There are some biblical prophecies that arguably did come to pass in ancient times.
But, did you know there are prophecies that have predicted the EU, RFID chips, and the
end times, which we may be living in now?
Here are some prophecies that ended up coming true.
Both Jews and Christians alike consider Isaiah to be the greatest of the Hebrew prophets.
He lived in the eighth century BCE and served as an adviser to multiple kings of Judah during
the time when the major world power was the Assyrian Empire.
Much of the prophecy in the early chapters of the Book of Isaiah regards the threat of
Assyria, with many of Judah's kings disregarding Isaiah's advice.
It isn't until the reign of Hezekiah that someone in charge actually listens to what
Isaiah has to say.
So what did Isaiah have to say?
Well, around 701 BCE, the Assyrian king Sennacherib laid siege to Judah and captured its cities.
A panicked Hezekiah asked Isaiah for advice, and the prophet told him to do nothing because
the siege would fail.
And this turned out to be right.
For unknown reasons, hundreds of thousands of Assyrian soldiers died, and Sennacherib
returned home.
Interestingly, the later chapters of Isaiah correctly predict the rise of the Babylonian
Empire and Judah's fall to it, nearly a century in advance.
However, many scholars argue significant portions of his predictions were actually written after
the fact.
By word count, the longest book in the Bible is the Book of Jeremiah, which collects the
sayings of the so-called "Weeping Prophet."
Jeremiah wrote not only the book of prophecy that bears his name, but also the Book of
Kings.
And his ministry began roughly 50 years after the end of Isaiah's.
And so, Jeremiah's book deals with the threat posed by Assyria's successor on the world
stage, Babylon.
The very first chapter of Jeremiah describes Babylon as, quote "a boiling pot, tilting
away from the north."
And before long, Jeremiah is warning the people of Judah that Babylon is coming as God's righteous
punishment upon his unfaithful people.
And, he was right.
The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to the capital city of Jerusalem in 597 BCE.
He then pillaged the great Temple of Solomon, and took the king and many prominent citizens
back to Babylon as exiles.
Jeremiah warned the puppet regent that he should surrender to Babylon, but he revolted,
and as punishment, the Temple and the whole city of Jerusalem were destroyed in 587 BCE.
As with Isaiah, however, it's important to note that many scholars argue that only portions
of the Book of Jeremiah are by the prophet.
Many portions were written later by Jeremiah's scribe Baruch
"All these prophecies pile up on one another and build the legend that is Jerusalem."
Ezekiel lived during the time of the Babylonian exile that Jeremiah warned against.
And, portions of Ezekiel's book promise the end of the captivity and the restoration of
Jerusalem and its temple.
The middle chapters of his prophecies, however, contain warnings of destruction against foreign
nations.
Most notably, Ezekiel's predictions against Egypt and the great city of Tyre show proof
of the prophet's accuracy.
Ezekiel promises that Tyre will be swept away by enemies, and Egypt will be a desolate waste.
And as it so happened, Nebuchadnezzar's 13-year war against Tyre drove the Tyrian people off
the mainland and onto an island.
And then, the Muslim invasion of Egypt in the 7th century CE left Egypt relatively insignificant.
Skeptics argue, of course, that these interpretations are a stretch, as neither Tyre nor Egypt were
left the smoldering ruins promised by Ezekiel.
The Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE saw many Israelites banished from their homes and scattered about the Middle
East.
This scattering of the Jewish people worsened in the age of the Babylonian exile in the
6th century BCE and reached its final tipping point with the Roman conquest of Jerusalem
in 70 CE.
The Romans destroyed the Second Temple, crushed the Judean state, and drove the Jewish people
from their homes.
As a result, a lot of Hebrew prophecy concerns the restoration of Israel and the Jewish people.
The latter chapters of Ezekiel promise that Jerusalem and its temple will be rebuilt and
the people who'd been scattered will be brought back home.
The middle chapters of Jeremiah promise restoration for Israel and Judah.
Some would argue that these prophecies were predicting the period after the Babylonian
exile and during the Second Temple period of Judah.
However, others argue that these prophecies reference the modern state of Israel, which
in turn warns of the approaching end times.
For Jews, that would include the Messianic Age, and for Christians, that would include
the Second Coming of Christ.
Whatever you do or do not believe about the Jewish or Christian Judgment Day, it's certainly
true that some prophets said Israel would exist again, and it currently does.
The biblical figure of Daniel, the guy from the lion's den, was among the noble citizens
of Judah who were taken to Babylon during the exile.
His clean living and uncanny ability to interpret dreams guaranteed him a position of power
in the court of Nebuchadnezzar.
There he predicted Babylon's doom.
Daniel made two famous prophesies.
The first was his interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream of a statue made of various materials.
The second was a vision of a ghostly hand, writing on a wall at King Belshazzar's feast.
Both of these prophecies predicted that Babylon would fall to the Persians, which would subsequently
fall to the Greeks who would then be superseded by the Romans.
As this was indeed the succession of power in that part of the world, many people take
the fulfillment of Daniel's prophecy as proof of the accuracy of the Bible.
The rebuttal to this, of course, is that most scholars agree that the Book of Daniel was
actually written centuries after the Babylonian exile, and Daniel's foresights were actually
hindsights.
Prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel are considered the "major prophets" thanks to
their weighty passages of doom against the world's greatest empires.
Thankfully, however, the Hebrew Bible is also full of minor prophets whose messages from
God are much shorter than their major colleagues.
One such minor prophet was Nahum, a contemporary of Isaiah who spent most of his three-chapter
book proclaiming the downfall of Assyria, specifically its capital city, Nineveh.
You might remember Nineveh as the city the prophet Jonah hated so much that he'd rather
be eaten by a big fish than warn them of God's wrath.
Or, you might recognize it as the historical capital of the real Neo-Assyrian Empire.
Either is fine.
An interesting thing about Nahum's prophecies against Nineveh is how specific they are.
Chapter one says that the Ninevites will be drunk like drunkards and consumed like dry
straw.
And, the ancient Greek historian Diodorus Siculus recorded that the city of Nineveh
was attacked by people who took advantage of the fact that the Assyrian soldiers were
too drunk to defend the city.
Likewise, archeologists found a layer of ash in the ruins of Nineveh, suggesting it was
burned as Nahum foresaw.
Of course, saying that a city will burn is probably the most generic possible threat
ever.
A thing one must understand about Christians is that they believe all Hebrew scripture,
known as the Old Testament, is actually all about them.
That is to say, that everything from Genesis to Malachi is leading toward the birth of
Jesus, whom they identify as the Son of God and the long-promised Messiah.
As such, it's very easy to find examples of Christian interpretation of Hebrew prophecies.
For example, Daniel chapter 9 says that the Messiah will come after the restoration of
the Temple and before it's destroyed for a second time.
Well, historical Jesus did live during the Second Temple period.
Genesis 49 claims that the tribe of Judah would retain power until the coming of the
Messiah.
This is interpreted to mean the the Herodian dynasty that was usurped by the Romans in
Jesus' lifetime.
And, Isaiah chapter 1 claims that the Messiah will be a descendant of the royal line of
David.
Well, the genealogies in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke go to some effort to prove Jesus
as descended from David through Solomon.
The name Muhammad doesn't appear anywhere in the Bible.
But, since the earliest days, it's been a part of Muslim tradition that both Hebrew
and Christian scriptures predict the rise of the great prophet of Islam.
Deuteronomy chapter 18 verse 18, for example, proclaims that God will raise up a prophet
from among the people.
And, Muslim scholars have long interpreted this to mean the people of Ishmael who was
the son of Abraham and who is considered the ancestor of the Arab people.
Likewise, Deuteronomy chapter 33 verse 2 describes God shining forth from three places: Sinai,
Seir, and Mount Paran.
The Muslim understanding is that Sinai refers to the advent of Moses, Seir to the rise of
Jesus, and Paran is considered to be Mecca and so points to the coming of Muhammad.
Similarly, John chapter 14 claims God sent an advocate which is understood by Christians
to be the Holy Spirit that descended on the Apostles after Jesus' ascension.
Muslims, however, interpreted this to mean a Comforter sent by God, namely Muhammad.
It was believed that this Comforter would clear up the misconceptions brought on by
the incomplete teachings of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.
And, this was to be accomplished through the Quran.
The Apocalypse of John, better known as The Book of Revelations, has captivated imaginations
for centuries with its terrifying visions of angels, dragons, beasts, and horsemen.
Some Christians even interpret the book as a prophecy for the end times.
Many have sought evidence of the modern world in John's apocalyptic visions, including signs
of modern technology, that they can use to prove the end of the world is coming.
"I think it's a sign from God, but don't quote me on that."
Perhaps the most widespread idea of Revelation reflecting the modern world is the mark of
the Beast.
John explains in chapter 13 that this mark is on one's hand or forehead, and without
it you can't buy or sell anything.
This has been interpreted to mean a kind of barcode or radio-frequency identification
chip that will be used to enforce control over the people.
Similarly, some Christians claim that the reference in chapter 11 to how people of all
nations will be able to see dead bodies almost instantly hints at live, globe-spanning communication
and the 24-hour news cycle.
And of course, a popular detail among conspiracy theorists is that the Beast is supposed to
arise from a European power even bigger than the Roman Empire, widely interpreted as the
European Union.
Of course, there's always a counterpoint, and here, it's that Revelation is a thinly-veiled
criticism of the Roman Empire, which had recently destroyed Jerusalem.
For some people, the explicit prophecies laid out by the prophets of the Hebrew and Christian
scriptures aren't enough.
There must be, they say, even more secret predictions contained within a series of hidden
patterns in the original Bible text.
Some kind of Bible code.
A book by Michael Drosnin called The Bible Code made a splash in 1997 with its claim
that manuscripts of the first five books of the Bible contain references to specific modern
events.
The way this code works is by using what's known as, quote, "equidistant letter sequences."
That is, looking at every second, fifth, tenth, hundredth, and so on, letter and seeing what
it spells.
That way, you can find hidden meaning in the Hebrew manuscripts.
Using this method, Drosnin claimed that the Bible predicts John F. Kennedy's assassination
in Dallas, the use of Scud missiles in the Gulf War, and the assassination of Israeli
prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Drosnin went on to explain that the Bible was actually written by the aliens who brought
human DNA to Earth and who left the key to understanding the code hidden in a steel obelisk
near the Dead Sea.
Needless to say, the Bible code has been heavily debunked thanks, in part, to the long history
of textual revisions of biblical manuscripts.
In other words, the Bible we have now isn't identical to the original versions.
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