Testimony of Prophecy

[JTTNMinistries]

Originally Posted by Timmy

"God alone has the ability to foresee the future."

If that's true, it's only in a very strict sense: God alone can reliably foresee the future. He always can, and He is always right. People, on the other hand, can do it too, but in a more limited way: 1. They can guess right. 2. They can make "educated" guesses. (Some did this in prophesying that McCain would win the election, I suspect. Didn't work, but it was worth a try! ) 3. They can predict something, then force the outcome. 4. Written predictions may be faked, after the fact, made to look like predictions. 5. With lots of predictions, some will be true randomly (or with help from 2-4 above), and only those may be selected and preserved, and the others discarded and forgotten. (A time-honored technique with stage performers and hot-line psychics.)

"The fulfillment of these literal prophecies is proof that the Word of God is divinely inspired."

No it isn't. See above.

BTW, I'm not saying any of the items listed above are the case, in the Bible. Just saying that the claim of proof is not correct.

Also, even if the prophecies were genuine (came from God), it only "proves" (in the sense the writer is claiming) that the particular books he deals with are inspired. (I haven't combed over the site, but it doesn't look like he cites all 66 books!)

If you really wanted to be a stickler you could probably spin it as far as claiming that only those sentences are inspired and that the prophets could have been wrong on other parts of their books.

The big problem would be that it makes your greater than the prophets and everyone else because you get to pick and choose which parts you believe are inspired or not.

Fulfilled prophecy is probably one of the great proofs of the Bible though.