Biblical Prophesy - Evidence For Xtianity?

Originally posted by The Dude 84
One thing seems to be totally absent from the debate:

Are there any prophecies that didn't come true in the bible? If so it would make the ones that did come true less meaningful. How reliable is a fortune teller if they're not always right?

The debate started because evolution was shown to predict certain things that are found in reality. The rea contents of the bible.

For example, Tell me how the bible can explain human psychology?

The prophecies of the Bible are so vague that there can be no definite answer to whether they came true or not. It depends on your interpretation of the prophecy, which is one reason it's not science.

Wow. I've been on this two and a half years. I'll put some time in and try to get closer to finishing. Some of the Muslims on this site have been asking for my viewpoint on something but I wanted to finish this first.

I made a mistake. I wrote that 10 had no prophecy. I must have been trying to get it finished quickly because now I see some there.

10:1 In the third year of Cyrus king of Persia a thing was revealed unto Daniel, whose name was called Belteshazzar; and the thing was true, but the time appointed was long: and he understood the thing, and had understanding of the vision.

OK...

10:5 Then I lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and behold a certain man clothed in linen, whose loins were girded with fine gold of Uphaz:

10:6 His body also was like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in colour to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude.

10:7 And I Daniel alone saw the vision: for the men that were with me saw not the vision; but a great quaking fell upon them, so that they fled to hide themselves.

Will there be an explanation?

10:14 Now I am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy people in the latter days: for yet the vision is for many days.

Ok...

No, I was right the first time. No predictive value here though there is some prophetic sounding stuff.

11 looks nice and juicy though.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
[b]The prophecies of the Bible are so vague that there can be no definite answer to whether they came true or not. It depends on your interpretation of the prophecy, which is one reason it's not science.

Are you saying that science has no interpretive elements? I think this assumption to be false.

Also, why not look at the rabbis who interpreted Daniel 9:24-27 in the Talmud and decided that it prophesied the coming of the Messiah to be around the time of Christ. Their interpretation, however, was that he tarries because of the sinfulness of Israel. Its either that or they must conceed that Jesus is the true Messiah.

Originally posted by whodey
Are you saying that science has no interpretive elements? I think this assumption to be false.

Also, why not look at the rabbis who interpreted Daniel 9:24-27 and decided that it prophesied the coming of the Messiah to be around the time of Christ. Their interpretation, however, was that he tarries because of the sinfulness of Israel.

When a scientist interprets, the first thing that is expected is that he will then take his new hypothesis and experimentally check to see if his intepretation is right. If this cannot be done then it is not science.

Religious interpretation doesn't work this way. There's no rigorous process of checking to see who is right and who is not. It's more like ancient Greek philosophy, where people just argue without actually trying to check who is actually right using data and hypotheses that are controlled for human bias and interpretation.

This is why science uses so much math. Math is either valid or not; no human interpretation needed. Thus if you study things that can be quantified you can get very precise, reliable and useful predictions that let you do things like land people on the moon and blow up Hiroshima. Religion does not provide the same kind of reliable predictive information as do Einstein's equations about relativity.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung

Religious interpretation doesn't work this way. There's no rigorous process of checking to see who is right and who is not.

Here is a rigorous interpretation process of Daniel 9:24-26

Part one (A chronilogical summary of Daniel 9:24-26)
1. There would be a decree to rebuild Jerusalem
2. Jesusalem and the Temple would be rebuilt.
3. Then an annoited one (messiah) would by "cut off" (an idiom for "rejected" or "killed"😉
4. Then Jerusalem and the Temple would be destroyed again.

I came up with this summary after reading various renderings of this verse in various translations of the Christian Bible of the Jewish Tanakh. (The Tanakh is the Jewish Bible; it contains the writings of what we Christians refer to as the Old Testament). I believe that this chronology fits most of the renderings that I have seen, whether they are translations by Christians or by Judaists. My summary if in no way originial-many Christians, such as John McDowell, have come up with the same chronology long before I did.

Part 2 (A summary of how Daniel 9:24-26 was fulfilled)
1. After the Medo-Persians had conquered the Babylonian empire about 2540 years ago, they ruled a vast empire that included the land of Israel. About 2446 years ago (about 445 BC), Persian king Artaxerxes gave permission to the Jews to rebuild Jerusalem, which was still in ruins after having been destroyed earlier by the Babylonians.
2. The Jews rebuilt the Temple and the city of Jerusalem.
3. Then, in about 33 AD, Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem.
4. About 40 years after Jesus was crucified, the Romans destroyed Jesrusalem and the Temple. (The temple has not been rebuilt since then)

Part 3 (How Daniel 9:24-26 was fulfilled to the day according to scholars such as Josh McDowell)
First McDowell and other scholars, separate the prophecy into 3 parts.
1. The "7 sevens" in Daniel 9:25.
2. The "62 sevens" in Daniel 9:25.
3. And the "70 sevens" in Daniel 9:27.

Then, they combine the first two periods for a total of 69 "sevens". They combined the first two periods because it is at after completion of those two periods that the anointed one appears, and that is what we are trying to calculate - when the anointed one was suppose to appear.

Next, tehy interpret the "sevens" as "seven years" or periods of seven years, rather than a period of seven days or seven weeks or seven months. Part of the reason that this is interpreted as "years" is because of the reference to "years" in Daniel 9:2. (Daniel 9:2 refers to the "seventy years" prophecy that Jeremiah spoke of in Jeremiah 25).

At this point, we are adding the 7 "sevens" and the 62 "sevens" for a total of 69 "sevens". And we are interpreting the 69 "sevens" to mean 69 periods of seven years, for a total of 483 years. So, we are saying that there would be a total of 483 years from the time that a decree is given to rebuild Jerusalem to the time that the Messiah is to appear.

Some scholars say that the period of 483 years should not be thought of in terms of our modern solar calendar which is based upon 365.25 days to a year. Instead, we are to use a "prophetic" calendar which has 360 days to a year. Many ancient calendars, including the Jewish calendar, was based on a lunar year of 12 months, with each month lasting 30 days each. Many ancient peoples, including the ancient Jews, did realize that there actually were more than 360 days to a year and so they would tack on an extra five days at some point during the year.

I could go on, but you get the idea. This interpretation has been just as rigorous as any scientific interpretation. You can read more if you like on this web site. http://100prophecies.org/weeks.htm if you like.

However, the most damning evidence as I have said is the rabbinical interpretations of Daniel 9:24-26. We see in the Talmud evidence that the rabbis are in agreement with the Christian intepretations. Why if they reject the Messiah?

"1a. Maimonides (Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon): "Daniel has elucidated to us the knowledge of the end times. However, since they are secret, the wise (rabbis) have barred the calculation of the days of Messiah's coming so that the untutored populace will not be led astray when they see that the end times have already come but there is no sign of the Messiah" (Igeret Teiman, Chapter 3 p.24)

So here we see that the ancient rabbis not only conceed that Daniel 9:24 is a calendar for for the coming Messiah, but that they have forbidden the calculation of the date because it apparently has already come and gone without sign of the Messiah. That is, if you reject Jesus as Messiah.

I suppose you and I could go round and round about the interpretation of Daniel 9:24, however, who cares? Are we experts? In fact, you could probably go to as many web sites that calculate Daniel 9:24 to be the calendar of the coming of the Messiah as there are those that refute such a notion. However, who are the experts? Are they not the rabbis of old mentioned above? How is you trying to interpret the Torah equal to that of the rabbis of old? Is this not equivalent to a preacher trying to refute evolutionary ideas? The preacher is out of his element. He has no understanding of science nor the rigor involved with interpreting scientific findings. What is worse, he probably has little education in terms of interpreting the original Torah that seems to support an evolutionary path. In fact, Maimonides wrote hundreds of years ago that his interpretation of Genesis in the original Hebrew led him to believe that we, in fact, had an evolutionary beginning.