The Argument From Prophecy Works Against Extreme Skepticism

On his podcast last Friday, Greg Koukl spoke to a man who was interacting with somebody with one of the more extreme skeptical views of early Christianity (skeptical of Jesus' existence, skeptical of the existence of the apostles, etc.). The caller wanted to know how to make an appeal to prophecy fulfillment when interacting with that sort of skepticism. The answer depends on certain factors involved, like some of the details of the skepticism in question and which prophecies are in mind. But I want to address some of the general principles involved. Adjustments would have to be made to those principles depending on the details of a particular situation.

If somebody is agnostic or doubtful about matters like Jesus and the apostles' existence, a strong argument from prophecy can still be made upfront. In addition to appealing to non-Messianic prophecies that don't depend on the existence of Jesus and the apostles, some of what's often considered Messianic prophecy can still be brought up. Even before arguing for something like Jesus' existence or the existence of the apostles, it's highly unlikely that by normal means there would be a fourth great empire that lines up so well with what Daniel predicted, that the empire would have the sort of highly unusual penal practices that would be hard to anticipate that are found in passages like Psalm 22 and the Servant Song in Isaiah 50, that a movement with the ability and will to fabricate a figure like Jesus would arise in line with the timing of Daniel's Seventy Weeks prophecy, that the fabrications would be so widely accepted among so many ancient non-Christian sources, that the Romans would destroy both Jerusalem and the temple in a way that lines up with the Seventy Weeks prophecy, that the movement that fabricated Jesus would be so successful in converting the Gentile world in line with the Servant Songs and other relevant prophecies, that the Gentile conversion would be accompanied by the sort of persistent Jewish unbelief that the Old Testament and Romans 11 anticipated, etc. There's a lot of material in our archives about these and other relevant prophecies. See here for a collection of links to some of those posts. Even before we get to an affirmation of the existence of Jesus and the apostles, many events that are widely accepted surrounding the New Testament era and the centuries that have followed are enough to make a good argument from prophecy.

Part of the problem with what the skeptics in question are doing here is that even if you do something like deny the existence of Jesus, you still have to explain the fulfillment of prophecies about the circumstances surrounding the anticipated figure. In other words, the prophecies aren't just about an individual. They're also about some surrounding circumstances.

And we can, and should, go on to explain how unreasonable it is to be skeptical about matters like the existence of Jesus and the apostles. What we ought to do is both explain how the skeptic's position isn't adequate to nullify an argument from prophecy even if his position is correct and go on to explain why his position is incorrect. (Part of the evidence for Jesus' existence is the fulfillment of prophecies about the circumstances surrounding the anticipated figure in the prophecies. The fulfillment of the surrounding circumstances makes the fulfillment of the prophecies about the figure himself more likely. Old Testament prophecy is part of the argument for Jesus' existence.)

Somebody could adopt an even more extreme form of skepticism, such as denying that the Roman empire existed or denying that Rome actually destroyed Jerusalem and the temple, but that would come at a price. There are always tradeoffs. If somebody resorts to that sort of skepticism, you should continue to ask whether it gets around all of the prophecies in question. If it does, then you can take the second step I've referred to above and leave the appeal to prophecy for later, once you've gotten him to accept some of the facts relevant to prophecy fulfillment. Given how radical his skepticism would have to be to avoid the facts under consideration, that sort of skeptic would be pretty rare, probably wouldn't be applying his skepticism consistently (e.g., not being so skeptical in other areas of life), and would be easy to answer (e.g., appeal to the general trustworthiness of human testimony; address the absurdity of a scenario in which so many people did so much to carry out such a widespread deception; explain that ancient sources would have had no way to anticipate later developments like archeology and the modern technology used to study the past in other contexts, meaning that ancient sources wouldn't have known what needed faked, and it's extremely unlikely that, without the knowledge of what needed faked, everything involved just happened to fall in place the way the ancient sources in question needed in order to mislead so many people in the relevant ways).