ANSWERS: 1
  • 1) I don't think that any agreement could be found about that one. Some Bible followers will find fulfilled prophecies everywhere, and also in the Bible itself, many figures seem just to act to fulfill former prophecies... On the other hand, critical readers are prompt to discover a huge amount of unfulfilled prophecies, and also some that will probably never be fulfilled. 2) "Bible prophecy, or "biblical prophecy" refers to passages in the Bible which predict future events and which are believed to be divinely inspired relevation. Such passages are widely distributed throughout the Bible, but those most often cited are from Ezekiel, Daniel, and Revelation. Believers in biblical prophecy engage in exegesis and hermeneutics of scriptures which they believe contain descriptions of global politics, natural disasters, the future of the nation of Israel, the coming of a Messiah and a Messianic Kingdom, and the ultimate destiny of humankind. Some prophecies in the Bible are conditional, with either the conditions implicitly assumed or explicitly stated. Some prophetic passages are depicted as direct statements from God while other statements are expressed as the privileged perspective of the biblical author considered to be a prophet[citation needed]. The Biblical prophets are usually considered to have received revelations from God, subsequently recording them in the relevant writings" Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_prophecy 3) "Prophecy fulfillment is a popular argument that bibliolaters rely on in trying to prove the divine inspiration of the Bible. They claim that the Bible is filled with recorded events that prophets foretold years and even centuries before they happened. They argue that there is no way to explain how these predictions could have been so accurately made except to conclude that the Holy Spirit enabled the prophets who uttered them to see into the future. In prophecy fulfillment, then, they see evidence of God's direct involvement in the writing of the Bible. A very simple flaw in the prophecy-fulfillment argument is that foreseeing the future doesn't necessarily prove divine guidance. Psychics have existed in every generation, and some of them have demonstrated amazing abilities to predict future events. Their "powers," although mystifying to those who witness them, are not usually considered divine in origin. If, then, Old Testament prophets did on occasions foresee the future (a questionable premise at best), perhaps they were merely the Nostradamuses and Edgar Cayces of their day. Why would it necessarily follow that they were divinely inspired? Even the Bible recognizes the possibility that uninspired prophets can sometimes accurately predict the future: "If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, `Let us go after other gods'--which you have not known--`and let us serve them,' you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for Yahweh your God is testing you to know whether you love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul" (Deut. 13:1-3, NKJV with Yahweh substituted for "the LORD"). By the Bible's own testimony, then, natural psychic ability could offer a perfectly sensible explanation for any example of prophecy that bibliolaters might cite in support of the inerrancy doctrine, but an unbiased contextual examination of the alleged prophecy will very likely uncover an even more rational explanation. Usually, Bible "prophecies" turn out to be prophecies only because imaginative Bible writers arbitrarily declared them to be prophecies. The same can be said of their alleged fulfillments: the fulfillments are fulfillments only because obviously biased New Testament writers arbitrarily declared them to be fulfillments." Source and further information: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/farrell_till/prophecy.html Further information: - "Seven Unfulfilled Prophecies": http://www.ucg.org/sermons/transcripts/200611prophecies.htm - "Our responses to "contradictions" and "unfulfilled prophecies"": http://www.aboutbibleprophecy.com/questions.htm

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