Self-disclosure of God Through Prophecies

Dear friends: Can humans predict accurately things hundreds of years and, sometimes, thousands of years ahead? Not at all, unless someone like Daniel who is the prophet of God and God did reveal many future history and events to him. Those prophecies have recorded in the Book of Daniel.

That is why the unceasing and vicious attack against the Book of Daniel;  the attempt on the part of modern rationalism to destroy the supernatural and the prophetic in the Bible.  They have given themselves to make the Bible a human book like any other book.  Consequently, there is no prophecy in it. 

But dear friends, you better examine the Bible and evidences yourself to decide if theirs are smear campaigns or not. Here is a link to some discussions on this topic I like to share with you.

http://www.wacriswell.org/Search/videotrans.cfm/sermon/1054.cfm

...Christianity is a revealed religion or it is nothing at all.  For example, Job 11 says man, by searching, cannot find God.  You can just be as smart as you can and go into every experiment known to the possibility of the human hand, but you won’t find God.  God has to reveal Himself.  And if He doesn’t, we don’t know Him, nor can we know Him.  The Bible is the record of the self-disclosure of God.  And as I have said, the fact of prophecy predicting things hundreds of years and, sometimes, thousands of years ahead, is a substantiation of the inspiration and truth of the prophetic Word of God in the Bible.  To take that supernatural self-disclosure out of the Bible is to destroy the Christian religion itself.

The attempt to make the faith nothing but man’s search for God is to lower it to the level of any other philosophical or religious system of which the world has too many.  But, Christianity is alone.  It is separate.  It is unique.  It is apart.  It is exalted.  It is holy.  And this uniqueness can be seen in its prophetic nature.

Dear me, for example—and I close here—2 Peter 1—and I can’t believe this.  In 2 Peter 1, he describes the truth of Christ Jesus in the fact that they saw it with their eyes.  They looked upon it.  Then, he says again the second time, we have an authentication of Christ in the great transfiguration.  There is Peter upon there—who are the others on the Mount of Transfiguration?  James and John, Moses and Elijah—you have them up there on the mount of transfiguration: a glorious avowal of the beautiful Lord Jesus.

But, Peter says, in chapter 1 of 2 Peter, that though we have the eyewitnesses of the disciples and the apostles, and though we have the tributes of Moses and Elijah, yet we have a more sure word of prophecy.  Even the men who looked at Him and saw His miracles, and talked with Him after the resurrection after the dead—even their testimony is not equal to that of the prophets who lived back yonder, hundreds of years before the Lord.

Do you remember Luke 24, when the Lord Jesus speaks to those to whom He is revealing Himself as raised from the dead.  It says in Luke 24:27: “Beginning at the prophets—beginning at the prophets—He spoke of the things concerning Himself.”  So in Acts 26, before Herod Agrippa, Paul avowed the deity and the Saviorhood of Jesus by the prophets. ( Acts 26:22 ) And in Acts 10:43, Peter, in the house of Cornelius says to him: “Give all the prophets witness.”

I have to close.  There’s not anything in all creation like this Book.  And there’s not anything in the mind or history of mankind like the prophecies that are in this Book.  And sweet people, there’s only about a half of them are fulfilled.  More than half of them are ahead of us.  And when we read God’s Book, we read the pages of tomorrow.

...As a background text, look at Daniel 1:17.  Daniel 1:17: “As for these four children, God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom.”  Then turn to verse 27: “Daniel answered the king and said, The secret which the king hath demanded—this secret is from God.—For there is a God in heaven that reveals secrets, and makes known to the king what shall be in the latter days.” [Daniel 2:27, 28]  All of this is in keeping with what God does and knows, and He alone.  And we’re going to see that this precious moment.

All right, to start; there is not a liberal theologian in the world who accepts the authenticity and integrity of the Book of Daniel.  He doesn’t exist.  He hasn’t and he’s not going to be.  All deny the authenticity of the Book of Daniel.  All declare it—all of these liberals—declare it a blatant patent forgery.  Its contents is made up of pure fiction.  It is a pattern of denial for the years and the years and the years.

Why this unceasing and vicious attack against the Book of Daniel?  Because of the attempt on the part of modern rationalism to destroy the supernatural and the prophetic in the Bible.  They have given themselves to make the Bible a human book like any other book.  Consequently, there is no prophecy in it.

They start here with the Book of Daniel because Daniel, to them, is most vulnerable.  Again, whatever else they may achieve in their destructive criticism, if Daniel is left intact, they have failed.  There are no theises against the supernatural in the Bible that could stand as long as the Book of Daniel stands.  Daniel is a revelation of the years and the centuries that followed after, which is something that only God could do.

So, we’re going to speak of prophecy in the Bible.  In the Bible, prophecy is everywhere—throughout the Bible.  It is not incidental.  The predictive element, like a Gulfstream, makes its way from shore to shore through the sacred Word—all of it.  One writer avows that two-thirds of the Scriptures are prophetic, symbolic.  More than one-half of them are yet to be fulfilled.  If you have any interest in the future at all, read the Bible.  It will reveal it to you.

Now, look at this.  Prophecy is unique in the Bible.  Nowhere else in all literature or in all other religions is there such a thing as prophecy.  All other religious books contain no predictions as to the future.  And there’s no exception to that.  And you look at this for just a moment....( for the whole article, click the link below)

http://www.wacriswell.org/Search/videotrans.cfm/sermon/1054.cfm

Acts 10:43 To Him all the prophets testify (bear witness) that everyone who believes in Him [who adheres to, trusts in, and relies on Him, giving himself up to Him] receives forgiveness of sins through His name.