(probably for the Bible Study thread or Faith & Belief)
Bible prophecy was one of the main reasons I started to take a serious look at the bible and religion. I really had very little knowledge of God or the bible when I was growing up and I could not say for sure that God was real because I had never experienced anything supernatural.
So when someone offered to show me 'proof' that the bible was a book inspired by God, i was obviously interested in how they could prove it. That 'proof' was prophecy.
Just so we are all on the same page as to what prophecy is, it means...(and there may be additional meanings)
1. revelation of divine will and purpose or the proclamation thereof
2. an expression of a divine command or judgment,
3. a declaration of something to come.
the Apostle Peter wrote:
quote:
. 2Peter 1:20"...no prophecy of Scripture springs from any private interpretation. 21For prophecy was at no time brought by man's will, but men spoke from God as they were borne along by holy spirit
I would also like to be clear that this thread is not for debate on whether a prophecy was written after the event but
whether the prophecy was fulfilled in the manner that the scripture said it would be fulfilled.(However, I know that critics make the claim of late authorship, so I will qualify each prophecy with the evidence for the time it was written)
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Prophecy about Alexander the Great in Daniel Chapter's 8 & 11.
In the sixth century BCE, the Prophet Daniel (as the book named after him) was inspired to record some remarkable visions that he saw which fortold the future course of world events. the visions he describes were a number of symbolic animals that displace one another on the world scene. He asked God what the vision means and an angel explains that the animals foreshadow world powers from his day onward.
One of those world powers was Greece...this is one small part of the prophecy.
quote:
Daniel 11:3 "And a mighty king will certainly stand up and rule with extensive dominion and do according to his will. And when he will have stood up, his kingdom will be broken and be divided toward the four winds of the heavens, but not to his posterity."
Speaking of the final two beasts, the angel says:
quote:
"The ram that you saw possessing the two horns stands for the kings of Media and Persia. And the hairy he-goat stands for the king of Greece; and as for the great horn that was between its eyes, it stands for the first king. And that one having been broken, so that there were four that finally stood up instead of it, there are four kingdoms from his nation that will stand up, but not with his power" Daniel 8:20-22.
How was this fullfilled?
The Babylonian Empire, (where Daniel was in captivity at the time of his writing, 618-535 BCE) was overthrown by the Ram possessing the two horns Medo-Persia, which, 200 years later, was conquered by the Greek world power spearheaded by Alexander the Great, "the great horn."
However, after Alexander's sudden death (323BCE), the
"the great horn was broken", and his 4 generals divided the empire between them; the result being that the empire broke into four smaller empires,
"four kingdoms from his nation that will stand up...but not with his power"
History testifies to the fact that his life was cut short and his 4 generals Ptolemy, Cassander, Lysimachus, Seleucus all took a portion of the empire to rule.
Diadochi - Wikipedia________________
But did Daniel write this prophecy in the 6th century, or later as critics claim? First, the book was alluded to in the first book of Maccabees (2bce). fIt was included in the Greek Septuagint version, the translation of which began in the 3rd century BCE.
Most notabley though, it contains historical details that would have been unknown to a second-century writer such as Belshazzar, the ruler of Babylon who was killed when Babylon fell in 539BCE.
The non-Biblical sources of the fall of Babylon are Herodotus (5th century), Xenophon (5th and 4th centuries), and Berossus (3rd century). None of these knew about Belshazzar. So its very unlikely that a second-century writer would have had information that had been unavailable to these earlier authors!
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This is just one, there are so many more, but this is good one to start with.
some others that I would suggest to look at would be
1. the Messiahs time of arrival prophecy in Daniel.
2. the end of the Gentile Times & effects for earth
3. the Messianic prophecies and how they were fulfilled in Jesus
4. destruction of the ancient Kingdom of Tyre
5. Jesus prophecy about the Destruction of Jerusalem 70CE
6. the 'Seed' of God to destroy 'Seed' of Devil
7. Apostates to take over the christian church
8. Destruction of Babylonian world empire by Persian King Cyrus
Edited by Peg, : No reason given.
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