The great and awesome Day of the Lord

[Mithrae]

As y'all know despite being raised as one I'm no longer a Christian and haven't been for over a decade: I don't accept core Christian doctrines (eg. I'd only guess ~70-90% probability for the existence of some kind of 'God' and consider it significantly more probable than not that Jesus didn't rise from the dead), and more importantly I don't even adhere to the teachings of Jesus (to sell what you have and give to the poor, don't worry about tomorrow but trust in God's provision, stop working for money and start working for the kingdom of God).

But I try to keep an open mind, and over the past ten months or so I've been troubled by the topic of biblical prophecy. It actually began all the way back in 2011, when one prophecy enthusiast came to the forum with all kinds of fallacies and arbitrary conclusions, claiming that his pet theory had only 112 trillion to one odds of being false. So in response I did a more objective assessment, and came up with something like 100 to one instead; which is not mind-blowing or miraculous, but is still somewhat intriguing.

I've privately gnawed on that issue at times over the years, but never managed to falsify it to my own satisfaction and even found a couple of additional points worth considering too. So hopefully the rest of you can help prove me wrong.

As I see it, if a prediction has been made and parts of it had already come true, that's either coincidence or it's indicative of genuine foreknowledge. Hence the likelihood that the rest will come true is the inverse of the likelihood that the first part was coincidence. (Plus the likelihood that it would happen anyway, prophecy or no, but in the case of biblical prophecies that's basically zero and therefore irrelevant.) That is absolutely critical to my reasoning, but I can't find a fault with it: Either the fulfillment of the first part was coincidence or it was indeed foreknown, and if it was foreknown then the rest of it presumably is foreknown also; so the likelihood that the first part was not coincidence is roughly the same as the likelihood that the whole prophecy is genuine.

Thus we have -
Prediction: Prophecy and interpretation
Confirmation: Signs and complete fulfillment

The biggest problem I've found with many Christian prophecy enthusiasts is that they tend to include their interpretation as part of the 'sign,' like that fellow from 2011 (and with some particularly enthusiastic folk, simply make up what constitutes a sign from whole cloth!), and that's a key error I've tried to avoid in my reasoning. In each case I've tried to justify an interpretation of biblical prophecy as legitimate, not arbitrary, and only then begun to consider how likely it is that the 'sign' which came to pass is mere coincidence. I will try to be as brief as possible with the signs I've been interested in, but I'll still put them in another post because this is already getting on the long side for an OP. However I'll briefly comment on two of the most obvious objections first:

1 - Biblical prophecies are too vague
It's a fair point, but firstly, that is why I've tried to specifically quantify the likelihood of a fulfillment or 'sign' being mere coincidence, distinct from and after establishing a legitimate interpretation; and secondly, what would the alternative be? If a prophecy were very specific then anytime since 400 CE or so basically any 'fulfillment' would be subject to the criticism that it was engineered by Christians to match the existing prophecy. Some miraculous exceptions which could not possibly be engineered by humans might apply (though not for any of the ones below), but then there's the endless debate over whether there's good reasons why a deity would not openly and universally reveal himself in such a manner. Criticisms on those grounds are not particularly valid to my mind, since they simply assume certain things about what 'God' or prophecy should be like, rather than addressing the actual data available.

2 - Seemingly fulfilled prophecies, even remarkable ones, are still coincidental products of large numbers; many many prophecies and thousands of years of history
The charge that some biblical prophecies are obviously false prophecies (eg. those of Ezekiel or those that 'Matthew' put in Jesus' mouth about his return) falls more into this category than being a valid objection in its own right, I think; after all on its own, it amounts to nothing more than the absurd 'some prophecies are false therefore they all are.' However the more nuanced recognition of how large numbers interact with the notion of coincidence is important, and is potentially valid, if it can be shown that that the real probability of a 'fulfillment' is in fact other than what I have calculated. I have tried to be careful in considering other scenarios, other possible 'fulfillments' in my estimations of probability, so I don't consider it a valid objection to blithely state that it simply must have been more probable than I've concluded.



Questions for debate:
Is the reasoning above valid, particularly the section in blue?
And if so, are the assessments of probability for the prophecies/signs in post #2 correct (or at least reasonable)?

[Mithrae]

After page upon page of off-topic back-and-forth one-liners, I'll make the first post of the new page something I've hinted at but maybe should have addressed more thoroughly earlier on: How easy it often is to debunk the date-setters of the past, even the most famous ones. It's an important point, because seeing how dubious many other alleged signs and dates have been provides a frame of reference in which to look those I've highlighted as potentially plausible.

Seventh day/millennium views
Description: Drawing on the comment in 2 Peter 3 that "With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day," the millennial kingdom described in Revelation and the creation story of Genesis, many Christians have supposed that history should have six 'days'/6000 years of God's work to rectify evil and then a seventh 'day'/millennium of 'rest.' This has been the basis for a number of predictions.
Problem/s: Firstly, the interpretation is dubious, drawing on only half of a sentence in Peter and splicing in otherwise unrelated elements from two other books. But secondly and more importantly, the start of those 6000 years is either unknown/arbitrary or flat out wrong: St. Hippolytus of Rome (lived c. 170-235CE) believed that 6000 years from the fall would be 500 CE; James Ussher famously calculated 6pm on October 23rd of 4004 BCE as the date of creation, which would mean it's now been 6022 years; while according to the Jewish calendar we're still only in the year 5777. Such wild guesses really couldn't tell us anything, even before scientists proved that in fact the world and even human civilization are much older than that and there obviously was no literal garden of Eden and fall.

Years/millennia since Christ views
Description: Obviously the hype around the years 1000 and 2000 attracted sensation on this basis, and doubtless to a lesser extent 500 and 1500 too.
Problem/s: There's simply no biblical basis for the view, besides perhaps taking that same verse from Peter and inventing some rationale from it (which is even worse than grabbing a rationale from Revelation and Genesis, IMO). Furthermore this too is quite arbitrary; 1000 CE was not actually a thousand years from Jesus' birth to begin with, but when nothing happened in that year plenty of people decided that maybe the 'real' date would be a thousand years after Jesus' baptism, or death.

The Millerites/great disappointment - 1843
Description: Based on Daniel 8:14, William Miller taught that the holy place would be restored 2300 years after Artaxerxes' decree to build Jerusalem; since he believed that was in 457 BCE, he predicted Jesus' return in 1843-44.
Problem/s: The 'day-year principle' is extremely dubious to begin with but, even if it were legitimate, Daniel 8:14 talks very explicitly of 2300 "evenings and mornings"! Furthermore Daniel 8 is clearly about the Greek period and specifically the oppression of Antiochus IV Epiphanes; Artaxerxes' decree and a supposed countdown to Jesus' return have nothing to do with it.

Charles Taze Russell/JWs - 1874 and 1914
Description: I'm not sure about his 1874 prediction, but from a link Jehovah's Witness provided earlier in the thread, it seems that JWs count forward 2520 years from the ascension of Nebuchadnezzar in ~607 BCE, based partly on Daniel 4.
Problem/s: Daniel 4 is quite unambiguously about a supposed seven year madness of Nebuchadnezzar; nothing to do with eschatology at all. JWs turn those seven years into 2520 days (seven years of 360 days), and then turn those 2520 days into 2520 years!

Hal Lindsay - 1988, 2007, 2018, 2037...
Description: Lindsay based his views on Luke 21, specifically that "Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled" and "when you see these things happening... this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened." He concluded first that the state of Israel represented the end of gentiles' trampling of Jerusalem, and then Israel's full control of the city in 1967, and decided that Jesus must return within a 'generation' of 40 years from those dates, later hedging his bets with the old threescore and ten years instead.
Problem/s: The interpretation is actually better than any of these other examples, which isn't saying a lot; it's reading into the text rather than from it, but not in a brazenly fallacious way like the other ones. The biggest problem is that the 'generation won't pass away' could easily be extended to 120 years if required (cf. Genesis 6:3), so Lindsay's hype and hubris was vastly overplaying and dishonestly profiteering on an interpretation which would really only suggest that Jesus might return sometime before 2087.

Revelation 12 sign - September 2017
Description: For those not already familiar; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelatio ... n_prophecy
Problem/s: Even besides the arbitrary count of Virgo's stars it would have been "a great sign appeared in heaven" (12:1) which no-one actually saw in heaven, and wouldn't even have noticed without trawling through some astronomy software with a fine tooth comb!



I hope that someone can provide a similar debunking of the content from the first two posts. But while all of the above are easily debunked, as far as I can see that doesn't seem to be the case for any one of those I've posted; the best and most obvious criticism would be that the 'sign of Elijah' draws on passages which aren't explicitly prophetic, but given how those passages look almost like a rough outline for the past few decades of US political history and are bookended by quasi-eschatological figures, I'm not sure that's a particularly strong point. Understanding the mistakes and pitfalls of bad interpretation makes me think that maybe the ones I've highlighted as plausible don't really have such mistakes - or at least not very obvious ones!

[Mithrae]

As I see it, if a prediction has been made and parts of it had already come true, that's either coincidence or it's indicative of genuine foreknowledge. Hence the likelihood that the rest will come true is the inverse of the likelihood that the first part was coincidence. (Plus the likelihood that it would happen anyway, prophecy or no, but in the case of biblical prophecies that's basically zero and therefore irrelevant.) That is absolutely critical to my reasoning, but I can't find a fault with it: Either the fulfillment of the first part was coincidence or it was indeed foreknown, and if it was foreknown then the rest of it presumably is foreknown also; so the likelihood that the first part was not coincidence is roughly the same as the likelihood that the whole prophecy is genuine.

Thus we have -
Prediction: Prophecy and interpretation
Confirmation: Signs and complete fulfillment

Well sure if you assume that an apparently fulfilled segment of a prophecy was due to foreknowledge, then we can reasonably assume the rest of the prophecy is foreknown as well.

Though I am not sure why this is an important topic, because the main and prerequisite argument will always be over whether there is any foreknowledge involved at all.

That's the thing, I'm not assuming that it was due to foreknowledge: I'm calculating the probability that it was due to foreknowledge, as the inverse of the likelihood that it's mere coincidence.

1 - Biblical prophecies are too vague
It's a fair point, but firstly, that is why I've tried to specifically quantify the likelihood of a fulfillment or 'sign' being mere coincidence, distinct from and after establishing a legitimate interpretation;

If you are successful in establishing a fixed and specific interpretation independent of the events of the world that occurred since the time of writing, then this would be a fair answer to the issue of vagueness.

However, that's much easier said than done.

and secondly, what would the alternative be? If a prophecy were very specific then anytime since 400 CE or so basically any 'fulfillment' would be subject to the criticism that it was engineered by Christians to match the existing prophecy. Some miraculous exceptions which could not possibly be engineered by humans might apply (though not for any of the ones below), but then there's the endless debate over whether there's good reasons why a deity would not openly and universally reveal himself in such a manner. Criticisms on those grounds are not particularly valid to my mind, since they simply assume certain things about what 'God' or prophecy should be like, rather than addressing the actual data available.

If vagueness is a problem, that problem doesn't go away just because non-vagueness would raise a different problem.

True, but my point is I don't think a compelling case has been made that vagueness (ambiguity might be a better word) is a problem. If the fulfillment of a prediction were extremely remarkable, then it's an extremely remarkable prediction. The kind of words in which that prediction was made can only change how remarkable its fulfillment really was, not invalidate it automatically: A clear and highly specific prediction with only one possible way of being fulfilled is more remarkable than an ambiguous one with two or three possible ways of being fulfilled, which in turn is more remarkable than a vague prediction which events in any century might be said to 'fulfill.' Many prophecy enthusiasts fail or refuse to take that into account; but I have, or I've certainly tried to. So if a prediction were ambiguous but I correctly incorporated that fact into my evaluation of its probability (or sufficiently justified the specific interpretation I've advocated) and reached a sound conclusion that the fulfillment is really very remarkable, simply repeating the original fact of its ambiguity wouldn't change the conclusion.

2 - Seemingly fulfilled prophecies, even remarkable ones, are still coincidental products of large numbers; many many prophecies and thousands of years of history
The charge that some biblical prophecies are obviously false prophecies (eg. those of Ezekiel or those that 'Matthew' put in Jesus' mouth about his return) falls more into this category than being a valid objection in its own right, I think; after all on its own, it amounts to nothing more than the absurd 'some prophecies are false therefore they all are.' However the more nuanced recognition of how large numbers interact with the notion of coincidence is important, and is potentially valid, if it can be shown that that the real probability of a 'fulfillment' is in fact other than what I have calculated.

I don't see what that has to do with it. The issue of large numbers is about the remarkability of coincidences, not their probability.

A 1-in-100 coincidence is remarkable when looked at in isolation, but group it with 99 other 99-in-100 outcomes and your overall result is exactly what you'd expect from random guessing. You have to consider everything as a whole, not just cherry pick the most stand-out outcomes.

Also true, but the point is that a blithe assumption that an outcome mustn't be remarkable 'because large numbers' would not be valid. People pull cards from a deck thousands of times a day throughout the world, but it's still remarkable if someone pulls out four aces in a row. If they do so, we can and should note the possibility that it was merely coincidence, but we're more likely to consider it probable that there was some trick or a fake deck or the like. If it were later proven that there was no trick involved, then principle of large numbers would lead us conclude that it was just a cool coincidence rather than some kind of miracle, but with the initial information available we would rightly be inclined to suspect some kind of trick.

Similarly in the case of a remarkable prophetic 'coincidence' the rational conclusion is that probably it's the product of genuine foreknowledge, particularly when such coincidences come up again and again. The fact that there are thousands of prophecies and thousands of situations where events potentially could have fulfilled them (but didn't) doesn't automatically change the assessment that this fulfillment was probably due to foreknowledge. It would only be if and when further information (or more commonly, a presuppositional worldview) indicates that it wasn't foreknowledge that we could rest easy in the knowledge that it's 'explained' by the large numbers.

Questions for debate:
Is the reasoning above valid, particularly the section in blue?
And if so, are the assessments of probability for the prophecies/signs in post #2 correct (or at least reasonable)?

My ability to address post 2 is limited. I have little biblical background.

Thanks for the response anyway But please consider responding to #2 - biblical knowledge would be helpful to spot if I've made any mistakes in interpretation, but not to consider whether my assessments of probability are legitimate given the interpretation. And it's the assessments of probability which are my real contributions and real concern here - the other stuff, particularly from the 'sign of Joel' and 'sign of Elijah' are based largely on the views of others, but the objective/sceptical quantification of those signs is something I've never seen elsewhere, and the only thing which gives them any plausibility.

[FarWanderer]

2 - Seemingly fulfilled prophecies, even remarkable ones, are still coincidental products of large numbers; many many prophecies and thousands of years of history
The charge that some biblical prophecies are obviously false prophecies (eg. those of Ezekiel or those that 'Matthew' put in Jesus' mouth about his return) falls more into this category than being a valid objection in its own right, I think; after all on its own, it amounts to nothing more than the absurd 'some prophecies are false therefore they all are.' However the more nuanced recognition of how large numbers interact with the notion of coincidence is important, and is potentially valid, if it can be shown that that the real probability of a 'fulfillment' is in fact other than what I have calculated.

I don't see what that has to do with it. The issue of large numbers is about the remarkability of coincidences, not their probability.

A 1-in-100 coincidence is remarkable when looked at in isolation, but group it with 99 other 99-in-100 outcomes and your overall result is exactly what you'd expect from random guessing. You have to consider everything as a whole, not just cherry pick the most stand-out outcomes.

Also true, but the point is that a blithe assumption that an outcome mustn't be remarkable 'because large numbers' would not be valid.

It's not remarkable because you apply large numbers. When I speak of remarkability I am talking about an impression, not an objective truth. An event can be both remarkable in one way and unremarkable in another. For example, your mother winning the lottery is quite remarkable in that it's YOUR mother who won, but it's also unremarkable in that someone won, even if that person was your mother.

The question is what level of resolution is the appropriate level for approaching the issue at hand. If we are looking at the validity of the predictions in the Bible for evidence of Christianity's truth, then to my mind the appropriate level of resolution is clearly the biblical predictions as a whole.

Determining the appropriate level of resolution is not straightforward, however. We search for patterns, but patterns require similarity without being identical. Whether we consider two distinct events as "the same" for inductive purposes is primarily if not entirely left to our intuition.

People pull cards from a deck thousands of times a day throughout the world, but it's still remarkable if someone pulls out four aces in a row. If they do so, we can and should note the possibility that it was merely coincidence, but we're more likely to consider it probable that there was some trick or a fake deck or the like. If it were later proven that there was no trick involved, then principle of large numbers would lead us conclude that it was just a cool coincidence rather than some kind of miracle, but with the initial information available we would rightly be inclined to suspect some kind of trick.

Similarly in the case of a remarkable prophetic 'coincidence' the rational conclusion is that probably it's the product of genuine foreknowledge, particularly when such coincidences come up again and again. The fact that there are thousands of prophecies and thousands of situations where events potentially could have fulfilled them (but didn't) doesn't automatically change the assessment that this fulfillment was probably due to foreknowledge. It would only be if and when further information (or more commonly, a presuppositional worldview) indicates that it wasn't foreknowledge that we could rest easy in the knowledge that it's 'explained' by the large numbers.

If someone confidently declared the top 4 cards of a deck to be Aces and it turned out to be true, there's no way I would accept that it was random no matter what "proof" they showed me. In other words, even if I couldn't figure out a trick I would still believe there almost certainly was one. However, if it turned out that declaring 4 Aces on top was a habit of theirs and they had actually done it thousands of times (always failing except the one time) then I would change my mind.

The declaration is what dictates the appropriate level of resolution in this case.

I would have the same response towards a biblical prophecy of similar probability, but there's nothing comparable to 4 topdeck Aces (about 1/30,000) in the Bible, as well as quite of lot of misses to water it down even if there were.

Questions for debate:
Is the reasoning above valid, particularly the section in blue?
And if so, are the assessments of probability for the prophecies/signs in post #2 correct (or at least reasonable)?

My ability to address post 2 is limited. I have little biblical background.

Thanks for the response anyway But please consider responding to #2 - biblical knowledge would be helpful to spot if I've made any mistakes in interpretation, but not to consider whether my assessments of probability are legitimate given the interpretation. And it's the assessments of probability which are my real contributions and real concern here - the other stuff, particularly from the 'sign of Joel' and 'sign of Elijah' are based largely on the views of others, but the objective/sceptical quantification of those signs is something I've never seen elsewhere, and the only thing which gives them any plausibility.

Alright, well just looking at the first one (Joel)

The sign of Joel

Joel wrote that "The sun will be turned into darkness / And the moon into blood / Before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes" (2:31).

In his first sermon on Pentecost, Peter apparently thought that prophecy was being fulfilled in his own time: According to NASA's data there'd been a solar eclipse in November of 29CE, very nearly a total eclipse when viewed from Galilee, and just fifteen days later a lunar eclipse during Hannukah. When these - the closest and most striking such occurrences in at least thirty years if not much longer - were followed just a few months later by the crucifixion of Jesus, who could blame Peter for that erroneous conclusion?

I don't see any reason to think Peter misinterpreted the prophecy just because his interpretation didn't come true. A prophecy doesn't become less ambiguous just because one of its possible interpretations is proven false.

But on that basis we can set aside the unwarranted assumption that this prophecy must refer to supernatural events.

??? Why? You mean because Peter thought it didn't...?

The rarest 'blood moon' phenomena listed by NASA are not mere total lunar eclipses, but total eclipse tetrads; four in a row over a period of two years.

Why are we assuming he's talking about the rarest of 'blood moon' phenomena? He just said the moon will turn to blood? Why is it only the rarest of such phenomena that qualify?

There've been fifty-five of them since 1CE, but some share the curious feature that all four eclipses fall on the Jewish festivals of Pesach and Sukkot. There have been only eight 'feast tetrads' since 1CE... and the last ones of the previous millenium were in 1949/50 (the initial armistice granting Israel relative peace from its hostile neighbours was signed in 1949) and 1967/68 (Israel gained control of Jerusalem in 1967).

The rarest 'dark sun' phenomenon is not a total solar eclipse, but the hybrid of total/annular eclipses, and the rarest of these are the class 3 hybrids: There have been only eight since 1CE.

And why rarest 'dark sun'? Joel just said the sun would go dark. Didn't say anything about it being rare.

The third closest these phenomena approach each other over a three thousand year period from 1 to 3000 CE is 78 years apart (H3 of 1350 and tetrad of 1428/29). The second closest is four years apart - H3 of 1489 and tetrad of 1493/94 - around the time of Europe's 'discovery' of the region which would become a second home to the Jewish people (almost half of all Jews). So with that perspective, the closest that they approach each other is less than six months apart: The eighth H3 solar eclipse of November 2013 and the eighth 'feast tetrad' beginning April 2014.

The eclipses in Peter's day were not so unusual: But the odds of this match-up being mere coincidence are around 1 in 100. Not the 'feast tetrads' or their occurrence around dates of historical significance for Jews - that is simply a matter of interpretation - or even the fact that there'd been seven of both 'feast tetrads' and H3 eclipses, which again is merely laying groundwork for considering them significant, a confirmation of interpretation if you will. Instead I'm looking at what we might have predicted in advance if we'd noticed these facts early enough: Simply the probability that the next H3 eclipse would occur so near to that eighth tetrad - even within three years of it, never mind six months! - was only around 1% likely to occur as a matter of coincidence, based on the seven H3 eclipses in 2000 years; 1-(1-7/2000)³ = 0.01046, or 1 in 95.6.

By implication, we can have ~99% confidence that this was a fulfilment of the first part of Joel's prophecy, the darkened sun and blood moon, and that the great and awesome day of the Lord will soon be upon us.

Joel said nothing about the amount of time between two different celestial events, or that they would happen within the next 2,000 years or 200,000,000 years. Or just 20 for that matter. There will always be a time in the future that these two celestial events happen very close to one another, so the fact that we are near such an event right now really doesn't say anything about the credibility of Joel's prediction.

Also there are more mathematical vectors, since there doesn't appear to be any reason why the 2014 tetrad is of particular significance. You say there have been 55 total eclipse triads in the last 2000 years. The probability of at least one of those 55 being near at least one of the seven H3s is not small at all (about a 17% chance that at least one pair would share a year). Regarding the feast tetrads, for them to be of any significance would require interpretive assumptions (and even then we still have 8 shots).

[1213]

...2 - Seemingly fulfilled prophecies, even remarkable ones, are still coincidental products of large numbers; many many prophecies and thousands of years of history
The charge that some biblical prophecies are obviously false prophecies (eg. those of Ezekiel or those that 'Matthew' put in Jesus' mouth about his return)...

I am sorry, if this is petty, but I think the prophesy of the return of Jesus cant be wrong, because Jesus himself says that only God knows when it happens, if it means the judgment day. However, return of Jesus can mean also that when Jesus comes back to life from the death, which obviously happened according to the story very soon.

But no one knows of that day and hour, not even the angels of heaven, but my Father only.
Matt. 24:36

[bjs]

There were a myriad of Hebrew prophetic writers whose works did not end up in the final canon.

There were likely hundreds of Hebrew prophets, and thousands (if not millions) of other kinds of future-tellers around the world. However, this seems to be changing the topic. You started this topic specifically about biblical prophecy. If we are going to include everyone who claimed to predict the future, or just every Hebrew who claimed to predict the future, then we are talking about something very different than biblical prophecy.

[Mithrae]

The question is what level of resolution is the appropriate level for approaching the issue at hand. If we are looking at the validity of the predictions in the Bible for evidence of Christianity's truth, then to my mind the appropriate level of resolution is clearly the biblical predictions as a whole.

Determining the appropriate level of resolution is not straightforward, however. We search for patterns, but patterns require similarity without being identical. Whether we consider two distinct events as "the same" for inductive purposes is primarily if not entirely left to our intuition.

People pull cards from a deck thousands of times a day throughout the world, but it's still remarkable if someone pulls out four aces in a row. If they do so, we can and should note the possibility that it was merely coincidence, but we're more likely to consider it probable that there was some trick or a fake deck or the like. If it were later proven that there was no trick involved, then principle of large numbers would lead us conclude that it was just a cool coincidence rather than some kind of miracle, but with the initial information available we would rightly be inclined to suspect some kind of trick.

Similarly in the case of a remarkable prophetic 'coincidence' the rational conclusion is that probably it's the product of genuine foreknowledge, particularly when such coincidences come up again and again. The fact that there are thousands of prophecies and thousands of situations where events potentially could have fulfilled them (but didn't) doesn't automatically change the assessment that this fulfillment was probably due to foreknowledge. It would only be if and when further information (or more commonly, a presuppositional worldview) indicates that it wasn't foreknowledge that we could rest easy in the knowledge that it's 'explained' by the large numbers.

If someone confidently declared the top 4 cards of a deck to be Aces and it turned out to be true, there's no way I would accept that it was random no matter what "proof" they showed me. In other words, even if I couldn't figure out a trick I would still believe there almost certainly was one. However, if it turned out that declaring 4 Aces on top was a habit of theirs and they had actually done it thousands of times (always failing except the one time) then I would change my mind.

The declaration is what dictates the appropriate level of resolution in this case.

I would have the same response towards a biblical prophecy of similar probability, but there's nothing comparable to 4 topdeck Aces (about 1/30,000) in the Bible, as well as quite of lot of misses to water it down even if there were.

Arguably there's something far more remarkable than calling four aces in the bible; the prophecy of Persian and Greek rulers in Daniel 11 which can be literally aligned almost verse by verse with history recorded elsewhere. Of course in that case we run headlong into the circularity that if it appears to be so supernatural, it mustn't be, and must have been written later (despite all the difficulties with that hypothesis).

If your friend successfully pulled his trick a couple of times, but you also knew that he'd failed half a dozen times, wouldn't you still assume that it was some kind of complicated deck-switching trick that he'd merely screwed up those half-dozen times? As you suggested, for coincidence to be a really plausible explanation, he'd need to have tried his trick thousands of times. Furthermore, if he also had a fairly consistent track record of doing much less impressive 'tricks' successfully - declaring that he was going to pull a number card, for example - however unimpressive they might be individually, they'd hardly reduce the likelihood that there was something going on behind the scenes. The bible has plenty of vague/unimpressive predictions which have been 'fulfilled,' and a few which are arguably quite impressive: I'm not sure the relatively few which are unequivocally false are up to the task which you're expecting of them.

More importantly I question the reasoning itself. You seem to be saying that if Andy said he heard from God, and made a really amazing prediction about the future, but then Billy, Carl and Dick also claimed to hear from God and got it wrong... that the predictions of those other people somehow invalidate Andy's claim? The bible is an anthology by many different authors, not a single book; the authors discussed similar themes and drew on each others' work, but there's no reason to suppose that the reliability of one author is tied to the reliability of others. This seems to be a bit like saying that the appropriate frame of reference when discussing general relativity is all scientific claims, and that the errors of Newtonian mechanics and Lamarckian evolution make the conclusions of modern physics less plausible. (A line of argument I have seen from some climate change contrarians, to be fair!)

#

But on that basis we can set aside the unwarranted assumption that this prophecy must refer to supernatural events.

??? Why? You mean because Peter thought it didn't...?

"On that basis" was a poor choice of words: We can set aside the unwarranted assumption that it must refer to supernatural events because the assumption is unwarranted. That a noteworthy early Jewish interpreter seemingly applied the prophecy to a regular solar and lunar eclipse of his own time - neither of them even total eclipses, at least as viewed from his region - merely confirms that there's no reason to assume the fulfillment must be supernatural.

The rarest 'blood moon' phenomena listed by NASA are not mere total lunar eclipses, but total eclipse tetrads; four in a row over a period of two years.

Why are we assuming he's talking about the rarest of 'blood moon' phenomena? He just said the moon will turn to blood? Why is it only the rarest of such phenomena that qualify?

There've been fifty-five of them since 1CE, but some share the curious feature that all four eclipses fall on the Jewish festivals of Pesach and Sukkot. There have been only eight 'feast tetrads' since 1CE... and the last ones of the previous millenium were in 1949/50 (the initial armistice granting Israel relative peace from its hostile neighbours was signed in 1949) and 1967/68 (Israel gained control of Jerusalem in 1967).

The rarest 'dark sun' phenomenon is not a total solar eclipse, but the hybrid of total/annular eclipses, and the rarest of these are the class 3 hybrids: There have been only eight since 1CE.

And why rarest 'dark sun'? Joel just said the sun would go dark. Didn't say anything about it being rare.

It's expressed as a sign - this will happen before that happens. The preceding verse talks about "wonders in the heavens and on earth." The assumption that a fulfillment must be something supernatural is unwarranted, but that it must be rare enough to be noteworthy is obvious.

The sign of Joel
Joel wrote that "The sun will be turned into darkness / And the moon into blood / Before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes" (2:31).

In his first sermon on Pentecost, Peter apparently thought that prophecy was being fulfilled in his own time: According to NASA's data there'd been a solar eclipse in November of 29CE, very nearly a total eclipse when viewed from Galilee, and just fifteen days later a lunar eclipse during Hannukah. When these - the closest and most striking such occurrences in at least thirty years if not much longer - were followed just a few months later by the crucifixion of Jesus, who could blame Peter for that erroneous conclusion?

I don't see any reason to think Peter misinterpreted the prophecy just because his interpretation didn't come true. A prophecy doesn't become less ambiguous just because one of its possible interpretations is proven false.

The point is that those were not particularly remarkable eclipses that Peter (presumably) observed. The eclipse in November 29CE was probably the darkest in recent memory, but there had been four other solar occlusions visible from Israel in just the preceding fourteen years. Unless we take seriously the gospel story of darkness at Jesus' death - which I think more likely came from a garbled version of the November eclipse - there'd been no wonders in the heavens to justify his conclusion.

Joel said nothing about the amount of time between two different celestial events, or that they would happen within the next 2,000 years or 200,000,000 years. Or just 20 for that matter. There will always be a time in the future that these two celestial events happen very close to one another, so the fact that we are near such an event right now really doesn't say anything about the credibility of Joel's prediction.

I didn't discuss it in my brief initial comments, but there's a bit more context to the passage which could be helpful here. I'll use a Jewish translation of the Tanakh (which makes no difference besides starting a new chapter at 2:28; I just don't like depending too heavily on Christian translations):

• Joel 2:28/3:1
  And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out My spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions;
  2 And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out My spirit.
  3 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.
  4 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of HaShem come.
  5 And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of HaShem shall be delivered; for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those that escape, as HaShem hath said, and among the remnant those whom HaShem shall call.
  3:1/4:1
  For, behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall bring back the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem,
  2 I will gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat; and I will enter into judgment with them there for My people and for My heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and divided My land. . . .

Christians believe that God began pouring out his Spirit - and not just on Jews but on "all flesh" - in the 1st century CE, and that Pentecost story is obviously the biggest reason for Peter's reference to Joel in his alleged sermon. You and I might take that story with a grain of salt, so I'm not sure how helpful it is in terms of interpretation. I would suggest that the clearest predictive element in the passage is the declaration that there would be a noteworthy darkened sun and bloody moon before the 'day of the Lord.' But also quite prominent is the reference to Judah (and seemingly Judah alone) returning to their land and to Jerusalem.

In this passage it's not clear whether or not that should happen before or after the 'great and terrible day of the Lord,' but as I've suggested it seems evident from other eschatological passages (such as Daniel's requirement that there be a temple to be defiled) that Judah's return to their land was a pre-requisite for most other predictions. That is why it is so interesting and so significant that the lunar eclipse tetrads of 1949/50 and 1967/68 happen to fall on the Jewish festivals of Pesach and Sukkot: The two years of most positive progress for the Jewish state, the initial respite from their neighbours' hostility then the tremendous gains of the Six Day War, marked by phenomena which had occurred precisely seven times in two thousand years. (I would check back beyond 1CE for earlier 'feast tetrads,' but with the changes to the calendar systems in prior centuries it's hard enough even checking dates from the 1st millennium. I may try to do it someday!)

Moreover, those 1949/50 and 67/68 feast tetrads had been preceded by decades exemplifying what anyone from prior centuries would unequivocally agree were "wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke": Aeroplanes, global warfare on unprecedented scale and nuclear detonations.

The Jews' return to self-governance on their own land after eighteen centuries of dispersion and fairly regular, often brutal oppression is remarkable enough. I'm not sure whether there's even many nations which maintain their cultural identity and cohesion after just a few generations of dispersion, even without oppression, and the only group I know of which is even remotely comparable to the Jews are the Romani; albeit only over a period about half as long as the Jewish dispersion, and without becoming the prosperous and formidable country that Israel has surprisingly become. The fact that this return occurred - after so long - so soon after such unequivocal fulfillments of "wonders in the heavens etc." is more incredible still. And the fact that the two years of most positive progress for the new Jewish state were marked by such rare, seven in two millennia phenomena virtually beggars belief! But I have not included any of that in my final assessment of probability for the fulfillment of this prophecy: I've taken it all simply as confirmation of interpretation.

Joel does predict those things, but he does so somewhat ambiguously, vaguely, so rather than taking the entire fulfillment on face value as mind-bogglingly amazing, I've taken it as merely showing that inasmuch as any fulfillment is legitimate, this is it: Therefore my calculation of coincidence in its fulfillment begins only after that more specific interpretation is established, once we can establish that there should be a noteworthy darkened sun aligned with the next blood moon 'feast tetrad.'

[Mithrae]

...2 - Seemingly fulfilled prophecies, even remarkable ones, are still coincidental products of large numbers; many many prophecies and thousands of years of history
The charge that some biblical prophecies are obviously false prophecies (eg. those of Ezekiel or those that 'Matthew' put in Jesus' mouth about his return)...

I am sorry, if this is petty, but I think the prophesy of the return of Jesus cant be wrong, because Jesus himself says that only God knows when it happens, if it means the judgment day. However, return of Jesus can mean also that when Jesus comes back to life from the death, which obviously happened according to the story very soon.

But no one knows of that day and hour, not even the angels of heaven, but my Father only.
Matt. 24:36

Day and hour, maybe, but Matthew thought he knew a pretty clear time-frame for it, and put his words in Jesus' mouth:
"Truly I tell you, you will not finish going through the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes." ~ Matthew 10:23
"Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom." ~ Matthew 16:28

Was Jesus wrong, or is it just Matthew's error? The 'cities of Israel' bit is not found in any other gospel, and Matthew 16:28 is a distorted version of Mark's original "some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power" (Mark 9:1). So it seems probable that it's Matthew who was wrong in putting those words in Jesus' mouth, not Jesus himself (though "this generation" in Mark 13 is a debatable point).


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There were a myriad of Hebrew prophetic writers whose works did not end up in the final canon.

There were likely hundreds of Hebrew prophets, and thousands (if not millions) of other kinds of future-tellers around the world. However, this seems to be changing the topic. You started this topic specifically about biblical prophecy. If we are going to include everyone who claimed to predict the future, or just every Hebrew who claimed to predict the future, then we are talking about something very different than biblical prophecy.

As I showed, foreknowledge is both an integral and common aspect of biblical prophecy. If instead of the somewhat arbitrary boundaries of the canon we changed our perspective a little to Hebrew prophecy which might plausibly have come from God - hardly a radical shift in perspective; some might even say that it's nitpicky or outright misleading to call that "something very different" - that fact becomes all the more obvious in the later flourishing of the apocalyptic genre. A good example is the Book of Enoch - ostensibly predicting the future from the flood right down to (potentially) the present age - which also happens to be 'biblical prophecy' since the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Churches regard it as such.

But that slight shift of perspective really isn't necessary to prove the point, and I can't help but notice that in your haste to hammer on this semantic distinction you have inadvertently overlooked the nine tenths of my post where I showed that foreknowledge is indeed both an integral and common aspect even of prophecy in the Protestant Canon

[FarWanderer]

The question is what level of resolution is the appropriate level for approaching the issue at hand. If we are looking at the validity of the predictions in the Bible for evidence of Christianity's truth, then to my mind the appropriate level of resolution is clearly the biblical predictions as a whole.

Determining the appropriate level of resolution is not straightforward, however. We search for patterns, but patterns require similarity without being identical. Whether we consider two distinct events as "the same" for inductive purposes is primarily if not entirely left to our intuition.

People pull cards from a deck thousands of times a day throughout the world, but it's still remarkable if someone pulls out four aces in a row. If they do so, we can and should note the possibility that it was merely coincidence, but we're more likely to consider it probable that there was some trick or a fake deck or the like. If it were later proven that there was no trick involved, then principle of large numbers would lead us conclude that it was just a cool coincidence rather than some kind of miracle, but with the initial information available we would rightly be inclined to suspect some kind of trick.

Similarly in the case of a remarkable prophetic 'coincidence' the rational conclusion is that probably it's the product of genuine foreknowledge, particularly when such coincidences come up again and again. The fact that there are thousands of prophecies and thousands of situations where events potentially could have fulfilled them (but didn't) doesn't automatically change the assessment that this fulfillment was probably due to foreknowledge. It would only be if and when further information (or more commonly, a presuppositional worldview) indicates that it wasn't foreknowledge that we could rest easy in the knowledge that it's 'explained' by the large numbers.

If someone confidently declared the top 4 cards of a deck to be Aces and it turned out to be true, there's no way I would accept that it was random no matter what "proof" they showed me. In other words, even if I couldn't figure out a trick I would still believe there almost certainly was one. However, if it turned out that declaring 4 Aces on top was a habit of theirs and they had actually done it thousands of times (always failing except the one time) then I would change my mind.

The declaration is what dictates the appropriate level of resolution in this case.

I would have the same response towards a biblical prophecy of similar probability, but there's nothing comparable to 4 topdeck Aces (about 1/30,000) in the Bible, as well as quite of lot of misses to water it down even if there were.

Arguably there's something far more remarkable than calling four aces in the bible; the prophecy of Persian and Greek rulers in Daniel 11 which can be literally aligned almost verse by verse with history recorded elsewhere. Of course in that case we run headlong into the circularity that if it appears to be so supernatural, it mustn't be, and must have been written later (despite all the difficulties with that hypothesis).

I'm afraid I'm already quite stretched thin just engaging you as much as I am.

If your friend successfully pulled his trick a couple of times, but you also knew that he'd failed half a dozen times, wouldn't you still assume that it was some kind of complicated deck-switching trick that he'd merely screwed up those half-dozen times?

Yes, probably.

As you suggested, for coincidence to be a really plausible explanation, he'd need to have tried his trick thousands of times. Furthermore, if he also had a fairly consistent track record of doing much less impressive 'tricks' successfully - declaring that he was going to pull a number card, for example - however unimpressive they might be individually, they'd hardly reduce the likelihood that there was something going on behind the scenes. The bible has plenty of vague/unimpressive predictions which have been 'fulfilled,' and a few which are arguably quite impressive: I'm not sure the relatively few which are unequivocally false are up to the task which you're expecting of them.

The more I've continued this discussion the more I have been gaining an impression that you are vastly underestimating the ambiguity of these prophecies.

More importantly I question the reasoning itself. You seem to be saying that if Andy said he heard from God, and made a really amazing prediction about the future, but then Billy, Carl and Dick also claimed to hear from God and got it wrong... that the predictions of those other people somehow invalidate Andy's claim?

Yes, if you group them for the purposes of induction. Should you? Depends. I don't think it's an issue you can settle by reason.

But on that basis we can set aside the unwarranted assumption that this prophecy must refer to supernatural events.

??? Why? You mean because Peter thought it didn't...?

"On that basis" was a poor choice of words: We can set aside the unwarranted assumption that it must refer to supernatural events because the assumption is unwarranted. That a noteworthy early Jewish interpreter seemingly applied the prophecy to a regular solar and lunar eclipse of his own time - neither of them even total eclipses, at least as viewed from his region - merely confirms that there's no reason to assume the fulfillment must be supernatural.

Everything beyond the clouds was the supernatural realm as far as people of ancient times were concerned.

The rarest 'blood moon' phenomena listed by NASA are not mere total lunar eclipses, but total eclipse tetrads; four in a row over a period of two years.

Why are we assuming he's talking about the rarest of 'blood moon' phenomena? He just said the moon will turn to blood? Why is it only the rarest of such phenomena that qualify?

There've been fifty-five of them since 1CE, but some share the curious feature that all four eclipses fall on the Jewish festivals of Pesach and Sukkot. There have been only eight 'feast tetrads' since 1CE... and the last ones of the previous millenium were in 1949/50 (the initial armistice granting Israel relative peace from its hostile neighbours was signed in 1949) and 1967/68 (Israel gained control of Jerusalem in 1967).

The rarest 'dark sun' phenomenon is not a total solar eclipse, but the hybrid of total/annular eclipses, and the rarest of these are the class 3 hybrids: There have been only eight since 1CE.

And why rarest 'dark sun'? Joel just said the sun would go dark. Didn't say anything about it being rare.

It's expressed as a sign - this will happen before that happens. The preceding verse talks about "wonders in the heavens and on earth." The assumption that a fulfillment must be something supernatural is unwarranted, but that it must be rare enough to be noteworthy is obvious.

I disagree. A couple posts ago you said that we shouldn't be making assumptions about how God would express prophecy. Now you are doing exactly that by saying it must be "noteworthy".

I also disagree that a "normal" eclipse isn't rare enough to be "noteworthy".

And there's no reason to think Joel wasn't writing about something yet more incredible than these scientifically-understood eclipses. I mean, if the Moon literally turned into blood tomorrow, then yeah I might reach for a Bible to get a grasp on the situation.

I don't see any reason to think Peter misinterpreted the prophecy just because his interpretation didn't come true. A prophecy doesn't become less ambiguous just because one of its possible interpretations is proven false.

The point is that those were not particularly remarkable eclipses that Peter (presumably) observed. The eclipse in November 29CE was probably the darkest in recent memory, but there had been four other solar occlusions visible from Israel in just the preceding fourteen years. Unless we take seriously the gospel story of darkness at Jesus' death - which I think more likely came from a garbled version of the November eclipse - there'd been no wonders in the heavens to justify his conclusion.

If the point is that it is a 'sign', as you said above, then all that matters is that it is "remarkable" enough that it is noticed as such. Which Peter apparently did.

Joel said nothing about the amount of time between two different celestial events, or that they would happen within the next 2,000 years or 200,000,000 years. Or just 20 for that matter. There will always be a time in the future that these two celestial events happen very close to one another, so the fact that we are near such an event right now really doesn't say anything about the credibility of Joel's prediction.

I didn't discuss it in my brief initial comments, but there's a bit more context to the passage which could be helpful here. I'll use a Jewish translation of the Tanakh (which makes no difference besides starting a new chapter at 2:28; I just don't like depending too heavily on Christian translations):

• Joel 2:28/3:1
  And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out My spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions;
  2 And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out My spirit.
  3 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.
  4 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of HaShem come.
  5 And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of HaShem shall be delivered; for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those that escape, as HaShem hath said, and among the remnant those whom HaShem shall call.
  3:1/4:1
  For, behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall bring back the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem,
  2 I will gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat; and I will enter into judgment with them there for My people and for My heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and divided My land. . . .

OK, so 3 and 4 go together. It's a progression of chaos that leads up to the "great and terrible day". The Sun going dark and the Moon going blood are the culmination of the buildup (they are the greatest of the "wonders in the heavens and earth" that God will show us).

Christians believe that God began pouring out his Spirit - and not just on Jews but on "all flesh" - in the 1st century CE, and that Pentecost story is obviously the biggest reason for Peter's reference to Joel in his alleged sermon. You and I might take that story with a grain of salt, so I'm not sure how helpful it is in terms of interpretation. I would suggest that the clearest predictive element in the passage is the declaration that there would be a noteworthy darkened sun and bloody moon before the 'day of the Lord.' But also quite prominent is the reference to Judah (and seemingly Judah alone) returning to their land and to Jerusalem.

Perhaps, but the order is wrong since in Jerusalem was formed before the eclipses happened.

Moreover, those 1949/50 and 67/68 feast tetrads had been preceded by decades exemplifying what anyone from prior centuries would unequivocally agree were "wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke": Aeroplanes, global warfare on unprecedented scale and nuclear detonations.

You left out the subject and verb from that sentence: "I will show". Presumably "I" is God.

[1213]

"Truly I tell you, you will not finish going through the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes." ~ Matthew 10:23

It is interesting question, what does the Son of Man comes mean. It could mean the return from the death, which happened very soon?

"Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom." ~ Matthew 16:28

I think that is different thing and came true after few days, according to the Bible:

After six days, Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John his brother, and brought them up into a high mountain by themselves. He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his garments became as white as the light. Behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them talking with him.
Matt. 17:1-3

[PinSeeker]

After page upon page of off-topic back-and-forth one-liners, I'll make the first post of the new page something I've hinted at but maybe should have addressed more thoroughly earlier on: How easy it often is to debunk the date-setters of the past, even the most famous ones. It's an important point, because seeing how dubious many other alleged signs and dates have been provides a frame of reference in which to look those I've highlighted as potentially plausible.

Seventh day/millennium views
Description: Drawing on the comment in 2 Peter 3 that "With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day," the millennial kingdom described in Revelation and the creation story of Genesis, many Christians have supposed that history should have six 'days'/6000 years of God's work to rectify evil and then a seventh 'day'/millennium of 'rest.' This has been the basis for a number of predictions.
Problem/s: Firstly, the interpretation is dubious, drawing on only half of a sentence in Peter and splicing in otherwise unrelated elements from two other books. But secondly and more importantly, the start of those 6000 years is either unknown/arbitrary or flat out wrong: St. Hippolytus of Rome (lived c. 170-235CE) believed that 6000 years from the fall would be 500 CE; James Ussher famously calculated 6pm on October 23rd of 4004 BCE as the date of creation, which would mean it's now been 6022 years; while according to the Jewish calendar we're still only in the year 5777. Such wild guesses really couldn't tell us anything, even before scientists proved that in fact the world and even human civilization are much older than that and there obviously was no literal garden of Eden and fall.

Years/millennia since Christ views
Description: Obviously the hype around the years 1000 and 2000 attracted sensation on this basis, and doubtless to a lesser extent 500 and 1500 too.
Problem/s: There's simply no biblical basis for the view, besides perhaps taking that same verse from Peter and inventing some rationale from it (which is even worse than grabbing a rationale from Revelation and Genesis, IMO). Furthermore this too is quite arbitrary; 1000 CE was not actually a thousand years from Jesus' birth to begin with, but when nothing happened in that year plenty of people decided that maybe the 'real' date would be a thousand years after Jesus' baptism, or death.

The Millerites/great disappointment - 1843
Description: Based on Daniel 8:14, William Miller taught that the holy place would be restored 2300 years after Artaxerxes' decree to build Jerusalem; since he believed that was in 457 BCE, he predicted Jesus' return in 1843-44.
Problem/s: The 'day-year principle' is extremely dubious to begin with but, even if it were legitimate, Daniel 8:14 talks very explicitly of 2300 "evenings and mornings"! Furthermore Daniel 8 is clearly about the Greek period and specifically the oppression of Antiochus IV Epiphanes; Artaxerxes' decree and a supposed countdown to Jesus' return have nothing to do with it.

Charles Taze Russell/JWs - 1874 and 1914
Description: I'm not sure about his 1874 prediction, but from a link Jehovah's Witness provided earlier in the thread, it seems that JWs count forward 2520 years from the ascension of Nebuchadnezzar in ~607 BCE, based partly on Daniel 4.
Problem/s: Daniel 4 is quite unambiguously about a supposed seven year madness of Nebuchadnezzar; nothing to do with eschatology at all. JWs turn those seven years into 2520 days (seven years of 360 days), and then turn those 2520 days into 2520 years!

Hal Lindsay - 1988, 2007, 2018, 2037...
Description: Lindsay based his views on Luke 21, specifically that "Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled" and "when you see these things happening... this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened." He concluded first that the state of Israel represented the end of gentiles' trampling of Jerusalem, and then Israel's full control of the city in 1967, and decided that Jesus must return within a 'generation' of 40 years from those dates, later hedging his bets with the old threescore and ten years instead.
Problem/s: The interpretation is actually better than any of these other examples, which isn't saying a lot; it's reading into the text rather than from it, but not in a brazenly fallacious way like the other ones. The biggest problem is that the 'generation won't pass away' could easily be extended to 120 years if required (cf. Genesis 6:3), so Lindsay's hype and hubris was vastly overplaying and dishonestly profiteering on an interpretation which would really only suggest that Jesus might return sometime before 2087.

Revelation 12 sign - September 2017
Description: For those not already familiar; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelatio ... n_prophecy
Problem/s: Even besides the arbitrary count of Virgo's stars it would have been "a great sign appeared in heaven" (12:1) which no-one actually saw in heaven, and wouldn't even have noticed without trawling through some astronomy software with a fine tooth comb!



I hope that someone can provide a similar debunking of the content from the first two posts. But while all of the above are easily debunked, as far as I can see that doesn't seem to be the case for any one of those I've posted; the best and most obvious criticism would be that the 'sign of Elijah' draws on passages which aren't explicitly prophetic, but given how those passages look almost like a rough outline for the past few decades of US political history and are bookended by quasi-eschatological figures, I'm not sure that's a particularly strong point. Understanding the mistakes and pitfalls of bad interpretation makes me think that maybe the ones I've highlighted as plausible don't really have such mistakes - or at least not very obvious ones!

Ugh. None of the above. Do you know what amillennialism is?