Fulfillments of Bible Prophecy

Isaiah 53 is vague. It does look like it had some not unimportant influence on Christian thought. The fact that the writers of the Gospels referred to the passage would indicate that certain versions of Christ's life may have been edited (not necessarily consciously, human memory is terrible, and we often 'remember' parts of a story that were not there but that we inferred must be there - even if we witnessed the events live) in an attempt to conform to some symbolism rather than because of an actual fulfilled prophecy. I'm not saying that is what happened, only that since we can't rule it out - we can't rule it in and so that leaves us no better off than before it was brought up. It's kind of an inherent problem about prophecies concerning the existence of Jesus Christ - we don't have much to verify them with other than the texts that the Church considered best fit with those exact same prophecies.Objections aside, the sections is till terribly vague. A specific version of Isaiah 53, that geniunely referred to Jesus would talk about crucifixion rather than 'piercing' would suggest the son of a manual labourer (rather than just 'servant') who lived in Nazareth would be executed by a government appointed by an Empire on the Italian peninsula would be born of Marium and Yusuf and be called Yeshua. That his execution would coincide with the Passover and that the religion that stems from this action would spread to the Antipodes and that a small group of the followers of this new religion, named after the Greek translation of 'messiah', would one day step on the surface of the moon.That would be pretty specific, unforseeable, and spoken before it was fulfilled. We'd also have the luxury of having verifiable evidence that least some of the events in the prophecy actually happened in the exact non-symbolic fashion as described, which would make a nice change.

What it means to the original author requires for there to be a person that has a thought (the original author). Meaning does not exist independently of a subject who finds that meaning. It is necessarily subjective, not objective. The intent of the author is definite and absolute, but it only exists in the mind of the author and is thus subjective. And inaccessible since the author is very very dead.We can attempt to infer the original intent of the author, but our conclusions must be highly tentative given the cultural, linguistic and temporal distance between us.The greater the reference to idioms and symbols and metaphor...the more difficult it will be for us to be sure of the intent of the authors. It seems that the Isaiah passage in question suffers from this problem. We can't be sure that Isaiah's intent was to prophesize regarding the death of Jesus of Nazareth.

No you didn't. You recount your personal experience, and try to suggest that your experience is universal. This is like me saying 'I enjoyed the taste of Spinach therefore I have experienced that Spinach tastes good to all who eat it'.You have merely interpreted a subjective experience as if it represented a universal and absolute truth for all. It's an easy mistake to make, and it is precisely the mistake people make when they think that Allah is the only God and Muhammad is his prophet or that Jesus Christ is God because "I have experienced that this is the case". And yet you discount the fact that the Lord is as ashes and dust when I call upon him. This shows the prophecy as false, but you will not accept that, nor the testimony of thousands of others who have experienced likewise. This is classic prophecy interpretation: ignore the problems, focus on the 'hits'. It's like going to see a psychic or reading a horoscope or casting I Ching or doing a Ouija board. Wonderfully self-fulfilling. As long as one person (you for example) believe the Bible, you could interpret this prophecy as being true.And yet, it feels deeply compelling to you. This is the true power of prophecy.

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.

Confirmation bias doesn't arrange anything. Confirmation bias is, in its simplest form, where you ignore the misses and look for hits. Like the way you ignored the misses I pointed out and tried to point to some completely different supposed prophecy as a 'hit'.I will address your latest claim at fulfilled prophecy when we have dealt with the one I started addressing, if you want me to. Until then, do you concede that you did not experience that the Lord Jesus is rich to all those that call upon him? That you only directly experienced doing so felt rich to you and that you have indirect reason to believe it was rich to some others? That you also have indirect reason to believe that it is not rich to all others since I stand as a counterexample. Since a single counterexample is all that is needed to refute a claim of 'all', your claimed prophecy has failed.Will you also concede that the only way for you to hold a belief that the prophecy still works is to deny that I did what I said. Indeed - you have to deny every single person that has a differing experience. You have to come up with excuses and rationales that help convince you that the prophecy is still true, I didn't do it right, I didn't believe hard enough. And do you concede that this renders the prophecy entirely useless, since it can never be wrong - no matter what?Even if the whole world tried the experiment and not a single person felt any richness - a philosopher could argue that it might be because nobody in the world tried hard enough, believed hard enough or that the presupposed it wouldn't work so it didn't. A prophecy than can claim fulfilment, no matter what happens, is no prophecy.

You were answering points I didn't raise, I hope you understand how that might have confused me.jay: I experienced that the Lord Jesus was indeed rich to all who called upon Him. {my emphasis}Mod: No you didn't.jay: Yes I did.You see how I might think that 'Yes I did' refers to your claim that you experienced Christ is rich to all, rather than 'to jaywill'. Exactly. So your claim that the experience is universal (applies to all) was premature, and it turns out, false. I sense you are coming around to this, now. So, despite the fact that we both called out to Christ with equal amount of faith, I didn't experience this richness. The prophecy is therefore unfulfilled, right? I do not doubt that some people experience what they would affirm as 'positive experiences' from this act. Some does not equal 'all'. So the prophecy stands unfulfilled. Indeed - but the fact that the Lord Jesus is not rich to me when I call upon him would does mean that the Lord Jesus is not rich to all who call upon him. Indeed. But the point remains that knowing somebody personally doesn't mean you know them perfectly. The point being that just because you experienced something as rich, doesn't mean that it is rich. Or maybe you have lost something. The only way to know is to live a whole life without calling out to Jesus but instead calling out to Lord Krishna and then comparing the two experiences. No, you believe the word of man that the word of god is that he is rich to all that call upon him.Are you going to give up this prophecy as useless, now? It doesn't predict anything since you will believe that it is true, even if other evidence suggests strongly that it isn't. You'll have to consider me a liar, delusional or terribly mistaken or something in order to reach that conclusion.Ignoring or explaining away all of the misses, accepting without scepticism all of the hits. The confidence trick of prophecy. Yet you have admitted that you haven't. You have only experienced that the Lord is rich to jaywill and x number of other people (based on their testimony). You have also experienced that calling upon the Lord is not rich to other people (based on their testimony).So - are you willing to concede this prophecy is either unfalsifiable and thus useless to confirm fulfilment, or has in fact been shown to be falsified? I've done it. I've called upon Allah in the name of Mohammed. I don't get the effects postulated. Sorry to break it to you, but your prophecy has failed. You won't accept this, you can't accept this. You have to go on ignoring and explaining away the misses and only focussing on the hits (yourself and your belief that others have experienced 'hits').Confirmation bias. It isn't so. You just believe it is, so you ignore all the times it was not true, and only remember or focus upon the times you think it was true - you probably also tried to 'read into' the motivations and intents of other people as you did with me earlier, and humans are notoriously good at seeing what they expect to see rather than what is.I am happy to post video footage of me calling out to a variety of deities and prophets but I suspect it will not convince you anyway.

So, the prophecy is true, one should feel rich, and the reason I didn't is because I didn't try hard enough, was too lazy, didn't believe hard enough and so on. You have avoided the points I was raising in an attempt to proseltyse at me. Do you accept that the prophecy jaywill raised is unfalsifiable? That if it doesn't seem to come true in certain cases there exists a handy list of excuses that believers can pull out of their asses - all of the excuses are handily impossible to verify.It kind of sounds like The Emperor is naked to me. It sounds like the excuses psychics, telekinetics, mediums, voodou practitioners come up with all of the time.So, whether or not what you are saying about the relationship with Yahweh is true (and my personal experience would imply that is actually false)...it is entirely ridiculous to tout it as a fulfilled prophecy if you are only going to count the hits and explain away the misses.

Asses is not necessarily foul language. Pulling something out of one's ass, is a common colloquialism and you're on the internet. It is incredibly easy to avoid the debate by feigning offense. If you have a geniune problem: don't play armchair moderator in this thread, especially by posting your concerns in two seperate posts (Message 190, Message 194). It wastes memory and it wastes debate space and simply distracts from the debate. If you really feel my behaviour is inflammatory or uncivil, bring it to the attention of moderators in the appropriate thread.In the meantime, step off the holier-than-thou high horse, and deal with the problems with your position. You made a claim that the the lord is rich to all who call upon him. I suggested that it was not the case, which demonstrates that it is not universal. This shows that this prophecy is not fulfilled, or cannot be verified as being fulfilled. Do you agree? You have tried to distract me with other prophecies previously. We are talking about a prophecy about richness and calling upon the names of Yahweh/Christ. Are you conceding that it is impossible to confirm whether this particular prophecy has been fulfilled because of the large numbers of excuses that can be pulled out of the proverbial hat? Is that why you are keen to try moving to a different prophecy? Focussing on the hits, trying to avoid focussing on the misses? You seem to be confused about my discussing universals. When I speak of universality I am talking about a single prophecy that makes a claim that Yahweh is rich to all that call. Since this prophecy applies to all people who follow a certain action,, it can be said to 'universally apply' and it also means that it can be tested. I have done this, and the name is not rich.I am eminently qualified to determine the universality of this prophecy since I am included in the set all who call.So, cedre has argued that I am lazy, that I didn't try hard enough, you have argued that I have to believe first, you have also argued that my skepticism interferes with the experiment and now you are arguing that I'm not qualified to determine if this prophecy has been fulfilled. These are golden oldies on the con trick of prophecy jaywill.Does this mean that the prophecy has failed, or does it mean that the prophecy can not fail because there is always a loophole you can jump through to explain away the problem? Once you have conceded that this prophecy is useless for purposes of demonstrating fulfillment, we can try another one.Focussing on the hits, ignoring or explaining away the misses: The confidence trick of prophecy.

You only answered half the question. You said that the prophecy is that Yahweh's name is rich to all those that call. I called, and I experienced no richness. There are two possibilities.1) The prophecy is false.
2) The prophecy cannot be falsified.I know, by virtue of us continuing to have this debate, that you are rejecting position 1. What I am trying to do is to convince you that this only leaves position 2. That it doesn't matter what happens when I call out to Jesus or Yahweh or Krsna or whoever, you will not consider it a failure of the prophecy.You will explain away the 'miss', you will attempt to focus on the 'hit'. I said this quite early on, and you have not failed to continue to do this.Will you accept, that a prophecy that could be seen as a fulfilled prophecy no matter what happens in the future, is a useless prophecy for the purposes of this thread? If nobody felt the richness upon calling on Yahweh, it would be just as much of a success as if nobody felt the richness and it would just as much of a success if there was a mixture of people's feelings. We could explain that those that don't experience richness don't meet some criteria (not trying hard enough, aren't attempting it in the right temporal context, aren't sincere, are too sceptical, they secretly want it to fail, you don't know what feeling rich means - maybe you feel it but don't realize it etc etc), and those that do feel it: success! Ahhh, classic prophecy get out. Is this how Christians become immortal? They keep calling out and not feeling the richness but since the prophecy says they will they have to stay alive to avoid a theological paradox? So, it cannot be falsified, right? If a person calls upon Yahweh and they say they received no feelings of richness...it's because they didn't do it right and so the prophecy survives. And if they call upon Yahweh and they say they got the feeling then the prophecy is fulfilled. This is not a difficult logical concept - excuse me for yammering on at it but you seem to be desperately avoiding it. I keep pointing out that there are two prongs, and you only deal with one prong. Heads I win, tails you lose is not a fair game jaywill (that is to say, I believe you are having a problem arguing in 'good faith').You said you experienced that Yahweh's name is rich to all who call him, I pointed out that couldn't be true since you cannot experience other people's experiences. It also didn't ring true since I called, and it was not rich. Now you are saying that you have to call in a certain prescribed fashion. If I said I did call in that fashion, then what? Will you say that I can't have done, otherwise I would have felt the richness?Has faith so blinded you that you are incapable of understanding this straightforward point?As Perdition asked, is there any scenario that would convince you that the prophecy has failed?

I've repeatedly mentioned it. Yes, I have called on the name of Jesus, Christ, Yahweh, God and Lord at least. Maybe this, maybe that. Despite the fact that you have thanked me for my clarification you are still missing the fullness of the problem. How about you stop skimming my posts and hiding behind the fact that I used a single and marginally unpleasant word via a common colloquialism in a post directed at a different poster and instead try paying attention to my argument?I said I think you are having issues arguing in good faith, my opinion in this regard grows.I don't feel like trying to find new ways to discuss points that you don't even begin to attempt to address, so I will just copy/paste them from my last reply.You said that the prophecy is that Yahweh's name is rich to all those that call. I called, and I experienced no richness.
There are two possibilities.1) The prophecy is false.
2) The prophecy cannot be falsified.I know, by virtue of us continuing to have this debate, that you are rejecting position 1. What I am trying to do is to convince you that this only leaves position 2. That it doesn't matter what happens when I call out to Jesus or Yahweh or Krsna or whoever, you will not consider it a failure of the prophecy.You will explain away the 'miss', you will attempt to focus on the 'hit'. I said this quite early on, and you have not failed to continue to do this.Will you accept, that a prophecy that could be seen as a fulfilled prophecy no matter what happens in the future, is a useless prophecy for the purposes of this thread? If nobody felt the richness upon calling on Yahweh, it would be just as much of a success as if nobody felt the richness and it would just as much of a success if there was a mixture of people's feelings. We could explain that those that don't experience richness don't meet some criteria (not trying hard enough, aren't attempting it in the right temporal context, aren't sincere, are too sceptical, they secretly want it to fail, you don't know what feeling rich means - maybe you feel it but don't realize it etc etc), and those that do feel it: success!

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I am not looking for you to add to the list of excuses as to why the prophecy hasn't come true. I didn't use the Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew, English, German or Spanish form of the Christian Messiah's name. I didn't try, I didn't believe before hand, it wasn't the right time, I was too sceptical etc etc etc ad nauseum. The very fact that between the believers you've managed to come up with such a dazzling array of 'reasons' why the prophecy did not hold up should be a big warning light of unfalsifiability. Address the problem that once we allow these kinds of excuses all possible future outcomes would be covered by the prophecy: everything is proof of the prophecy, and nothing shows that it is wrong.I didn't expect getting you to address this point was going to be easy: it wouldn't be such a successful confidence trick if you were able to deal with this.

After a post where I stressed that I wasn't asking for you to 'solve' the problem of why I didn't feel the richness, you reply with this? There are only two explanations.1. You are deliberately not addressing my point, even when I repeat it several times using different wordings and put it in bold italics. That is to say: You are not debating in good faith.2. You have been so utterly hoodwinked by the confidence trick of prophecy you are almost entirely incapable of comprehending the point.In applying the principle of charity, I am forced to conclude it is the latter, in which case I pity you. Maybe you should try arguing with psychics and other woo-meisters for a while, you'll begin to see that they suffer from the same blindess and use the same diversionary tactics. They all seem to incapable of grasping the simple concept that a prediction which can take into account every conceivable eventuality is no prediction at all.On the other hand, if you want to address the actual points I raised, I'll be keen to hear what you have to say about them. Return to the previous posts and try to understand what I am saying and how it might be different from what you currently think I am saying.

To conclude then, I raised the objection that at least one prophecy that jaywill provided was worded in such a way as to be impossible to be considered unfulfilled. That this prophecy is a stark example of the confirmation bias inherent in prophecy.Time and time again, we start from a claim that there is some good reason, or 'proof' of supernatural claims of the Bible or religious viewpoint, and within 300 posts we see a view quite different begin to emerge. The view that the touted 'proof' isn't something which leads to belief (ie proof) but instead should be considered more closesly to a 'confirmation' of an already existing belief.That is to say, we start from

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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.

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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.

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(From Message 1).And we end with the likes of

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What is wrong with one needing to have faith in what the Bible prophesied ? Your basic objection that "It requires an eye of faith" may be a criteria which you reject but God has in mind.

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You may be wanting God to play strictly by your rules that no "eye of faith" be required. In response to this objection I think it would be a good idea for one to make an examination of fulfilled promises told about in the Bible and see if no "eye of faith" was required upon those for whom the prophecy came about.

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(From Message 292)I appreciate these are different posters, but even the originator of this thread, Peg, concedes that to understand the text one needs some kind of divine intervention:

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If someone really wants understanding, God will grant it.

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(from Message 232).To answer the OP, were any prophecies fufilled (ignoring the date of authorship)? Yes, I think that is fairly certain. There are two types of fulfilled prophecy:1) Where the prophecy is constructed so that no matter what the future outcome was, an argument could be raised to suggest the prophecy is still fulfilled - this is the variety jaywill and I discussed.2) Those that were actually prophesised 'after the event'.There are other categories, such as prophecies that aren't actually prophecies in the 'specifically predicting future events' kind of fashion, and those that may predict future events but they are written in such a fashion that it would require later biblical authors to 'interpret them' and write about a character that they claimed fulfilled them in line with their...unorthodox interpretations. Being the eager pattern seekers we are, we are suckers for vague symbology. Being fools for confirmation bias, we are prone to fall for a whole host of tricks and cons that are designed (almost always unconsciously) to convince us it is all real.Did the relevant authors of the Gospels lie when they made prophetic claims on behalf of Jesus? I don't think so. Many of the Jesus stories were probably passed orally for decades before being formally written down in the format we have them today. All it takes is for one person in the chain of story telling to lie, exaggerate, or more honestly - make the assumption that something like the destruction of the Temple would be something Jesus would have prophesized and since Jesus was really the Messiah he must therefore have done so.And finally we have the selection problem. There were other gospels, but if they made prophecies that were false, the early Church would probably have destroyed them. Until there were only a few surviving gospels (and other letters etc) which had the cream of the crop of prophecy making and fulfillment (and had the best possible claims of having been written before the events). A psychic that predicts a massive array of future events, seals them all and has proof of the time and date they were sealed can destroy all of the failed prediction and dramatically reveal one or two predictions that were spot on, and three or four which, with a bit of interpretative work can be seen as basically being fulfilled - it's an old magic trick, and a variation of an old scam.