How do fulfilled prophecies prove the reliability of Scripture?

Question 60079.

Fulfilled prophecy is the one line of evidence that Scripture itself puts forward as a test, which makes it different from every other argument in the apologist’s bag.

God does not say prove me by philosophy or by archaeology. He says look at what I said would happen and see whether it happened. That is a falsifiable claim, offered voluntarily, and I think we should take Him up on it while being careful about how we use it.

The test God proposes

Isaiah 41 is where the challenge is issued. God summons the idols to court and asks them to tell what is to come hereafter, that we may know that you are gods.

The argument is that only the one who governs the future can announce it. declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, says the Lord in Isaiah 46.

Deuteronomy 18 makes the same point in reverse and applies it to prophets. If the word does not come to pass, the Lord has not spoken it. That is a demanding standard and Scripture sets it for itself.

So the appeal to fulfilled prophecy is not an argument Christians invented. It is the Bible’s own proposal.

Why specificity matters

A prediction is only impressive if it could have failed. Vague pronouncements about troubled times ahead cost nothing and prove nothing.

What makes biblical prophecy different is the detail. Not a great king will fall, but Cyrus by name, generations before his birth, described as the one who would say of Jerusalem she shall be built.

Not a city will suffer, but Tyre stripped to bare rock with its stones and timber cast into the sea, which is a strange thing to specify and a stranger thing to have happened when Alexander built his causeway out of the ruins of the mainland city.

Specificity is what turns fulfilled prophecy from a horoscope into evidence.

The messianic prophecies

The strongest case concerns Jesus, and it is the cumulative weight rather than any single text that impresses.

Born in Bethlehem, from the tribe of Judah, of David’s line. Preceded by a messenger. Entering Jerusalem on a donkey’s colt. Betrayed for thirty pieces of silver, the money thrown to the potter. Hands and feet pierced, lots cast for His clothing, not a bone broken, buried with a rich man.

Isaiah 53 is the passage I would put in front of anyone. Written centuries before, it describes a servant wounded for our transgressions, upon whom the Lord laid the iniquity of us all, and they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death.

Read it cold, without the heading, and it is difficult to mistake who is being described.

Answering the obvious objections

The sceptic has three standard replies and each deserves a straight answer.

The prophecies were written after the events. For the messianic texts this will not work. The Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek was made in the third and second centuries before Jesus, and the Dead Sea Scrolls include a complete Isaiah scroll dated to roughly a century before His birth.

Jesus arranged the fulfilments deliberately. He could arrange to ride a donkey. He could not arrange His birthplace, His ancestry, the manner of His execution, the casting of lots by Roman soldiers, or the decision of a wealthy man to donate a tomb.

The Gospel writers invented details to fit. Possible in principle, but they were writing within living memory in a hostile environment, and the argument requires them to have invented material that also embarrasses them.

Where I would be careful with fulfilled prophecy

Now the caution, because the argument is often overplayed and that does real damage.

Not every verse marked as a prophecy in a chain reference is a prediction. Some are typological, where an event in Israel’s history prefigures something greater. Matthew’s use of out of Egypt I called my son is drawn from Hosea, where the original refers to the exodus. Matthew knows that. He is drawing a pattern, not claiming Hosea made a prediction.

The often quoted statistics about the mathematical odds of one man fulfilling a set number of prophecies should be handled gently. The calculations assign probabilities that are essentially guesses, and a sceptic who spots that will discount everything else you say.

The strength of the argument from fulfilled prophecy lies in its cumulative and qualitative force, not in a number with a great many zeroes after it.

Prophecy concerning Israel

A second body of material concerns the nation, and it runs from the Torah onward with striking consistency.

Scattering among the nations, hatred and persecution, preservation as an identifiable people despite having no homeland, and a regathering to the land. Ezekiel 36 and 37 describe the return in detail, and Ezekiel 37 pictures a body assembled before breath enters it.

The survival of the Jewish people at all is a historical oddity. Every other ancient near eastern nation was absorbed. The Hittites, the Moabites, the Edomites, the Philistines are gone, and the people whose Scriptures predicted both their scattering and their preservation are still here.

I hold that these promises will be fulfilled literally to ethnic Israel, and I refuse to set dates on the remaining ones. See also the prophetic significance of 1948.

What fulfilled prophecy actually proves

Be precise about the conclusion, because overclaiming is how apologists lose arguments they were winning.

Fulfilled prophecy establishes that these documents contain knowledge that no human process could have produced. That points to a source outside human history who knows the end from the beginning.

It does not by itself prove every doctrine, and it does not make anyone a believer. Jesus said that if they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead, and He turned out to be right about that in the most direct way possible.

Evidence removes excuses. It does not change hearts, and confusing those two will leave you frustrated and your friend unconverted.

The prophecies not yet fulfilled

There is a further point that sceptics rarely consider. A great deal of biblical prophecy is still outstanding, and the pattern of the fulfilled portion is what gives me confidence about the rest.

The first coming was fulfilled literally, in detail, in ordinary history. Bethlehem was a real town and thirty pieces of silver was a real sum. That is the strongest argument I know for expecting the second coming to be equally literal.

Which is why I read the remaining prophecies the same way I read the fulfilled ones, and why I will not spiritualise a returning King, a literal reign from Jerusalem, or the promises made to Israel. Consistency is the whole point.

Prophecy against the nations

Beyond the messianic material there is a body of prophecy concerning the nations, and it is worth knowing because it is often overlooked.

Nineveh was to be made a desolation, dry as a desert, and the city was so thoroughly lost that its site was disputed until excavations in the nineteenth century. Babylon was to be uninhabited, never again to be a dwelling place, and although Saddam Hussein rebuilt portions of it, nobody lives there.

Egypt was told it would be a lowly kingdom, never again exalting itself above the nations, and that is precisely what happened to a civilisation that had dominated the ancient world for two thousand years.

Daniel 2 and 7 sketch a succession of empires that maps onto Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome with enough precision that sceptical scholarship has been obliged to argue for a late date for the book, which is itself a compliment to the accuracy of the text.

Prophecy and the humility it should produce

A final word of caution to those of us who love this subject. Fulfilled prophecy is a strong argument and it has a poor cousin, which is prophecy speculation.

The same Christians who rightly point to Isaiah 53 sometimes go on to identify the antichrist in the newspaper, calculate dates from Daniel, and announce the year of the Lord’s return. Jesus said plainly that no one knows the day or the hour.

Every failed prediction damages the credibility of the fulfilled ones in the mind of the watching public, and we have made a great many. Restraint here is not weak faith, it is obedience.

Hold the record of fulfilled prophecy confidently and hold the unfulfilled ones humbly, and let the difference between those two postures be visible.

So, now what?

If you want to test this for yourself, do not start with a list of proof texts someone handed you. Read Isaiah 53 in full, then read Mark 15, and let the two sit beside each other without commentary.

If you are using this in conversation, use it carefully. Lead with the strongest material, be honest about typology, and do not reach for the odds calculations. A friend who catches you overstating one thing will disbelieve you about everything.

And if fulfilled prophecy has convinced you that these documents come from outside our history, then the next question is unavoidable. If the book is telling the truth about all this, what will you do about what it says concerning you? See also what Scripture says about prophecy fulfilment.

Remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning.

Isaiah 46:9 to 10, ESV