Fulfilled Prophecy As A Down Payment

I've discussed the prophecies of Isaiah in some recent posts. Something that's significant about Isaiah is how it combines so many prophecies that have already been fulfilled and so many that haven't been. And they're often in close proximity.

Think of Isaiah 7-9 and the prophecies there that often come up at Christmastime and in other contexts. Here's a collection of some of my posts on Isaiah 9:1-7, for example, a passage I've done a lot of work on. Critics of Christianity, such as advocates of Judaism, often cite the eternal kingdom of peace referred to in Isaiah 9:7 as an example of Christianity's alleged failure to fulfill what the Old Testament anticipates.

But prophecy fulfillment can be likened to a down payment. What's already been provided gives you reason to expect the rest to be paid. As my Isaiah 9 posts linked above demonstrate, Christians have a lot of evidence warranting a Christian view of the passage, the conclusion that Jesus has already fulfilled a substantial part of it, and the expectation that he'll fulfill the rest as well.

And think of the nature of what's predicted in verse 7. It's an eternal kingdom. When will eternity end? Never. Can we perpetually object that not everything has been fulfilled? It would be absurd to object, after a million years of the Messiah's reign with worldwide peace, that those million years don't qualify as eternity and, therefore, not everything has been fulfilled. So what? You need to address the evidence for what's been fulfilled already. Prophecy already fulfilled gives us reason to expect more fulfillment in the future.

And it's not as though everything has been fulfilled in Judaism. Jews, like Christians, have to appeal to partial fulfillment.

And chapters 7-9 in Isaiah aren't all that's relevant here. There are other passages for which we have good evidence of Christian fulfillment that's already occurred, such as the Servant Songs.

Keep in mind that just as the portions of Isaiah that are still unfulfilled can seem distant to us, passages like the relevant portions of chapters 7-9 and the Servant Songs had the same status for pre-Christian readers. That was true to some extent for the earliest Christians as well, since Jesus' influence on the Gentile world, anticipated in so much of Isaiah, took centuries to develop to the extent it's gotten to in our day.

One reason, among others, why you can trust the prophecies of Isaiah that still aren't fulfilled is that there are so many others that have been fulfilled.