Archer writes:
Why didn't anyone call any of these events before they happened? Isn't that what real prophecy is supposed to do?
I once saw a movie about Nostradamus. Whether Nostradamus ever said this in real life, I guess we'll never know.
In the movie, the character that was Nostradamus told his friend that he could see events taking place centuries ahead of time and that he wants to write them down. His friend thought for a minute and said that Nostradamus' work could be used by people for centuries to come to enrich themselves with wealth and power. Nostradamus then said that to prevent this, he would write his prophecies in such a way that they could only be understood AFTER the event had already happened. In other words, he would make sure that noone would be able to use the prophecies to his own ends.
At one point, another character asked Nostradamus why write down his prophecies at all if he didn't want anyone to know ahead of time what will happen, and the character Nostradamus answered that his head hurts unbearably if he doesn't write them down.
I can't remember for the life of me what the movie was called or who made it. It was relatively a cheap budget film played by shakespearian actors.
Anyway, the point is here is an explanation presented to answer the question why can't we use these same sources of prophecy to predict the future? As a science fiction superfan, I can't tell you how many times I've seen science fiction writers present scenarios of how a timeline is interrupted because someone foresaw the future and the destructions that follow. Basically, everyone who ever got a hand in coming up with anything remotely close to time travel and future predictions agree that it is best to not meddle with the natural timeline. Any interference might cause a butterfly affect that would cascade into something we don't want to know.
For example, there was a book I read many years ago about this. A group of time travel cops came back to their present, our future, finding a primitive society that speaks some weird language that none of them had ever heard before, and each one of these guys speak at least 2 dozen languages. While they were traveling through time studying historical events, something must have happened that destroyed their time track.
Anyway, long story short, they finally was able to trace back the exact moment in history that caused the chain reaction. The consul of Rome Africanus was suppose to survive in the 2nd Punic War and eventually defeated Hannibal. Their very presence caused the guy to die and Rome was burned to the ground. No Latin meant no Romance languages.
Isn't it possible that the prophets knew that disrupting the timeline could have catastrophic results? Say somebody prevented 9/11 and saved all those lives. But then one of those lives went on to bear a son and this son eventually becomes the next Hitler. You save 3 thousand lives and you end up killing a billion.
So, isn't it possible that the prophecies of the bible are there purely to prove god's omniscient wisdom rather than telling us ahead of time what will happen?
Disclaimer:
Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style.
He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!
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