One of the great proofs of Scripture, one of the great products of its revelation, is prediction that came to pass years afterward with such amazing accuracy that was humanly impossible, that it must be authored by God. Welcome to Grace To You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. It's been said that if you take a hundred million silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas, they will cover the entire state two feet deep. And if one of those dollars were marked with an X, and if you had a blindfolded man pick up a dollar at random, the chance that he would grab the marked one would be about the same chance as if eight biblical prophecies about Jesus would come true. And yet, keep in mind, more than eight prophecies about Jesus were fulfilled in the New Testament. So what should those incredible odds tell you about the trustworthy nature of God's Word, and how can that give you hope today? Consider those questions with John MacArthur as he continues his study titled, Is the Bible Reliable?
And here's John with today's lesson. One of the great marks of divine revelation is the fact that God has written down in this book events in history, people and places, and the conflicts of both with such absolute accuracy that there is no way that the human mind could have ever known these things, only the divine mind of God could have foreseen them. And then one of the great proofs of Scripture, one of the great products of its revelation is just that, that there is in the Bible prediction that came to pass years afterward with such amazing accuracy that was humanly impossible that it must be authored by God. This is essentially, if you will, the argument from omniscience. Since the Bible knows everything, it must be the product of a being who knows everything and that being is none other than God.
This then is God's book. There is no way that human beings with limited capacities, both in terms of intellect and observation, could ever know the future. There is no way that man can predict the future. Only God can give us detail by detail by detail, history, before it happens. That is precisely what the Bible does.
McElvain gives us a helpful definition and I'll give it to you. He says, Prophecy is a declaration of future events such as no human wisdom or forecast is sufficient to make. Depending on a knowledge of the innumerable contingencies of human affairs, which belongs exclusively to the omniscience of God so that from its very nature prophecy must be divine revelation. Prophecy is not just a good guess. Prophecy is not just conjecture. It is the statement of historical fact that is unpredictable and contingent and unknowable and future.
And only God can do that. Now we can probe into the past by the means of the science of historiography. We can probe into space by the means of the science of astronomy. But we have no faculty of pre-knowledge. And that is why probably the most interesting subject to the human mind is the subject of the future because it is the one area where he has absolutely no knowledge. Oh, it's true that we may be able by observing certain things that are going on, be able to predict a trend in business, or we may be able to predict a movement in politics, or we may be able to forecast the weather somewhat due to current circumstances.
But there is no way that we can in the future pinpoint people and places by name and actual historical data that shall take place. This kind of prediction with this kind of fulfillment constitutes one of the claims of Scripture to its uniqueness as being the revelation of God. Listen to Isaiah 46, 9 and 10. I am God and there is none like Me declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times the things that are not yet done. God says, I am God, I can tell you at the beginning what the end will be and from ancient times the things that are not yet done.
None like Me. He alone is omniscient. Man admits he is not omniscient.
Man admits he doesn't know everything. He doesn't know the future. But the Bible predicts with amazing accuracy the future. Now somebody immediately is saying, well wait a minute, you're talking about predicting the future and you say only God can do it. What about Nostradamus, or what about Mother Shipton, or what about Edgar Cayce, or what about Jean Dixon, or whoever else, Jane Roberts or any of the rest of them.
What about them? Well if you study their predictions, you'll find that their predictions are for the most part rather general, rather nebulous, rather capable of various and sundry meanings. Generally they don't come to pass. The exception is when they do.
A few are fulfilled in a general sense. And I hasten to add this, many of the predictions that these people have made and are making are made demonically. And the demons will predict something is going to pass when they in fact have the control to make that thing happen. And there are some things that demons can affect. There are some things that they can do that the kingdom of Satan can bring to pass.
And demons, knowing that that is their strategy, can then predict that it will happen and that's really what hooks people. You say, what about horoscopes? Horoscopes don't predict anything.
They just tell you what you're like and you keep listening to them long enough until you become like that. No man or no demon can predict specific events or persons by name who will appear scores or hundreds of years in the future. I'll give you an interesting statement. I read this week at least two different historians who said, there is no religion extant in the world with one viable, believable, verifiable prophecy except Christianity. There is not one. You study all the religions of the past, none of them have predictive prophecy, none of those things that they said were pinpoint prophecies that ever came to pass. They didn't even fool with that. That would have been to discredit them, wouldn't it? Because they could have shot themselves down by making future predictions that never came to pass. So they avoided it. Satan isn't stupid. He knows what he's doing.
But you know something? The Bible didn't avoid making prophecies. It makes prophecies over and over and over and over and over. A. T. Pearson says there are at least a thousand separate prophecies.
And all of them that were to come to pass have come to pass with absolute accuracy. Now watch. You say, well, fulfilled prophecy doesn't prove the Bible is the Word of God. Listen to this. Listen. If prophecy doesn't prove the Bible is the Word of God, it could sure prove that it isn't the Word of God.
Really fast, couldn't it? By just being wrong a few times. But it isn't wrong.
It's never wrong. Now what is the divine standard? What is the divine standard in Deuteronomy 18, 20? It says this, But the prophet who shall presume to speak a word in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or who shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall...what?...die. God doesn't tolerate false prophets. And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken?
How do we know when the guy says the truth and when he doesn't? How do we know he's a legitimate prophet? When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath...what?...not spoken. But the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously, thou shalt not be afraid of him.
He doesn't really know the scoop. Now notice, the standard...the standard for God's prophets was absolute accuracy. I submit to you that if you say the Bible cannot prove to be the Word of God prophetically, I tell you this, if you will find one prophecy in the Bible that did not come to pass as the Bible says, you can throw away your Bible and I'll join you in it because God said there must be absolute accuracy.
Let me show you another passage. Turn to Isaiah 41, Isaiah 41, 21. Here you have a definition of prophecy.
He says, produce your cause. Isaiah writes, says the Lord, bring forth your strong reason, says the King of Jacob. If you've got the answers, let them bring them forth and show us what will happen. You want...you know how to tell a true prophet in the Old Testament time?
He can tell you what will happen. Let them show the former things which they are that we may consider them and know the latter end of them or declare us...what?...things to come. Show the things that are to come hereafter that we may know that you are God's.
Now you see what the test is? True prophet predicts the future with 100 percent accuracy, putting those Scriptures together, 100 percent accuracy and there are many other Scriptures incidentally on the prophetic theme. One other one just comes to mind in Jeremiah 28 and 9, I'll read it to you. The prophet who prophesieth of peace, when the word of the prophet shall come to pass, then shall the prophet be known that the Lord hath truly sent him. Jeremiah 28 and 9. You can tell a true prophet because what he says comes to pass, absolute accuracy.
Now mark this. The Scripture over and over and over and over and over appeals to this unanswerable proof of the divine nature of the Scripture. In my mind, folks, the single greatest proof of the truthfulness of this book is fulfilled prophecy.
It is absolutely staggering in its amount. It is extra biblical in its verification. It is unanswerable as an argument for the validity of Scripture. You know, the first Christian sermon that was ever preached was preached on the day of Pentecost and it was based on prophecy. Peter stood up and said God had determined that Christ would die. They had killed Christ and immediately he launched into the prophecies of the book of Psalms on the resurrection of Jesus Christ and showed how they came to pass, didn't he?
And the rest of the preaching of the apostles and the preaching of the early church had prophetic themes in it. Prophecy has always been an unanswerable proof of the divine origin of Christianity. It all began with Genesis 3.15 where you have the first prophecy where it's prophesied that the seed of the woman would bruise the serpent's head. No woman ever had a seed until Mary conceived Jesus Christ without a human father. The seed was in the woman for the first time in the history of mankind and Jesus was born of that union.
A virgin-born man, Genesis 3.15 predicts. And it goes all the way out to the end of the book of Revelation and you've gotten the book of Revelation just loads of prophecy. And you and I are seeing the shadows of some of it coming to pass right before our eyes. Now the prophecies of the Bible relate to a lot of things. They relate to history.
They relate to eschatology. There are things which have already come to pass and there are parts of the prophecies that have not yet come to pass. Some of the prophecy relates to people.
Some of it relates to people in mass, some to individuals, some to rulers, some to kings, some to cities, some to nations, and some to the whole world. The Bible is loaded with it. In the Old Testament, for just a brief illustration, there are 20 chapters consecutively in Isaiah of prophecy, 17 in Jeremiah, 9 in Ezekiel, 2 in Amos, and it goes all the way out to the end of the prophetic books, just more and more and more and more. Doom is predicted for Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia, Babylon, Tyre, Sidon, and on and on and on it goes.
In the New Testament, there are prophecies in the gospels covering the cities in Palestine such as Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Chorazin. There is the great book of the prophecy of the book of Revelation where prophecy goes on out till the end till the Lord comes and even after that. But all prophecies that have been geared to be fulfilled in history up to this time have been fulfilled with such amazing accuracy, it's staggering. I think what is especially interesting in the light of this is to have you look at 1 Peter chapter 1 for a moment. 1 Peter chapter 1 gives us an amazing insight and it is this, the prophets didn't even know what they were writing. The stuff was so futuristic and so prophetic and so out of whack with the current scene that they didn't even understand it. You know, when a prophet predicted that Babylon would be destroyed, that was like predicting that New York would be knocked off by the Boy Scouts, you know.
I mean, that was just absolutely beyond belief because it was so foreign to the thought of the day. But you come to 1 Peter 1, 10 you read this, of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you, searching what person or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ who was in them did signify when He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow. Now to untangle that, it simply means this, they predicted the coming of Christ and then they read what they wrote to figure out what it meant. That's inspiration, folks. They actually had to read their own prophecies and they couldn't even understand them.
Let me give you an illustration. Isaiah sat down to write one day under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and he wrote an amazing thing. In Isaiah, and I believe it's the 44th chapter and about verse 28, here's what Isaiah wrote. He wrote about Cyrus. He says, "'Who saith of Cyrus, he is my shepherd and shall perform all my pleasure, even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built and to the temple Thy foundation shall be laid.' Isaiah said, "'Folks, there's coming a man who is going to release the Jews from captivity and send them back to build a wall and build a temple. His name is Cyrus.'"
Now listen to me, folks. Isaiah said that 150 years before Cyrus was ever born. How did he know that? He said it was a good guess. You don't guess that Cyrus is going to be the king and release Israel. Let me give you another one. This is really an interesting one.
It's very similar. First Kings chapter 13 verse 2. This just staggers you. "'And he cried against the altar in the word of the Lord and said, O Alder, Alder, thus saith the Lord. Behold, a child shall be born into the house of David.'"
Listen. "'Josiah by name and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places who burn incense upon thee and men's bones shall be burned on thee.'" Now here he says, there's coming a man named Josiah who's going to burn all these false people.
You know when he said that? Three hundred years before Josiah was born, he named him and said what he'd do and he did it. There's no way for a man to know that. That has to be God. Prophecy might not prove the Bible is the Word of God, but boy, it sure could fast prove it isn't, right?
All it had to do was name the guy something but Josiah. God's absolute test is the accuracy of the Word of God. God says, try it, test it, put it to the test, doesn't He? See it. It can stand the scrutiny.
It's never wrong. Jesus told the people in Mark 13 23, one of the reasons you ought to listen to what I say is this, "'Behold, take heed, I have told you all things.'" And He said that in a prophetic context. You better listen to me, folks. I'm telling you the future and that's not something you can do.
You ought to recognize who I am. Now the evidence for fulfillment is overwhelming. Let's go to Ezekiel and I'll show you some prophecies that came to pass. Ezekiel 26, the first one we'll look at is Tyre. Look at chapter 26, and actually the judgment on Tyre goes clear through verse 19 of 28, but we're not going to endeavor to go into three chapters, just part of it 26. Now as you look at that prophecy, it's a very detailed prophecy. We could probably outline nine or ten different things.
Let me just give you a few. The prophecy goes like this. Number one, Nebuchadnezzar will destroy the mainland city of Tyre, verse 7 and 8. Secondly, verse 3 and 4, many nations will rise against Tyre and it's said they'll come like waves of the sea.
That means in succession, one and then later another and then later another, like waves roll in and go back and roll in again and go back and roll in again. Another thing, Tyre would be made bare like a flat rock, twice that is stated. Twice it is stated fishermen will dry their nets there. It is stated in verse 12 that all the rubble will be cast into the sea. All that is left of the city will be thrown in the water and it is stated also in 14 and 21, Tyre will never be rebuilt. Now Tyre was a great city. Tyre wasn't just a little fishing village, it was a very great city. The Phoenician people lived there and it was really the capital of Phoenicia. The Phoenician people were the world's greatest colonizers of ancient times. Now the city of Tyre was the capital of this Phoenician trade center.
And of course, you know the Middle East isn't a crucial thing no matter which way you're going up, down, or back and forth, you wind up in the Middle East. And so they were at a crucial point of trade. From Hiram I, Tyre controlled Phoenicia. It was strongly fortified and to show you how strongly fortified it was, it had a 150 feet high wall and the wall was 15 feet thick.
In addition to that, and of course that surrounded the city on its land side and the sea, they had one of the most capable fleets in the world to defend themselves from the sea. When Joshua led the children of Israel into the Promised Land, Tyre was a flourishing city. Hiram I actually began to reign sometime during the reign of David. And when David was going to build the palace, you remember David built the beautiful cedar palace? He got those cedars from Hiram because Phoenicia and Tyre really was in the territory today that we know as Lebanon, the cedars of Lebanon. And Hiram loaned David his artisans to craft parts of the great palace.
David was succeeded by his son Solomon. Solomon didn't build a palace, what did he build? He built a temple and again he used Hiram. And Hiram floated down cedars to the shoreline and they hauled them up to Jerusalem for the building of the great temple. And so this was a very, very great city. It was a city that both David and Solomon looked to for aid.
Now three years after the prophecy was given by Ezekiel, Nebuchadnezzar did exactly what the prophecy said. He threw up a mound against the city and he began to siege the city. In those days, you know how they conquered a city? They just surrounded it and sooner or later the supply was cut off. As soon as they laid siege against the city, the city couldn't come or go. No traffic, no trade, no nothing and you had to live on what you had and hope that the army starved before you starved. And so Nebuchadnezzar threw a siege.
It lasted thirteen years. And when Nebuchadnezzar did that, he laid that siege for thirteen years. At the end of that time, he stormed the city and smashed the walls. It said he would break down the towers and smash the walls in verse 12 and that's exactly what he did. And when he did that, he fulfilled the prophecy.
The tire would be destroyed accurately. Ezekiel even said who would do it. He even said he'd break down the towers when he did it, that he'd smash down the walls. And that wasn't necessarily always done. Sometimes the city would surrender and you could just go through the gate and take over when they were all dying of starvation.
But an amazing thing happened. Finally, when Nebuchadnezzar stormed that thing and smashed and crushed the walls and hit the city, there weren't any spoils left in the city. All during those thirteen years, the people had been removing all of their possessions to an island a half mile off shore. They had been using their fleet to just run the stuff out there and they now had an island city a half mile off shore.
The twenty-ninth chapter of Ezekiel, the seventeenth to the twentieth verse, tells us that Nebuchadnezzar gained no plunder. Now what happened? They took the mainland city. It was destroyed. But there was a new little island city a half mile off shore and it flourished for 250 years. Remember, the prophecy was fulfilled. The city of Tyre was destroyed.
A new little thing on the island began. And for 250 years that little city flourished out there and all the stones and all the timbers and all the rubble remained for 250 years sitting right there on the old site of Tyre. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. John's current series is titled, Is the Bible Reliable? John, as you showed today, the prophecies in Scripture that have already been fulfilled make a strong case for the Bible's reliability. And yet there still is a tendency for people to sort of throw up their hands when it comes to understanding biblical prophecy.
So how do we get past that? How do we get past the intimidation and into the richness of the Bible's prophetic books? First of all, you have to understand that the Bible is a supernatural book and it is written by God and God knows not only the present and the past, but God knows the future before it ever appears so that the Bible speaks truthfully of the past, the present, and the future. In other words, you have to realize that the Bible gives prophecy, future prophecy.
Some of it has already been fulfilled. There are prophecies in the Old Testament that are fulfilled later in the Old Testament. There are many prophecies in the Old Testament fulfilled in the New Testament with the coming of Christ and many more to be fulfilled. There are all kinds of prophecies in the New Testament that will be fulfilled at the return of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So you start by understanding that the Bible speaks prophetically about the future. And then it's just an opportunity that you have to dig into the Word of God, to find out how God has revealed those prophecies and how they are to come to pass. And I would just remind you that we have, through the years, written a series called the MacArthur New Testament Commentary.
It has been completed for a few years now, 33 volumes. But at the same time, over the years, I have preached through the Old Testament as well. And that includes the book of Zachariah. You don't get a complete picture of eschatology or the future without a thorough understanding of the prophecies of Zachariah. In fact, I have said that if you haven't mastered the book of Zachariah, then I don't want to hear your view of the end times, because it has to take Zachariah into account. The name Zachariah means Yahweh remembers, God remembers. That really is the theme of the book of Zachariah. The book affirms the covenant-keeping God of Israel who remembers his promises and will fulfill every one of them through the Messiah. This marvelous book, Zachariah, is a volume that every believer should master, as well as pastors and lay leaders, anyone serious about understanding the Bible and particularly prophecy. The commentary on Zachariah hardcover 465 pages.
It is an adventure in prophetic literature. And now for the first time available from Grace to You. Place your order right now.
Thanks, John. And friend, this commentary is a great help for any student of God's Word, whether you're studying for personal devotions or putting together a Sunday sermon, order the Zachariah commentary today. Call us at 855-GRACE or you can place your order at our website, gty.org. The Zachariah commentary costs $25 in hardcover and shipping is free.
Again, to order, call 855-GRACE or you can order from our website, gty.org. And to download the messages in John's current series for free, you can do that at gty.org. Just look for the title, Is the Bible Reliable? And you'll also find dozens of other topical studies, as well as hundreds of sermons that have never aired on the radio. In fact, all of John's sermons, that's more than 55 years worth of preaching. Free to download in audio and transcript format at gty.org. In fact, at the website, you'll also find John's New Testament commentaries, the MacArthur Daily Bible, the systematic theology book called Biblical Doctrine, and much more. Our website one more time, gty.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Remember to watch Grace to You Television Sunday on DIRECTV Channel 378, and then be here Monday as John helps you to answer the question, How can an ancient book like the Bible be practical enough to solve modern problems? It's another half hour of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.
