in hindsight. This last prophecy is particularly interesting because it says God will turn Babylon into "swampland". Again, we don't need to try to find some vague, symbolic reference here. God said he would turn Babylon into "swampland", so the plain meaning is that He will turn it into "swampland"! The city of Babylon was discovered and excavated by archaeologists in the 1800s. However, many parts of the city could not be dug up. Why? Because they were under a water table that had risen up over the years. Babylon had literally become a swamp.
Cyrus
... who says of Cyrus, He is my shepherd and will accomplish all that I please; he will say of Jerusalem, "Let it be rebuilt," and of the temple, "Let its foundations be laid." This is what the Lord says to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold of to subdue nations before him and to strip kings of their armor, to open doors before him so that gates will not be shut.
Isaiah 44:28-45:1
So what does this prophecy mean? Well, by its plain meaning it means that some guy named "Cyrus" is going to say to let Jerusalem and the Temple be rebuilt, and that he would be a conqueror of nations. So was there ever a conqueror by the name of "Cyrus"? Yes, there was. If you remember what I told you above about the fall of Babylon, you'll recall that Cyrus was the Persian king who conquered the Babylonians in 539 B.C. If this is all getting confusing, there are three empires we've been discussing in the following order:
Assyrian Empire (conquered in 609 B.C. by the Babylonians)
Babylonian Empire (conquered in 539 B.C. by the Persians)
Persian Empire
So Cyrus indeed was a great conqueror. But not only that. Cyrus also approved the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the Temple, just like Isaiah said in his prophecy.
Remember, Isaiah made this prophecy between 701 B.C. and 681 B.C., during the reign of the Assyrian empire. This was before the Babylonian Empire even existed let alone the Persian Empire. Jerusalem and the Temple were still standing, so there certainly was no reason for them to be "rebuilt". Cyrus wouldn't even be born for over 100 years!
Now this prophecy wasn't like Nostradamus' famous alleged prophecy of Hitler in which he actually used the word "Hister", not "Hitler". Isaiah said "Cyrus" and the king's name was "Cyrus".
This wasn't the only prophecy about Cyrus' conquer of Babylon in the Bible. When discussing Jerusalem, Jeremiah said:
You are saying about this city, "By the sword, famine and plague it will be handed over to the king of Babylon"; but this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I will surely gather them from all the lands where I banish them in my furious anger and great wrath; I will bring them back to this place and let them live in safety.
Jeremiah 32:36-37
So Jeremiah said that Jerusalem would fall to Babylon, the people would be banished, but then they would subsequently return to Israel. As discussed above, Israel became a vassal nation to the Babylonian Empire when the Babylonians conquered the Assyrians in 609 B.C. Beginning in approximately 605 B.C., the Babylonians began exiling Israelites to Babylon. Then in 586 B.C., the Babylonians actually destroyed Jerusalem and tore down the Temple. But once Cyrus and the Persians defeated the Babylonians in 539 B.C., the Jews were allowed to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple and to return from exile.3
Everything Isaiah and Jeremiah said would happen came true exactly as they had prophesied, even though both men were long dead before the prophecies came true.
Revenge on the Edomites
I will take vengeance on Edom by the hand of my people Israel, and they will deal with Edom in accordance with my anger and my wrath; they will know my vengeance, declares the Sovereign Lord.
Ezekiel 25:14
The outlook doesn't look too good for Edom, does it? But first let's answer two preliminary questions: (1) Who is Ezekiel; and (2) What is Edom?
Ezekiel was an Israelite who was deported to Babylon in approximately 597 B.C. His prophetic ministry started about five years later. He continued his ministry until about 570 B.C. Edom was a nation that had warred with the Jews continuously throughout the ages.
So what does this prophecy say? Well, obviously it looks like very bad things are going to be happening to Edom. But that's really not the important part. After all, I could make some generic statement anytime I want that some great society was going to fall, and odds are it would come true eventually. After all, very few of the societies from that time are still around today. But look at the prophecy again. Who is going to be the agent of this wrath against Edom? God says "the hand of my people Israel" will deal His wrath. So the Israelites will be the ones to punish Edom.
Ezekiel wrote this prophecy during his ministry between roughly 592 and 570 B.C., during the period that the Jews were exiled in Babylon. At this time, the Jews did not even control their own country, let alone have the ability to take over anyone else's nation. I guarantee you that if any of the Edomites would have heard this prophecy at the time it was made they would have laughed at Ezekiel.
But over 400 years later, after the exile was over, the Jewish priest-king John Hyrcanus I battled and defeated the Edomites, just like Ezekiel said would happen. So the remarkable part of this prophesy is not so much that it predicted the fall of Edom (which happened as predicted in about 100 B.C.) but that it also predicted that Israel would be the ones to bring about that fall, even though at the time the prophesy was made, there certainly did not appear to be any hope on the horizon that any Israelite would be conquering anybody.
Destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem
I will give you a few Biblical passages for this next prophesy because it is one of the more famous prophesies in the Bible and was mentioned several times by different prophets.
Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call attention to its buildings. "Do you see all these things?" he asked. "I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down."
Matthew 24:1-2
Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
Luke 21:24
Know and understand this: From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven 'sevens,' and sixty-two 'sevens.' It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. After the sixty-two 'sevens,' the Anointed One will be cut off and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed.
Daniel 9:25-26
Any time you see something written in red that means Jesus spoke those words. So the first two passages above were prophesies from Jesus Himself, whereas the last one is an older prophesy from a prophet named Daniel. Daniel was an Israelite who was taken into Babylonian captivity in 605 B.C. when he was only 15 years old. He made his prophesies during the exile. The first part of Daniel's prophesy is Messianic in nature (i.e., it points to when the Messiah would arrive) and will be discussed in more detail in the upcoming article on the Messianic prophesies. I include his prophesy here for what it says about Jerusalem. After the Messiah ("Messiah" literally means "anointed one") is "cut off", a ruler will come and destroy Jerusalem and the sanctuary.
For reasons I will explain more fully in the Messianic article, the cutting off of the Messiah refers to Jesus' crucifixion. So at some point after that (approximately 30 A.D.) Jerusalem and the Temple would be destroyed by some ruler of the time. In the two passages above from Jesus, He also predicted that the Temple would be utterly destroyed ("not one stone here will be left on another") and He specifically mentioned that the people who destroy Jerusalem will be "Gentiles" (i.e., non-Jews).
So did this happen? Yes, it did; and not too long after Jesus predicted it. Jesus died in 30 A.D. In 70 A.D., in response to a Jewish insurrection, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and killed an estimated 1.1 million Jews. The Romans set fire to the Temple, causing the gold on the Temple ceiling to melt and settle into crevices. The Romans then pried apart the stones in order to remove the gold. Literally, "not one stone" was left on another.
Another destruction of Jerusalem
Her leaders judge for a bribe, her priests teach for a price, and her prophets tell fortunes for money. Yet they lean upon the Lord and say, "Is not the Lord among us? No disaster will come upon us." Therefore because of you, Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble, the temple hill a mound overgrown with thickets.
Micah 3:11-12
Micah was a prophet who ministered at approximately the same time as Isaiah (during the Assyrian Empire). Specifically, his ministry dated from 742 B.C. to about 703 B.C.
Now at first glance, it may seem like Micah is prophesying some of the same events we've discussed before. After all, he is clearly talking about the destruction of Jerusalem, and we already know that Jerusalem was destroyed at least twice after Micah's ministry (once in 586 B.C. by the Babylonians and again in 70 A.D. by the Romans). But remember what I told you before about Biblical prophecy. Most of the time you don't need to worry about interpreting vague symbolism. If a prophesy says something with a plain meaning, our first interpretation should always be in accordance with that plain meaning.
Here, Micah says Zion (i.e., Jerusalem) would be "plowed like a field." As far as we know, this did not happen after either the Babylonian siege of 586 B.C. or the Roman destruction in 70 A.D. But the Romans destroyed Jerusalem again in 135 A.D, and guess what? They plowed Zion. According to the Gemara, a collection of ancient Jewish writings, the Romans ran a plow over the area formerly occupied by the Temple after the destruction of Jerusalem in 135. Not only that, but the Romans minted a coin at that time with the image of a man using a plow. That coin commemorated the founding of the Roman City Aelia Capitolina. Where was that city located? On the very site of Jerusalem. Again, the plain and obvious meaning of a Biblical prophet was literally fulfilled.
Conclusion
This is an extremely small sampling of fulfilled Biblical prophesies. There are countless others like these that could literally fill an entire book (in fact, they do fill an entire book; the Bible!). The point of this article is not to give you an exhaustive list of all the fulfilled prophesies on the Bible. That would take way too long and would probably bore many people to death before I even got 1/10 of the way through. The point here is simply to provide a small sampling in order to illustrate my point. We know that God exists outside the confines of time. We learned that through cosmology. Perhaps the best way to think of God's perception of things in our linear universe is not to say that He can "predict" the future. Because God exists outside of linear time, there is no such thing as "past", "present" or "future" to Him. All events from all times are accessible to Him now, all at the same time. So He does not "predict" things that have not yet come to pass. He simply "sees" the things that are right there in front of Him.
Because all times are equally accessible to God, He is obviously uniquely suited to tell us how things are going to play out in our little linear existence. In order that we may trust that it is really Him communicating to us through the books of the Bible, God has allowed us to have a little glimpse into what we would call the "future". This tells us not only that the Bible can be trusted but also that its true author is God Himself. Nobody else has the ability to show us the future as God has done.
As I said in Part 1 of this series, God Himself is obviously best suited to describe His divine nature to us. If the Bible is truly God's book, then it is essentially God Himself talking to us and telling us about Himself. This makes the Bible the best resource to learn about God's nature. It is superior to the Koran, the Book of Mormon, or any other piece of literature. We know from the cosmological evidence that God exists outside of time. The Bible reveals things to us that could only be revealed by an entity that exists outside of time. The only such entity we know of is God Himself. Therefore, God's true nature is as it is described to us in the Bible. That description comes to us from God Himself, and that brings us to the God of Christianity.
Footnotes
1 Please understand that I do not claim that so-called "psychics" can never get a prediction right. After all, the Bible itself speaks of spiritualists and people who contact the dead, but it explicitly prohibits dealing with them. While there is no indication that demons such as Satan have the ability to tell the future (after all, if he did, he would know he was inevitably going to lose), they certainly have been privy to some things God Himself has said from time to time. Satan's tempting of Jesus showed that he was intricately familiar with the scriptures. So Satan clearly pays attention to what God says. Although my personal belief is that all so-called fortune-tellers are hoaxes, I am willing to leave open the (theoretical) possibility that some may be able to stumble into an accurate prediction once in a while. However, you will find that these "predictions" are either incredibly vague (like Nostradamus), or wrong far more often than they are right. I believe that many spiritualists may not think they are doing anything wrong, and they may believe that their "power" even comes from God. However, their "power" (if they even really have any) is actually being delivered from somewhere else, whether they realize it or not. It is inconceivable that God would hand down an explicit prohibition against consulting psychics, then go on to imbue them with power Himself.
2 Some people may object to me relying upon other books of the Bible when affirming the fulfillment of prophecies because I am still essentially using the same source, or because those books are "biased". First, you must remember that the Bible is actually comprised of numerous separate books, all written at different times. It is a compilation, not one unified work. Second, the types of events listed in these prophecies are not the kind of things that could go unnoticed. Bias really has nothing to do with it because the author's credibility never enters into the equation. The types of prophecies that would be fulfilled would be something like "Such and such Empire will cease to exist", or "King Ali Baba is going to have his head cut off." These books were widely circulated at the time they were written. You couldn't exactly go off claiming that the Babylonian Empire had fallen apart in fulfillment of prophecy only to have the Babylonians come in and kick some major booty the next day. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that if such an event had not yet occurred at the time the book with the prophecy was written, and it is subsequently recorded in a later book, then it really happened (and many of these events are confirmed by other historical evidence anyway).
3 This is further confirmed by the discovery of the "Cyrus Cylinder" in 1879 A.D. The cylinder dates to 536 B.C. and is engraved with a declaration by Cyrus that stated because the people in Babylon allowed his rule without resorting to violence he removed their bondage and restored their buildings (i.e., Jerusalem and the Temple).
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