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Are there ANY evidences that all the biblical prophecies were falsified?

What is evidence?

In a previous essay I addressed the question, “Are there ANY Bible prophecies that indisputably came true?”  For the skeptic it is possible to dispute everything, including the reality of human life itself.  So, for the anti-supernatural presuppositionalist, the answer is predetermined to always come out, “No.”

But turn-about is good research.  So, it must be asked of the skeptic, “Are there ANY concrete evidences that every Bible prophecy was falsified?”

Evidence cannot be mere allegation.  It is academically negligent and charlatanism to say, “If a prophecy can be faked it certainly was faked.”  That is not evidence of a faked prophecy.  Anyone can cast aspersions or invent any claim that they can imagine in their mind.  So just making an accusation is not evidence.  Given this is literary history we are dealing with (i.e. the Bible), it is obvious and fair that only concrete evidence is acceptable in the form of written documentation that purports to have been first documented contemporaneously with the biblical texts.

In other words, to be a valid evidence that disproves a Bible prophecy, the written refutation must have also been written at the same time as that of the biblical prophecy, and not centuries later (i.e. virtually all the Gnostic writings were written 100 or more years after the last of the Bible texts were written, so they disqualify themselves as refutations of any biblical statement).  It must come from eyewitnesses of the actual events to disprove the validity of the Bible prophecy or to demonstrate that every gospel author and every apostolic epistle writer lied so as to turn Jesus from an ordinary man into the Messiah.

New Testament conspiratorial evidence?

In almost all conspiracies in human history both the truth and the charges of falsification are left behind in writing by the eyewitnesses.  There are virtually no such written charges with regard to the gospels and the epistles, suggesting that the apostles told the scrupulous truth.  In fact, those who knew the apostles or their associates identify that the four gospels were already commonly known and in use by the 2nd century AD (see the Canon of Muratori, a letter from Clement of Alexandria, and the writings of Irenaeus).  If the four gospels were already in common use by the 2nd century AD then they had to have been written and circulated before that time, which means that eyewitnesses of the events could have read them, critiqued them, and objected if they were in error.  Such objections simply do not exist while thousands of copies and fragments of the gospels do.

With regard to the New Testament there are NO extant personal letters, copies of personal letters, or official documents from the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd century from eyewitnesses that dispute that Jesus was born, lived, and died according to the details of the widely circulated gospels.  Such a lack of refutation is all but inconceivable if all the Messianic details had been fictionalized by the apostles.  How is it that today they are slandered as liars with no written evidence to bolster the empty allegation?

Old Testament conspiratorial evidence?

Similarly, the nearly 2000 years of written Jewish history demonstrate a total lack of extant documents that illustrate that the Old Testament was repeatedly re-written, edited, revised, and continually altered over the centuries.  Where did all these disparate real and faked manuscripts circulate that they could all disappear from every recorded history?

Israel’s scribal and prophetic tradition is a particularly alarming problem for the skeptic.  The skeptic must demonstrate that ALL future-telling prophecies were faked and added into the Old Testament Jewish scrolls by no later than 200 BC (that is when they were sealed into Qumran caves until uncovered just this past century).  Why is that an alarming problem?  Because when the Jews returned from exile and rebuilt the temple before 500 BC, they became zealots of their religion and their sacred Scriptures.  The people read them and memorized them voraciously.  If there had been thousands of altered or faked versions floating around, the scribes would have been stoned to death.

The last prophets (Malachi and Nehemiah) wrote their prophecies prior to 400 BC.  They were the last prophets the Jews heard from until the time of Christ’s birth.  Everything that was written in Jewish history between 400 BC and the time of Christ was considered to be non-Scripture to all Jews. 

It is an academic stretch of a tremendous magnitude to consider that the Jews, many of whom knew their Scriptures quite well, all conspired to allow them to be re-written and re-edited between 400 BC and 200 BC by admitted non-prophets who wanted to add-in prophecies and events that had never happened.  Had these imaginary rogue scribes gone back to edit Daniel (written just one century prior to the return of the exiles and had been written for all those who were in the exile), and had they sought to re-write the contents of Daniel, then everyone who went through the exile would have seen and exposed the fakery.  Or if mythical evil scribes attempted to alter Isaiah (which contained the promises of their return to rebuild Jerusalem) all the people would have known it instantly and killed the aberrant scribes. 

Is there any extant evidence of faked Bible prophecy?

In truth, there is more hard extant evidence that the Old Testament, gospels, and New Testament epistles are genuine eyewitness accounts of what actually occurred than exists for many other secular “historical” documents.  There is virtually no extant evidence that any Old or New Testament prophecy was faked.  There are no extant Hebrew Bibles showing a pattern of more and more fulfilled prophecies being added in over the centuries.  Virtually the only thing that is used to challenge the validity of the Bible, the gospels, and the epistle accounts are the empty and unproven aspersions of modern critics.

Let me put this question to the skeptic:  What evidence do you have that all the Messianic prophecies were added to the Scriptures between 400 BC and 200 BC besides the mere conjecture of modern authors?  What hard evidence do you have that none of the scriptural prophecies were written during the lifetimes of the actual prophets?  Where are the thousands of extant Old Testament scrolls that have built up over the centuries showing that the earliest scrolls did not have prophecies but that the prophecies were only added into the latest ones?  Where are the thousands of extant letters from the residents of Jerusalem to their friends and families in other countries debunking the growing legend about the man named Jesus who had supposedly lived, performed miracles, died, and resurrected in their home town?

As for the real Bible, the thousands of its genuine extant copies and fragments all demonstrate the same thing: it has remained consistent and unchanged in content from Moses until today.

Who has the burden of proof?

Often the skeptic will insist that since supernatural things like prophecy do not happen in ordinary life, the believer must demonstrate that prophecy is real and that there is a supernatural God.  I think the question is reversed.  The Bible does exist.  Its existence means it is the assertion, it is the evidence.  Since it has prophecies (which have been fulfilled) the burden of proof is on the skeptic to show that NONE of those prophecies were real, that they were all written after-the-fact.

Since the Bible provides the fulfilled prophecies in documented form, it provides substantial evidence for the supernatural.  The evidence must be examined to determine if it is false, of course.  But to be proven false, it must be shown with documentation and concrete evidence that all of the prophecies were faked.  Therein lies the burden of proof.  It is up to the skeptic to disprove the evidence placed before them.

Skeptics do not like the Bible as evidence, because it demonstrates a supernatural origin.  Skeptics have a presupposition that the supernatural does not and cannot exist.  Therefore, they cannot investigate whether any evidence demonstrates the supernatural or not because they have predetermined that anything that demonstrates the supernatural is already false.  They have drawn their conclusion before they have done the investigation and so they cannot and will not allow any evidence that could lead to a possible conclusion that the Bible is a book of supernatural revelation.  One cannot perform an investigation if one has already rejected all outcomes they do not desire.

What should we conclude?

There is no written evidence that the Old Testament has been edited to add-in prophecies after the fact.  Nor is there written evidence that the New Testament authors faked all of Jesus’ prophecies and all of the details of His life.  The only written evidence that has been found over twenty centuries is that the Scriptures have remained scrupulously and fastidiously unchanged (excepting changes in the Hebrew tongue and rather insignificant copyist errors) since they were first penned by the original prophets. 

Therefore it is academically honest to regard the Bible as an historically trustworthy document written by eyewitnesses, studied and memorized by faithful believers since the first writings, and transmitted conscientiously from one generation to the next.  We do have the sure Word of God given by prophecy with us today.

So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts. But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. (2 Peter 1:19-21)

Are there ANY Bible prophecies that indisputably came true?

What presuppositions make every prophecy into a lie?

On a religion forum someone posted and asked, “Are there ANY Bible prophecies that indisputably came true?”  Immediately rock solid prophecies leapt to mind and to keyboard: Abraham and Sarah having Isaac in their old age, God promising to grow a mighty nation of the Jews in Egypt, God telling Moses that he will lead the nation out of Egypt, Isaiah prophesying that God would release the Jews from Babylonian captivity to rebuild Jerusalem, Daniel naming the kings of coming empires, and that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. 

Rock solid?  As I soon learned, every prophecy in the Bible was rejected by the skeptics along with every secular source that supported the biblical accounts.  It turned out the poster and the skeptics had ironclad rules they had hidden from view but followed rigidly.  By the time the hidden rules of the presupposition game were slowly revealed in the words of the skeptics, the answer they had predetermined to obtain for themselves was, “No, there never was and never will be an indisputable biblical prophecy because our rules have guaranteed this answer for us.”

The hidden rules of the presupposition game are:

1. If a prophecy was made in one book of the Old Testament and fulfilled in another book of the Old Testament it must always be assumed that the prophecy was a recent scribal edit added after the fact (about 400 BC) and did not exist in the first writing of the book.
2. If a prophecy was made in the Old Testament regarding the future Messiah (e.g. virgin birth, born in Bethlehem, died via crucifixion, resurrected from the dead) then whenever the New Testament demonstrates that Jesus fulfilled that prophecy it must be assumed that the gospel writer invented those details about Jesus and that they never actually happened to Jesus.
3. If a prophecy was made by a New Testament person (e.g. Jesus predicted the destruction of the temple which occurred in 70 AD) then it must always be assumed that the prophecy was written down after the prophetic event was fulfilled and was not actually uttered at the time described in the writing.

What is the implication if every Bible prophecy is a lie?

In short, the hidden rules of the anti-supernatural presuppositionalists guarantee that no biblical prophecy can ever be accepted as valid prophecy.  Worse, it automatically makes every Old Testament book of the Bible a fabrication filled with falsehoods and every New Testament apostle that wrote a letter or endorsed a gospel account to be a flagrant liar. 

Virtually the entire Christian faith is dependent on the truths that Jesus was born of a virgin, was born in Bethlehem as a descendant of David, lived a perfect life, died a sacrificial death, and resurrected from death to life.  Since all those events were first prophesied in the Old Testament about the Messiah, it means that either Jesus fulfilled them all and was the Messiah, or, every foundational aspect of Christianity is a brazen lie and never happened. 

In other words, if one accepts that Jesus did live a perfect life, and/or died a sacrificial death via crucifixion, and/or resurrected from death to life, then you have “personal proof” that at least five Old Testament prophecies absolutely were fulfilled. 

Opposite that, if one accepts that the gospel writers and the apostles all lied in their writings about such things as Jesus being born of a virgin, Jesus being born in Bethlehem in the line of David, His perfect life, His sacrificial death by crucifixion, and His resurrection to life, then EVERY aspect of Christianity is false and immoral; all of it having been based on falsehoods.  There can be nothing good or wholesome in the Christian religion in such a case for it is all comprised of deceit, errors, and intentional mis-directions.

No revelation of God is possible?

Now, if every Bible prophecy is a fabrication and was never made in real human history, then God never revealed Himself in it or through it, ever.  For example, Abraham could never have encountered God because God always prophesied the future (including a son and a nation) to Abraham on every encounter.  Certainly Moses never encountered God because at the burning bush God supposedly prophesied that Moses would lead the nation out of Egypt into the promised land originally granted to Abraham (a prophecy later fulfilled by Joshua).

Kind David was given a future-telling prophecy that his lineage would rule Israel for eternity and would save all the world from their sins.  That too had to have been a lie, a fake future-telling prophecy, a fabrication added to the scrolls by devious scribes in 400 BC. 

Was every prophecy of the Messiah a future-telling prophecy?

And the worst part, there never was a promised Messiah.  Every promise of a Savior/Messiah in the Old Testament was a future-telling prophecy.  Every one.  If all of those prophecies were recent edits by sneaky Jewish scribes in 400 BC and were not made by the original prophets who first wrote the books, or, if they were never fulfilled by anyone, including Jesus, then the world never did have a Messiah from the line of David.  No Messiah means no sacrifice was made for sins.  No sacrifice for sins means no forgiveness and no salvation.  None. 

Were the first manuscripts of the Bible written without any future-telling prophecies?

It is wrongly assumed by the skeptics that the Bible was originally a book that told a story about religious men and had no future-telling prophecies.  They suppose that as time went on and the people described in the books died, the books were edited to describe past historical events as if they had been forecasted by the religious men. 

Such a theory completely ignores the fact that the Bible is nothing but one continuous future-telling prophecy from one page to the next.  There are no stories that do not contain future-telling prophecies.  The prophecies were often the point, motivation, and plot behind each recorded event.  There can be no story of Moses without all the future-telling prophecies by which God directed him and ultimately delivered the Law.  Take away the future-telling prophecies because you assume they never happened in the manner described in the Bible, and there is no book of religious men.

What choice do I have but to believe the prophecies of the Bible are valid?

That about sums up the two choices: 

1. Every patriarch in the Bible is a liar for having claimed an encounter with God and having claimed to have been given a future-telling prophecy regarding a promised land, a great nation, or a coming Messiah, thus, all of Judaism and all of Christianity are a giant conspiracy of uncounted liars covering a span of four thousand years.

-Or-

2. The prophecies were presented to the original patriarchs just as the Scriptures report them and Jesus is the fulfillment of every one of the prophecies just as the gospels, apostles, and eyewitnesses have reported. 

Which choice is backed by the best evidence and is more plausible?  If you have a presupposition that everything supernatural is impossible, you will choose option one.  If you presuppose a living personal God who loves His creation and has communicated with it, option two may have some appeal for you.

As for me and my house, we have chosen to believe in the Lord.

Election, Predestination, Freewill, Choices, and Nonsense

C.S. Lewis once famously stated in his book, The Problem of Pain, that it was “nonsense” to assume that God chose who would be the elected saints and also those who would reject Him while He simultaneously held guilty those who turned away from Him.  To Lewis God was incapable of choosing whom He would love and call to salvation while at the same time condemning to Hell those whom He chose not to give the gift of saving faith.   

D.A. Carson more correctly noted that God can do all the choosing (He chooses both those who go to Heaven and those who go to Hell) while holding responsible those humans whom He did not choose to come to belief in Christ.  Carson, in his book How Long O Lord?, does not find this concept to be nonsense but concurrent biblical truths.

The Apostle Paul, of course, presents the doctrine of predestination / election (“a choosing in advance”) in the terms understood by Carson.  Paul notes that God chooses those humans He will honor with salvation and those who are destined for destruction in Hell (Romans 9:8-22).  He did all this choosing “before the foundation of the world” was spoken into existence (Ephesians 1:4).  Merely because Lewis could not personally do what God can do is not warrant to accuse God of being nonsensical.

But let us explore this idea of logic and apparent contradiction.  Arminians are celebrated for following Lewis in accusing God of uttering nonsense in Romans 9.  They say if God chooses those who will believe and those who will not believe then it is illogical to hold the unbelievers responsible for their unbelief for no one can resist the choosing of God; it is not the human’s fault so the person does not deserve Hell.  Paul debunks this very accusation in Romans 9:13-21.

It seems to escape the Arminian’s notice that their position has an extraordinary and overwhelming illogical presupposition underlying their own framework.  They argue that before creation God desired all the world to become saved and therefore He chose no one to be saved or unsaved, but relied upon the freewill of each person to decide their own fate.  Then, before the world was yet created, He looked into the future and saw which person would accept Him and which would reject Him, then He only “elected” those who would use their freewill to accept Him. 

Such a scenario is impossibly illogical.  Before the world was created, IF God could see into the future to know what persons would choose to believe in Him and what persons would not, and IF God desired everyone in the world to be saved, then WHY did He allow the unsaved to be created or even born? 

Was God not powerful enough to change the future before it happened and demand that His desires be implemented?  Was God not powerful enough to decree, “Johnny is not going to choose Christ, but since I want all people to be saved I will simply not have Johnny be born”?  Was Johnny more powerful than God so as to thwart His good intentions?

Or maybe God is not all knowing and cannot really see into the future?  Perhaps God did His best to foreknow what each person would do, but since the future is always in motion it is blurry and hard to read, so He most often got it wrong since most people go to Hell?

The notion that God is either lacking in power or lacking in knowledge (or foreknowledge) is heresy, illogical, and nonsense.  Yet, this is the underlying assumption that must be made by all Arminians when they promote freewill.  Lewis boasted that he believed God defers the use of His power to allow humanity to exercise his freewill.  That comment is self-contradictory when Lewis also claims that God desires all people to be saved.  If God desired all men to be saved, He would not have intentionally limited His power and thus condemned untold multitudes to Hell.  Remember, there is no good reason why God allowed Hell-bound unbelievers to ever be born when He could easily have stopped each one from coming into existence while still allowing to be born all those who would choose to believe in Him. 

Arminianism is logically flawed.  Worse, it is biblically flawed.  It makes God to be less than God in both knowledge and power.  Given the choice between accepting the mystery of biblical election / predestination and the logical contradictions and heresies introduced by Arminianism, I must side with the Apostle Paul.

Just as it is written, "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated." What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! For He says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. (Romans 9:13-16)

Sorry Harry Potter Fans, but It’s Not Magic: A Blog of Miracles, Science, and Magic

When God created the universe He did not use magic.  He planned in advance the rules that would govern energy, atomic cohesion, biology, entropy, matter, physics, and quantum physics.  Then Christ, who lived in the realm of spirit, created a corporeal reality--from the absoluteness of the infinite void that lacked energy, time, space, and matter.  He willed into existence the energy and the particles of matter that now comprise the massive cosmos that surrounds our little planet.  Then, applying the laws of physics and biology He manipulated the very molecules of His cosmos and He created life itself.

God did not use magic.  He created physical laws, and the energy and matter that obey those laws.  He manipulates this physical realm by ordering the energy and matter particles that He brought into existence. 

When God performs miracles, He commands the very atomic and molecular elements to reorder themselves so that the result is compatible with His physical laws even though there were no physical means or abilities to have achieved that result.  For example, water is hydrogen and oxygen.  When Jesus changed water to wine, He had the knowledge and power to reorder every molecule to be reassembled into wine, the resulting substance of which obeys and is compatible with the physical laws of this universe even though there was no physical means to have instantly reordered the molecular structure of the water.  That is a miracle.

Magic is an imitation of the miraculous.  By magic I am not referring to the slight-of-hand misdirection-trickery of illusions by David Copperfield.  I am referring to actions and results that cannot be accomplished by ordinary persons.  Nor am I referring to the use of science and machinery by which one can convert coal to electricity.  I am referring to only the use of will and knowledge.  No human has the knowledge or the power to reorder matter or energy by mere use of their will.

Yet, the Bible speaks of Egyptian magicians having performed acts that mimicked genuine miracles.  Today we hear about impossible things that happen when children play with Ouija boards.  How can such things be if humans do not have the power of will or the knowledge to reorder molecules and energy?

Satan is the prince of the power of the air.  This is a limited authority he has for a limited time to be sure.  Yet, at his disposal are legions of angels (one third that followed him from heaven) called demons.  Scripture is replete with comments about the angels of God and the demons of Satan being able to do what man cannot: reorder matter and energy. 

When a human “magician” (not an illusionist doing slight-of-hand) appears to perform acts of true power, or a Ouija board answers a question on its own, the power is that of a demon taking action.  Humans can do no such thing.  There is no magic, only the operations of demons.

Some will argue that controlling or commanding a demon to get things done is magic.  After all, what are spells and incantations except verbal petitions to demons to make something happen?  Such persons who offer supplications to demons do not understand that men cannot control or command demons.  The demons are controlling and manipulating them.  Satan is the prince of the power of the air, not the other way around.  Demons appear to “obey” the human so as to deceive them and bring them more and more under demonic influence and more and more into the chaotic thinking of evil.  This leads the human to becoming open to being possessed, the slave of the demon, not its master.

No, there is no magic, only demons.  Satan is prince (not king) of the power of the air of this planet.  And Christ is the King over all He created.  Pray to the Creator, the King of Kings, for a new heart, a living spirit, and for the forgiveness of sins, and He will save you, sending His Holy Spirit to live inside you as a guarantee of ultimate salvation and a protection against the powers of this world.  Who needs magic when God offers you a personal miracle like that?