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Do you know of any other sacred books that contain prophetic statements? What does this mean regarding how you view the Bible?
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I am not familiar with other sacred books and their prophetic statements. I do know that people all through history have made claims and predictions of things to come, often times inaccurately. The Bible’s prophecy, however, has proven to be true over and over, again. The Word has not changed over these thousands of years, and it is reliable!
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No, I do not know of any other sacred books with prophet statements. I know that the Bible is the only book that is fully true and divinely inspired, and that impacts my view of the Bible. It is the most precious and valuable of all prophetic works for those reasons.
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La bibbia è l’unico libro ispirato da Dio (Theopneustos) II Timoteo 3.16
tutti gli altri testi sono profani e non ispirati quindi assolutamente non attendibili. -
Additional post (via email reply) from my friend and Bible prophecy teacher Lee Brainard (Soothkeep.info):
“The pattern for the interplay between pretend predictive prophecy and genuine predictive prophecy is the interplay between the false prophets and the true prophets in the OT and the NT. The true prophets gave prophecies that were clear enough that they could easily be verified. False prophets sometimes gave clear predictions that were easily falsified. As a general rule, they were mere sycophants catering to what the people wanted to hear. The false prophets had no direct revelation from God. The true prophets had ‘thus saith the Lord.’ Daniel made this a distinct part of his testimony. He got his wisdom from God, not because he was a wise man. Nostradamus, mystic Muslims, palm readers, Tarot card readers, seance mystics, clairvoyants, astrologists, etc. in the modern day often make predictions of the future. These are typically generic enough that it is hard to either prove or disprove them. This is because the enemy is not omniscient and can only, at best, guess at the future. On the rare occasion that he is right, it is either a lucky guess or he was privy to something from the throne room of God. No formal religion, no informal religion, no secret society, no brand of spiritualism or animism has predictive prophecy that compares to the Bible. The Bible stands alone in this regard like Mt. Everest standing next to the dung pile at the local stockyard.
“There are several different divine watermarks in the Bible that are impossible to forge. For instance, the redemptive threads that weave through the Bible, typology, forty plus authors over two thousand years yet a consistent message, and biblical predictive prophecy. But prophecy is the one that stands out the most. It is the most impossible to forge. For instance, that latter few chapters of Daniel give so much detail in the events of the silent years from the Greek empire through the Roman that Bible-haters are almost panic stricken trying to deny its genuineness. They all but gave up trying to deny its veracity. Now they try to claim it was written after the fact.
“Yes. It is essential that the Bible contain prophetic statements. The first coming of the Messiah was entirely a matter of prophecy from the first promise in the garden until the coming of the Messiah nearly 4000 years later. Prophecy gives men hope. That is its design. We live in fallen, godless world where all men die and return to the dust of the earth. Prophecy holds out the Redeemer and his glorious redemption—the redemption of Israel, the redemption of the church, the redemption of the saved Gentiles, the redemption of the world, the redemption of creation.”
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I had never been asked whether I knew of any other sacred books that contain prophetic statements, so no, I did not know of any in terms of predictive prophecy. But this prompted me to do a little sleuthing on the internet. I also asked a Bible prophecy teacher I respect and am awaiting his reply. Meanwhile, I found this statement in an article helpful from a GotQuestions.org article about Bible prophecy: “The amount of prophecy in the Bible is one of the things that make it unique among religious books. There is absolutely no emphasis on predictive prophecy in the Qu’ran or the Hindu Vedas, for example. In contrast, the Bible repeatedly points to fulfilled prophecy as direct proof that it is God who speaks (see Deuteronomy 18:22; 1 Kings 22:28; Jeremiah 28:9)” (https://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-prophecy.html). Also this statement below from another article on the uniqueness of the Bible, which seems to imply that there might be other religious books that contain prophecy, but that possibility is not pursued: “The Bible is also unique from other religious books in that it contains prophecy. In fact, by one count, about 27 percent of the Bible is predictive (Payne, J. B., The Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy, Baker Pub. Group, 1980, p. 675). This means that, when written, over one fourth of the Bible—more than one in four verses—was prophetic. Hundreds of the Bible’s detailed prophecies have come true in literal fashion. No other religious book contains prophecy to this extent” (https://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-unique.html).
As far as what this means for how I view the Bible in terms of its unique feature among the world’s sacred or religious books of containing prophetic statements, especially predictive prophecy statements, I believe that this means that God has evidently made his ability to reveal what has not yet come to pass a mark of authenticity and reliability for the message, messenger, and sender of the message. Prophetic statements in any other sacred book or even on the lips of someone claiming to speak for the God of Israel in the biblical narrative as happened in certain cases that fail to be fulfilled are a death stroke to any would-be prophet (literally in Israel), whereas any prophet who speaks or writes the word or message of God concerning things to come that then in the course of time are fulfilled is shown to be a true prophet with a true message from no other source than God Himself.
In the Torah, Israel’s book of instruction, God through Moses revealed what He wanted His people the Israelites to understand about the role of a prophet in Israel:
These nations which you will dispossess listened to soothsayers and diviners; but as for you, the LORD your God has not appointed such for you. The LORD your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear, according to all you desired of the LORD your God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, “Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God, nor let me see this great fire anymore, lest I die.” And the LORD said to me: “What they have spoken is good. I will raise up for them a Prophet like you from among their brethren, and will put My words in His mouth, and He shall speak to them all that I command Him. And it shall be that whoever will not hear My words, which He speaks in My name, I will require it of him. But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in My name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.” And if you say in your heart, “How shall we know the word which the Lord has not spoken?”—when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him. (Deuteronomy 18:14–22 NKJV)
Jesus of Nazareth was the ultimate revealer of God, the true capital P Prophet, who spoke the truth and never erred in anything He said (Matthew 21:11, Luke 1:76, Luke 2:25-Luke 2:34, Luke 7:16, Luke 24:19, Acts 3:22). Prophecy spoken and fulfilled is a hallmark of Scripture and the Messiah, God’s anointed King, our Redeemer.
