I remember many years ago when I was an atheist; there was a time when I was researching all the other religions.
I wanted to search if any of the claims that any of these religions made were correct.
As I was doing my research, I found that the supporters of some of these religions would give different reasons for why they thought a particular religion was true.
But the problem was that each religious supporter had a different reason for why they thought that religion was the right religion.
So I ended up researching each religion and looking at it to see if it made any claims about why it was the right religion out of all the other ones.
Now, I can tell you that through my research, not all religions claim that they are right even though its supporters may make that claim themselves.
So that’s what you’re going to discover today.
What is the standard that the Bible claims you should use to find out why it is the right religion out of all the other religions out there?
The Bible Has The Amazing Ability to Predict The Future
And to answer that question, you have to go to the book of Isaiah in the Bible, verses 9 and 10.
This is what it says, and this is God speaking in these two verses:
“For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.”
Now whether you’ve heard of this Bible passage before or whether this is your first time, it’s easy to miss what is being said here.
This Christian God in the Bible is saying that He is the only God that can declare the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done.
This is just another way of saying that the measure of a real God would be His ability to predict the future with 100% accuracy.
Therefore, the standard that we are going to use to see if the claim of Christianity is the one true religion out of all the other religions is to use its own claim that it can predict the future with 100% accuracy.
So what I’m going to do in this blog post is share with you three predictions in the past that the Bible got right.
Now mind you, these are three out of several hundred predictions that the Bible got right and it didn’t get any wrong.
But for time sake, I’m not going to be able to share all hundreds of predictions with you.
And I’m also going to share with you one prediction about the future that has not come true yet, but it looks like it’s going to come true very soon.
By the way, you’re going to want to prepare yourself for what’s coming ahead because there is a disaster coming very soon.
If you’re not ready, then you and you’re family will not be able to survive.
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Prediction #1 By The Bible
The first prediction is that Jesus, the Savior of the world, would be born.
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Prediction #2 By the Bible
The second prediction that the Bible got 100% correct has to do with King Cyrus rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem.
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Prediction #3 By The Bible
The third prediction that I want to share with you has to do with the birth of Israel as a nation.
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— Peter Guirguis, Not Ashamed of the Gospel, Why is Christianity the Right Religion Out of 4,200?, September 10, 2018
Why Peter Guirguis became an atheist (and why it is doubtful he actually was an atheist in the typical sense of the word)
There is no pain like being among idiots who believe they are careful thinkers.
There is no way this guy was ever an atheist. I don’t even think he was so much as an ‘apatheist’, he seems simply to be a liar.
I have news for him: if you’re searching credulously for which god to believe in, you’re not a fucking atheist.
Taking hundreds of years old scriptures and making them fit events is nothing more than retconning.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retroactive_continuity
This is absolute laziness on an apologist’s part. Why shouldn’t we dismiss this like they dismiss Rasputin’s “prophecies”?
Sigh I fell for this bible prophecy came true crap, and it sucked me in. Too much trauma all at once made me vulnerable, probably even 9-11. I converted in around 2002, to waste good years of my life on this nonsense.
Sigh. This is a problem when one believes in inerrancy – there is no examination of the texts. What happened to the prophecy that Jesus was to return during the literal lifetimes of his followers? (Luke 9:27) Doesn’t this count as failed prophecy? What am I missing?
First I’ll confess I still have one foot in the Christian community and one out. I feel like my faith is fading day by day. Why? Because of absolute crap apologetics like this. Nothing new here folks, I’ve heard it all before, and unfortunately I’ve said some of it before. I used to strive to be an apologist for the faith. Honestly, this is what has pushed me from my faith. More than learning how to defend the faith as I studied apologetics I learned how to deconstruct the faith. With skepticism and logic I could tear every apologist’s defense down.
I went over to this guy’s website and read the entire article. It made me want to bang my head on my desk. Because beyond what Bruce shares he goes into details about how Bitcoin is leading to the coming of the Antichrist and the Great Tribulation.
But let me quickly address his defenses here. Using Isaiah as a prediction of Christ’s birth is one of the worst things to do. I believe that entirely rips the verse out of context (go ahead and read the whole chapter you’ll see) and shoehorns us into this thing called “double fulfillment” of prophecy. I believe Matthew’s use of this prophecy was totally out of context as well. We immediately fall into the trap of the Bible proving the Bible is true.
Then we have the Cyrus rebuilding the temple prophecy. The actual date of the writing of Daniel is in dispute as well as it’s authorship. Ample evidence exists to suggest Daniel was written at a much later date and therefore was looking backwards at time instead of prophetically forward.
Finally he pulls a verse from Jeremiah and uses it to point to the foundation of the nation of Israel at the end of WWII. Again, this is tentative at best. I believe Jeremiah was looking to the reforming of the Jewish nation after the exile. It was meant to be a promise to the people that they would not be in exile for long and there was hope. He was not looking over a thousand years into the future, but offering his people a hope in the near future.
So as long as Christianity offers such circular logic, poor scholarship and lack of critical thinking it’s going to continue to decline at least to true intellectuals. To people who really want to find the truth, they are going to find the Bible is not infallible and inerrant. It is a flawed book influenced by the people and the culture of it’s time.
Randy, you said, “So as long as Christianity offers such circular logic, poor scholarship and lack of critical thinking it’s going to continue to decline at least to true intellectuals.” That’s all Christianity ever has to offer. There is nothing else. It’s only “The bible says in the bible that Christianity is right, so THERE!
That’s what bothers me so much. The deeper I’ve gone, the more questions I’ve found than answers. Step one for me was rejecting the infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible. I’ve been a fan of Bart Ehrman long before I ever ran across Bruce’s blog. From his research and mine it is impossible to accept the Bible on those two terms. I used to be an atheist. And Bruce or somebody here said no true atheist could be committed to Christianity. Well, I’m finding that to be true. I may have been deluded by it all, but the delusion is slipping away.
Randy, just keep on reading and thinking. Whether you stay in Christianity or not, as long as you continue looking at the world – all aspects of it – asking questions, reading, discussing with others, etc, you will continue your journey as is proper for you at the time. Where I am now is certainly not where I was 20 years ago, 10 years ago, 2 years ago, 4 weeks ago.
Bart Ehrman’s books are so informative and easy to read. I would recommend them to anyone (except one can’t unread what one has read).