As many Christians know, there are many prophecies in the Bible about future events that God will fulfill according to his will. The Bible records many such prophecies that were fulfilled in ancient times such as the prophecy attributed to circa 690 B.C. in Isaiah 44:28-45:7 that a future King named Cyrus would give an order to rebuild the Temple of God in Jerusalem. Ezra 1:1-4 records that this prophecy was fulfilled circa 538 B.C. when Persian King Cyrus gave such a order, about 160 years after that event was prophesied to occur. [This is the same Persian King Cyrus who invaded the Scythian/Saka tribe called the Massagetae of whom I wrote in a recent post that their Queen Tomiris defeated Cyrus in a war.] Another prophecy by an unnamed prophet circa 930 B.C. foretold a future King named Josiah would sacrifice the bones of false prophets on the very altar they had built to false gods (I Kings 13:2). In circa 620 B.C., about 310 years later, King Josiah of Judah did exactly what the previous prophecy foretold he would do (II Kings 23:16).
Daniel 7:1-8 describes a prophetic dream given to Daniel circa 545 B.C. about four great world empires that would be successive. They have been identified as Babylon, Persia, Alexander the Great’s Greece and Rome. Alexander’s empire had “four heads” (verse 6) and after Alexander’s death, his empire was, indeed, divided into four separate kingdoms. The first link has a good description of an ancient account by Josephus that Alexander the Great while in Jerusalem was shown a prophecy from the book of Daniel that he, Alexander, would conquer the Persian Empire (which did happen).
For Believers, the above accounts are sufficient to demonstrate that there is a Divine Creator who gave and later implemented the prophecies of the Bible. However, for agnostics, atheists and biblical “minimalists,” there is a ready explanation to refute their disbelief that any God gave or kept those ancient prophecies. The doubters assert that the above-cited prophecies were actually written down after the fulfillments of the so-called prophecies in order to make it look like a real God gave and fulfilled them. That criticism of biblical prophecy needs to be addressed and answered…and it is easy to do so.
There are many biblical prophecies about the time at the end of our current age called “the latter days,” “the time of the end,” etc. These prophecies are coming to pass in our time, and my article, Are We Living in the Biblical “Latter Days? comments on latter day biblical prophecies now coming to pass. For the sake of brevity, I will in this post focus on one specific latter-day prophecy which was written circa 2600 years ago and which has been fulfilled in recent decades. Obviously, the standard objection of the doubters that prophecies were written “after the fact” cannot be true in the case of Zephaniah’ 2’s prophecy. Zephaniah 2 is a prophecy written about 630 B.C. which began to be fulfilled in 1948. Ancient manuscripts and biblical scrolls and books have had the prophecy of Zephaniah written in them for many centuries so there is no possibility that this prophecy was written “after the fact.”
Zephaniah 2:1-2 speaks of the latter days in the phrase “the day of the Lord’s anger.” My Latter Days article should make it clear to all that we are looking at a latter day prophecy. Zephaniah’s prophecy first addresses the land of the ancient Philistines–the modern region of Gaza–which is so frequently in the news nowadays. Verses 4-5 prophecy the ancient Philistine cities will be destroyed and verse 5 pronounces God’s wrath against these ancient cities now mostly in the Gaza region. Then the prophecy segues to the modern time when it prophesies that the “remnant of the house of Judah” will inhabit the “coast” and also the city of Ashkelon (verse 7). In 1948, when the British withdrew from the Palestine UN Mandate area, the Jewish region (“the tribe of Judah”) included both the Mediterranean seacoast and the city of Ashkelon. This is a precise fulfillment of the prophecy first given circa 2600 years prior to 1948. This was not just a lucky ancient guess! There is more to consider in Zephaniah 2. The Jews who settled in the new Jewish nation in 1948 are called “the remnant of Judah (verse 7).” This is a most appropriate term to use to describe the displaced survivors of the European Holocaust caused by Adolph Hitler and the Nazis. After losing approximately 6,000,000 Jewish lives to that Holocaust, it was very appropriate to call the survivors of the Holocaust who settled in the Holy Land “a remnant” of the Jewish people. The prophecy emphasizes this fact about the post-World War II Jews by repeating the phrase “a remnant of my people” and also by adding the phrase “a residue of my people” (verse 9). The Jews who settled in the Jewish nation declared in the Promised Land in 1948 were truly just a small “remnant” or “residue” of the pre-World War II population of European Jews. The choice of words in the prophecy of Zephaniah very accurately foretold the historical context of the Jews/Israelis in 1948
There is still more! In verses 8-11, the prophecy foretold that the nations and peoples that surrounded the new Jewish nation in the Holy Land in the latter days would “magnify themselves against their border (emphasis added).” and that God would defeat the adversaries of the Jewish people in their new nation. This has been a consistent historical fact from 1948 until recently. The surrounding Arab/Islamic nations wanted to destroy the Jewish nation and fought several wars–all of which were won by the Jewish people. The victory of the outnumbered and outgunned Jews in 1948 to preserve their nation was truly miraculous, but Zechariah 2 predicted the Jews in their new nation would be victorious. The recently publicized credo of Hamas stating “From the River to the sea” reflected the border envy of surrounding peoples prophesied in Zephaniah 2:8.
There is still more. Notice that Zephaniah 2 never mentions the city of Jerusalem being controlled by the Jews or that city being the Jewish capital when the Jewish nation was founded. The Old City of Jerusalem remained a part of Jordan until Jewish fighters seized control of it in 1967 (a 19-year time cycle after the founding of the Jewish nation in 1948). Now consider that Zechariah 12 and 14 often mention Jerusalem as being of central importance to the nation of Judah at the very end of our age and that Jerusalem is presented as the capital city of the Jewish State when our age closes with the coming of the Messiah/Jesus Christ. Notice how modern events have validated the details of Zephaniah 2 and Zechariah 12 and 14. These biblical prophecies “got it right” by not predicting that Jerusalem would be the capital of the new Jewish nation when it was founded in the latter days, but that Jerusalem would become the Jewish capital before our age ends.
Zephaniah 2 gets everything right in its prophecy about the Jews and their new nation at the end of our age. Its has specific details which exactly and accurately predicted what would happen in the Holy Land in the end of our age. There is no way so many details could have been predicted accurately millennia in advance unless a Creator God originally authored the prophecy and still lives to make sure his word gets implemented just as he predicted. Some people struggle to find some meaning in the cryptic quatrains of Nostradamus which are very subject to alternate understandings, but Zephaniah 2 has no such problem. It got everything right about world events involving the Holy Land in our time and it did so with great specificity! The modern fulfillments of biblical prophecies about the latter days proves that they were Divinely inspired. It should also sober us to realize we are provably living in the prophesied time that will witness the end of our current age.
