Thank you, oh, thank you, Beamstalk for this reference regarding biblical prophecies. I got a troll who seemed to think I would be overly impressed with name calling and biblical prophecies. The troll claimed that biblical prophecies are 100% accurate. That's quite a claim, there. And not quite true, either.
Let's review just a few of the biblical prophecies that did not come true (from the Skeptic's Annotated Bible):
As a punishment for killing Abel, God says Cain will be "a fugitive and a vagabond." Yet in just a few verses (4:16-17) Cain will settle down, marry, have a son, and build a city. This is not the activity one would expect from a fugitive and a vagabond. 4:12
God says that the Israelites will destroy all of the peoples they encounter. But according to Joshua ( 15:63, 16:10, 17:12-13) and Judges (1:21, 27-36, 3:1-5) there were some people they just couldn't kill. 7:24
God promises to give Joshua all of the land that his "foot shall tread upon." He says that none of the people he encounters will be able to resist him. But later we find that God didn't keep his promise, and that many tribes withstood Joshua's attempt to steal their land. 1:3-5
God says that Solomon's kingdom will last forever. It didn't of course. It was entirely destroyed about 400 years after Solomon's death, never to be rebuilt. 7:13, 16
In Jeremiah (34:4) God tells Zedekiah that he will die in peace and be buried with his fathers. But this verse and Jer.52:10-11 say that he died a violent death in a foreign land. 25:7
These verses falsely predict that Babylon will never again be inhabited. 13:19-20 (Babylon is now in Iraq. In case you haven't noticed, there are an awful lot of people living in Iraq right now. In fact, we're involved in a war with them.)
This verse prophesies that Damascus will be completely destroyed and no longer be inhabited. Yet Damascus has never been completely destroyed and is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities. 17:1
This verse predicts that there shall be five cities in Egypt that speak the Canaanite language. But that language was never spoken in Egypt, and it is extinct now. 19:18
These verses predict that there will be an alliance between Egypt, Israel, and Assyria. But there has never been any such alliance, and it's unlikely that it ever will since Assyria no longer exists. 19:23-24
We'll end with an elementary science fail:
"The light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold." Well, this is one prophecy that will never come true. Since the moon has no light of its own, but only reflects that of the sun, it could never shine like the sun. And the sun will not, at least not while there are humans to see it, shine 7 times as bright as it does now. 30:26
See, 10 prophecies, and not a one of them came true. If you're basing your faith on the perfect accuracy of biblical prophecy, then I'm sorry, but there it is.
To be fair, those guys in Judges has iron chariots and God is completely powerless to iron chariots.
ReplyDeleteJudges 1:19 KJV
"And the LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron."
They're so specific about the iron, too. Like god would have been able to handle chariots of steel or gold or wood, but not iron.
ReplyDeleteIron: yhwh's kryptonite.
Perhaps YHWH is just one of the Fair Folk =P
ReplyDeleteSo I should be wearing a cross around me neck- and iron one! good to know, good to know.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, doesn't the bullshit with Abraham and Isaac sound exactly like something the Fae might have pulled in legends?
ReplyDeleteGood job collecting the failed prophesies. I found a book a while ago, Who wrote the Bible, that used language analysis to determine the who and when of the "prophesies."
ReplyDeleteI wrote a blog post about it:
Biblical Prophecy: Hindsight is 20/20
EC beat me to it...
ReplyDeletei never caught that before, either. its a VERY interesting thought, God = Sidhe? hrrmm...
Well, the Sidhe were said to be just as random in their behavior as yhwh was.
ReplyDeleteLorena- hi! Read your post, and I have to say this: it confuses me to no end that people who claim to be reading the bible as a literal reporting of fact then use complex, interpretive workarounds to claim that the bible prophecies were all fulfilled. Makes no sense.
well, the Sidhe ARE supposed to be the children of Gods (they are the Tuantha de Daanan, the children of the Goddess Daana/Dana/Danue)... so, maybe YHVH was originially Danua's husband, and left for Babylon because he was tired of HER being in charge instead of him?
ReplyDeletethis is actually making a weird kind of sense - you know the bits about who the children of Adam and Eve were going to marry? and the "chariots of fire" stuff?
it MAKES SENSE if you follow it around - the children of Adam and Eve marry the Tuatha de Daanan, the children of Goddess and God, or the children of Danue and YHVH!
oh, gods, i hope i didn't just stretch that to the snapping point...
(i *TOLD* you my religion incorporated every other religion, but i didn't realize it could be taken so LITERALLY.
lol. i'm going to have to write a story about this)