In Defense of the Faith - Prophecy, the Great Proof

Question: In several of your books you offer prophecy fulfilled as proof that God inspired the writing of the Bible. But that’s proving the Bible by the Bible, which is circular reasoning. Any religion can offer similar “proof” by using their Scriptures in the same way.

Response: There is overwhelming evidence of many kinds for the inspiration of Scripture. Prophecy is only a part of the evidence. Nor is there anything wrong with “proving the Bible by the Bible” any more than with proving a mathematical theorem by mathematics. However, prophecy fulfilled proves the Bible not by itself but by verification from secular history that what the Bible foretold did indeed occur. As for suggesting that “any religion can offer similar ‘proof’ by using their Scriptures the same way,” that is simply absurd.

Give me just one example of a prophecy for the coming of Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster, Krishna, or Muhammad, much less one that was fulfilled! There simply aren’t any. Yet there are scores of specific prophecies for the Jewish Messiah throughout the Old Testament. Moreover, we have documentation for the detailed fulfillment of every one of these prophecies in Jesus both from the eyewitnesses who recorded the events and from Josephus and others. There is far more evidence for the events of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus than for any of the Caesars, for Plato, for Alexander the Great, or for any other historical character. The skeptic rejects Jesus Christ out of personal prejudice rahter than from thorough and unbiased investigation and evidence.

Scores of specific prophecies foretold unique events that literally were fulfilled to the letter in the factual history of the Jews as a people. There is no parallel in the history of any other race or ethnic group. We have dealt with this proof provided by biblical prophecies in detail in other books.