Are There Real Prophecies?

The incredible phenomenon of prophecy has already convinced many doubters and skeptics, bringing them to faith in Jesus Christ. The author of this article is one of them.

Second Peter contains a unique term. Chapter 2, verse 3 says that people are seduced with “false” words. The original word is plastos, and this is the only place it appears in the New Testament. It is reminiscent of “plastic,” sharing the same linguistic roots.

Today, there are artificial objects, plants, flowers, or foods that seem deceptively realistic. Plastic fruit shines attractively from shop windows. It looks good enough to eat, but there’s no nutritional value, and even greater disappointment. This is the kind of spiritual food that the world, with its sects, philosophies, and ideologies, has to offer. It leaves hungry souls empty, offering an indigestible substitute for living food. And sometimes, it’s fatal.

The contrast with the true Word of God—called “prophetic” in the same epistle (2 Pet 1:19)—is even more impressive. Prophetic: in other words, living, active and self-fulfilling, whether in judgment or in grace.
And it’s precisely this wonderful phenomenon of prophecy that has convinced many doubters and skeptics, bringing them to living faith in Jesus.

Examples of Prophetic Fulfillment
A Christian witnessed to a Jew about the resurrected Messiah. They looked at the Bible together. The book of the prophet Daniel recorded how the Messiah would come and be killed, after which the sanctuary would be destroyed (Dan 9:26). This sanctuary—the temple—has been in ruins for almost two millennia now, so the Messiah should have appeared prior to that. But the Jewish people are still awaiting the coming of the Anointed One. Something doesn’t add up.

It gradually dawned on this son of Abraham that only one person appeared as Messiah before the destruction of the temple. This person was also rejected, as we see in this prophecy (among others): Jesus of Nazareth. When the Christian then showed him Zechariah’s prophecy, which says that the Jews will look upon the living God whom they have pierced (Zech 12:10), he recognized his true and living Savior. He gave his life to this living Jesus Christ, confessing like Thomas, “My Lord and my God!”

There are numerous cases of seekers who found faith through the prophetic Word, not least the author of these words. His atheism was undone by the prophecies about the people of Israel.

Psalm 83, for example, shows how relevant and alive biblical prophecy is: “For behold, your enemies make an uproar; those who hate you have raised their heads. They lay crafty plans against your people; they consult together against your treasured ones. They say, ‘Come, let us wipe them out as a nation; let the name of Israel be remembered no more!’” (vv. 2-4). Although around 3,000 years old, this passage reads like it could have come from present-day Hezbollah, Hamas, or Iran. You might think that Iran’s president was meditating on Psalm 83 during his “quiet time.”

The Bible is unique in its abundance of prophecy. No religious book in the world has detailed prophecy, be it the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Edda, or any other volume. The Bible is the only book in humanity’s historical record in which history isn’t written retrospectively, but in advance. This is absolutely unique.

For example, compare Deuteronomy 28 with the development of the people of Israel. If you’re being intellectually honest, you have to recognize that it was written by an omniscient God, or at least someone who knows the future. The two great catastrophes in the history of this people are foretold here in the most extensive prophetic section of the Bible. Verse 36 predicts the first exodus, and verse 64 the second worldwide diaspora. It’s also worth noting how verse 36 mentions a king in the context of the first diaspora. And in fact, when Israel was taken into exile among a foreign people in Babylon, it’s expressly stated that the nation still had a king: Zedekiah, Jerusalem’s last king.

But in verse 64, a king is no longer mentioned in reference to the second (worldwide) diaspora. And this was the case in 70 AD, when Israel was scattered among the nations after Jerusalem’s destruction. The Jews no longer had a king. Jesus of Nazareth, the true King of the Jews, had been rejected by the previous generation.

God competes with the claims of a multi-religious pagan world with this argument: “Tell us what is to come hereafter, that we may know that you are gods” (Isa 41:23). You can see that God is the true God by the fact that He reveals what is to come.

Since Einstein, we’ve known that time and space aren’t independent variables, but are closely interwoven. A spatially omnipresent Creator (which is the definition of God) must therefore be temporally omnipresent as well. And this is exactly what God, the author of the Bible, provides proof of. He can predict events that are still awaiting fulfillment thousands of years later. Their temporal distance poses no problem for God; a thousand years are like a day, and a day like a thousand years to Him (2 Pet 3:8).

Examples of Prophetic Details
For example, David describes the Crucifixion with astonishing detail (Ps 22). He speaks of hands and feet being pierced (v. 16), and at a time when the practice didn’t yet exist. In that era, the Jews’ method of execution was stoning. The fact that Jesus’ feet were pierced appears in black and white—not in the New Testament, but in the Old.

There’s another incident that’s worth mentioning here, and it’s astonishingly relevant—especially today. A strange event is described in Revelation chapter 11. It describes the killing of the two witnesses of God by the beast from the bottomless pit (v. 7). Afterwards, their bodies lie in the streets of the city of Jerusalem for 3 ½ days, while the whole world congratulates itself on the end of these two prophets. And then they return to life.

One Bible commentator who lived at the end of the 18th century, wondered how it would be possible for an event to be noticed by the entire world, despite taking place in such a short time.

When America was discovered, it took nearly half a year for people on the European continent to learn about it. When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, it took 10 days for Europe to find out. In the meantime, the US already had put a new president in office.

The book of Revelation literally says that the whole world sees this event: “For three and a half days some from the peoples and tribes and languages and nations will gaze at their dead bodies…” (v. 9).

When these four terms (peoples, tribes, languages, and nations) are used in Revelation, they’re not referring to a limited group but to the entire inhabited earth. Our aforementioned commentator therefore concluded that this brief event could nevertheless reach the eyes of the world through a maturation of the technology of telegraphy (at the end of the 19th century, no other possible means of transmission existed).

This is no longer a question in our world. When something sensational happens anywhere on the planet, you can usually see it on the news that same day, even that same hour. But Revelation was written almost two millennia ago, when technology to enable rapid global communication was utterly unimaginable. How is such precision possible? Only the living God could know such a thing!

I could give example after example of how only someone with a full bird’s eye view of events, someone beyond concepts of past, present, and future—i.e., God—could reveal such details. Therefore, He is also the true author of the Bible.

Proof of God?
Seen both scientifically and physically, this is clear evidence of a transcendent intelligence. Prophecy cannot be physically explained by any inherent connections. Scientifically speaking, it’s simply inconceivable that an existing paradigm (the present) could already be connected to a framework that doesn’t yet exist (the future). Herein lies the incontrovertible end of all clever interpretations, which attempt to define events only according to the laws of the visible world.

If detailed prophecy exists, then it is the proof that the true God has spoken. He lives, He has overcome death, and He is not an invention of man. And this true God will return, as the prophets of old foretold. Let’s get ready!

Midnight Call - 10/2024