There are many prophecies in the Bible. Most of the time when you hear about them, it is in connection with some future event. But the prophecies that have the most impact on our lives are the ones that have already been fulfilled. These are the events attacked vigorously by critics of the Bible because if they actually came to pass as predicted, other things the Bible says would receive credibility.
Critics point out, and rightly so, that prophecies can be forged in one of three ways. First, the prophecy is made after the event took place and then claimed to be before it. Second, it is one of many ambiguous predictions that sounds similar to what actually happened, or third, observers lied about what they saw to match the prophecy. All of these explanations have been used to debunk successful predictions in the Bible.
For example, the prophecies concerning the Seleucid Dynastic Wars (157-63 B.C.) in Chapter 11 of the Book of Daniel are so historically accurate that critics must claim the chapter was written five hundred years later than Jewish scholars have determined (i.e., 30 B.C. instead of 530 B.C.). Likewise, they claim statements about the long awaited Messiah could eventually be satisfied by anybody if you simply wait for enough generations. And third, they say the gospel writers could create fantasies about Jesus because they wrote decades after most of the witnesses were either dead or unaware of their publications. These seem like plausible, unremarkable explanations for fulfilled Bible prophecies until a closer examination is done.
Thanks to archaeologists working in the ruins of Babylon, we now know that cultural descriptions of that place and time in the Book of Daniel are accurate. That begs the question, how could someone writing in Israel around 30 B.C. know anything about life in Babylon five centuries earlier and 1600 miles away? It is much more likely the account was written by Daniel during the Babylonian captivity of the Jews. That means God revealed the events of the Seleucid Wars to him. A fact ignored by critics of Bible prophecy is that the Dead Sea Scrolls, which includes 38 of the 39 Old Testament books are dated at 100 B.C., a century before Jesus did anything recorded in the New Testament. So Old Testament prophecies weren’t written after Jesus did them and then claimed to be written before Jesus. The Dead Sea Scrolls actually were written before Jesus was born.
What about prophecies concerning the Messiah? Genesis 49:10 says he will belong to the tribe of Judah. 2 Samuel 7:16 says he will be a descendant of King David. Micah 5:2 says he will be born in Bethlehem. How likely are these things? There were twelve tribes, so the odds of randomly being a descendant of Judah are 1 in 12. The Jews had over forty kings in their history, so being in David’s line is approximately 1 in 40. At that time, Bethlehem, which is five miles from Jerusalem, had an estimated population of about 300 compared to 600,000 in Jerusalem or 1 in 2000. Since Mary and Joseph were visitors in Bethlehem at the time of Jesus’s birth, let’s say 500 people were there, so 1 in 1200. Since these three events must occur in one person, we multiply them together to get an overall likelihood of 1 in 576,000 that a person meeting these conditions could be randomly born. The point is, Messianic prophecies are specific, not ambiguous, and are unlikely to occur, even after many generations of Jews.
What about witnesses lying about things Messiah was predicted to do? For example, Zechariah 9:9 says he will declare himself to Jerusalem riding on a young donkey. For a king to use the lowest form of transportation, other than walking, would have been unthinkable. Yet that is what the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John record Jesus doing. These gospels were all written decades later when none of these men were together. Did they conspire years in advance to fabricate what Jesus did? There are other old testament prophecies about Jesus whose fulfillments are recorded by more than one of the gospel writers. Examples are his virgin birth (Isaiah 7:14), a messenger sent before him (Malachi 3:1), rulers conspiring against him (Psalm 2:2), healing the deaf, dumb, blind and lame (Isaiah 35:2-6), and his burial as a rich man (Isaiah 53:9). The same reasoning applies to them. The gospel writers would have needed to make a list of what they would write years later if they were falsifying their accounts.
Of course, one of the greatest Bible prophecies is that Jesus would rise from the dead. It is one he made himself (John 2:19) and its fulfillment is the cornerstone of the Christian faith. It is significant that a Greek inscription of a edict by Roman Emperor Claudius, who ruled from 41 to 54 A.D., was found in 1930 by a French archaeologist. It is specifically directed to Palestine and states that the penalty for removing a body from a tomb is death. Why would Claudius make this ruling unless the story of Jesus rising from the dead was widespread in that land and he thought the body of Jesus had been stolen?
Prophecy is a tool for validating what the Bible says. And many witnesses in the days of Jesus recognized this and wrote down their testimony for future generations (Luke 1:1-4). Unfortunately few of their accounts have survived until this day, leaving us with needing faith to trust his message. We can, however, take comfort in the fact that no testimony contrary to the Bible accounts has been found and fulfilled prophesy still remains a convincing argument for the credibility of the Bible.
