I was recently told that an excellent example of prophecy fulfillment in the Bible is the prophecy that the nation of Israel would be restored, as recorded in Ezekiel 4. If true, that would be a huge boost to the Bible’s credibility, so let’s dig in and see how it fares.
In Ezek 4:4-6, God tells Ezekiel to do the following:
4 “Lie also on your left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it. According to the number of the days that you lie on it, you shall bear their iniquity. 5 For I have laid on you the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days; so you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. 6 And when you have completed them, lie again on your right side; then you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days. I have laid on you a day for each year.”
A little context is probably in order. Ezekiel lived during the time that the nation of Judah was taken captive by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Much of his writings talk about the captivity that the Jews are under, and in this passage, he prophesies about when they’ll return from captivity. As the end of verse 6 says, each of these days represents one year.
The Case For This Being a True Prophecy
The person who pointed me to this prophecy gave this link as a good explanation of how this prophecy works, so I’ll be referring to its points throughout this post.
First, we take these two periods and add them together: 390 years for Israel + 40 years for Judah = 430 years.
Next, Babylon took Judah captive in 606 BCE for exactly 70 years leaving 360 years left to go. But how do we explain this leftover 360 years?
Well, it turns out that Leviticus 26 lays out all these conditions on the Israelites. There, God tells them that as long as they serve him faithfully, he’ll bless them. But if they don’t serve him faithfully, then he’ll punish them “7 fold” or “7 times” for their sins (Lev 26:18-33). So if we take those remaining 360 years and multiply them by 7, we get 2,520 years.
But we’re not done yet. We must remember that the Jews used a calendar based on both lunar and solar years. They had 12 30-day months and would occasionally add in leap-months as needed to keep the seasons lining up correctly. So to understand what Ezekiel meant by “year,” we need to convert these 2,520 years into days, which comes out to 2,520 x 360 = 907,200 days.
Now to find out how many actual years this represents, we need to convert back to the standard 365.25 day/year calendar that we use today. This comes out to 907,200 / 365.25 = 2,483.78 years.
We can finally connect all the dots:
606 BCE – 70 years = 536 BCE
-536 (since it’s BCE) + 2,483 + 1 (since there’s no year 0) = 1948 CE
And 1948 is the year that Israel was again made a nation! Furthermore, Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar in 587 BCE, 19 years after he took Judah. And Jerusalem was restored to Israel in 1967 CE — exactly 19 years after they reclaimed the nation of Israel! So the numbers work out for Jerusalem as well!
So that’s the case for the prophecy being legit. But are there reasons to be skeptical?
The Case Against This Being a True Prophecy
There are actually a number of problems with what I laid out above, and those familiar with the Old Testament may have already seen them.
First of all, why should the years in Ezekiel’s prophecy be added together at all? Ezekiel says there will be 390 years for Israel and 40 years for Judah — it’s no accident that he separated them. According to Jewish tradition, all 12 tribes of Israel were united when they took the land of Canaan. They remained united through all 15 judges and through kings Saul, David, and Solomon. But after Solomon died, the nation split into two kingdoms: the nation of Israel, consisting of the northern 10 tribes, and the nation of Judah, consisting of the southern 2 tribes. So far, the archaeological evidence leans away from this story. It appears that Israel and Judah were never united into one large kingdom, but that’s outside the scope of this article, so we’ll leave it at that for now.
Israel was taken into captivity by the Assyrian Empire in 722 BCE. Many passages in later parts of the OT predict those lost tribes being restored, and it seems that this is what Ezekiel is referring to in this passage. That’s why they’re given a different period of time than Judah is — they were taken captive almost 150 years before Judah was. So it does not make sense to add these years together as though they refer to one specific thing. Israel and Judah were being dealt with separately here.
Secondly, the starting date of 606 BCE for Judah’s captivity isn’t accurate. In 606 BCE, Judah was its own kingdom, though it was a vassal state to Egypt and had been for 2 or 3 years. Egypt and Babylon were butting heads in the region during this time. Nebuchadnezzar came to the throne in 605 BCE, and he defeated Egypt at Carchemish that same year. That’s when Judah changed allegiance from Egypt to Babylon, as it was suddenly clear that they were now the most powerful force in the region. But it wouldn’t be appropriate to say they were under captivity at that time. They were still a separate kingdom that paid homage to Babylon. If we were to make the case that such a scenario equaled captivity, then Judah’s captivity would actually have begun in 609 or 608 BCE under Egypt.
In 601 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar tried to invade Egypt, but his forces were driven back, which caused several of the kingdoms in the Levant to rebel against him. Judah was one of them. In 599 BCE, Babylon besieged Jerusalem, and the city fell in 597 BCE. But at this point, Judah still retained its status as a vassal kingdom, and Nebuchadnezzar appointed Zedekiah as king. But several years later, Zedekiah revolted, aligning the kingdom with Egypt once again. This time, when Nebuchadnezzar took the city, he practically leveled it, and much of the population was taken off into captivity. This was in 587 BCE.
Considering this information, the most likely candidate to mark the beginning of Judah’s captivity is 587 BCE. Even if you try to push it back further, it’s hard to make a case for any time before 597 BCE, and this causes problems for the math that was laid out above.
One of the problems has to do with the 70 years of Babylonian captivity that was talked about above. When you were reading the above arguments, it may have struck you as odd that 70 years got subtracted for Judah’s captivity to Babylon, when Ezekiel said 40 years. The reason 70 was brought up is because of Jeremiah 29:10, where Jeremiah prophesies that Judah would be in captivity for 70 years. But that’s not what happened.
When the Persian Empire overthrew Babylon in 539 BCE, they allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem that same year (Ezra 1:1). The numbers differ depending on when you count Judah’s captivity as beginning, but this makes Judah’s captivity as few as 48 years (the more likely figure) or as many as 66 years. This again causes problems for all the equations that were used above.
There’s also the issue of multiplying the years by 7. There’s some discussion about whether the passage in Leviticus means that punishments would be multiplied by 7 years, or whether it would mean 7 separate punishments (like 7 additional plagues, etc). There’s also the issue that this kind of language is often taken to be more symbolic than literal. Furthermore, if this is how God was going to mete out the punishment, perhaps that’s already been calculated into the numbers he gives Ezekiel. Again, the passage has God say “a day for each year,” and there’s no indication that it should mean anything else. But I view those as side points.
The main problem I have is why does the multiplication of 7 only apply to 360 of the years? Why wouldn’t it have applied to all of them? So if we add the years together, and multiply by 7, we would have 3,010 years, not 2,520. Even if we continue to use 360-day years, that calculation comes out to 2,966.74 years, which puts us around the year 2431 CE. Of course, that isn’t helpful to those who want this prophecy to be true.
There’s another issue that should be mentioned as well. It turns out that the Septuagint doesn’t use the same figures as the Masoretic text. The Septuagint records Ezekiel 4:4-6 like this:
And thou shalt lie upon thy left side, and lay the iniquities of the house of Israel upon it, according to the number of the hundred and fifty days during which thou shalt lie upon it: and thou shalt bear their iniquities. 5 For I have appointed thee their iniquities for a number of days, for a hundred and ninety days: so thou shalt bear the iniquities of the house of Israel. 6 And thou shalt accomplish this, and then shalt lie on thy right side, and shalt bear the iniquities of the house of Juda forty days: I have appointed thee a day for a year.
It’s hard to say if 390 is the correct number, or if 150 is. Some people think that 150 is original, but that later scribes changed it once that amount of time had passed. But who knows? Unfortunately, there’s not a way to know which number is original to the text, which makes it very hard to base predictions upon.
Finally, the last piece of this that should be questioned is using a 360-day calendar. The Hebrew calendar was based on both the cycle of the moon as well as the solar year. Therefore, it is said that their calendar consisted of 12 30-day months, and every couple of years they would add a 13th month to keep the years aligned correctly with the seasons. But this isn’t exactly right. A lunar month follows the phases of the moon, which does not work out to 30 days exactly. Instead, it will alternate between 29 and 30-day months, meaning that the Hebrew calendar year came out to 354-355 days (or 385 days on leap years). This calls into question using a 360-day calendar to recalibrate the years in Ezekiel’s prophecy.
Furthermore, the Jews still understood that a year consists of 4 seasons (which is why they used intercalary years), so it seems bizarre to redefine “year” every time it’s used in prophecies. And it’s easy to see how big a 5.25 day variance can be. In the example at the beginning of this post, it took us from 2,520 years to 2,483.78 years. Daniel 12 and the Book of Revelation are the only places in the Bible I’m aware of that use a 360-day average in reference to a year. But I think it’s hard to argue that those references mean every time “year” is used in a prophecy it should be recalculated using 360-day years. Most calendars in the ancient world did not operate that way, and 360 days per year was a good generic estimate when referring to how many days are in a year at that time. Just as today we refer to a year as 365 days, when we realize that an extra day is needed every 4 years. That doesn’t mean when someone says something will happen in 20 years we have to recompute it to 19.98 years — we know they mean 20, regardless of how the leap years fall. I’m sure there are some Christians who would argue vociferously over the need to use 360-day “prophetic” years, but they have to. Without them, too much fails.
Conclusion
This was a really long post, and we’ve covered a lot of ground. I certainly can’t speak for everyone, but I personally do not find this prophecy to be a good example of a real prophecy. When taken at face value, Ezekiel talks about 390 years for Israel and 40 years for Judah. Neither of those figures work out correctly. Since they don’t, many different explanations have been sought after to make this prophecy point to something significant. The beginning of this post laid out one of those arguments, and on the surface, it seems pretty impressive. It gets us to the years 1948 and 1967 which are definitely important to the nation of Israel. But to get there, we’re making several sacrifices, like what year Judah went into captivity, adding the years together, multiplying some of them by 7, and converting the years to a 360-day format that almost certainly wasn’t the intent. And there’s still the issue of whether or not that translation is even accurate.
To me, this prophecy is simply too vague to be of any use. And the method used to create a connection to modern-day Israel is too problematic to be anything but evidence against prophecy-fulfillment, in my opinion.
Resources used in this article:
http://www.alphanewsdaily.com/mathprophecy2.html
http://www.theskepticalreview.com/JFTProphecyEzekiel4.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezekiel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Judah
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_%28587_BC%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebuchadnezzar_II_of_Babylon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_calendar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_calendar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunisolar_calendar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_month
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophetic_Year
Finding Truth 
Mike reminds me of this fellow:
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“Oh, I’m sorry, Mike.”
No need to apologize. Pretty much expected. So in other words you can’t get the gold star. She keeps you as far away from them as she can
No shock there. LOL
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‘Mike reminds me of this fellow:”
lol…..Ron you remind me of a 14 year old kind with free time on Mom’s computer…Ooooh Youtube.
Wait… that might not be “remind be of” but more like “remind me that you are” 🙂
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Smile…I seem to recall you berating Nate somewhere for not including all aspects of some prophecy and here you are cutting short my comment so’s it suit your interpretation.
How very Christian of you , Mike. I think the correct term would be, ”Making it up as you go along.”
Really, what an ignorant apologetic plonker you truly are. At least a bloke such as Licona has a modicum of integrity.
But you…really you’re an embarrassment to your faith and your god, and neither do you have a true understanding of Christianity.
Like Gandhi is supposed to have said. ”I like you Christ but I do not like your Christians.”
You are a pathetic excuse of a representative for your religion
I doubt Yeshua would give you the time of day.
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“Smile…I seem to recall you berating Nate somewhere for not including all aspects of some prophecy and here you are cutting short my comment so’s it suit your interpretation.”
Wait your saying context change the fact that you said sorry and ducked. Hmmm so context matters when its you speaking but not when its in a Biblical text. hmmmmm veeeeeery interesting.
Besides that your floundering. the zing I made is unrelated to cutting quotes short. You want a do over? Fine —
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mike. I thought Yeshua was your teacher? Did he throw you out of class and give you detention for being such an unchristian obnoxious twat? Oh, dear.”
No need to apologize. Pretty much expected. So in other words you can’t get the gold star. She keeps you as far away from them as she can
No shock there. LOL
Works the same
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“Really, what an ignorant apologetic plonker you truly are. ”
and yet I knew that Gk manuscripts have no verse numbers, the verse count of Mark and don’t use words like plonker as demonstrating my limited vocabulary. So what does that make you? AH yes
The One who has to learn the basics of GK manuscripts from an apologetic plonker 🙂
Kinda like a Plonker wannabe? I’ll just call it PW for short.
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lol…..Ron you remind me of a 14 year old kind with free time on Mom’s computer…Ooooh Youtube.
Now you’re projecting, because your “Michael Anthony” Google+ account had nothing but comments left on a Youtube video.
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@Ron
It’s funny that you posted that video. I was telling someone the other day how much Mike reminded me of that scene!
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And just for kicks, I’ll offer my little synopsis as well:
Ezekiel gives two figures: 390 years (or 150, depending on the text) and 40 years. Mike’s favored explanation does not explain why two different numbers are given here, though considering Hebrew history / mythology, it seems like it would be referring to the separate kingdoms of Israel and Judah — not a combined period of time.
So Mike adds the numbers together (just because) and comes up with 430 years. That does no good to anyone because it doesn’t point to much of anything significant. So let’s subtract 70 years, not because this text tells us to, but because several other prophets talk about 70 being significant.
This leaves us with 360 years, which still doesn’t do us any good. So now let’s look all the way back in Leviticus and multiply these 360 years by 7. This gets us closer to Israel’s restoration as a country, but it’s not just right. So let’s use some passages in Daniel and Revelation that refer to months as 30 days (just as we refer to them today), and pretend that this means we should recalculate these 2,520 years to 360-day years, then divide that by a real year (365 days), which finally gives us a number we can use!
It’s simple, and I’m sure anyone could have figured this out without having to wait until 1948 or 1967.
However, if these years are based on 360-day years instead of 365-day years, then we obviously should have corrected those numbers before we ever started subtracting or multiplying anything else. So let’s correct things real quick:
430 years x 360 days = 154,800 days
154,800 days / 365.25 days = 423.82 years
We’ll go with Mike’s explanation and say that 7 should not be applied to the first 70 years. You know, good figs and all that. So…
423.82 years – 70 years = 353.82 years
353.82 years x 7 = 2,476.74 years
Let’s just go ahead and use Mike’s years too:
606 BCE – 70 = 536 BCE
-536 + 2,476.74 + 1 (no year 0) = 1941 or 1942 CE
How strange that the 360-day year that Ezekiel must have been using, doesn’t work out when figured correctly. I mean, does it make sense that 70 of those years were 365-day years and the rest were 360-day years?
Don’t worry, our litmus test is this: pick the dates that you need to match and work backwards. Because a divinely-inspired text would work just like this.
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Nate
Brilliant! I think you just delivered the Master Class in “Why This Nonsense Isn’t Taught in a Single University.”
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Thank you, John! Your posts and comments are always so well thought out, so a comment like that from you is high praise indeed.
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“It’s funny that you posted that video. I was telling someone the other day how much Mike reminded me of that scene!”
I love it! When you are reduced to start joining in with Ron’s videos you can tell how desperate you have become. I’ve seen your hand waving on some of the others as well. I liked the link to wikiepedia with the 90% fence and the escape hatch that unless all prophecies are fulfilled none of them can be. Thats really unbiased and just looking to um find the truth
Lol and we have just begun with fulfilled prophecies. Can’t wait to get to the medo persian hack job article debunking by actually looking at the text. Till didn’t tell you everything Nate. If you had done fuller research than relying on Till you might have spared your family some grief
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“Ezekiel gives two figures: 390 years (or 150, depending on the text) and 40 years. Mike’s favored explanation does not explain why two different numbers are given here, though considering Hebrew history /”
yawn repetition isn’t going to make the point stronger … Keep trying my boy. Nothing you say will change the fact that in the ezek 4 text the days Zeke lies there is 430 consecutive days. Till can say whatever he likes (well not anymore I mean ). Might as well argue why the sky is blue on a clear day. So alas fibbing does not work because the text says he’s out there 430 days not me. Case closed
“This leaves us with 360 years, which still doesn’t do us any good. So now let’s look all the way back in Leviticus and multiply these 360 years by 7.”
Yeah baby as required by the law of moses no less. Torah if you didn’t know. Jews always have to follow the torah. Its where the rules of punishment and blessings for sin are defined. Sorry if Till didn’t tell you
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“However, if these years are based on 360-day years instead of 365-day years, then we obviously should have corrected those numbers before we ever started subtracting or multiplying anything else.
430 years x 360 days = 154,800 days
154,800 days / 365.25 days = 423.82 years”
ROFL You silly person you :). Why would we need to change much less obviously need to change the calendar in Ezek 4?
Ezekiel 4 is a prophecy in and of itself and so the years to use would already be in the 360 day format as the number to multiply by 7.
Thats like claiming the 70 weeks of daniel has to be converted to 69 weeks. LOL. Do you ever think things through? or do you just assume its the bible so hey I don’t have to engage my brain for an alternative to my assumptions?
So your whole post based on your desperate assumption is for nought. As a prophecy in regard to the future punishment it would already be the 360 day calendar base- Simpler to specify a day in the future needing no Intercalation (it only needs be converted to specify a time within our calendar). Just count off the days.
Plus your posts betrays your rhetoric that nothing more be need said by you on it because it was supposedly all worthless. The time you spent trying to float that wrong assumption says otherwise.
As far as the date of the return or the month of 606 bc We know only the year and not the months. Your error about the first year of cyrus has previously been corrected since it does not tell us anything in reference to when in his first year. Thankfully and to your chagrin the actual time of the return is not necessary for this prophecy. You just simply use the numbers provided and they work out to 1948 fine
You can whine and hand wave about the 360 day year all you want. Revelations is not unrelated to daniel but builds and interprets it and there is a clear 360 day year which when applied in Daniel lands up at the time of Christ.
S0 the the three dates – the time of Christ, 1948 and 1967 corroborate each other. the same system sets the three dates.. EZ peazy
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If it was already in 360-day years, then there was no need to convert them in your calculations, which means the prophecy (even if you still multiply by 7 and start with 606 BCE) comes out to 1985.
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Hey Nate,
You were right in your previous comment about the 70 years. I noticed the other day that “70” was subtracted from 606 BCE in the calculations from that website you linked to in your original post, which means that they treated the 70 as normal years as we all understand them.
Mike did mention in a comment that it was actually 69 normal years, so another option is to subtract 69 from 606, which will get to 1947. Instead of responding to your correction all I was able to see from Mike’s last comment was the usual foam and spittle of character belittlement.
To me that issue is small potatoes when looking at the whole picture, but it’s just another indication of what’s going on. This looks very much like a back calculation to get to the year of interest after the fact. Unrelated passages from the bible are grabbed to come up with numbers that can be munged together to get to the goal. Also, there is no prophecy in the bible saying that any portion of Ezekiel’s periods are to fall under the judgment of the x7 Leviticus passage, so it’s really a speculative prophecy added to the bible. These kind of back calculations to reach a set goal are more numerous than I had thought back in my college days when I was so impressed with Daniel 9 – other religions have them too.
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“If it was already in 360-day years, then there was no need to convert them in your calculations, which means the prophecy (even if you still multiply by 7 and start with 606 BCE) comes out to 1985.”
Wow. You really do just read Till. Your lost. You multiple by 360 to get the amount of days involved so you can convert to our calendar. However if you are subtracting years in the same calendar you obviously don’t convert them. Simple.
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“Mike did mention in a comment that it was actually 69 normal years, so another option is to subtract 69 from 606, which will get to 1947. Instead of responding to your correction all I was able to see from Mike’s last comment”
Then I would suggest a pair of glasses Howie
“As far as the date of the return or the month of 606 bc We know only the year and not the months. Your error about the first year of cyrus has previously been corrected since it does not tell us anything in reference to when in his first year.
See? I said before we don’t have the months for either. june 2012 to December 2013 is the next calendar year but over a year in time. the difference between a 365 day year calendar and a 360 day calendar over a 70 year period is not sufficient to demand a calendar year change.
“so, there is no prophecy in the bible saying that any portion of Ezekiel’s periods are to fall under the judgment of the x7 Leviticus passage, so it’s really a speculative prophecy added to the bible. ”
Howie you just don’t know what you are talking about. Leviticus 26 is part of God’s covenant with Israel. The section is called the Torah which Jew’s view as more binding and important than any prophetical book. Everything in regard to sin and punishment is bound and dictated in Jewish law by the torah. Ezekiel 4 specifies the number of years of sin and Leviticus 26 indicates that any punishment must be multiplied by 7 provided previous actions have not resulted in repentance. Strictly speaking the only thing Ezek provides us with is the number of years. the multiplication is demanded in the torah. case closed on that issue.
“These kind of back calculations to reach a set goal are more numerous than I had thought back in my college days when I was so impressed with Daniel 9 – other religions have them too.”
Then you got duped. Nate tried the same argument when we discussed Daniel 9 claiming that you can choose any date that fits after the fact. Thats just a bare faced lie made up by skeptics. In Daniel you are EXTREMELY limited to the dates you can look at as they MUST be dates of orders that have to do with rebuilding Jerusalem and there are only a couple. As it turns out picking the ONLY ONE of those orders that actually gets the city rebuilt you come to the time of Christ. its actually Nate and skeptics trying to fudge out of the most appropriate date because they don’t like where the results lead
Of course the contention there again is the 360 day year but you all can whine as long as you want. The odds of using ANY calendar cited in the Bible AND USED in Babylon and coming to these date is statistically significant. The beg that using these calendars would result in season problems ignores the fact that not all calendars used are used for agriculture. to this day we use a 360 calendar in financial applications and there is no doubt whatsoever that babylon also had a 360 day calendar
It only gets MORE statistically significant when using the same numbers of 70 etc used in Daniel 9, and then for the return of Jewish rule over Israel and then the Retaking of Jerusalem all work out to the dates. Like it or not they corroborate each other. Lie till the cows come home the number are provided in the biblical text.
This isn’t about your opinions, whining or barfing whether you disagree or not . This is about mathematical statistical significance that doesn’t bend to what you think and you don’t get to vote on.
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Did anyone use the calculations and numbers of years to arrive at 1948 and 1967 respectively before the events which are a supposed fulfillment of prophecy happened? Anytime after the shift from B.C. to A.D.?
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“These kind of back calculations to reach a set goal are more numerous than I had thought back in my college days when I was so impressed with Daniel 9 – other religions have them too.”
Howie, what other religions have these? Can you give some specific examples? I am interested in hearing more about this. Thanks!
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Bluntbelief: The Baha’i believe there are several prophecies from different religions for the year of the “manifestation of the Bab”. You can find them in several links on this page: http://bci.org/prophecy-fulfilled/
Here’s another Buddhist one: http://www.maitreya.org/english/PZoroaster-Judaism.htm
And then there’s the many mathematical “miracles” of the Quran. Here’s just one: http://www.eholyquran.com/Quran/LinksPrime/MathematicalMiraclesOfQuran.htm
A google search will get you more of these Quranic miracles – some of them related to the count of related words in the Quran matching up, or passages which predict big events of history (like the moon landing for example).
Back when I was a Christian the whole Bible Code became popular after the Witztum, Rips and Rosenberg paper came out. You may have heard about it – hidden messages found in the bible that foretold many big events in history.
Of course then there’s the stuff like the characters of Bill Gates’ name adding up to 666, or the 9/11 e-mail that linked a whole bunch of related events surrounding the attacks to the numbers 9 and 11. Things like this float around every once in a while, and I usually just file them into my Trash box.
And it’s all too common to hear the language of “statistically significant”, “miraculous”, “undeniable”, “amazing” with all of these kinds of claims.
All of these different things have their issues just like the one of the original post, but they show how with a bit of effort and maneuvering it isn’t too hard to generate things which appear miraculous to some.
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…it isn’t too hard to generate things which appear miraculous to some.
And especially for those who have never taken a stats course. All you have to do is ask: how did you derive the statistical probability of your claim……
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“Of course then there’s the stuff like the characters of Bill Gates’ name adding up to 666, or the 9/11 e-mail that linked a whole bunch of related events surrounding the attacks to the numbers 9 and 11.”
Yawn……Nice try. This has nothing to do with bible codes or gematria which is what you are referring to…….lol. These are all numbers on the surface text that are specifically called to be multiplied in a prophecy and in the law of Israel and specifically relates to a particular event. Thanks for the links because not one of them have anything approaching the specificity of this calculation tied to historical dates. it shows that you were just fudging.
Take Daniel 9. There is nothing adhoc or after the fact in that passage. its states clearly its 70 to be multiplied by seven and it gives a particular start date from a word or decree to rebuild Jerusalem. Despite Nate’s bare faced lying you cannot pick any date . it has to be a date where there is a decree or command to rebuild and restore Jersualem.
Daniel 9:24-26 (KJV)
24 Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.
25 Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.
26 And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.
There are only about two or three possible dates and of all of them the only one that actually results in the City being rebuilt in Nehemiah is the one that leads to the time of Christ. Its not the Bible believer that tries to fudge the passage its the skeptic that tries to fudge away from the passage.
Further Daniel 9 is very clear that its dealing with the SAME seventy year period of captivity that is subtracted in this calculation. In the Hebrew its very clear that this time period is to be cut off from the rest of time and separated because that is the literal meaning of the word “determined” in verse 24 – cut off
Go ahead instead of linking to a page you claim contains calculations and end points similar in specificity – present one that actually does.
P.S. Its all just lazy “logic” to say oh this person, religion, group says something simlar so this is no different. if you are one that is dedicated to…ahem… finding truth you deal with it case by case.
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“All of these different things have their issues just like the one of the original post, but they show how with a bit of effort and maneuvering it isn’t too hard to generate things which appear miraculous to some.”
then go ahead bro. Put one up. You linked to this
http://www.eholyquran.com/Quran/LinksPrime/MathematicalMiraclesOfQuran.htm
but thats numerology
You linked to this
http://www.maitreya.org/english/PZoroaster-Judaism.htm
But the fulfillment date is just when someone is alleged to receive some personal revelations not a hard historical event such as the founding of a nation or the reclaiming of a city as in 1967.
You cite this
http://bci.org/prophecy-fulfilled/
With about 40 links but don’t specify what you are talking about which is rather convenient.
Put up one that matches this calculation or you are just blowing smoke.
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Howie,
I’m aware of most of these already. I apologize; I misread your original post. But thank you for replying!
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