biblical prophecies..

And there is the element of novelty, compared, at least, to the tedious umpteenth repetition of biblical canards . . .

Hpw about this exchange between me and timber originating here, regarding the prophesied abandonment of Babylon.

And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.
And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.
And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.
(Revelation 13:11-14 KJV)

"Do you mean that fire actually comes down from heaven to the Lord's Tomb in Jerusalem on Holy Saturday, and everyone sees it?"

Although we have eagerly watched the Holy Fire descend for centuries, we know nothing about how it comes or even when it first began. It is universally accepted in Eastern Christendom as a heavenly manifestation, yet surviving accounts of the Fire's miraculous character date only from the ninth century.

According to the Bible the world was supposed to have ended by now. What are we doing wrong?

23
Be watchful! I have told it all to you beforehand.
24
"But in those days after that tribulation the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light,
25
and the stars will be falling from the sky, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.
26
5 And then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in the clouds' with great power and glory,
27
and then he will send out the angels and gather (his) elect from the four winds, from the end of the earth to the end of the sky.
28
"Learn a lesson from the fig tree. When its branch becomes tender and sprouts leaves, you know that summer is near.
29
In the same way, when you see these things happening, know that he is near, at the gates.
30
Amen, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.

'This' generation is referring to those new 'budding' growths of Israel.

Not the UN's Israel born in 1948--as most think--but God's Israel.

This one is probably something I can't explain to anyone's satisfaction unless they were willing to listen to a bunch of my research.

All I can say is that one is in the works, Dok. As we speak. That little tree is budding out as we speak.

The 'son of man' coming in the clouds is not Jesus coming down from a UFO on a white Arabian stallion--'son of man' is not 'Son of God' and 'clouds' represent obscurity and inner awareness that is not obvious when viewing from the outside of a person.

I know that's lame, but it's one of the deeper ones that were why I first posted that definition of 'prophet.' It's not just cut and dried prognostication--if it were then what would the mystery be and what would it be worth?

BTW--'son of man' is basically the same as 'prophet'--which is like 'apostle,' as well. These are the ones who are 'sent.' I strongly suspect they are sent time and again--throughout history.

Check Daniel, Ezekiel.

Elastic exegesis.

Early Christians were confident, based upon their exegesis, that Hey-Zeus would be along any day now, and that they lived at the end of days.

That proved, however, to have been a case of unsupported anticipation. The Hey-Zeus crowd have been obliged to constantly push back the date for the party, and their catering bills have become astronomical.

An unknown author, under the pseudonym of 'Mark' wrote:

23
Be watchful! I have told it all to you beforehand.
24
"But in those days after that tribulation the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light,
25
and the stars will be falling from the sky, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.
26
5 And then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in the clouds' with great power and glory,
27
and then he will send out the angels and gather (his) elect from the four winds, from the end of the earth to the end of the sky.
28
"Learn a lesson from the fig tree. When its branch becomes tender and sprouts leaves, you know that summer is near.
29
In the same way, when you see these things happening, know that he is near, at the gates.
30
Amen, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.

Neo, if you wish to insist upon your link, you serve only to embarrass yourself. Apart from what Timber has pointed out, you miss a reference which throws all of that claptrap out.

The passage you quote in Isaiah refers to the "Medes." The two Aryan tribes which entered the central Iranian plateau about 4500 years ago were the Mada and the Parsee or Pharsee--the Medes and the Persians according to the Greeks. Babylon (actually, Babilu, in the Akkadian) was razed by the Assyrians, as Timber points out in the other thread, in 689 BCE. It arose again, was beseiged, and again regained its glory. All of which occured before the Medes arrived on the scene.

Nabopolassar established a new Babylonian empire in 626 BCE, throwing off the Assyrian yoke. The Jews, then held in their "Babylonian captivity," expected the Medes to attack and destroy Babylon, which is the source of the prophecies of both Isaiah and Jeremiah, but it did not occur. The Medes had only thrown off their tributary relationship with the Assyrians in the 7th century BCE, at the time that Babylon fell to the Assyrians, and the was finally freed by the new Akkadian empire (for clarification, the Akkadians were the Semitic people who took over the middle east from the Sumerians, more than a thousand years earlier--reference to Chaldeans are reference to one of the many dominate tribes of the Akkadians who rose to power in the region). When the Medes finally established dominance in the Iranian plateau near the end of the seventh century BCE, they attempted the invasion of what is now Anatolia, and the Cilicians and the Akkadians of Babylon intervened on behalf of the Lydians, in what is now western Turkey. Isaiah and Jeremiah predicted what seemed probable to them because of the rising power of the Medes, and the spreading influence of the Medes and Parsee, whose legends and monotheism were already widely disseminated in the region. (By the way, your basic Hebrew hillbilly got his monotheism from the same source--they've just never been honest about it.) But they were wrong. Before the people of the Iranian plateau were able to conquer and definitively occupy Mesopotamia, the Persians under Cyrus the Great had overthrown the power of the Mada, the Medes, and established the Persian empire in the mid-sixth century BCE. Timber's responses to you in the other thread outlined the up and down history which Babylon, like any other ancient city, underwent over a period of millenia. He has pointed out that the Selucid Empire move the capital. He might also have pointed out that Babylon was eventually abandoned in the 7th century CE, because the Arab Muslims established Baghdad so near to the site of the ancient city, and established their caliphate there.

It's bad enough that religionists rely upon goofy exegesis to justiby their nonsense. They really step on their virtual penises when they attempt to delve into the realm of history, where the Holy Bobble is known to be little better than a comic book.

Two problems you've got there, Neo. The first is that Babylon ceased to be inhabited many centuries after Isaiah predicted that it would be brought down by the Medes (the second problem you've got with this feeble attempt). That never occurred--claiming that because, many centuries after the Medes failed to arrive, Babylon was finally abandoned is proof of Isaiah's prediction is to make it meaningless, since it was central to his claim that the Medes would destroy the city.

I could with as much confidence state that Martians will destroy New York City, and that it will thereafter be uninhabited. That New York will some day cease to be inhabited is not at all implausible. For someone in the future to claim that i had predicted as much, based upon divine inspiration, and that such a prediction is an underpinning on the divinely revealed truth of that particular scripture would be ludicrous.

Unless, of course, the Martians do arrive shortly to destroy the city. Wanna place any bets?

In October 539 BCE, the Persian king Cyrus took Babylon, the ancient capital of an oriental empire covering modern Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel.

The Median king Astyages sent an army to Anšan. It was commanded by Harpagus, but he defected to the Persians. Astyages was captured and Cyrus became the new ruler of the empire of Persians and Medes. . .

Cyrus seems to have united Persia and Media in a personal union; it was, therefore, a dual monarchy.