And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
(2 Peter 1:19–21)
The second proof for the Bible’s reliability is fulfilled predictions or prophecy. There are 1,817 prophecies recorded in Scripture. Most of the fulfillments are also recorded. One famous example is Isaiah’s prediction that a future king named Cyrus would authorize and pay for the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple’s foundation (Is. 44:28; 45:1). This was amazing given that Jerusalem was inhabited and the temple still standing when Isaiah made his prophecy in 700 BC. One hundred years after Isaiah’s prediction, Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed by the Babylonians. Forty years later, the Babylonians were conquered by the Persians and a king named Cyrus gave the decree to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple (2 Ch. 36:22-23; Ez. 1:1-8).
The Old Testament also made very specific prophecies about Jesus. For instance, it predicted the exact time of his coming, the exact place of his birth, the family into which he was born, the condition of his family at the time, the manner of his reception by Israel, and the details of his death, burial and resurrection (Is. 53:1-12; Mic. 5:2; Da. 9:25-27; Je. 23:5-6; Ps. 16:18-11). At the time of Jesus’ resurrection alone, twenty Old Testament predictions were fulfilled within a twenty-four-hour period of time.1
However, those long-term prophecies were only recorded because every prophet had to be validated by the fulfillment of short-term predictions. To claim to be a prophet required making a short-term prediction. If that prediction did not come about, the false prophet was executed (Deuteronomy 13:1-5; 18:21,22). This is why Peter can say the prophets’ claims about Jesus are even more certain than his eyewitness testimony.2 The prophets’ claims had been vetted hundreds of years before his testimony by short-term predictions and now the fulfillment of their long-term predictions made their veracity doubly certain.
The reality of fulfilled prophecy in scripture has a twofold application for us. For one, it continues to affirm our belief that the Bible is reliable. Secondly, it confirms that we have a God who is sovereign over every detail of the universe. God made these prophecies through men and sovereignly orchestrated every event in history to fulfill them.
Prayer
Acknowledge in prayer the ways you sometimes revert to thinking that the universe is a series of random, uncontrollable events. Acknowledge that they are uncontrollable for you, but that God, who writes history and confirms his sovereignty by fulfilled prophecy, is in control of it all.
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- E. Schuyler English, A Companion to the New Scofield Reference Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 26. Quoted in Boice, Standing on the Rock, 61).
- The NIV translates echomen bebaioteron as a passive, “made more certain.” If Peter had wished to say that he would have written echomen bebaiothenta. Instead he simply says, “We have a more certain word.”