Featured Favorite Commentary on Galatians

True but not in the sense you mean it.

It wouldn't be difficult or immoral for God to manipulate a king of a nation to release the Jews at a particular time of His choosing, nor would it have been difficult for Him to ensure that a particular person became king at that time nor that this person would be called "Cyrus", which was a particularly common name of Babylonian kings at the time.

In short, no one denies that God is involved in the unfolding of history and the history of Israel in particular.

For a reason.

If Judas had never existed or if he had decided to repent, you would know of no unfulfilled prophecies because the passages in the Old Testament that he fulfilled were not predictive prophecies, per se. They were simply events that happened that God chose to parallel with the events that surrounded the incarnation to demonstrate that what was happening was divine in nature.

For example, the passage in Zechariah 11:12-13 which Judas fulfilled is not a prophesy in the common sense of that term. It was just an event that happened. If Judas had no betrayed Christ or 30 pieces of silver, no one would point at that passage and be able to declare it to be an unfulfilled prophesy. The only reason it's considered a fulfill prophesy at all is because God orchestrated those events to parallel that passage.

No, we don't. The phrase appears once in the bible at I Kings 1:35 when God had appointed Solomon to be king over Israel.

An incident that need not have happened, by the way, for "the Lord would have established Saul's kingdom over Israel forever", said the prophet Samuel, but it didn't happen! Not because God was pull Saul's puppet strings but because Saul was foolish and made a sacrifice to a false god. (See I Samuel 13)

 

A prophet was to prophesy a prophecy.

Prophesy is a verb.

Prophecy is a noun.

Two different words; two different meanings.