 We’ve looked at the Kingdom of Israel  We’ve seen how it split into Judah and Israel  We’ve studied what their kings were like  We’ve looked at how they fell apart  We’ve studied the expectations they had and how they hadn’t lived up to them Now we’re going to look at what God says will happen because of their disobedience.

 Biblical Prophecy is the foretelling of events that have yet to happen ◦ Why? So that God’s plan will be revealed before it actually happens ◦ When it does happen, just like God said it would, it illustrates how awesome God truly is  Biblical prophecy is not: ◦ Fortune-telling ◦ Astrology – zodiac signs and whatnot ◦ Tarot or palm reading ◦ Psychics

 Biblical Prophecy is different than other types of foretelling the future in a couple of different ways ◦ It is impossibly specific ◦ It is never intended to make people’s lives easier – only to show God’s glory and His plan ◦ It is never intended to give you an edge in your personal life – biblical prophecy is always given to a whole people group

 The Old Testament contains 1,239 individual prophecies (depending on how you count them…) ◦ Many of these have already come to pass ◦ Many have yet to happen  Of those that have happened, the historical record is usually very clear. ◦ The Bible lays out the prophecy, generally many, many years before it happened ◦ Outside sources verify the events actually took place as the Bible said they would

 Modern atheistic scholars say that Biblical Prophecy is impossible ◦ The fact that the Bible describes events as they happened is easy to explain: the authors of the Bible simply added pieces to it as the events happened, and wrote it in such a way to make it seem like it was being foretold.

 Archaeology has been able to determine, with a high degree of accuracy, when nearly all the books in the Bible were written ◦ In fact, the evidence for books of the Bible having been written, in their totality, is so solid that no scholar who is being honest can even dispute it…

There are 24,000 copies of NT books written within the lifetimes of the people who lived the events, compared to just 10 copies of Julius Caesar’s writings – none of which comes before 1000 years since Caesar lived. There is not one single document of people living at the time of the NT who say the events didn’t happen. Therefore, there is more evidence that Christ was who he said he was than that Julius Caesar ever even existed…

…And those are the New Testament Books: the ones that scholars say are more “debatable” than the Old Testament ones…

Let’s look at a few of those Biblical Prophecies, and how they actually came to be true.

 Jeremiah 25:11-12 predicts Babylon’s rule over Judah, for 70 years. ◦ Written 626BC, fulfilled 50 years later.  Isaiah 45:1 – predicts Cyrus the Great would destroy Babylon’s walls (300 ft high, 70 ft wide!) ◦ Written 701BC, fulfilled 539BC

 Isaiah 14:23 claims Babylon would be turned to a swampland… ◦ When Cyrus destroyed Babylon in 539, the city never recovered. When archaeologists in the 1800s rediscovered it, they found they couldn’t dig some parts because the water table had risen over the years ◦ Written 701ishBC, fulfilled 200 years later, plus some…

 Nahum 3:15 – Nahum says Nineveh will be destroyed by fire, so badly it will never recover ◦ Archaeologists in the 1800s discovered that all of Nineveh’s ruins are buried in a layer of soot and ash ◦ Written 600BC, fulfilled 612BC

 Ezekiel 26:12 – Tyre will be destroyed, and all its stones hurled into the sea ◦ Alexander the Great needed a bridge to get his armies across to the Island of New Tyre. He took apart Old Tyre (the Biblical city) and used its stones to build the land bridge, which still exists today. ◦ Written 587BC, fulfilled 333BC.

There are 351 unique prophecies about Jesus Christ in the Old Testament These were written at least 400 years before Christ lived, and we know that for a fact, no one disputes it.

 Daniel 9:25 – written 538BC “So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks of years and sixty two weeks of years.”

Nehemiah 2:5,6 – written 444BC “So it pleased the King to send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers tombs, to rebuild it.” Exact Date – 1 st of Nisan, 20 th year of Artaxerxes the king. 5 th of March, 444BC

 Luke 19:38-40 – Christ urges his Disciples to call him Messiah “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” Exact Date: March 30, 33AD

 Now let’s compare the date of the decree (March 5, 444 BC) with the date of Jesus’ declaration (March 30, 33 AD). Before we begin, we need to clarify the fact that the Jewish prophetic year was composed of twelve 30 day months. In other words, the ancient evidence indicates that the Jewish prophetic year had 360 days, not 365 days. Since Daniel states 69 weeks of seven years each, and each year has 360 days, the equation is as follows: 69 x 7 x 360 = 173,880 days. In nothing more than a simple mathematical demonstration, the number of days in the period from March 5, 444 B.C. (the twentieth year of Artaxerxes) to March 30, 33 A.D. (the day Jesus entered Jerusalem on the donkey) can be determined at this point.  The time span from 444 B.C. to 33 A.D. is 476 years (remember that 1 B.C. to 1 A.D. is only one year). And if we multiply 476 years x days per year (corrected for leap years), we get the result of 173,855 days. Now let’s add back the difference between March 5 and March 30 (25 days). What is our total? You guessed it, 173,880 days, exactly as Daniel predicted it…

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