Transcript
Engineers were preparing to build a highway in the middle of the Amazon Forest when a native walked up and told them to seek shelter because there’d be heavy rain in 2 hours.
The engineers looked up at the clear sky, didn’t heed the man’s prediction and continued with their work. But then in exactly 2 hours, it poured heavily.
The following day the native showed up again and told them not to worry it would be sunny for 4 days. Sure enough, it was sunny the entire 4 days.
On the 5th day, he showed up again in the morning and told them it would be too hot to work in the afternoon. And it did get too hot in the afternoon.
The following day the lead engineer dispatched a few of his juniors to seek the wise native, gift him some cash and ask for his prediction of the weather.
They found the man in his homestead, he accepted the gift and gave them his prediction. This carried on for 3 months while the engineers worked to set up the highway.
One morning, as had become their routine, the junior engineers went to seek the wise native with their daily cash gift to enquire about the day’s weather.
The wise man said he had bad news and couldn’t accept the cash: “I can’t help you today. The batteries on my radio ran out so I can’t listen to the weather forecast.”
This man’s prophecies were fulfilled, based on the weather forecast. Weather forecasts and predictions aren’t as accurate as this, but the predictions regarding the future in the Scriptures are always 100% accurate.
With incredible detail, forthright clarity, and impeccable accuracy, the Bible gives prophecies concerning the future.
And the past fulfillment of prophecy in Scripture is an internal defense and apologetic, which authoritatively declares that the Bible is the Word of God and we can trust it.
Joshua 6:26: “And Joshua adjured them at that time, saying, Cursed be the man before the LORD, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho: he shall lay the foundation thereof in his firstborn, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it.”
At the city of Jericho, Joshua followed God’s instructions for the Israelites to march around the city once a day for six consecutive days.
Then on the seventh day, the men of war, seven priests with ram’s horns, those bearing the ark of the covenant, and the rear guard, were to walk around the city seven times.
At the seventh time, when the priests blew the trumpets, Joshua signaled for the Israelites to give a mighty shout and the walls of Jericho then crumbled to the ground.
Following this mighty miracle, the soldiers went in and took the city, burned it with fire, and destroyed it completely.
After this great victory, Joshua imposed a curse on the city. Joshua adjured the people by a solemn oath, and made it binding upon them and their posterity, to leave the city in ruins as a memorial to God’s great victory and as a powerful warning to other cities that opposed Israel of the God that fought for Israel and His great power.
And God warned the Israelites through Joshua to not attempt to rebuild the city that God had destroyed due to its wickedness and idolatry, and that a curse would fall upon the man who did attempt it.
Joshua prophesied and told the people of Israel that the man who rebuilt the city of Jericho would lay its foundation at the cost of the death of his firstborn son.
And also, his youngest son would die when the gates were constructed and the work reached its completion. Thus, the man would lose two sons, one at the beginning and one at the completion of its reconstruction.
Fast forward 500 YEARS to the days of wicked King Ahab. And 1 Kings 16:34 says this, “In his days did Hiel the Bethelite build Jericho: he laid the foundation thereof in Abiram his firstborn, and set up the gates thereof in his youngest son Segub, according to the word of the LORD, which he spake by Joshua the son of Nun.”
The godlessness of that period in Israel’s history during the reign of King Ahab is witnessed by the brazen attempt of a man to rebuild Jericho in defiance of God’s curse and prophecy.
This man learned the hard and painful way that God is always faithful to His Word, and that what He had spoken 500 years before was true.
Five centuries later, Joshua’s prophecy founds its fulfillment in the life and family of a man named Hiel from Bethel. Heil attempted to reconstruct the city and restore it to its former condition.
The curse was literally and exactly fulfilled when, at the beginning of the work, as the foundation was being laid to rebuild the city, Heil’s firstborn son, Abiram, died.
And then at the end of the work, when the city was being completed and the gates in the walls were being hung, Heil’s youngest son, Segub, died.
Verse 34 literally means, that Hiel “laid its foundations at the cost of the life of Abiram his firstborn, and set up its gates with the loss of his youngest son Segub.”
How they died, we do not know. But they did so, as verse 34 states, “according to the Word of the Lord, which He spake by Joshua the son of Nun.”
God kept His Word. He confirmed His Word through Joshua. What Joshua prophesied was fulfilled and is exactly what happened to Heil’s two sons.
This is one of many fulfilled prophecies in the Bible that point to God’s faithfulness, omniscience, and the truth of His Word.
And the passage of a long period of time, 500 years, did nothing to keep God from being faithful to exactly what He had promised and said would happen.
1 Kings 13:1-2: “And, behold, there came a man of God out of Judah by the word of the LORD unto Bethel: and Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense.
“And he cried against the altar in the word of the LORD, and said, O altar, altar, thus saith the LORD; Behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name; and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men’s bones shall be burnt upon thee.”
Following the division of the kingdom in the days of Rehoboam, King Jeroboam of Israel set up golden calves for Israel to worship, one at Dan in the north of Israel, and the other at Bethel in the south.
As King Jeroboam stood by the altar in Bethel to burn idolatrous incense, an anonymous, unnamed “man of God” from the southern kingdom of Judah, boldly came “by the word of the Lord” to this pagan place in the northern kingdom to cry against it.
Interestingly, he ignores the king who was offering incense, and he speaks, not to Jeroboam, but to the blasphemous altar where incense and sacrifices were being offered.
The prophet shouted his word of prophecy, which came from the Lord, loudly and publicly, about a child, “born unto the house of David,” named Josiah, who would come in the future and destroy this pagan shrine.
This is one of the most remarkable prophecies of the Old Testament, because he predicted the actual name and actions of a king of Judah, “Josiah by name,” who would not be born for another 300 years. Josiah is one of very few in Scripture named before his birth.
If the United States still exists 300 years from now, imagine trying to give the exact name of the President of the United States in the year 2323! That’s the kind of thing we are talking about here.
Man does not and cannot know the future in his own knowledge. But our omniscient God does know the future and He can with perfect detail and certainty declare it in advance. And only an omnipotent God can bring to pass what He has declared.
God declares and knows the end from the beginning, and all things in between. He knows the future before it happens. Thus, prophecy in Scripture is just pre-written history.
These records in Scripture of history way before it happens, done with 100% precision and accuracy remind us of God’s greatness and that He holds the future, and that we hold in our hands, His Word, the very Word of God, and we can trust it wholly.
Here the Lord reveals to a prophet, 300 years before it took place, that a future king of Judah named Josiah would take the bodies and bones of the pagan priests of the high places of Israel’s King Jeroboam and burn them on that altar, which would desecrate and defile the altar.
Fast forward 300 YEARS! And 2 Kings 23:15-16 reads, “Moreover the altar that was at Bethel, and the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, had made, both that altar and the high place he brake down, and burned the high place, and stamped it small to powder, and burned the grove.
“And as Josiah turned himself, he spied the sepulchres that were there in the mount, and sent, and took the bones out of the sepulchres, and burned them upon the altar, and polluted it, according to the word of the LORD which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these words.”
Just like that prophet foretold through the perfect wisdom and foreknowledge of God, “Josiah” became king of Judah when he was 8 years old, succeeding his wicked father Amon (22:1). He reigned for 31 years in Jerusalem.
When King Josiah was 26 years old, he began a series of spiritual reforms and he rid the nation of idolatry which transformed the nation of Judah.
Josiah was diligent in his reforms. Thus, he zeroed in on Bethel and he removed the pagan altar there that Jeroboam had set up hundreds of years earlier.
In his zeal for God, he went to Bethel and destroyed the altar and the golden calf; he “burned the grove” or the wooden images at the site, and he burned this entire idolatrous high place. And he stamped, smashed, and grounded it all to dust and ashes.
Josiah was jealous for God’s glory, wanting Him to have the worship and service that is due to Him alone.
King Josiah then turned and “spied the sepulchres that were there in the mount,” or he saw the tombs that were nearby and all around this pagan site. This gave Josiah the thought of completing the ruin of Bethel.
He then ordered that the bones of the pagan priests from Jeroboam’s day be brought out and burned on that altar to complete the desecration of the altar and the entire site.
To the Jews, the burning of dead men’s bones leaving their ashes behind, unable to be completely removed, made this place perpetually unclean and polluted.
All of this was the exact fulfillment of a prophecy uttered over 300 years previous. As verse 16 says, this was all “according to the word of the Lord which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these words.”
Isaiah 41:21-26: “Produce your cause, saith the LORD; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob.
“Let them bring them forth, and shew us what shall happen: let them shew the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things for to come.
“Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods: yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together. Behold, ye are of nothing, and your work of nought: an abomination is he that chooseth you.
“I have raised up one from the north, and he shall come: from the rising of the sun shall he call upon my name: and he shall come upon princes as upon morter, and as the potter treadeth clay.
“Who hath declared from the beginning, that we may know? and beforetime, that we may say, He is righteous? yea, there is none that sheweth, yea, there is none that declareth, yea, there is none that heareth your words.”
In this passage, God taunts false gods and idols, challenging their inability to predict future events.
In a courtroom-type scene, verse 21 says, “Produce your cause, saith the Lord; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob.” God invited idols to present your case, produce your cause that you are real.
Our God tells idols to defend themselves to bring forward their strongest arguments, proofs, and evidence to establish their deity and show that they exist and are real.
The Lord says, “Let them bring them forth, and shew us what shall happen.” God’s test for the lifeless idols was: Tell us and show us what is coming in the future so it can be proven whether you are truly gods.
The Lord adds, “let them shew the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them.”
The Lord challenges idols, “If you are really gods, then you certainly know the past as well as the future. Tell us about the past. Knowing the past, you should be able to account for and “know the latter end of them,” or why things are the way that they are and how they came to be because of past events. God has done this for us in His Word.
The Lord then again challenges false gods, “declare us things for to come. Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods.”
The Lord again brings up that if the idols of the nations are real and are gods, they should surely be able to predict and declare things to come.
Again, God has done this and has fully demonstrated this wisdom and ability to do so in His Word. It is full of prophecy and shows what will happen in the future. The Book of Revelation is all about things to come.
The Lord then says, “yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together.” This section is as if the Lord is standing in the courtroom, questioning a thousand idols of all different sizes, shapes, and designs, and finally cries out, “Do something! Do good or do evil! Do anything to show that you are real.”
Do something “that we may be dismayed, and behold it together,” or so that we, Jehovah and His worshippers, may fear you and your power when we all see it together. But nothing happens. God’s challenge is met with silence.
Thus, God tells all idols in verse 24: You are nothing, less than nothing (1 Cor. 8). Your work is nothing. And the worshiper who chooses You as a god is foolish.
A god that can’t tell the future is therefore not omniscient and thus is not a god at all. The idols God challenged are all a delusion and illusion and unworthy of one’s trust and worship. And it is foolish and an abomination in God’s sight to worship an idol.
God alone is the true God, and He alone possesses the full knowledge of the future and can predict it. So He demonstrates that in verse 25: “I have raised up one from the north, and he shall come: from the rising of the sun shall he call upon my name: and he shall come upon princes as upon morter, and as the potter treadeth clay.”
No idol ever predicted the coming of Cyrus, but God did, telling Israel about this man in advance, nearly 175 years before he came into power.
Two points of the compass are mentioned in this verse to tell us where this man would come from in relation to Babylon.
When it says, “from the rising of the sun shall he call upon My name,” Cyrus came from and was born in Persia to the east of Babylon. Verse 2 of this chapter states this plainly as well: “Who raised up the righteous man from the east…?”
But later, after his rise to power, Cyrus conquered Media, which lies to the north of Babylon. And he proceeded on his conquests from there. And it was from Media that God “raised up one from the north” and he came down upon Babylon to conquer it.
So the Lord’s words refer to Him raising up one of eastern birth, who would march upon Babylon from the north.
And “he shall come upon princes as upon morter, and as the potter treadeth clay.” He will come and tread the Babylonian princes and officials underfoot, mortar being commonly mixed with feet at that time, as was clay for bricks and pottery.
And thus God proves He is God and all-knowing by foretelling the one who would conquer Babylon and be the deliverer of Israel’s exiles there.
Another amazing thing about this prophecy is that this was prophesied about 100 years even before Judah was taken captive to Babylon!
And God is foretelling the man who would conquer Babylon and set His people free after their 70-year captivity and return them to the land of Israel.
God returns to His taunt of idols in Isaiah 41:26, asking, “Which among the idol-gods announced the coming of a conqueror from the beginning, before he came so that we may know he is coming?”
For that matter, which idol has given any prophecy before an event occurred, so that when it took place one could say “He is righteous,” or unquestionably right?
And I like God’s summation: Yea, there is none that sheweth. Yea, there is none that declareth. Yea, there is none that hears your words when one prays and worships them.
God alone is the true and living God. He shows, He declares, He hears our words, our prayers, and worship. He gives prophecy before an event takes place, and it declares His righteousness when it is perfectly fulfilled and all comes to pass exactly as He said.
Isaiah 44:27-45:1: “That saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers: That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid.
“Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut.”
God goes a step further here. God alluded to a mighty conqueror who would overthrow Babylon in Isaiah 41.
But here God in His perfect wisdom and foreknowledge, clearly and specifically names him: Cyrus! Amazingly, He names him at least 150 years before the man was even born! And at least 175 years before he rose to power!
History verifies and records that Cyrus the Great was the founder of the Persian Empire. He reigned from 559 to 530 B.C., and he united the Medes and the Persians into a formidable world empire.
And Cyrus, God says, would be “My shepherd.” He would round up God’s people, His sheep, and return the faithful remnant to the fold in the land of Israel. God states of him in Isaiah 45:13 that “he shall let go My captives” or let My exiles go free.
Cyrus would “perform all My pleasure,” God says. Cyrus was a special instrument in God’s hand, for God’s work in conquering the kingdom of Babylon, and delivering the Jewish captives from there.
As well as “even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid.”
Due to Cyrus allowing Israel to return to the land, this opened the door for the work of rebuilding Jerusalem and the temple after the Babylonians had destroyed them.
But again, this is long before, over 100 years before Jerusalem and the temple was even destroyed by the armies of Babylon in 586 B.C.
Jerusalem and Solomon’s temple were still standing at this point when this prophecy was given. But Isaiah prophesied of their reconstruction long before their destruction, all of which happened exactly as God said it would.
Isaiah 45:1 states that, God’s anointed one, Cyrus, with God’s help, would “subdue [or conquer] nations before him;” and he would “loose the loins of kings,” or ungird and disarm them. He would render kings weak and incapable of resistance.
And God even foretold DETAILS of the city of Babylon’s destruction when He prophesied in verse in these verses, “That saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers…to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut.”
The city of Babylon was seemingly impregnable. It had strong defenses, which included moats and walls surrounding the city that were more than 70 feet thick and 300 feet high, with 250 watchtowers. But Cyrus was able to enter the city and conquer it.
One commentary stated how, “While King Belshazzar of Babylon held a reckless party [as we read in Daniel 5], Cyrus conquered the city by diverting the flow of the Euphrates River [which ran through the city] into a nearby swamp; thus, lowering the level of the river so his troops could march through the water and under the river-gates.
“But they still would not have been able to enter, had not the bronze gates of the inner walls been left inexplicably unlocked. God opened the gates of the city of Babylon for Cyrus and put it in writing 200 years before it happened!”
Just like it was prophesied, the river was dried up and the gates were not shut.
And as God had revealed, later Cyrus was born, rose to power, and overthrew Babylon, and then in the first year of his reign he made a proclamation throughout his kingdom.
2 Chronicles 36:23 reads, “Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the earth hath the LORD God of heaven given me; and he hath charged me to build him an house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all His people? The LORD his God be with him, and let him go up.”
These are only 3 examples of many fulfilled prophecies found in the Old Testament, but they illustrate an important principle: The Bible is the Word of God! Fulfilled prophecy substantiates the perfect truthfulness of the Word. And we can trust it.
God’s faithfulness in keeping and fulfilling past prophetic promises tells us that we can and should trust Him for our future.
It gives us comfort and assurance regarding the bright promises of hope and blessing in heavenly places that He has made to the Church, the Body of Christ.
Such as Titus 3:7: “That being justified by His grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”