In enumerating the reasons to trust the Bible none can be more compelling than Biblical prophecy. To really appreciate the importance of Biblical prophecy, think of how difficult it is tell the future with any detail or accuracy. Cheri asked me last night, “what do you think’s going to happen with “Obama Care?” No matter how tightly I furrowed my brow or stared through the windshield of the car I was driving, the future details of the faltering national health care initiative wouldn’t come to me. Las Vegas & Foxwoods owes its consistent success to our inability to predict outcomes with certainty.
As humans we keep trying and are almost always failing to predict next things. Future telling is a really tough assignment. A few days before Princess Diana was killed, a psychic predicted that she would marry Dodi Al Fayed. Of course that didn’t happen.
Nostradamus was a famous “prophet” in the 16th century who would stare into a bowl of steaming water as it’s vapors descended and give forecast of the future. Here’s one of his predictions. ” In the year that is to come soon and far from Venus, The two greatest ones of Asia and Africa shall be said to come from the Rhine and Ister, Crying and tears shall be at Malta and on the Italian shores.”
Hey, I’m sure you all knew, that was a prophecy about Adolph Hitler since it had the words “Rhine,” (Rhine River in Germany) “Ister” (Hitler) and “tears.” Nostradamus had a lot of obscure “quatrains” (A stanza of 4 lines with alternate rhymes) like this. Hey, getting paid to stare into steam doesn’t sound too stressful. Where do you sign up for that gig? Nostradamus predictions were usually pretty confusing and often wrong. Within the writings of Moses God shows that He takes this matter of prophetic accuracy very seriously. Here’s the Words of God to Moses in Deuteronomy 18:11: “If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him.”
While I could list hundreds of Biblical prophecies that came true in great detail, let me just share one at this time. How would you like to be asked to predict who the president of the United States will be 150 years from now? And describe what will be one of his most important domestic and foreign policy decisions? Well that’s what the Bible did in the case of Cyrus, king of Persia. When the prophet Isaiah was writing around 700 B.C. Babylon was just coming into being. Isaiah predicted that this nation would surround Jerusalem and take the Jews captive. That prophesy was fulfilled about a hundred years later.
Not only did Isaiah predict that Babylon would conquer Jerusalem, but he went on to to say that the Persians would conquer Babylon. Persia was also barely in existence when he wrote that Persia would become a world power and conquer Babylon. Then he said that the Persian Empire would let the Jews return to Jerusalem after they conquered Babylon. He goes on to actually name the king who would rule the Persian Empire at the time of the Jew’s release.
I want you to read Isaiah 44:24-28 with me. Keep in mind as you read it that Jerusalem would be ransacked and the Temple destroyed a hundred years or so after Isaiah wrote these words. By the way, Isaiah wrote during a period in which Israel was prosperous.
Isa. 44:24-28 “This is what the LORD says– your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb: I am the LORD, who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself, 25 who foils the signs of false prophets and makes fools of diviners, who overthrows the learning of the wise and turns it into nonsense, 26 who carries out the words of his servants and fulfills the predictions of his messengers, who says of Jerusalem, ‘It shall be inhabited,’ of the towns of Judah, ‘They shall be built,’ and of their ruins, ‘I will restore them,’ 27 who says to the watery deep, ‘Be dry, and I will dry up your streams,’ 28 who says of Cyrus, ‘He is my shepherd and will accomplish all that I please; he will say of Jerusalem, “Let it be rebuilt,” and of the temple, “Let its foundations be laid.”‘ Isaiah 44:24-28 (NIV)
I don’t know if you realize yet, but that Bible on your Smart Phone, tablet, coffee table or shelf is packed with this kind of amazing foretelling of future events. I am not aware of one single instance where the Bible got it wrong, not one. Doesn’t it then make sense to trust your life to one who knows all and ultimately controls all? Why in the world would you trust your life to books and philosophers that can’t even tell you for sure whether it’s going to rain tomorrow.
Now I don’t mean to say that the Bible is going be your crystal ball which will reveal to you the next surge in the stock market or who you could live happily ever after with; that’s not the purpose of Biblical Prophecy. But it does have advice about money and dating. So you have to suspend reasonableness not to trust a book that repeatedly foretells future events without error. At the very least I am asking you to give the Bible to be the measuring device for all you think, decide and do.
