a Response to:"PROPHECIES: IMAGINARY AND UNFULFILLED"
by Farrell Till.

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."

While Mr.Till's opening paragraph represents a fairly apt summary of ONE argument used by proponents of the bible's divine origin, his second paragraph veers wide of the mark in its representation of his opponents position. It is, in fact, a borderline misrepresentation. While it is true that biblical proponents (hereinafter referred to as believers) recognize the existence of predictive capabilities outside the range of the "Divine", it is not true, nor a fair representation of the believers position, that all such predictions fall into only TWO catagories: the Divine or a unique personal quality of an individual. It is a widely held and commonly known fact that believers subscribe to a "SUPERNATURAL" origin for all such accurate predictions, but not all supernaturally originated predictions are DIVINE, some having their origin in the DIABOLICAL, which is as much a supernatural causative as the divine. Let us just say that Mr. Till has been caught attempting to limit the supernatural to those phenomena that can only be attributed to the DIVINE. As we can see in the next paragraph, a LITERAL reading of the very text he has chosen to support his surrepticiousness, actually exposes the misrepresentation.

"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,[b] natural psychic ability[/b] 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."

It should be clear to even the most casual observer that the prophet or dreamer of dreams in this text, having seen his prediction fulfilled is ascribing both its origination and fulfillment to "other gods which you have not known" and not, as Mr. Till would have us believe, "NATURAL PSYCHIC ABILITY". In fact, the text goes on to ascribe the success of these phenomena to Yahweh as a test. So Mr. Till's first argument turns out to be a disingenious misrepresentation of his opponents position, a cleverly concocted strawman that leaves us wondering if Mr. Till isn't actually utilizing the very kind of imaginative artifices to support his position he accuses biblical writers of. Apparently the "UN" in Mr. Till's unbiased contextual examination does not extend far enough to include even the simplest and most commonly held contextual positions of his opponents. I dare say, as we continue our examination of Mr.Till's unbiased contextual examination, we shall have to decide for ourselves just how unbiased it really is.


NONPROPHECIES

"Later, I will examine several examples of these "imaginary prophecies," but a more logical place to begin examination of the prophecy-fulfillment argument would be with what, for lack of a better term, I will call "nonprophecies." These involve those cases where, although alleged prophecies were quoted or referred to by New Testament writers, Bible scholars have been unable to find the original statement. An example is found in John 7:38 where Jesus said, "He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water." If Jesus was right in saying that scripture said this, just where was it said? No such statement in the Old Testament scriptures has ever been located, yet "the scripture" to Jesus would certainly have been the Old Testament. In this statement, then, we apparently have a fulfillment that was a fulfillment of--what? How could there be a fulfillment of a prophecy that was never even made?

Oh my...If this is an example of unbiased CONTEXTUAL examination I'm afraid we're in for a long haul. Indeed, where is there, in John 7:38, any reference to a prophecy fulfilled? Jesus is making a declaration of His divinity and not, as Mr. Till would have us believe, making a reference to any prophetic text. The text from which Jesus has constructed this allegory are these:

Jeremiah 2:13 "For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me [b]the fountain of living waters,[/b] and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water."

Jeremiah 17:13 "O LORD, the hope of Israel, all that forsake thee shall be ashamed, and they that depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the LORD,[b] the fountain of living waters."[/b]

Now if proper context and unbiased examination were truly Mr. Till's objective he would surely have noticed the very next verse: John 7:39 (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)

So, in fact, we do have a prophecy being GIVEN here and not one being returned as fulfilled. Mr Till's "imagined prophecy" conspiracy, another GROSS contextual mangling, so exposes his obvious slant and extremely BIASED approach until he appears quite willing to sacrifice his credibility to secure an early victory. The further assumption that every word Christ spoke when referencing scripture must be verbatim to warrant the proper context is so absurd as to be hardly worth mentioning yet, here it is, a smoking gun in Mr. Till's arsenal of unbiased criticisms.

It is noteworthy to further mention that the context of John chapter 7, (if any unbiased person wishes to read the entire chapter for a more accurate contextual application) fits very nicely in the theme of Jeremiah's lamentation of the people who had FORSAKEN the Lord. The very first verse in John 7 leads us directly to a reasonable and accurate context that is far different than Mr. Till's imagination would have us believe: John 7:1 ¶After these things Jesus walked in Galilee: for he would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him.

I think it safe to conclude that a people who seek to kill you have, as Jeremiah so elequently stated, FORSAKEN you. So the very first two examples of Mr. Till's "unbiased contextual examination" have proven to be extremely biased and so out of context that even a man like myself, who hasn't even a high school diploma, has picked out the fact from the fiction. Let us hope the Sec Web has more to offer in the way of scholarly examination of these questions and that Mr. Morgan has better references with which to link us for an unbiased and contextual examination of this very good question on the validity of prophecy in the argument for divine origination.