Have all prophecies from the Bible come true?

Answer 1

Many believe that prophecies have been fulfilled, but there are still some others pending which relate to the end times. It has been calculated that the odds of certain prophetic events occurring is extremely unlikely, yet the majority have been quantitatively fulfilled in spite of this. Dr Hugh Ross has calculated the following:

" Approximately 2500 prophecies appear in the pages of the Bible, about 2000 of which already have been fulfilled to the letter-no errors. (The remaining 500 or so reach into the future and may be seen unfolding as days go by.) Since the probability for any one of these prophecies having been fulfilled by chance averages less than one in ten (figured very conservatively) and since the prophecies are for the most part independent of one another, the odds for all these prophecies having been fulfilled by chance without error is less than one in 102000!"

Additional answer: In his model prayer, Christ taught us to pray for the coming of God's Kingdom. The fulfillment of Bible prophecy indicates that the Messianic Kingdom was established in heaven in 1914.* Is it, therefore, still appropriate for us to pray for that Kingdom to "come"? Certainly. For in Daniel's prophecy, the Messianic Kingdom, symbolized by a stone, is on a collision course with human political governments, symbolized by an immense image. The stone will yet come against that image, striking it a blow that will reduce it to powder. Daniel's prophecy says: "The kingdom itself will not be passed on to any other people. It will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, and it itself will stand to times indefinite."-Daniel 2:44.

It is noteworthy that the Apostle Paul referred to the execution of God's judgment upon the ungodly as tribulation. He wrote: "This takes into account that it is righteous on God's part to repay tribulation to those who make tribulation for you, but, to you who suffer tribulation, relief along with us at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his powerful angels in a flaming fire, as he brings vengeance upon those who do not know God and those who do not obey the good news about our Lord Jesus." (2Th 1:6-8)

Things Yet to Come

But just what does The Bible foretell about our future?

GOD'S RULE TO REPLACE HUMAN RULE OF THE EARTH. "The God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will . . . crush and put an end to all these [human] kingdoms, and it itself will stand to times indefinite."-Dan. 2:44.

SOME PERSONS WILL SURVIVE THAT DESTRUCTION. "Seek Jehovah, all you meek ones of the earth, who have practiced His own judicial decision. Seek righteousness, seek meekness. Probably you may be concealed in the day of Jehovah's anger."-Zeph. 2:3.

A NEW EARTHLY ORDER. "I saw a new heaven and a new earth . . . And God . . . will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore."-Rev. 21:1-4.

THOSE IN THE GRAVES WILL COME OUT. Jesus declared: "The hour is coming in which all those in the memorial tombs will hear his voice and come out."-John 5:28, 29.

Answer 2

If enough people make enough prophecies, some will come true and some will fail. In other cases, a scriptural passage that was not even intended as a prophecy can be interpreted as such in hindsight, by people who wish to prove the miraculous. Objectively, the Bible has made very few real prophecies, and very few of these have come true.

In early Hebrew times, a prophet was not someone who foretold the future, but someone regarded as an intermediary between God and his people. It was only after the Babylonian Exile that Judaism really came to expect prophets to foretell the future. An example is the prophecy in Ezekiel 29:12 ("And I will make the land of Egypt desolate ... and the cities that are laid waste ...") - a prophecy that never came true.

The gift of prophecy became important in Christian belief. For example, Matthew's Gospel quotes Isaiah chapter 14, where it was said that "the young woman" would conceive and have a baby - a prediction that comes true a few verses later. However, Matthew relied on the Septuagint, an early Greek translation that contains several translation errors. One error in the Septuagint was to replace "the young woman" by "a virgin". By taking this mistranslation, out of context, Matthew found a 'prophecy' that the Messiah would be born of a virgin.

Christian tradition is replete with Old Testament 'prophecies' that were never intended by the biblical authors. Burton L. Mack (Who Wrote the New Testament) tells us how this is done, because he sees happen all the time, in the classrooms of the School of Theology at Claremont. At first the study of a text may not seem to support a traditional Christian conviction, or the answer one hopes to find in the Bible. But with a little ingenuity, one can set up the comparison again with other emphases and make the answer come out right. He says this trick seems to come naturally when studying the Bible. Since these prophecies were created in hindsight, they naturally came true.