Thursday, July 16, 2009

The Proof is that there is no Proof

bible, prophecy, jesus, god, proof, unfulfilled, ray, comfort,
Ray Comfort has made his silliest argument yet, and it's one many a Christian makes: all the prophecies in the Bible have been fulfilled, and the ones that haven't been fulfilled will be, and that's proof that God exists.

Wait, what?


"In Mark 14:62 in response to the chief priests and the council who have posed the question 'are you the Christ,' Jesus says: 'I am. And YOU will SEE me sitting at the right hand of power, and COMING with the clouds of heaven.' Did those men SEE him coming with the clouds or sitting in power? They almost certainly saw him die, but the Bible never confirms that this prophecy was fulfilled. In fact, when the Bible record ends, his disciples are still awaiting His coming. It never happened. It still hasn't happened 2000 years later. Why Ray? Is Jesus a False Prophet?"

You forgot that the hour is coming when all that are in their graves shall hear His voice (see John 5:28). There is going to be a resurrection of the just and the unjust (see John 5:29). Every eye will see Him. The chief priests will bow the knee before Him. So will Hitler and every murderer, rapist, thief and liar. Richard Dawkins will bow down to Jesus Christ as Lord of the Universe and Creator of all things (see Romans 14:11, Philippians 2:10). By Him, everything was created (see Colossians 1:16) and every human being will see him in His glory, including you. John saw the resurrected Christ and trembled in terror. He shines with a brightness above that of the sun (see Acts 26:13).

So it would be wise to stop asking whether He was a false prophet. Instead confess and forsake your sins, and put your trust in Him while He extends His mercy to sinful men and women. He has waited for 2,000 years because He is not willing that any perish, but that all come to repentance. Everything Jesus said would happen has happened throughout history (see Matthew 24 and Luke 21), and you can therefore bet your very soul that those men to whom Jesus said will see His coming, as sure as Hell will see it.


First of all, that's not an answer to the question, nor is it proof. It is a bald assertion, followed by a threat. Think about this for just a second. If someone borrowed $500 from you and promised to pay it back "soon", and then after a year, you asked them for the money and they said, "oh, yeah, soon, don't worry about it", would you accept that answer? Really?

Secondly, let's look at Matthew 24 and Luke 21. (Oddly, those were the two that Ray did not link.) In Matthew 24, Jesus predicts the destruction of the temple where the Dome of the Rock - مسجد قبة الصخرة‎ - now sits. At this point, the Temple Mount had already been destroyed once, by the Babylonians almost 600 years previously. Predicting that something that happened in the past may happen again in the future isn't that much of a leap.

What follows are the conditions that will precede Jesus' return, and what a unique set of circumstances those will be! Wars, rumors of wars, wars, famine, disease, earthquakes and lawlessness. Seriously? That's a prophecy? I predict that tomorrow, somewhere on the planet, it will rain. Because that's never happened in the history of the world.

Luke 21 contains the exact same text, word for word (or very close to it) as Matthew 24.

So there we have it, folks. Jesus predicted the predictable and the commonplace. And anything he predicted that hasn't come to pass, will. You have someone's word on it.

There are, in fact, a number of unfulfilled prophecies in the Bible, starting with Adam and Eve.
God says that if Adam eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then the day that he does so, he will die. But later Adam eats the forbidden fruit (3:6) and yet lives for another 930 years (5:5). 2:17
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 promises Abram and his descendants all of the land of Canaan. But both history and the bible (Acts 7:5 and Heb.11:13) show that God's promise to Abram was not fulfilled. 13:15, 15:18, 17:8, 28:13-14

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

These verses [in Isaiah] falsely predict that Babylon will never again be inhabited. 13:19-20

This verse [in Isaiah] 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
"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

"David shall never want a man to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel." But the Davidic line of Kings ended with Zedekiah; there were none during the Babylonian captivity, and there are none today. 33:17
"They shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them." Despite this promise, the Jews have been continually uprooted and their lives disrupted. Even today, their land ownership falls into question. 9:15

The gospel of Mark claims that John the Baptist fulfilled the prophecy given in Malachi. But the Malachi prophecy says that God will send Elijah before "the great and dreadful day of the LORD" in which the world will be consumed by fire. Yet John the Baptist flatly denied that he was Elijah (Elias) in John 1:21 and the earth was not destroyed after John's appearance. 3:1, 4:1, 5

That's just a short listing of all the unfulfilled prophecies and promises of God. Christian apologists who are Biblical literalists will tell you that some of those prophecies were fulfilled, because while the Bible says x, it really meant y. I guess it all depends on what the meaning of "literal" is.

9 comments:

  1. Yeah sure, your arguments *sound* good, but that's only when you don't take the claims of fulfilled prophesies and inerrant scripture at face value... ;^)

    Seriously, it is amazing how much people take those things at face value without ever seriously thinking through them a little bit. Of course apologists have had nearly 2,000 years to come up with answers to all the heretical naysayers.

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  2. My favorites are Matthew 16:28 and 24:34, passages where Jesus very explicitly states that he's coming back in the lifetime of people that he's speaking to.

    Strangely enough, every single time I have ever asked "so, which disciple is still alive?" I have never received an answer - apologists universally change the subject.

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  3. So similar to:

    "The Bible is the inerrant word of God!"
    "How do you know this?"
    "The Bible says so! What else do you need?"

    [headdesk]

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  4. Thanks. Now I'm going to have to get around to writing that long, long overdue post on Biblical prophecy.

    In case you're wondering, anything can be a prophecy if you assert that things were prophetic long after they were written...

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  5. anybody want to help me name my prophetic book? i'm also taking applications for apostles.

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  6. i'm also taking applications for apostles.

    Ohh! OOOOH! D'ya have dental?

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  7. PF said: "i'm also taking applications for apostles."

    I actually wrote out a handful of passages attributed to "The Gospel of St. John the Blasphemer" for a story I was writing years ago. However, that was more a reference to a friend of mine. So...

    Can I be St. Tybalt the Unbeliever?

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  8. Well, duh, of course we have dental. I can't have toothless apostles, it just doesn't look right.

    MM has now locked up "the Unbeliever", but "the Unfaithful", "the Irreverant" and "the Dyspeptic" are still available.

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  9. i believe that *I* am the Irreverant. since i have been your Grand High Priestess and General of All Your Armies for a good bit, now... and, btw, that requisition for more glitter is *still* waiting for you to sign off on it...

    but i'm on strike until i get this month's cookies.

    :D

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