Top Reasons to Believe in The God of The Bible: Fulfilled Prophecy
Is there any good, concrete evidence that God inspired the Bible? I am convinced, that Christians like myself need to know why we believe the Bible is God’s word. We should have far better answers than “I believe the Bible is God’s word because the Bible says it is God’s word”. One good evidence we have that God inspired the Bible, is that there are pretty specific prophetic passages that predict certain things will happen and then history confirms that these events happened. My argument is that these predictions and their fulfillment show that the writers of the scripture had to be receiving some sort of insight from beyond the natural realm because it is extremely unlikely that humans using natural means could accurately predict the kind of precise events that the Bible does.
Throughout this series, I have been giving a short overview of the books of the Bible in each genre we have been going through. I think in covering this genre, I am going to cover the major themes found in the prophetic books. The prophetic books all have similar major themes and there are 17 prophetic books in the Hebrew scriptures, so I think it is probably best to cover a few major themes of the prophetic books and spend the majority of my time covering some of the fulfilled prophecies in the Bible.
The first major theme is calling Israel back to faithfulness to God. When we tend to think of the prophetic, we tend to think of the ability to foretell the future. However, the main purpose behind God sending the prophets was not to foretell the future. The main purpose was to call back Israel to faithfulness to the covenant. Throughout the prophets, God likens his relationship with Israel to a marriage. God likens Israel’s worship of the Canaanite deities, to a cheating spouse. The prophet’s main task was to call Israel back to being faithful to the covenant they made with God at Sinai.
The second major theme is to deliver hope during dark times. Unfaithfulness to the covenant brought dark times as a consequence. However, amid those dark times, there were promises of better days ahead. There were promises of a coming descendant of David that would rule the land justly and in righteousness. This descendant of David would bring peace and prosperity to the world. This descendant of David would bring the knowledge of the God of Israel to the world and this descendant of David would bring people to a right relationship with God by offering himself as a sin offering. The prophetic literature is probably one of my favorites, because of the tension of this idea that dark times are coming and yet even despite those dark times, brighter days are also ahead. To me, it is just incredibly hope giving that there are much brighter days ahead even if the entire world is falling apart.
Now, on to looking at some of these predictions. The first passage we are going to look at is not in the prophetic literature. It is found in Deuteronomy. I am choosing this passage for a very specific reason. Many times, how the skeptic gets around the argument of fulfilled prophecy in the Bible is to posit that the passage was written after the historical events to make it appear like an accurate prophecy was given. I am choosing Deuteronomy 30:4–5 because I have done a video detailing how Deuteronomy was probably written during the late Bronze Age and because the fulfillment of Deuteronomy 30:4–5 can be seen during the modern era, thousands of years after Deuteronomy was written. So, the charge that Deuteronomy 30:4–5 was written after said events, won’t work in that instance. In my next article, I plan on addressing a couple of the hotly contested prophetic books that are often believed to have been written after the prophesied events occurred.
Deuteronomy 30:4–5 “ 4 Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the LORD your God will gather you and bring you back. 5 He will bring you to the land that belonged to your ancestors, and you will take possession of it. He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your ancestors.”-NIV
This passage is in reference to the nation of Israel. Historically, this has happened twice to Israel. It happened around 538 BC when King Cyrus issued a decree to allow the Jewish exiles from the Babylonian captivity to return to Israel and rebuild what the Babylonians destroyed. The other time it happened was in 1948 when Israel was reborn after thousands of the Jewish people were largely in a state of diaspora throughout the world.I know that currently, the subject of Israel is rife with political controversy. It is beyond the scope of this article to get into the politics of the modern state of Israel. The point I do want to drive home is that the fact that in Deuteronomy we see a promise given to the nation of Israel that even if driven into a state of worldwide diaspora, there would come a point where they would have a nation-state again in their homeland. After almost 2,000 years of being in worldwide diaspora, in 1948 the Jewish people once again had a nation-state again. The fact that a people group living in diaspora for 2,000 years, end up having a nation-state in their historic homeland is unprecedented. Even more impressive is that a text that is probably about 3,200 years old predicted such a thing would occur. To me, this demonstrates that the Bible is indeed God-inspired.
Our next prophecy is from the prophetic literature. We are going to be looking at Malachi 1:11.
Malachi 1:11 For from the rising of the sun, even to its going down, My name shall be great among the Gentiles; In every place incense shall be offered to My name, And a pure offering; For My name shall be great among the nations,’Says the LORD of hosts.” NKJV
This prophecy was given about 430 B.C and predicts that worship of Yahweh could be found throughout the world. In 430 B.C. Worship of Yahweh was found pretty much exclusively among the Jewish people. The predominant religions of that time were polytheistic religions and not the monotheistic worship of Yahweh. Fast forward to the present day and indeed the worship of Yahweh can be found throughout the world, embraced by people of many different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The same can not be said for other Canaanite religions. No one today is involved in Baal or Dagon worship (not even those who identify as wiccan or pagan). The fact that Yahweh’s prophets predicted worship of Yahweh would end up going global and then throughout history we see this happening (most notably with the advent of Christianity in the first century), shows yet again that the God of Israel is the one true God.
Next, we will look at Ezekiel 26 which was probably written around 571 B.C. Ezekiel is about God’s judgment on the ancient Phoenician city of Tyre. It is beyond the scope of this to look at this entire prophecy at this point. I plan on going into depth with this chapter when I do my in-depth look at Ezekiel. For now, though, I want to focus on one particular aspect of the prophecy.
Ezekiel 26:12 “They will plunder your wealth and loot your merchandise; they will break down your walls and demolish your fine houses and throw your stones, timber and rubble into the sea.”
Amazingly, in 332 B.C. this happened during the siege of Tyre during Alexander the Great’s conquest. Here is a quote from a World History encyclopedia article on Alexander the Great’s siege of Tyre.
“Negotiations having failed, Alexander began his operations in January 332 BCE. After occupying old Tyre, he began to construct a causeway (or mole) across the channel toward the walls of Tyre, using rocks, timbers, and rubble taken from the buildings of the old city.”
So, I believe that the Christian does have good evidence for the existence of God and the inspiration of scripture. The fact that the Bible makes pretty specific predictions and they end up coming to pass in history certainly supports the idea that writers of scripture were getting their information from beyond the natural realm. Next, I will be looking at some issues in dating some of the other prophetic texts.
