Christians claim that God can see what is going to happen in the future. He is a celestial fortune-teller. They also claim that, in order that we might be able to show that Jesus was his Messiah, Prophet, and Son, he foretold things about him in the Old Testament.
One is struck by the importance that the biblical Jesus attached to fulfilling what the prophets of the Old Testament allegedly foresaw about him (Matthew 5:17; Luke 24:27; Luke 24:44; Matthew 26:56; Luke 4:20–21; Acts 3:18; Luke 22:37; Acts 10:43; 1 Corinthians 15:3–4; Matthew 2:4–6; Acts 13:29). He used these prophecies as credentials. If he was wrong about them, then he was not the Son of God.
Acts 17:2–3 has Paul arguing with his hearers for three Sabbath days using the Old Testament, explaining and proving that it was necessary for Jesus the Messiah to suffer and rise from the dead. This makes Paul untruthful, for no proof that a resurrection was predicted can be found in the texts.
Scholars agree that the prophecies do not fit Jesus and were never meant to.
Christians respond that it looks that way, but God put the prophecies together in such a way that he knew the first Christians, by using their method of interpretation, would see that they matched Jesus. God, they say, inspired the interpretation method. This is just a cop-out. Anybody could make prophecies using that kind of standard.
The Bible that Christians plunder for prophecies is not the Bible but a mistranslation called the Septuagint.
This fraud was enabled by St. Augustine, among others:
“For the Septuagint translators are justly believed to have received
the Spirit of prophecy; so that, if they made any alterations under
His authority, and did not adhere to a strict translation, we could
not doubt that this was divinely dictated. And therefore we find
that the apostles justly sanction the Septuagint, by quoting it as
well as the Hebrew when they adduce proofs from the Scriptures.”
— St. Augustine, City of God
Books Forecasting a Messiah?
Jesus told the world that the Prophets—the Old Testament apart from the Law—predicted things about him. The New Testament says he belonged to a line of royal blood that God cursed. God vowed that the line of Coniah would never reign. So Jesus was not Messiah or king. Christians allege that God forgave the line, but no clear evidence of that exists in the Bible. It is just speculation. There is something amiss when they have to rely on speculation, especially in a matter so serious. Because if they are wrong, they are following a Messiah who is unauthentic.
Malachi 3:1
God says that he will send a messenger before he comes to the Temple as the Angel of the Covenant.
Alleged Fulfilment: God sending John the Baptist as a forerunner for Jesus and visiting the Temple in the person of his Son.
New Testament Interpretation: It imagines that this is the fulfilment (Matthew 11:10).
The Truth: John the Baptist initially believed and then doubted that Jesus was the Christ (Matthew 11). He was no angel then. A vacillating man is not a proper forerunner but a hindrance. God could not make such a silly prediction unless he indulges in doing stupid miracles, for any Jew could fulfil the prediction.
The prophecy does not mention an incarnation, so it is most likely predicting a theophany or apparition from God in the Temple.
Micah 4:2
“All nations will receive the Law from Jerusalem.”
Alleged Fulfilment: Jesus will give the Law of God to all people.
The Truth: Jesus made mistakes about the Law. He said that when God told Moses he was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it proved that the doctrine that people will rise from the dead is in the Bible. The Law—not a perversion of it—will go out. Where does the Old Testament say that Jesus will send it out of Jerusalem?
Micah 5:2
“In Bethlehem of Judea will come one who had his origin from of old.”
In The Case for Jesus the Messiah, we learn that quedem or “from old” literally means “from ancient time, aforetime” (page 74). Or it can mean “from eternity.”
New Testament Interpretation: Predicts that Jesus will be born in Bethlehem. Matthew deliberately misquoted the verse in his gospel to make it a more convincing prediction about Jesus.
The Truth: Matthew took it out of context. The prophecy says that when his mother gives birth to him, the exiles of Israel will come back to it, which did not happen when Jesus was born (v.3). The prophecy says only that the man will come from Bethlehem, so he was not necessarily born there. The man will have existed before he was born, perhaps as an angel or plan in God's mind.
The verse does not prove that "the figure must be God, as he came from eternity, which only God can do." The Bible never mentions eternity—the concept comes from Greek philosophy. The verse, then, if it refers to eternity, means it in the poetic sense of “long ago.”
Jeremiah 23:5–6
A king will come to save Israel and Judah who will be called “Yahweh our Righteousness.”
Alleged Fulfilment: Jesus is “Yahweh our Righteousness” and will save them someday.
New Testament Interpretation: None.
The Truth: The word “save” can mean many things. Jeremiah doesn’t say if he means the Messiah or a Messiah. And he does not say the king will save, but only that the people will be safe in his day. The name of the person does not mean that he will be God, for the popular Jewish name Joshua (or Jesus) meant “God the saviour.” The king could be called “Yahweh our Righteousness” as a nickname or title.
Jeremiah 31:15
“Rachel weeps for her children, for they are dead in Ramah.”
Alleged Fulfilment: The massacre of the innocents by Herod in Bethlehem.
New Testament Interpretation: The Gospel of Matthew explicitly claims that this is the fulfilment (Matthew 2:17).
The Truth: Ramah was not Bethlehem but a village five miles north of Jerusalem. God tells Rachel to stop crying, for he will bring the rest of her children back. The passage refers to the return of the Jews to Israel after they were deported to Babylon. Rachel mourns those who have died, and God promises to bring the rest home to console her. Rachel here is the long-dead wife of Jacob. She is not really crying—the prophet is just being poetic, for she was the ancestress of the people who were dying and exiled, the people of Ephraim.
It is not advisable to take a poetic passage literally to locate forecasts about Christ in it.
Christians say that the prophecy of chapter 31 must refer to the time the Messiah was on earth. This is false. Up until verse 31, there is nothing that might be messianic in it. After that, it starts to tell us about the new covenant. Christians say that Jesus brought in this new covenant, so it is about Jesus. But God can make a new covenant without a Messiah. And who is to say the covenant is the one Jesus brought in? God says the new covenant will make everybody miraculously know the truth and that Israel will become holy in all its ways. This covenant is not that of Jesus Christ, for it never did these things. Christians reply that it will in time, but that only makes it a potential covenant!
It is highly unfair to say a prediction is messianic when it doesn’t say so itself.
Isaiah 7:14
“The virgin shall conceive and bear a son called Emmanuel,” which means “God is with us.”
Alleged Fulfilment: Jesus being born of Mary, who was a virgin.
New Testament Interpretation: The Gospel of Matthew says the prophecy predicts the birth of Jesus from the Virgin Mary.
The Truth: In context, Isaiah 7:14 says the prediction was a sign for a king living centuries before Christ. Jesus was not called Emmanuel or even nicknamed. Matthew read parthenos in the Septuagint—the translation of the Old Testament Book of Isaiah—and quoted the verse with parthenos in it. But in the original Hebrew, and it is only the original that counts, the word translated as “virgin” was almah, which meant “a young woman.” The prophecy has been altered from the original. The claim made by Matthew for the prophecy insults God’s intelligence—and ours!
BOOKS CONSULTED
Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible, John W Haley, Whitaker House,
Pennsylvania, undated
Are There Hidden Codes in the Bible? Ralph O Muncaster, Harvest
House Publishers, Eugene, Oregon, 2000
Attack on the Bible, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro,
Tennessee, 1965
Bible Dictionary and Concordance, New American Bible, Catholic
Edition, CD Stampley Enterprises, Charlotte Enterprises, Inc, North
Carolina, 1971
Encyclopaedia of Bible Difficulties, Gleason W Archer, Zondervan,
Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1982
Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Vol 1, Alpha, Scripture Press
Foundation, Bucks, 1995
God’s Word, Final, Infallible and Forever, Floydd C McElveen, Gospel
Truth Ministries, Grand Rapids, 1985
In Search of Certainty, John Guest, Regal Books, Ventura,
California, 1983
Jesus Hypotheses, V Messori, St Paul Publications, Slough, 1977
Science and the Bible, Henry Morris, Moody Press, Bucks, 1988
Science Speaks, Peter W Stoner, Robert C Newman, Moody Press,
Chicago, 1976
The Bible Code, Michael Drosnin, Orion, London, 2000
The Case for Jesus the Messiah, John Ankerberg Harvest House,
Eugene, Oregon, 1989
The Hard Sayings of Jesus, FF Bruce, Hodder & Stoughton, London,
1983
The Late Great Planet Earth, Hal Lindsay, Lakeland, London, 1974
The Signature of God, Grant R Jeffrey, Marshall Pickering, London,
1998
The Truth Behind the Bible Code, Dr Jeffrey Satinover, Sidgwick &
Jackson, London, 1997
The Truth of Christianity, WH Turton, Wells Gardner, Darton & Co
Ltd, London, 1905
The Unauthorised Version, Robin Lane Fox, Penguin, Middlesex, 1992
The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus, Raymond E
Brown, Paulist Press, New York, 1973
Theodore Parker’s Discourses, Theodore Parker, Longmans, Green,
Rader and Dyer, London, 1876
Whatever Happened to Heaven, Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Eugene,
Oregon, 1988