Does prophecy support the Bible

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I'm saying that acording to your logic, any prophecy can be read and then people could go do it.

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Not all prophecies are capable of being carried out, and that is why the best prophecies are the kind beyond human intervention. As has been mentioned, events in the natural world would be a type of prophecy beyond human control.Self-fulfillment is one important criticism when evaluating ANY prophecy, and should be valid to anyone who believes that prophecies can really exist. Without criteria for judging what is good prophecy from bad prophecy, how is anyone able to judge true prophets from false prophets?Dan's beer prophecy was a good one, but let's choose one that is more realistic.You can go to a palm reader and many do. Let's say a palm reader tells you that you will have ice cream soon. Unless you are diabetic, it is likely that you will have some ice cream at some point. The fact that you have been told you will, may even increase your noticing the opportunities you have to do so. If you are particularly devoted to this psychic, you may find it irresistable to get ice cream next time you get the chance.The problem here is that the prophecy has been left in your own hands, and has not been well defined as to when it will actually happen. You could of course try to deny the prophecy by going out of your way to never eat ice cream, but this is of course why prophecy is usually carried out by believers in the first place.If you knew that I was given this same prophecy by a pyschic I swore by, and I tell you I ended up having ice cream the very next day, would you say she was a true prophet or would you say it wasn't a very strong prophecy in the first place?For several of the prophecies you have mentioned, the prophecies are coming true only because those dedicated to their fulfillment (or the prophet) are going out of their way to make them come true. While this does not itself make the prophecy a false one, it seriously removes credibility of the prophecy.Combined with their other weaknesses, Biblical prophecy comes off equally (and sometimes less) credible and reliable as the ones I can get from the psychic down the street.Who then am I to believe? And who are you to believe? Are Jesus and the psychic both great seers? Or will you judge the psychic based on some criteria?As far as "preaching the Bible to every nation on earth" goes, it is problematic that the scale and timeframe were not set (in addition to the self-fulfillment problem).If Jesus had said that the Bible would first have to be taught to nations no one had ever heard of before and in places of the world people could not even conceive of at that point in time, it would have been much more compelling. Otherwise one cannot know that he didn't mean the region people knew of as "the world" at that time. Jesus did not set an accurate physical scale on this prophecy.As it is, the Bible has been taught around the world for centuries (almost 500). Why have the other components of the prophecy not happened sooner? If centuries can lag between points of prophecy, what then is the use of these events as markers? In this way no decent time scale has been set.We can already see that "generation" is now defined to last at least 2000 years, maybe more if people don't get around to building that temple some time soon. Is this parameter being stretched to make prophecy, or is this parameter being used to constrain and define whether something is prophecy? See the weakness?

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By the way the people wanting to rebuild the Jewish temple are not doing it because the Bible prophecied it would be rebuilt. They are not christians. They are rebuilding it because they think a massiah will come. So they can not be self fulfilling the prophecy. They are just fulfilling it.

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Actually they are building it to fulfill prophecy. They are still waiting for the first coming of the messiah, while Xtians wait for the 2nd. It just so happens that both want the same thing, including the building of the temple. It is the same type of reasoning that led Xtians to help Jews reestablish Israel in the first place... so that God's word would not be wrong.I hope this explanation is more acceptable to you, and that if you do not agree with me, that you will explain what criteria is best used to judge true prophecy from false prophecy (or how can you differentiate between a dimestore psychic and Jesus).------------------
holmes

Nice overview on prophetical critique.

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If the right-wing Israelis are willing to ban travel, what sort of Israelis are you thinking that want to plow down Al-Aqsa??

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Some Israelis do want to rebuild the temple (and even tear down the mosque to do so). But what's the matter. If 2000 years have passed so far, and 500 between one point of prophecy and the next, building the temple is just a matter of time.Right?------------------
holmes

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Prophesied when all anyone knew about for money was gold and silver. There will come a time when money/exchange medium will be via marks and numbers worldwide.

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Wrong, this is simply advancement of technology. Marks and numbers were certainly used at the time for inventory, all this suggests is that coins would be replaced by those same methods.Given that Jesus was not to found of coin exchangers in the temple, this could very well be an idea that eventually coin exchangers would not be necessary at all, as marks could be "converted" directly.

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Relevant prophecy: There will come a time when it the nations of the world will view certain persons in one city of the world. This is a Biblical prophecy in Revelation, chapter 11

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I actually do not understand what this means. Do you have a clarification? It certainly looks to fail the vagueness test.By the way, I am not to thrilled to see you on this thread after leaving the other threads on this topic unfinished. I don't think I said anything offensive. Why did you drop out of our discussion, only to reappear here and act like your opinions were not in contention?------------------
holmes

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I see you don't understand the meaning of a prophecy either.

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What is your major malfunction buz? We've been over this in other threads, and you know damn well I am open to prophecy (just haven't seen any yet) and know what prophecy is.And what about the rest of my post? Why did you not bother dealing with any of the rest of it?In the one quote you sampled, I was simply stating that Dan's beer prophecy was a good example of really bad (or fallacious) prophecy. He was making it obvious that it was a bad one, to easily demonstrate what self-fulfilling prophecy means. Furthermore, his argument acts as a reductio if you choose not to use self-fulfillment as a criticism of prophecy in general.You know and I know that there must be criteria for judging prophecy. Self-fulfillment is a sign of poor prophecy. You can debate whether those specific prophecies involve self-fulfillment, but you can't slam Dan or I personally for arguing that they are or if we show other examples of really bad self-fulfilling prophecy.Well I guess you can call anyone names if that is what you like. But you can't use personal attacks to prove your position.------------------
holmes