Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 93:371 (Jul 1936)
Article: The Apologetic Argument from Fulfilled Prophecy
Author: John Henry Bennetch

BSac 93:371 (Jul 36) p. 348

The Apologetic Argument from Fulfilled Prophecy

John Henry Bennetch

The first Christian apologists deemed fulfilled prophecy the main evidence for the Faith. Similarly today the apologetic argument from external evidence turns to the Bible, maintaining that the Scriptures present as foremost the proof from prophecy. The appeal of God Himself to fulfilled prediction is to be found throughout the Bible. “And if thou shalt say in thy heart, ‘How shall we know the word which Jehovah hath not spoken?’ When a prophet speaketh in the name of Jehovah, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which Jehovah hath not spoken: the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously thou shalt not be afraid of him” (Deut 18:21, 22). Detailed prediction, then, is the mode chosen by the Lord God to make plain to man the fact that He has spoken. Our aim in this brief paper will be to present fulfilled prophecies of the Messiah, the Gentile nations, and the Jews. In a more complete treatment of the subject, the Church would have to be included.

Apologetic argument from prophecy must be formidable, since the foes of Christianity have directed their biggest guns against it. What really are they attacking? Almost every book of the Bible contains some prediction, while seventeen books are wholly prophetic. Indeed, nearly one-fourth of the Scriptures was predictive when written. All through the Old Testament times a thousand hints of prophecy were being fulfilled. But when the Messiah came to the earth, to Bethlehem, and went to the Cross of Calvary, and rose from the tomb on the third day, the most numerous and striking predictions met in Him. “To His bear all the prophets witness!”

BSac 93:371 (Jul 36) p. 349

(Acts 10:43). If prophecy centers on the Son of God, the critics should take warning.

All are aware that in the ancient times before the Cross of Christ, knowledge of the true God was confined to the narrow limits of Jewry. Each people had its own deities. The idea of a nation willingly exchanging its religion for another, was quite foreign to experience and even the thought of the ancients. National religions did sometimes change through the long centuries, as warfare, civilization, or culture arose. But is it not amazing to find the burning hope in the Old Testament, brightening as the ages advance, that a day would come when the world’s idolatries should cease and the spiritual God of Israel come to be worshipped in spirit and in truth? There is still more to account for than this confidence -one central figure was Israel’s hope, who was to lead the nations to God, called t...