Ecclesiastes 8:7
"Since no one knows the future, who can tell someone else what is to come?"
"For he does not know what will happen; So who can tell him when it will occur?"
"If no one knows what will happen, who can tell him when it will happen?"
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I am not personally of the view that there is actually such a skill or ability of anyone to predict the future. Generally perhaps based on trends, but not specifically as the Bible seems to do. Prophets of the past, in my view, may have spoken about what they felt would happen in their own times, but "prophecies" thousands of years in advance are simply not possible.
Anyone can, if they are willing, to see that what seems like prophecy, such as the 8 "and thus it was fulfilled"s of Matthew 2, concerning the birth story of Jesus, are merely back written into his tale, which in no way agrees with Lukes Birth Narratives, and a clear making Old Testament scriptures mean what they never actually mean when written down.
The reason Jesus last crucifixion story and his last words seem prophesied is because the author of the Gospels lifted quotes from the Psalms to flesh out a story, they really had no idea about how it went down nor were they witnesses of it.
Prophecy is not so much history prophesied, but prophecy historized and brought ahead into the present by writers intending to give the impression the present was pre-dicted long ago, when it was not.
For example, the reason Daniel 11 seems so prophetically detailed is simply because all the events it predicts had already happened. Outcomes were already known and lives lived to historize into prophecy. (Daniel was a product of the Second Century BCE and not the Fifth.) The reasons that empires could be prophesied to come is because they had already come and gone.
When you get into Daniel 12, it all gets rather vague again about the real future and Daniel is simply told to shut it down. The reason? We don't actually know what will happen as it has not yet happened.
Today, I am more inclined to see OT prophets as being fascinating for their schizophrenia (Ezekiel and Amos along with any who noted "And the Lord said unto me), depression (Jeremiah) and others who heard the voice of God in their heads when no one else did. If Paul's visions were real, to Paul, they take on the symptoms of temporal lobe epilepsy. (Voices, bright lights and often with religious content). These now understood mental issues would not have been understood and assigned divine gift status back in the day.
I recall visiting a mentally ill member in the hospital where she calmly said "I know you don't understand this, but Mr Diehl, you are an angel unawares". Well yeah! LOL. Mania and bi polar issues can do that to you.
"Someone once asked what's the difference between a Bible Prophet or Christian fundamentalist and a paranoid schizophrenic? Well, one hears voices in their head, has a heightened moral code, is judgmental yet can be very deceptive and manipulative, has delusions of being on a mission from God, sees things that no one else present sees or hears , sees lights in his head, is the center of the universe and has special knowledge that must be kept secret until the right time an then can only be understood as explained by the one. The other, of course, is a paranoid schizophrenic."
Prophets, Apostles, and Mental Illness
Jesus is said to have prophesied his coming "soon", "shortly" and "quickly", and the Apostles joined in specifically telling those in the NT Church to be ready, not marry and if you had a wife, act as if you didn't, whatever that meant. The Apostle Paul, not unlike all Church leaders today who build their churches on the fear of imminent prophetic fulfilments, spent his whole ministry pre-dicting "we shall not all die...", until he did of course. That was our collective experience with WCG. "Just ahead", "Three to five years, 10 at the outside, 15 max" was just more prophetic fiction mean to motivate, perhaps for less than honorable reasons.
Dave Pack, the greatest fool ever produced by the WCG is addicted to making an ass out himself prophetically. He is never right and he never will be because the whole concept of prophetic abilities is simply wrong. No one can pre-dict the future in any theological sense.
While Dave claims...
“I’ve been studying God’s word for almost 50 years. And I’ve studied prophecy, I know
this, like no man who’s ever lived. And I’m gonna tell you things over the next several weeks that are so awesome, so mind-bending, even before today.”“I know literally, literally everything that happens from the time Christ drops outtathat cloud ’til this things rolls into the box. I’ve got the whole picture ’til there’s no moreearth. So, I know what God is gonna do and you know what God’s gonna do.”
“I’m gonna to reveal a great prophecy is ending. A great prophecy no one ever sawin the Bible is ending right now, and you know nothing of it, and the church didn’t, andevery historian and theologian who’s ever lived never knew anything about it.”
...he will always be a fake and badly mistaken prophetic fool.
Now, I can probably predict the loss of the war by Ukraine and the "chosen people" making themselves the most accursed people on the planet, but that's not based on anything any Holy Spirit had to "inculcate" my mind with. That just seems to be common sense at play.
Both the Gospel Jesus and the Apostle Paul, as well as others, real or imagined authors of the NT were wrong. When Jesus is said to have said, "This generation shall not pass until all these things be fulfilled" it does not mean and never did mean, "this generation to whom these things happen to". That's the apologetic since it did not happen then. Jesus meant it for none others than for those to whom he was speaking. Jesus was wrong. The beat went on...
Bob Thiel is big on prophetically awful weather because "God is trying to get our attention." Rubbish... Weather is just weather and we know better, or should. Unless, of course, God is a low pressure system in disguise. Besides, what's with God having to "try". Lame.
Our first hint of the fallacy of prophetic skills is realizing that...
- Fortune-Teller
- Seer
- Prophet
- Augur
- Cassandra
- Crystal Gazer
- Doomsayer
- Futurist
- Jeremiah
- Oracle
- Palm Reader
- Prophesier
- Prognosticator
- Sibyl
- Soothsayer
- Herbert Armstrong
- Dave Pack
- Gerald Flurry
- Bob Thiel
Whoever said it was spot on...
The future isn't what it used to be. We can predict everything, except the future. The future's uncertain and the end is always near.
And prophecy can never really come alive because
"Since no one knows the future, who can tell someone else what is to come?"
"For he does not know what will happen; So who can tell him when it will occur?"
"If no one knows what will happen, who can tell him when it will happen?"
21 comments:
There are many very good Christian/ atheist debates on YouTube discussing these very points Dennis brings up. To name a few look up:
Bart Ehrman / Jimmy Akin
Ehrman/ William Lane Craig
Alex O'Connor/ Trent Horn
The truth about God and His word always wins out!
A lot of us were angry when the Tkach group took over WCG and changed all the doctrines.
But that is what Paul did - changed the doctrines from messianic Judaism to a gentile religion that was Christ centered.
He did keep the doctrine of the second coming and added the man of sin that the later book of revelation expanded.
A "mainstream" prophetic preacher who made it big died this week.
I wonder if Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth opened a door for the Armstrongs to have fame and growth in the late 1970s - even with the 1975 failure.
"(Daniel was a product of the Second Century BCE and not the Fifth.)"
And the evidence for that is..................
Go do your homework :)
The Book of Daniel is a 2nd century BC biblical apocalypse with a 6th century BC setting. Ostensibly "an account of the activities and visions of Daniel, a noble Jew exiled at Babylon",text features a prophecy rooted in Jewish history, as well as a portrayal of the end times that is both cosmic in scope and political in its focus. The message of the text intended for the original audience, was that just as the God of Israel saves Daniel from his enemies, so he would save the Israelites in their present oppression. The context was the Maccabean wars with Rome and meant to encourage them that Rome would not win. However they did. As well, The Book of Revelation used Daniel and its themes to encourage the Jews/Christians in Jerusalem just before Rome destroyed the temple in the same way. However, the outcome was also the same. Rome won.
Prophets have always used commonly known, relatable calamities and events which their audiences had witnessed in previous and other settings. There have always been natural disasters, wars, disease, financial distress, captivities, lawless rulers, crime, famine, slavery, etc, and these are all on a prophet's palette, and available to paint out any number of scenarios involving the supernatural.
I liken the correlation of prophecy to current events to something that happened with Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, and the classic film "Wizard of Oz". Someone back in the '70s (presumably some "stoner") noticed that there is perfect correlation between the music in the album (if started at the same time as the film), and the activities in the film. The members of Pink Floyd, and the recording engineers deny that there was any conscious intent to execute this phenomenon, but the correlation is nearly perfect, and now the stuff of legend. I'm sure that ACOG people will automatically assume that Satan, or demons caused this, just as they believe that God revealed HWA's prophecy mold to him.
There is no doubt that correlation between events in prophecy could be made with post-World War II history and then current events. That correlation vanished in 1975, and the ideas behind it totally invalidated its basis in genetics with the mapping of the human genome, completed in 2003. We see instead the natural progressions of rising and falling empires, and the deterioration of the planet due to man's propensity to pollute, coupled with various threatening pendulum swings. There is no playbook, and no inside information as to when Jesus will return. It may or may not be nice to have that information, but nobody really knows. Some people we know have been waiting for 50 years now, based on one long dead man's speculations. Others have died, following lives of sacrifice, victims of unrequited prophecy.
They should have stuck to teaching the living of life based on classic Christian values. This is just personal, but instead of lying about the Germans and Jesus, I wish they'd lied to me about Santa Claus.
Get your crystal ball ACOG ministers.
One thing is for certain Armstrongism with its self-appointed prophets. Prophecy has NEVER been alive nor accurate.
Hal Lindsey died? Did he know it was going to hapoem?
It is so nice to see how Dennis cherry- picks a verse. And then misinterprets it. I thot only Christians did that, at least according to atheists. If one were to read the rest of the chapter one would see the verse is talking about not knowing when one will die. It is not a verse about prophetic predictions as Dennis claims.
Besides, there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding on this site about biblical prophecy, bible prophets, and “interpreting” prophetic verses. Would make a great discussion session, don’t you think?
Totally right, Gary! And to think we all once ran our lives based on it, although some of us deeply hoped it would never come to pass in our lifetimes. They left just enough personal unknowns for us so as to make it as painful as possible to contemplate. Bottom line is we fell for something really low grade, or at least our parents did!
Ever since the arbitrary "what if" zone I placed around 1975 expired, whenever I hear anyone speak of prophecy, or repeat someone's prophecy, I take it just as I do watercooler speculation, like "Hey, Joe! Who do you think is going to win the game tonight???"
At least the newspapers have the common decency to put a disclaimer below the daily horiscopes, stating that they are there for entertainment purposes only. Prophecy in Armstrongism was for HWA and his ministers' entertainment only!
BB
Out of context.
What about the worlds most insignificant false prophet witchdoctor Bob?
The saddest thing of all is that Dennis thinks he makes sense.
No, 12:37, the real saddest thing is that you think that you do!
Do atheists really expect us to believe the prophetic word is the product of fortune tellers and palm readers? Could these charlatans produce a work where the book of Revelation is the perfect ending, climax, and complement to the events described in the book of Genesis?
The prophetic events associated with the return of Jesus Christ and coming Kingdom of God saturate the O.T., are prominent in the Gospels, epistles of Paul, and the books of John. If one accepts the Bible as the word of God he must believe in the prophetic word for that is man's only hope for survival and remedy of sin.
Our atheist friends apparently are quite comfortable with nuclear weapons, forever chemicals, plastic pollution, and man's greed which has produced all three. But who knows, when the Star Trek society finally arrives, all will be fine. In the meantime we are stuck with a medical profession that kills off 700,000 a year through human error, a greedy scientific community who can't make up its mind on opiodes and covid, and governments with questions but no answers, and those are supposedly the BEST MINDS mankind has to offer!
It would not only take a Christ to invent a Christ, but it would require a Christ to invent the prophetic word. It is true that there are many aspects about the future we can't precisely predict even though Dave Pack claims he can. But one thing is clear. Without the prophetic word our only option is Captain Kirk. Good luck with that!
Part of my recovery from Armstrongism involved reevaluating the ways in which prophecy had been misinterpreted and abused to manipulate us, and to induce us to make great modifications to our behavior. Although we had been discouraged from, or forbidden to consult resources outside of Armstrongism for second opinions, I began to read widely. They always did tell us to "prove all things". It's just that in WCG, that meant reading their materials and agreeing with them. That was supposed to indicate that your mind was open and you were truly being led by the Spirit of God! Often, this was accompanied by bias-confirmation prayer! Gotta recognize all of that for what it really was in order to tear down the bogussness and rebuild.
One of the reference materials I consulted explained how in most parts of the world in which things are going relatively well, we tend to fervently hope that apocalyptic prophecies are never fulfilled in our lifetimes. It appalls us to even think in such terms. A real turn-off! However, many people in countries where worst case scenario is already in play, (Haiti was used as an example), the apocalypse is a very encouraging concept, because it means the end to the deprivation, a pressing of the reset button. In fact, this reset is seen as the only hope, the only way in which things can be favorably resolved.
I thought of this as I read BP8's list of existential threats. I don't know that these cause Americans to wish for an apocalypse as fervently as do the Haitians. There are those who actually believe that they are simply manipulative hoaxes created to derail business as usual and destroy our lifestyle. However, what if mankind is intended to learn how to resolve his own problems? The people sitting on their hands as they wait for the apocalypse to resolve these issues generally do nothing. Humans tend to resent anyone who attempts to force our behavior, whether those individuals be from the fields of religion, or science. Part of the way in which people are created in God's image is that we are problem solvers. And the problem with problems is that once we resolve one, the next one appears, and replaces it. Even in Star Trek, the crew is constantly facing monumental problems and threats. It seems that one of mankind's propensities involves exporting human problems to new and different places in the universe.
If prophecy is true and accurate, it will come to pass, and it's so massive that although there will be degrees of suffering (some will do better, others worse) there is really nothing we can do about it. Even if there were a general consensus on the interpretation, we'd still have disagreements. One of the reading resources I mentioned earlier advanced the idea that God does not give us prophecy so we'll know in advance exactly what will happen and how to prepare. He gave it so that after it has come to pass, we all realize Who is in charge.
I don't worry about prophecy any more. I tend to become concerned about specific events, and their possible impacts. I took the precautions I thought appropriate during Covid, and have voted in ways that I felt would tend to resolve problems rather than create new ones. But, in the aftermath of 1975, Armstrongism has continued to make a mockery out of prophecy. It is no longer even useful as a tool for growth to them. It's not producing phenomenal income as it did for HWA, and it certainly isn't putting massive numbers of butts in the seats. In a practical sense, it has been rendered useless. Over-usage has killed it!
BB
Granted, its a rather convoluted post in terms of just the writing.
BB 945
I'm not giving credence to the abusive "chicken littles" of this world, but to give validation to the prophetic word of God, which promises to "destroy those who destroy the earth" and "restore all things" to their proper order (Rev.11:18, Acts 3:19-21).
I'm not suggesting we do nothing about our problems, only that our capability to do so is suspect, seeing that those who have created the problems are usually the ones commissioned to fix them. Throw in "the love of money" and "who is the greatest" and mankind is stuck in the mud without a shovel.
What man is good at is the art of propaganda and misdirection. Hollywood paints "man" with the finest brush. Star Trek, like Gunsmoke and Perry Mason are pure fiction, putting man in his best light. But reality paints a different picture. There are no "perfect" lawyers or law men (Matt Dillion) in the real world. The only perfect man the world has ever known was hated for telling the truth and killed for the effort. It would be no different today!
If man wants to circumvent the prophetic word, all he has to do is do those things the word says he is incapable of doing . . .like
--living in complete and total peace, which would contradict Romans 3:17.
Also,
--live in righteousness, without sin (see Romans 3:10).
Captain Kirk once recounted that 23rd century man had conquered his carnal nature and impulses. If man is going to survive without God he better hope that happens. The prophetic word says it won't!
Not a problem, BP8. You and I just have slightly different world views.
BB
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