How To Approach Easter Prophecy

Issues of prophecy fulfillment often come up in the context of Easter. I want to make a few points about how to best handle the situation.

You have to prioritize. Some prophecies are more evidential than others. And some are of such a nature that they work well even when responding to more extreme forms of skepticism, such as agnosticism or skepticism about Jesus' existence. Prophecy, including Messianic prophecy, involves more than an individual. It also involves a context surrounding that individual: the penal practices anticipated in Psalm 22, the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in Daniel's Seventy Weeks prophecy, etc. You can begin with prophecy fulfillments that are less controversial, then get to the more controversial ones later. For more about issues like these, see here.

Secondly, don't get overly focused on whether a fulfillment is primary or secondary, non-typological or typological. Critics often object that Christians are taking Old Testament passages out of context when they claim a fulfillment of a prophecy in later history. Supposedly, the passage is actually referring to David, Hezekiah, a remnant in Israel, Cyrus, or some other source different than the one Christians cite as the fulfillment. As I've mentioned before, one way to respond is to explain that even a secondary or typological fulfillment is significant. It's highly unlikely that by normal means Jesus' life would line up as well as it does with Psalm 22, that his alignment with the Servant of the Lord figure in Isaiah came about by natural rather than supernatural means, that his life would by normal means line up as well as it does with Daniel's Seventy Weeks prophecy, etc. even if we were to take such passages as referring primarily to some other figure. Given the involvement of the Romans, for example, in fulfilling passages like the ones I just mentioned, it's unlikely under normal circumstances that all of the relevant events would unfold in such a way as to line up so well with the passages in question. Sources like the Romans wouldn't set out to pattern Jesus' life after such passages, and it's unlikely that such a close alignment would happen as a mere coincidence. If Jesus' life and the surrounding context keep lining up so well with events in David's life, events in the history of the nation of Israel, and so on (assuming that the passages in question are primarily referring to such entities), that seems providential. Even a secondary or typological fulfillment of such passages would have significant evidential force.

Third, and last, I want to recommend doing something to prepare for discussions about prophecy. It's good to single out one verse, theme, or whatever else in the prophetic passage under consideration, something that can be brought up as an example of the likelihood that the passage is referring primarily to the entity Christians think fulfilled the passage (e.g., Jesus). You can cite the significance of the accomplishments mentioned in Daniel 9:24, the geographical and chronological scope of the significance of the events of Psalm 22 as referred to in verses 27-31 of that psalm, or the Divine terminology applied to the Servant figure in Isaiah 52:13. These passages seem to have a greater rather than a lesser type of figure in view, one you could call an eschatological messiah (in contrast to some lesser type of messiah, like David or Cyrus). Citing material like what I've cited from Daniel 9, Psalm 22, and Isaiah 52 above is a good way of responding to the objection that Christians are taking the passages out of context. It's even better to have more than one verse, theme, or whatever that you can cite from these passages in order to make the point, but at least choose one. And even if you're going to discuss more than one, it's often helpful to focus on one as a starting point. As the paragraph above this one explains, you don't have to begin with an argument that a passage is Messianic in its original context, that it only refers to Jesus, or some such thing. But it's good to be prepared to address that subject and to eventually get to it.

We've written a lot over the years about prophecy fulfillment, and you can find a lot of relevant material in those posts. For example, the page just cited links many of Steve Hays' posts on the prophecies of Daniel. In the paragraph before this one, I mentioned the fourth Servant Song in Isaiah. Here's a post I wrote on the Servant Songs. And here's one on Isaiah 9. In another post, I discussed some of the reasons for rejecting the notion that the passage is about Hezekiah. Here's an article I wrote that goes into some depth about chapters 4-5 in Micah. And you can find more in our archives.