Can We Trust the Bible? Prophecy Fulfilled

The basic thrust of the Assyrian challenge to Hezekiah was the same challenge that we find throughout the Bible to those who trust in God, those who believe in God; and it is a challenge that is first articulated by Satan through the serpent in the garden of Eden when he addresses Eve and said: “Did God really say that you can’t eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?” It is a question that at its very core challenges the integrity of God’s revelation—did He really say that? Did he really mean that? Is His Word really trustworthy? Can you really count on Him? Does He really have your best interests at heart? That is the same question that is the focal point of the propaganda of the Rabshakeh and the military commander that Sennacherib sent to Hezekiah. The same question comes up today. We look out on our world and there are all kinds of religious options, a whole list of religious cafeterias, and we can take and choose whatever we wish on any given week or day, and somehow we have so denigrated and diluted the concept of truth that truth no longer refers to something that is universal, something that applies to anyone at any time in any country, any culture, and that truth is that which is unshakeable and which is eternally applicable. So truth then becomes something that is totally subjective: what I think is true, what works for me; it takes on a pragmatic tone.

But have we ever taken the time to look at the foundations of our faith, whatever that may be? Are those foundations unshakeable?” Can we evaluate those in light of external evidences, whether it be historical, archaeological, geographical in some cases, whatever it may be? Is there verification that validates the foundations of our faith? The thesis we are presenting is that only the Bible can be validated in terms of history, in terms of archaeology, in terms of the basic claims and observations that are made in the Bible related to science—it is not a science book but it makes statements that relate to science; it is not a geographical textbook but it makes comments related to geography. What we discover is that nothing stated within the Bible has ever been proved to be wrong. What we discover archaeologically is that the Bible fits the context in which it claims to have been written. One reason that is important is that there are a number of claims made in challenging the authority and the veracity of the Bible that say, well the Bible really wasn’t written at that time and in that era, it was written much later. The reason that claim is made and what the real agenda in saying the Bible was written much later than it claims to have been written is to wipe out predictive prophecy. For example, if Daniel wasn’t really in the middle of the 6^th century BC, roughly between 586 and 553 BC, and was written latter—say, around 250-300 BC—then much of the predictive prophecy in Daniel would have been written as history. What is so miraculous about writing history? Nothing. But if Daniel was written in the middle of the 6^th century BC and he is predicting the fall of Babylon, the rise of Media-Persia, the defeat of Media-Persia by the Greeks and the rise of the Greek empire, the defeat of the Greek empire eventually by the Romans and the rise of the Roman empire, then there is something that is truly remarkable and astounding. Then there is somebody writing in detail, not just in generalizations, about the future—something that comes true down to the most minute details of the prophecy. So what we want to look at as we answer the question, can we really trust the Bible, is fulfilled prophecy—how we can look at prophecies given in the Old Testament, how they were fulfilled in the ancient world, and then that helps us to see the uniqueness of the Bible.

Does God exist? If we answer no then we have the major problem of trying to explain the existence of everything. Some philosophers have indicated that the greatest question in philosophy is, why do things exist? If the answer is yes, then the next question is, can God communicate? If He can’t communicate then by definition He can’t be God, so the answer, therefore, must be yes, God can communicate? Can God communicate clearly? In other words, he may be able to communicate but if it is fuzzy what good does it do? So is God capable of clear, precise communication so that those to whom He is communicating can understand what He says? If God is God then He should be able to create creatures who have the right receptors to understand what it is that He is communicating to them. The next question would be, if God can communicate clearly, can He protect that communication? In other words, once He has communicated is He able to protect it so that it is preserved down through the ages and those who live 1000, 2000, 5000 years later will be able to have an understanding of what He said in the past. We conclude by saying that if God can conclude clearly, and protect His communication, then what would its characteristic be? If God communicates clearly then we would expect that His Word would be internally consistent, accurate, supported by evidence—the evidence doesn’t prove it, it validates it or confirms its veracity—internally logical and rational, and without error.

The standard in the Scripture is absolute. Isaiah 41:21-23 ^{NASB “}‘Present your case,” the LORD says. “Bring forward your strong {arguments,}” The King of Jacob says. Let them bring forth and declare to us what is going to take place; As for the former {events,} declare what they {were,} That we may consider them and know their outcome. Or announce to us what is coming; Declare the things that are going to come afterward, That we may know that you are gods; Indeed, do good or evil, that we may anxiously look about us and fear together.”

” Can anyone else accurately predict things to come? God points out that it is prophecy, the uniquely predictive aspects of the Scripture, that emphasizes who He is and the veracity of His Word. We can conclude by saying that Biblical prophecy is a declaration of future events which includes sufficient detail as to exclude human generalizations and vague predictions, human conjecture, probabilities, and which includes facts and details which only God could know. In other words, it may not be as in precise a detail as we might like, for whatever reason, but it is precise enough of detail to where we know that when it is fulfilled it is done exactly as God said it would be done. If those details are not there then the fulfillment has not yet occurred.

When we look at prophecy in the Old Testament it can be categorized in two ways. First, short term or fulfilled prophecy. The reason for having this is because it validates the prophet as a prophet. Preachers will rhetorically say that a prophet had two roles: a foreteller (predictive) and a forth-teller (challenging or rebuking or correcting the king). Then when they get into the New Testament they say the foretelling is out but the forth-telling is still there, so you can still have prophets today. That destroys the whole concept; that is not the biblical idea. The foretelling was intimately connected with the forth-telling because in the Old Testament when the prophet who represented God as a prosecuting attorney he is prosecuting Israel for their failure to obey God. His role is to challenge their disobedience and the prediction relates to the future judgment for their failure to be obedient. To validate his long-term prophecies which would not be fulfilled in his lifetime, or even in the lifetime of his hearers, there were numerous short-term prophecies that would be fulfilled within Israel’s life time and the lifetime of his hearers which validated his long-term prediction. There were shot-term prophecies such as the dreams God gave to Joseph.

There were also long-term prophecies such as those related to the glorious future kingdom of Israel, the glorious reign of the Messiah, and we have to understand that there are distinctions between the timing of some of those prophecies. The Old Testament predicts a range of things that will be accomplished by the Messiah, some of which were accomplished early when Jesus Christ came the first time, and some of which will not be accomplished until later. There are two aspects to the role of the Messiah, one is that he would suffer, and one is that he would rule. One is that He would be rejected by men and one is that he would come and rule over men and establish the kingdom. These are not happening at the same time.

Four things to remember:

1) Josephs dreams, Genesis 37, later fulfilled when he became the number two ruler in Pharaoh’s Egypt. He also later had the dream of seven years of prosperity followed by seven years of famine, and the truth of that was such that Pharaoh had him prepare rule over the land in order to preserve and save during the years of prosperity in order to be able to handle the years of famine. It came through precisely as the dream had indicated.

2) The prophecy against the altar of Jeroboam, 1 Kings 13:2, 3 ^NASB “He cried against the altar by the word of the LORD, and said, ‘O altar, altar, thus says the LORD, ‘Behold, a son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name; and on you he shall sacrifice the priests of the high places who burn incense on you, and human bones shall be burned on you.’ Then he gave a sign the same day, saying, “This is the sign which the LORD has spoken, ‘Behold, the altar shall be split apart and the ashes which are on it shall be poured out.’” Cf. 2 Kings 23:16 ^NASB “Now when Josiah turned, he saw the graves that {were} there on the mountain, and he sent and took the bones from the graves and burned {them} on the altar and defiled it according to the word of the LORD which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these things. [17] Then he said, ‘What is this monument that I see?’ And the men of the city told him, ‘It is the grave of the man of God who came from Judah and proclaimed these things which you have done against the altar of Bethel.’ [18] He said, ‘Let him alone; let no one disturb his bones.’ So they left his bones undisturbed with the bones of the prophet who came from Samaria.” So we see a prophecy given in 931 BC which is fulfilled in precise detail in 622 BC.

3) The prophecy of Ezekiel predicting the destruction of Tyre, one of the chief cities of the Phoenicians, in Ezekiel 26:1-6 ^NASB “Now in the eleventh year, on the first of the month, the word of the LORD came to me saying, ‘Son of man, because Tyre has said concerning Jerusalem, ‘Aha, the gateway of the peoples is broken; it has opened to me. I shall be filled, {now that} she is laid waste,’ therefore thus says the Lord GOD, ‘Behold, I am against you, O Tyre, and I will bring up many nations against you, as the sea brings up its waves. ‘They will destroy the walls of Tyre and break down her towers; and I will scrape her debris from her and make her a bare rock. She will be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea, for I have spoken,’ declares the Lord GOD, ‘and she will become spoil for the nations. Also her daughters who are on the mainland will be slain by the sword, and they will know that I am the LORD.’” Six specific predictions are made about the destruction of Tyre. (The date of this prophecy: Ezekiel is taken captive in the second siege against Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 597 BC. It was not until the third attack in 586 that Jerusalem was destroyed and the temple was destroyed. Each time Nebuchadnezzar came he took away captives.) This prophecy was made in 586; Tyre will not be finally destroyed in the way the prophecy speaks until 332 BC, some 270 years later.

In this prediction he says several things about how Tyre will be destroyed, and he predicts that it will be destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, verse 7. He does destroy, not the whole city but the mainland part, as he comes from the north. Ezekiel predicts that many nations would come against Tyre, not just one. He predicts that Tyre would become like the top of a flat rock and it would be completely barren. Fishermen would spread their nets there. Tyre would be thrown into the water and never be rebuilt, and he says that Tyre’s vassal cities would be destroyed. This passage also gives the basis for this judgment—anti-Semitism, v. 2. Tyre was eventually destroyed by Alexander the Great in 332 BC and has never been rebuilt, according to the prophecy.

4) The destruction of Nineveh in 612 BC. About forty years prior to their destruction Nahum, one of the so-called Minor Prophets, predicted the destruction of Nineveh in about 665 BC. He predicted that Nineveh would be destroyed by an overflowing flood, 1:8 ^NASB “But with an overflowing flood He will make a complete end of its site, And will pursue His enemies into darkness [9] Whatever you devise against the LORD, He will make a complete end of it. Distress will not rise up twice [it will not be rebuilt].” In its destruction the gates were smashed, the River Tigris was utilized, diverted and flooded the city which was completely destroyed, so much so that some 200 years later when a Greek army was in full retreat from a Persian army it went right past the site and didn’t even realize that that is where they were. It had completely vanished from human consciousness. In the second century Ad the Greek satirist, Lucian, said: “Nineveh is so completely destroyed that it is no longer possible to say where it stood. Not a single trace of it remains.”

So here are four outstanding examples that we have from the Old Testament of predictive prophecy that is fulfilled in detail, and there are many other prophecies that we could go to in order to demonstrate that. This fits the test that God gave Moses in Deuteronomy 18 that if a prophet claims to speak in the name of God then what he says will come true one hundred per cent of the time. But there are also unfulfilled prophecies that we find in the Old Testament, prophecies related to the Messiah. Many were fulfilled when Jesus Christ came the first time—more than 100—and there are about 200 that have not yet been fulfilled. The chance of even ten of those prophecies being fulfilled in one person is in the order of such a magnitude it has been compared to filling the entire state of Texas with silver dollars up to about four feet in depth, marking one of them with a little fingernail polish, stirring it into the whole pile, and the chances of a blindfolded man picking out that one marked silver dollar is greater than the chances of ten prophecies coming true in one person. So when there are 100 prophecies in the Old Testament all being fulfilled in one person indicates that Jesus Christ is exactly who he claimed to be.

Illustrations