Fulfillments of Bible Prophecy

Show that the words used by Isaiah clearly describe a spiritual battle.Your own creative interpretation doesn't make it so for Isaiah's words.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

To the general complaint of skeptics:"You have to believe to have faith. And you have to have faith to believe" I do not try to argue.I have decided that that is true and biblical. You have to have some faith in order to believe in God and you have to have some belief in order to have faith.The Bible confirms as much: Some observations:1.) The writer says "Come forward to God". The coming implies that he as well as others have already come. So the confirmation of those who have come before me is helpful. I seek to come forward to where they are in the experience of God. So I listen to them.2.) You have to believe that God is in order to come to God. While the logician may complain of circular logic, he should realize also that this condition in and of itself does not prove that God is not real.3.) The Bible also is a record of a vast variety of levels of faith - from nearly none at all to a lot. Thomas requested imperical proof of Christ's resurrection by examining His wounds. Gideon fleeced God and was assisted with confirming tests of probability.So God did not disallow people to ask for a sign or assistance to believe. And today we may also if it is not more of a sign then God is pleased to give.I trust my father that he is my dad. I don't really know that. I trust him. I mean I never got a DNA analysis done on his blood. I trust him and he trusts his wife, my mother, that I am indeed his son.Similarly, we can trust God or we can insist on more of a sign than God is pleased to give to confirm. He must know that in some cases it is not a problem with the intellect. It is a problem in the will.

Must leave for now. Don't anyone weep. I'll be back and try to help you to see that a prophet of God in the Bible, in general, deals with "spiritual" matters.Even when God's prophets are talking about material things, they are usually trying to secure spiritual values.I thought you knew that.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

Purpledawn used a jewish source of today to raise the point that the jews do not believe that Isaiah 53 is a messianic prophecy.What I was showing is that the Jews in the first century did view it as a messianic prophecy as can be seen by the Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel.And the fact is that the Rabbis of later times did not view him as the messiah. The prophecy itself said that he 'would be despised and held of no account' by the jews.
To this day the still refuse to accept that Jesus was the Messiah. Those Jews who did believe in him did not remain in Judaism...they became Christians such as Saul of Tarsus. He was a Pharisee and a strict follower of Judaism who initially was fiercely opposed to the Christians. He became a christian and left Judaism behind.

I think Jaywill was making the point that if one wants to make a claim that contradicts scripture, then the claim can easily be dealt with.eg. Is the passage of Isaiah 53 a messianic prophecy?The NT writers confirm that it is and they apply it to Jesus by explaining how parts of the prophecy were fulfilled by himie 'and Jesus cured the sick and so fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah that says "he bore our sicknesses..."The question is answered by the Apostles and christian teachers. Yes it is a Messianic prophecy and this is how Jesus fulfilled the scriptures.

My point with Theodoric was that the human mind can often continue ad infinitum saying "But you haven't PROVED it yet."And with the phenomenon of prophecy this is a popular tactic.

Have you compared Isaiah 53 to the Gospels?I think jaywill gave a good rundown of how Jesus fulfilled Isaiahs prophecy in Msg 135.
Of course you are not obliged to believe it. Not many of the jews who heard the Christians preach believed either. Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

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Have you compared Isaiah 53 to the Gospels?

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That's what kbertsche and I have been discussing. Message 93, Message 116, Message 119, Message 131Show that what the Gospel authors claimed as fulfillment actually matches the plain text reading of what Isaiah said. Without your added backstory the prophecy, as it is translated, doesn't fit Jesus.The entire prophecy is not included in the claim of fulfillment.
The words used as they are understood in the time of Isaiah are not reflected in the Gospel recounts of Jesus' life.IOW, all the prophecy is not accounted for and without embellishment, the parts claimed as fulfillment don't match either.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

For those who make the case "But even the Jews did not believe that such and such was a prophecy about Christ."That may be true. But before you hedge all your bets on that you should realize the record of occasional Jewish unbelief.At one point neither did they believe that Moses was going to lead them to the Promise Land. They were ready to stone him and return to slavery in Egypt.They also rejected Jeremiah's prophecy that bad things would happen to the remnant of Jews if they attempted to flee to Egypt. In this case the a group of Jews went to Jeremiah and asked him to tell them what it was that God wanted them to do. After he returned from inquiring from God and told them, the flat out rejected it because it was not what they wanted to hear !"You didn't speak what God was saying!" they retorted. The account is very instructive - Jeremiah 34:15-30.They rejected the prophecy because they WANTED God to say what THEY wanted to have happen to them down in Egypt.Please read this before making jump decisions about how to react to prophecy in the Bible.And there are other cases of Jewish unbelief. You cannot base everything on Jewish belief or unbelief.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

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At one point neither did they believe that Moses was going to lead them to the Promise Land. They were ready to stone him and return to slavery in Egypt.

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The only thing you have to prove this is the bible.

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They also rejected Jeremiah's prophecy that bad things would happen to the remnant of Jews if they attempted to flee to Egypt. In this case the a group of Jews went to Jeremiah and asked him to tell them what it was that God wanted them to do. After he returned from inquiring from God and told them, the flat out rejected it because it was not what they wanted to hear !

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"You didn't speak what God was saying!" they retorted. The account is very instructive - Jeremiah 34:15-30.

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Same as I said above. You can not use something to prove itself. There has to be some objective, external evidence to prove something. ANything else is just relying on faith.It is ok for you to do so, but don't expect others to.

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But before you hedge all your bets

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What bets do I have to hedge?

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

Purpledawn,You may say that the prophesy of Isaiah 53 doesn't match the life of Jesus.But I would say that even in fulfillment of prophecy from God, there is always an element of possible doubt - intentionally perhaps."But what if it is not really a fulfillment of a promise of God?" some doubt.There is room left for doubt if you want to. Often there is just enough evidence to be convinced but also just enough residue to doubt if you wish.The Bible is a test on you and I. It is not only a test on God. It seems that God often gives you a way out if you really do not want to believe His heart and His word.I'll speak more to this latter.

Theodoric, you are speaking to me now. I don't know about others but I rarely talk in terms of "PROVING" God. I speak in terms of indications that one is on the right track to believe in God or in the Bible.As I said before, you can forever state that something has not been proved. Much of this is posturing. The evidence of Jesus is the ultimate suffering servant refered to in Isaiah 53 lead me to believe that we are on the right track to accept the New Testament's teaching that He was.If I work real hard at it I can object that that is not proved."WEEEEll, it said that He didn't open His mouth. But really Jesus DID open His mouth once or twice while being judged. Sooooo, you haven't proved it yet !"Hedging bets was an expression. My point was that the reader should not judge the entire matter of prophetic fulfillment simply on whether the Jews at large believed of not.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

And you think this makes sense. Classic. You didn't read my post before responding to this bit, perhaps? I have. Thousands of others have. And they didn't have the experience you did. You will later develop a whole new theory about why it didn't work.I've seen it before countless times.1. You didn't try.
2. You didn't do it right.
3. You didn't believe hard enough.
4. Your subconscious scepticism interefered with God's desire to help...and so on. It's a very similar mindset to conspiracy theorists. No. You had an experience that you felt was God being 'good', and tried to infer that this means God was in fact, universally 'good'. A murderer's family will quite often say that their personal experience of the person is contradictory to their committing the act of murder. This does not mean that the person didn't commit murder.You have emphatically not experienced that calling upon Jesus is good for everybody even if you have experienced that it is good for you, and for some other people. And you can't say that your personal experience means it was a universal truth. And that is all that I said. You are the one who is not taking the agnostic approach. You claim to have knowledge, not me. I have. They do. What next? Really? I've not met one that hasn't. I go to Shisha bars and sit talking religion and philosophy with Muslims on a weekly basis into the small hours of the morning.This is a distraction though - Muslims claim to have had a subjective experience of Allah. You are making the same mistake they are making, even if you think the experience differs somewhat. You are making the same mistake as the Buddhists who have personally experienced satori, of Pagans who have experienced the power of nature spirits and so on and so forth. It doesn't mean they are all right. No. I called out, believing that he was my Holy Father. I appreciate that in order for your precarious faith to survive these facts, you have to find some reason to deny these things, you have to concoct a loophole to explain why it didn't work out for me, and for thousands - maybe millions, who are in a similar position.Don't you think it is strange that you presume to know my state of mind and that you have some kind of knowledge about what I did and didn't do and why? Classic gold. There are many things which fit this category. Some of them are contradictory. I have experienced many of them, including those that contradict each other. It doesn't matter who first started taking advantage of humans propensity to confirmation bias does it? All that matters is that your idea of prophecy and psychics both call on us to focus on the hits and try to ignore, forget, or desperately go to any lengths to 'explain away' the misses.Just like you are doing in this reply. What you are doing is no different than Sylvia Browne fans do when confronted with evidence she is a charlaton. "You were giving off too much negative energy" is their version of the "You have to believe in order to experience" trope you've wheeled out here.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

You are no longer even arguing the OP. You are preaching. If you want to preach you should go someplace else. Preaching is not something that is usually accepted here.Any chance you starting a thread on a Heliocentric Solar System? You seemed really excited to discuss it here.

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Hedging bets was an expression. My point was that the reader should not judge the entire matter of prophetic fulfillment simply on whether the Jews at large believed of not.

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First of all, I don't think that is what the saying means. If you use that expression you are implying that I have something to lose if I do not follow your argument. Second of all, Jewish people believing the prophecy or not is only a part of the argument against Isaiah being prophetic. Please do not misrepresent what I have said in previous posts.

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

It has been said that Judaism is more than a religion. It has been said that it is a civilization. It has been a long lasting one too. Probably not as long as Egyptian civilization by the time of the birth of Jesus. But it had been long lasting nonetheless.When Cleopatra was queen of Egypt the pyramids had already been standing over 1,000 years. They had their own archeologists too digging around Egypt trying to determine what things were what which were built 2,000 years previous in thier own civilization.How is this relevant to the discussion at hand? My point is that when Jesus was born in Bethlehem the priests had already for centries been in expectation that a Messiah would be born in that city.That is how they knew to tell Herod when he asked where the "born king" of Israel would be.I don't know how "confirmation bias" arranged that a man like Jesus was born there.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.