Everyone recognizes that if a person or a book could accurately predict the future and be correct every single time– not 50%, not 75%, but 100% of the time– then that person or that book would have to have divine help. That is superhuman. Humans just cannot do that. Is there a book that does accurately predict the future and get it right 100% of the time? Yes, there is. It’s called the Bible and it contains scores of amazing prophecies that prove it to be from God. Let’s quickly look at five of these prophecies.
Number one: The fall of Tyre. In the year 597 BC, the prophet Ezekiel made a bold proclamation against the city of Tyre. At the time, the city was one of the wealthiest and most secure cities in the entire world. It had massive walls. It also had an island city that the inhabitants– if they were attacked– could go out to that island city. Yet for all that, Ezekiel predicted several things that would happen to Tyre. He said that the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar would come up against the city, that he would build siege mounds against the wall, and the city’s walls would be broken down. He predicted that many nations would come up against the city and the city would be scraped clean like a rock. He predicted that its stones and its timber and its soil would be thrown into the sea. How are you going to get these stones and timber and soil of a huge city like Tyre thrown into the sea? As we look at history, secular history provides the answer for that. Nebuchadnezzar–the king of Babylon– did come up against the city of Tyre. He did exactly what Ezekiel predicted, but it didn’t stop there because after he built a siege mount against Tyre, the inhabitants moved out to the island city and he couldn’t attack it. And yet in about 330 BC, a man by the name of Alexander the Great attacked Tyre and the inhabitants did the same: They went out to that island city. But Alexander the Great wasn’t happy with a simple victory over the mainland city. He took the rocks and the timbers and the soil and scraped them clean, dumped them into the sea and made a causeway out to the island city. How could Ezekiel have looked into the future more than 250 years and predicted what would have happened? Divine assistance.
Number two: The fall of Babylon. Babylon was one of the richest cities in the world during the years of about 740-680 BC. It had walls that were 75 feet thick. They were 300 feet high and it was surrounded by the Euphrates River that made a moat around it in some places 65 feet, in other places 250 feet across. And yet the prophets in the Bible– Jeremiah and Isaiah– they prophesied that God would “raise and cause to come up against Babylon an assembly of great nations.” Jeremiah recorded that God had declared, “I will dry up her sea and make her springs dry.” And the prophet foretold that a drought would come against her waters and they would be dried up, for the land is a land of carved images. And also the prophet promised that the Lord had spoken, “I will prepare a feast and I will make them drunk that they may rejoice and sleep a perpetual sleep.” Now interestingly, secular history validates this prophecy. It shows us that the Euphrates River went under the city of Babylon, and yet Cyrus– the king of the Medes and the Persians– redirected the river and caused it to go into a basin and he marched his troops under the wall of Babylon and, incidentally, the Babylonians were drunk and feasting when that happened. God dried up the waters of Babylon and they were drunk and slept a perpetual sleep.
Number three: Messianic prophecies. There are hundreds of prophecies in the Old Testament that talk about a coming Messiah. They talk about how that Messiah is going to live, where He will be born, how He will die, how He will be buried, and the things that He would do in His life– like riding a donkey into the city of Jerusalem. And some of them were written 1000 years before Christ came. And yet in every single instance, Jesus Christ fulfilled those prophecies to the letter. So much so that in Luke 24:27, Jesus taught His disciples, “Beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.”
Number four: The fall of Jerusalem. In Luke 21:20, Jesus said to His apostles, “But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies then know that its desolation is near.” In Matthew 24: 1-2, “Then Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and His disciples came to Him to show Him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said to them, ‘Do you not see all these things? Assuredly I say to you, not one stone shall be left upon another, that shall not be thrown down.'” Jesus made these comments at about AD 30 or 33. And yet for another 40 years or so, nothing happened of a remarkable nature of destruction to the city of Jerusalem. But in AD 70, the Roman army– under the command of Titus, who later would become the Emperor– destroyed Jerusalem in an event that is marked as one of the most destructive events in all of ancient history, exactly like Jesus Christ had predicted.
Number five: The reign of Cyrus. Isaiah wrote his prophesy in about 720 BC. In his book, he made a bold prediction that the great nation of Babylon would fall. And he further specified that it would be destroyed by the Medes and the Persians. And then he narrowed the target and predicted that a king named Cyrus would be the man to conquer the city and the nation. Now the interesting aspect of this prophecy was that it occurred almost 150 years before Cyrus ever even existed. Isaiah called him out by name. Can you imagine finding a document that was almost as old as the United States of America that mentioned you would be born and be doing exactly what you are doing today? That’s amazing. When we look at the Bible, and we see the amazing historically accurate, documented, predictive prophecy we’re forced to the conclusion that the Bible is God’s Word.