If the Bible were to only say that Israel would come back after being conquered by the Romans, then ehm it wouldn't be thaaaat much of a prophecy. The Bible said Israel would come back, and also when Israel would come back.
Ezekiel 4:3-6:
"Then take an iron pan, place it as an iron wall between you and the city and turn your face toward it. It will be under siege, and you shall besiege it. This will be a sign to the house of Israel. "Then lie on your left side and put the sin of the house of Israel upon yourself. You are to bear their sin for the number of days you lie on your side. I have assigned you the same number of days as the years of their sin. So for 390 days you will bear the sin of the house of Israel. "After you have finished this, lie down again, this time on your right side, and bear the sin of the house of Judah. I have assigned you 40 days, a day for each year."
1. Ezekiel said the Jews were to be punished for 430 years because they had turned away from God. As part of the punishment, the Jews lost control of their homeland to Babylon. Many Jews were taken as captives to Babylon.
2. Babylon was later conquered by Cyrus in 539 BC. Cyrus allowed the Jews to leave Babylon and to return to their homeland. But, only a small number returned. The return had taken place sometime around 536 BC, about 70 years after Judah lost independence to Babylon.
3. Because most of the exiles chose to stay in pagan Babylon rather than return to the Holy Land, the remaining 360 years of their punishment was multiplied by 7. The reason is explained in Bible's book of Leviticus. (Leviticus 26:18, 26:21, 26:24 and 26:28). In Leviticus, it says that if the people did not repent while being punished, the punishment would be multiplied by 7. And, by staying in pagan Babylon, most exiles were refusing to repent.
4. So, if you take the remaining 360 years of punishment and multiply by 7, you get 2,520 years. But, those years are based on an ancient 360-day lunar calendar. If those years are adjusted to the modern solar calendar, the result is 2,484 years.
(A better explanation of 4 will come at the bottom of this post)
5. And, there were exactly 2,484 years from 536 BC to 1948, which is the year that Israel regained independence.
(taken from http://www.watchmanbiblestudy.com/Articles/1948PropheciesFulfilled.htm
permission to use automatically granted in notice on bottom of the page)
A better explanation of 4 from (http://www.hebroots.org/hebrootsarchive/9808/9808_m.html):
The Babylonian captivity ended in the spring of 536 B.C.E., 1st Nisan.
This date is the starting point for our calculations.
The period of worldwide captivity would last 2,520 biblical years x 360 days = 907,200 days.
Converting this figure into our calendar year we divide the 907,200 days by 365.25 to reach a total of 2,483.8 calendar years.
(Remember that there is only one yearbetween 1 B.C.E. and 1 C.E.; there was no Year Zero). The end ofIsrael's worldwide captivity would occur after a total of 2,483.8 years had elapsed from the end of the Babylonian Captivity in thespring of 536 B.C.E.
End of Babylonian Captivity: Spring 536 B.C.E. + the duration of Worldwide Captivity: 2,483.8 Calendar Years = When the Worldwide Captivity would end: Spring 1948.
The Rebirth of Israel: May 14th 1948
3 comments:
This sort of nonsense has been refuted time and time again
Using the same strategy that people use to fish these so-called prophecies from the Bible have been shown to be equally applicable to any book. Skeptics have shown how this same stuff can be done with Moby Dick for example, and how it prophecizes the birth of Princess Diana and a whole lot more: http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/torah.html
Its just a case of already having a conclusion and then going to a text to prove it. This is how christiandom produces all those false prophecies for Jesus in the first place (Isaiah 53, 7:14, etc)
Failed prophecies are a dime a dozen in christiandom (http://www.religioustolerance.org/end_wrl2.htm). So many churches have propagated themselves as being the generation to witness Jesus coming, Jesus quite explicitly referred to his own generation being the one who shall witness his return (which never happened). And thus we have the "futurist" approach evolved in contemporary theology where each church takes "the generation which shall not pass" as their own.
If there really was any geniune prophecy in the Bible, then how do you explain this rich history of failed ones?
All this shows its only after a so-called prophecy is fulfilled can you then call it true. Its only after Israel was colonially created in 1948 do you then go back to your bible with muddied wordplay and claim, look this was prophecized.
Hindus do this exact same thing with the Vedas. A little wordplay here and there, and wallah we have all of Indian history, from the British colonists to the countries of India and Pakistan "prophecized" in the Vedas
More ironic of all is that the Bible in itself is filled to the pitfull with plenty of failed prophecies that never came to fruition: http://webspace.webring.com/people/np/paul_tobin/prophecies.html
Finally, given the current trend Israel seems to be headed for a one-state solution, after which I am certain christiandom will denouce these same wordplay prophecies as false and will insist we not confuse them with the real ones. Typical :(
Also SJ watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwXrr3SpK2A
As explained in the video, Hal Linsey, another "futurist" charlatton used the same wordplay you are using predicted that the Bible is saying 40 years after the creation of Israel would Jesus ascend, and of course that never happened either. And not soon after, christians said his wordplay was false
As shown in the link on the first post, this traces to a long tradition of failed prophecies in the christian tradition. After the prophecies fail, christians denounce them as false and then latter on go back to making more false predictions
Why can't bible believers ever make a positive predication of the future using the bible? Everytime they do so, they fail, which seriously shows prophecy is just one big charade.
>> Using the same strategy that people use to fish these so-called prophecies from the Bible have been shown to be equally applicable to any book. Skeptics have shown how this same stuff can be done with Moby Dick for example, and how it prophecizes the birth of Princess Diana and a whole lot more: http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/torah.html
Shalmo, you are confusing the passage in Ezekiel with the Bible Codes. It seems complete words in Equidistant Letter Sequences have been showed to exist in large texts (without metaphysical meaning of course), but that has nothing to do with this particular prophecy at hand.
>> Its just a case of already having a conclusion and then going to a text to prove it. This is how christiandom produces all those false prophecies for Jesus in the first place (Isaiah 53, 7:14, etc)
This is not the issue of the thread. Read the commentaries.
>> Failed prophecies are a dime a dozen in christiandom (http://www.religioustolerance.org/end_wrl2.htm). So many churches have propagated themselves as being the generation to witness Jesus coming, Jesus quite explicitly referred to his own generation being the one who shall witness his return (which never happened). And thus we have the "futurist" approach evolved in contemporary theology where each church takes "the generation which shall not pass" as their own.
This is not the issue of the thread, I referred you to commentaries on the issue you bring up in JP's blog.
>> If there really was any geniune prophecy in the Bible, then how do you explain this rich history of failed ones?
There are no failed prophecies. Read the commentaries.
>> All this shows its only after a so-called prophecy is fulfilled can you then call it true.
That's what a prophecy is. There's nothing diabolical about it.
>> Hindus do this exact same thing with the Vedas. A little wordplay here and there, and wallah we have all of Indian history, from the British colonists to the countries of India and Pakistan "prophecized" in the Vedas.
This has nothing to do with anything.
>> More ironic of all is that the Bible in itself is filled to the pitfull with plenty of failed prophecies that never came to fruition: http://webspace.webring.com/people/np/paul_tobin/prophecies.html
All the stuff on Tobin's page seem to be typical Orthodox apologetics that there's answers for or stuff that there's still time for it to be fufilled.
>> Finally, given the current trend Israel seems to be headed for a one-state solution, after which I am certain christiandom will denouce these same wordplay prophecies as false and will insist we not confuse them with the real ones. Typical :(
There will indeed be a one state solution and it will be a Jewish state. God will make sure of that.
As for your second post, Daniel and Jesus said to not worry about calculating when the end would come since noone will ever get it right. Attempting to calculate it is unbiblical. Because people make mistakes does not mean there's nothing to prophecy.
By the way Shalmo, your Islamic friends attempt to read Muhammad into Deuteronomy.
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