GRANT R JEFFREY LIES ABOUT THE BIBLE

 
PROPHECIES BEING FULFILLED TODAY?
 
Bible cranks claim that some of the prophecies of the Bible are being fulfilled today.   If God knows the future and can tell us what is in it then any book from him should demonstrate that ability.

These prophecies are from the Christian fundamentalist book, The Signature of God.

Isaiah and Ezekiel said that Israel would return to their land again some day after having lost it and been exiled a long time. There is no need for a God to tell you such things. Israel was a religion as well as a nation. I can confidently predict that the papacy will one day be out of Rome but will return. How could Israel becoming a nation once again in 1948 be a miracle when the Holy Land was regarded as sacred to Jews and so a magnet for them? The prophets knew that Israel was scattered and still believed like them that the land was where they should be so there was nothing marvellous about their guess.

Psalm 83:2-8 is supposed to predict that Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan and Egypt will be enemies of the restored nation of Israel today. The prophecies were good guesses for Israel never got on with its neighbours. They found it racist and too different and did not like it. What Fundamentalists would prefer to forget is that the long-extinct Philistines with the inhabitants of the non-existent city of Tyre are also listed as being part of this evil conspiracy.

It is even claimed that Zephaniah predicted that Hebrew would become the language of the Jews once again (3:9). The prophet said that the people would speak in one language but did not say what. When it was believed that God would bring his people back to Israel it was only natural to suppose that in time they would have the one tongue. Modern Hebrew is spoken by 5 million Israelis which is alleged to be the part fulfilment of this prophecy. A part-fulfilment is not much of a fulfilment at all.

The prophets allegedly miraculously knew that God’s people would be scattered all over the world. But they were writing after the exile when many Israelites were lost by mingling with other nations. There is no need to suppose that they meant a scattering after their time. Israel is still be scattered today because people who do not even know that they have Jewish blood in them are procreating.

All nations have to put up with people emigrating.

The Prophets said that the land of Israel would become fertile (Isaiah 35:7) because of the increase in rainfall (Joel 2:23). Rainfall has increased in this century.

It is dishonest to say that the first is a prophecy that has been fulfilled when it is a part of one that has not been fulfilled. The prediction is sandwiched between promises that all the nations shall see God’s glory or beauty and all the sick shall be healed and the desert will be come fertile. There shall be no dangerous animals and the people of Zion will have everlasting joy.

And the forecast about the rain does not mean an increase. It is said to be a just measure. Israel nearly always had all the rain it needed and if it didn’t it would still have a just measure as much as their God would have believed they deserved.

Isaiah 27:6 says that Israel will blossom and fill the world with fruit. This is taken as symbolic in the Amplified Bible for Israel could never fill the world with fruit. The fruit is believed to be spiritual. It is even said that Jacob will take root meaning that Israel is a tree. And Jeffrey takes this out of context to trick people into believing that it is a marvellous prediction proving that God knows the future!

Jeffrey argues that since Ezekiel 38 says that the towns of Israel have no walls it means that he knew about nuclear weapons and bombs which make walls irrelevant. But the prophecy mentions the use of swords so Jeffrey is talking nonsense. Israel, Ezekiel says, will repose on God’s promise to guard it (38:14). Israel is called God’s people which are invariably obedient people. This leads him to deny that there will be walls around the city for with God presiding and the people being good there is no need for them. So, the prediction is not remarkable at all. It is not speaking of modern times when it does not give the reason for having no walls as being that they are no good against modern technology and warfare.

Ezekiel 44 says the Jewish priesthood will be restored. The Temple Institute in Jerusalem has prepared the vestments and sacrificing priests are now being trained. This teaching is inevitable when the Jews always believed they would be restored to their land.

If the Catholics were put out of Ireland one would know that they would be back one day and could predict that they will have cardinals and cathedrals and all the rest for that is part of the baggage of the assertion that they will be back. Yet the credulous bible-bashers think Ezekiel’s conjectures are remarkable!

The prophecy about a coming world empire is not impressive (Daniel 2). There has always been a liking for such forecasts. The predicted empire will be replaced by God’s empire so if the next empire is not replaced by it the fundies will be looking for a new empire to fulfil the forecast. The prophecy is no threat to anybody’s atheism.

According to Grant R Jeffrey, Isaiah 13 says that Babylon will be rebuilt (page 173). And it is happening today. And that is the reason he is saying it for the prophecy contains no trace of that idea. The prophecy never gives any hint that it refers to what will happen to the restored Babylon but to the Babylon that existed when the prophet was writing. Because Babylon was still going strong in 363 AD, the Bible believers are saying that the prophecy means Babylon will be rebuilt and then destroyed forever. Again the prophecy is interpreted not by itself but in the light of the future to make it fit the facts. The prophet said it would be worse than Sodom and Gomorrah – not likely when it is being built by Muslims. If he means that it would be worse off than these cities then we should not know where it is at all for we don’t know where Sodom and Gomorrah are for they got wiped off the face of the earth by God. The fact that the prophecy says that the Medes will destroy Babylon is ignored by all fundamentalists. What happened was that Babylon surrendered to the Persians and not the Medes in peace. The prophecy in verses 19-29 says that like Sodom and Gomorrah were never inhabited again so Babylon will never ever be inhabited “from generation to generation.” It says people won’t even pitch tents there!

Jeffrey what proof do you have that Zechariah 14:12 and Revelation 6:8 foretell the AIDS epidemic? Zechariah says that those who attack Jerusalem will get the plague to it is not AIDS he means.

Jeffrey lies about Revelation 13:16-18 when he says it predicts that cash will be done away. He thinks that the mark of the beat, 666, without which you cannot buy or sell which will be put on your hand and forehead is a microchip! But it could be a tattoo without which you cannot buy or sell for not being a devotee of the great beast.

Television is allegedly predicted in Revelation 11 for the whole world sees God raising up his two hated witnesses from the dead. But God could make all people have a vision of it happening. If it happens on television people will not be worried about it and few will tune into it for television uses trickery a lot.

Astonishingly, Gabriel’s saying that men will run to and fro in the latter days (Daniel 12:4) is taken for a prophecy about aeroplanes and fast ships!

There are man-made attempts to dry up the River Euphrates. This is supposed to fulfil Revelation 16:12. But the book says that was caused by an angel so it was to dry up naturally or miraculously. The wily Jeffrey did not mention that the angel before that poured his bowl of wrath on the beast which caused darkness over the world and made all people sick and weeping with ulcers. When the five things predicted before the drying of the Euphrates have not happened it follows that the man-made drying of the river contradicts the prophecy and does not fulfil it.
 
DID EZEKIEL PREDICT 1948?
 
The independent nation of Israel was declared on May 15th, 1948.

According to Jeffrey, the author of The Signature of God, the Bible gave the exact date for this event over 2000 years ago.

God told Ezekiel to make a model of Jerusalem as if it were under siege as a sign to Israel (Ezekiel 4:3).

Then the prophet was told that it would be 390 days before Israel becomes a nation. God says that day stands for year (4:6) so it is 390 years. Then he adds on forty days so it is 430 years in total.

Ezekiel was told to lie on his side for 390 days indicating the sufferings of Israel would be as long in years but to lie another forty days on another side to indicate Judah suffering for forty years. Jews belong to Judah but they have really suffered longer than Israel though he gives Israel a longer period and Judah a shorter.

Because God said in the Torah that Israel would be punished seven times over for its stubborn impenitence (Leviticus 26) and assuming that the Bible year is 360 days Jeffrey gets a total of 2483.8 of modern calendar years.

Ezekiel was counting from the time the Babylonian Captivity ended that is in the spring of 536 BC or 536.4 BC. There is no year zero so a year has to be left out so then he adds on 2483.8 of years which brings him to the 15th May 1948.

This is an amazing coincidence or so it seems for there are coincidences and there are manufactured ones. We are blind to how many tremendous coincidences happen every day.

But can we be sure that it is just a coincidence?

Yes.

The Bible never says that it knows when the nation of Israel will be restored. It even forbids interpretations and doctrines which are not explicitly sanctioned by it.

The multiplying of the 430 years by seven is just an assumption and the prophet never hinted that it was to be done. Israel would have repented sometime which would ruin the calculation for the multiplication of the punishment would have been cancelled. Seven is a perfect number in the Jews belief so it stood for the punishment being repeated or added on until the right time not for strictly seven times longer ().
 
Israel did repent (Baruch 4:37; Joel 2:25-27;) albeit it may have been temporary.

Ezekiel was unlikely to have meant we should multiply by seven when the people were allowed by God back into their country though they were still evil. If their due had been multiplied by seven they would have been kept in exile.

Israel getting back to their country would be the end of the punishment not their declaring it to be a state. So the date of 1948 is wrong for they were there before that. The punishment ends when you are able to go back to where you belong.

Watch out for liars like Jeffrey. Even fundamentalist Ralph Muncaster’s Christian booklet, Are There Hidden Codes in the Bible?, advises readers to read his books but be careful for his information is often dubious.

Ezekiel 12:21-28 presents God as saying that anything Ezekiel predicts in the name of the Lord God will be rapidly fulfilled and the delays in fulfilment are over. Hardly anything this prophet predicted came true that fast and most of his prophecies have not come true yet. So Ezekiel is shown to be false prophet. The revelation in 12 proves that the Christians have no business pretending that the prophecy about Tyre being attacked by Nebuchadnezzar implicitly refers to the later attack by Alexander as well which they only support because the old Neb never did half of what the prophecy said he would do leaving the rest of it for Alexander the Great. Isaiah 17:1 which predicts the everlasting destruction of Damascus and the Nile drying up in Isaiah 19:5 have not happened yet so it is certain that because of that Isaiah can by no means be considered to be a true prophet. If the world goes on long enough Damascus will be destroyed and the Nile will dry up one day. False prophets will find it easy to make prophecies that will come true if the events they refer to could be thousands of years ahead. We can take it then that Isaiah meant for Damascus and the Nile to meet their end long before now which would indicate he was a false prophet.
 
CONCLUSION
 
Bible prophecy fails to provide evidence for the supernatural production of the Bible by supernatural means. What it provides evidence for is that Christians trying to get us to believe in the Bible are operating a scam.
 
 
BIBLE QUOTATIONS FROM:
The Amplified Bible

 
BOOKS CONSULTED
 
 
Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible, John W Haley, Whitaker House, Pennsylvania, undated
Are There Hidden Codes in the Bible? Ralph O Muncaster, Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, Oregon, 2000
Attack on the Bible, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1965
Bible Dictionary and Concordance, New American Bible, Catholic Edition, CD Stampley Enterprises, Charlotte Enterprises, Inc, North Carolina, 1971
Encyclopaedia of Bible Difficulties, Gleason W Archer, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1982
Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Vol 1, Alpha, Scripture Press Foundation, Bucks, 1995
God’s Word, Final, Infallible and Forever, Floydd C McElveen, Gospel Truth Ministries, Grand Rapids, 1985
In Search of Certainty, John Guest, Regal Books, Ventura, California, 1983
It Ain’t Necessarily So, Investigating the Truth of the Biblical Past, Matthew Sturgis, Headline Books, London, 2001
Jesus Hypotheses, V Messori, St Paul Publications, Slough, 1977
Science and the Bible, Henry Morris, Moody Press, Bucks, 1988
Science Speaks, Peter W Stoner, Robert C Newman, Moody Press, Chicago, 1976
The Bible Code, Michael Drosnin, Orion, London, 2000
The Case for Jesus the Messiah, John Ankerberg Harvest House, Eugene, Oregon, 1989
The Dark Side, How Evangelical Teachings Corrupt Love and Truth, Valerie Tarico, Ph.D, Dea Press, Seattle, 2006
The Hard Sayings of Jesus, FF Bruce, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1983
The Late Great Planet Earth, Hal Lindsay, Lakeland, London, 1974
The Signature of God, Grant R Jeffrey, Marshall Pickering, London, 1998
The Truth Behind the Bible Code, Dr Jeffrey Satinover, Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1997
The Truth of Christianity, WH Turton, Wells Gardner, Darton & Co Ltd, London, 1905
The Unauthorised Version, Robin Lane Fox, Penguin, Middlesex, 1992
The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus, Raymond E Brown, Paulist Press, New York, 1973
Theodore Parker’s Discourses, Theodore Parker, Longmans, Green, Rader and Dyer, London, 1876
Whatever Happened to Heaven, Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Eugene, Oregon, 1988
 
 
www.awitness.org/essays/levjer.html, A Levite Scribe Pretends to be Jeremiah

www.geocities.com/Nashville/Opry/2092/False.html, Was Jesus Christ a False Prophet?

 
www.awitness.org/lostmess/fprophet.html, False Prophecy in the Prophets of the Bible

www.hotcc.com/users/shagbark/daniel.html, Kyle Williams, Daniel is False Prophecy

http://cs.anu.edu.au./~bdm/dilugim/secrets.html, Secrets of the Bible Code Invented, Brendan McKay
 
www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/indef/4d.html, When is a Prophecy Miraculous? Richard Carrier

www.mindspring.com/~bab5/BIB/lessons.htm What the Heck is a Jesus Code? This tells us that the Bible Code has a lot of phrases of Satan, His Name is Jesus all through Isaiah 53.
 
www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/1995/3/3proph95.html
All Prophets Were False! Stephen Van Eck

www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/prophecy.html  
False Prophecies, Broken Promises, and Misquotes in the Bible
 
www.infidels.org/library/modern/steven_carr/non-messianic.html, Steven Carr, Critique of Josh McDowells Non-Messianic Prophecies This Site cannot be overly recommended. It is superb.