Christianity
False Prophets: Biblical Prophecies and Mother Shipton’s Exposed
Abstract
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.George Orwell
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Friday, November 17, 2000
Saturday, 15 August 2009
Prophets
Prophecy is considered by Christians as proof of the messiahship of Jesus. They think it so uncanny that events in the career of Jesus were prophesied in the Jewish Scriptures, that it must be proof of the hand of God. Why then just pick the prophecies of Jesus to believe? Every religion has its prophets able to foresee events of the future. The proofs each offers that they possessed this power differs little from one to another.
Even some non-religious men were accurate prophets. Tacitus, the Latin historian, prophesied the downfall of the Roman empire and its attendant calamities more than five hundred years before its occurrence. Solon, one of the seven wise men of Greece, foretold calamities which befell the Athenians two hundred years before they occurred. Marcus Tullius Cicero about 50 BC prophesied:
There will arise after many ages, if we may credit the Sibylline Oracles, a hero who will deliver his oppressed countrymen from bondage.
Was this Tony Blair… General Washington… Nelson Mandela? V I Lenin or Giuseppe Garibaldi? Chaim Weizmann? Is it Bernardo O’Higgins? General Pinochet or Margaret Thatcher, the hero of the Falkland Islands. Cicero’s prophesy has been fulfilled over and over again.
The Sibylline Books are composed of passages like the quatrains of Nostradamus, and the doggerel of Mother Shipton. They are so cryptic, they are quite impossible to understand. What was Cicero referring to in the oracles? In Sibylline Book 5:256-259, John Allegro tells us, is the following:
Then there shall come from the sky a certain exalted man who spreads his hands on the many fruited tree, the noblest of Hebrews, who one day caused the sun to stand still, when he cried with fair speech and pure lips.
Is this a prophecy of Jesus’s death on the cross, the many fruited tree—the Tree of Life, bearing a different fruit for each month of the annual cycle and therefore symbolising the zodiac and the cosmic cycle. The one who caused the sun to stand still was Jesus’s namesake, Joshua, of the scriptural invasion of Canaan. Is this the way the oracle names the noblest Hebrew as Jesus, using the old legend? The Sibylline Oracles is not later than the first century BC, so predates the crucifixion. In fact, if it refers to anyone it refers to the legend that Joshua would return to lead the Israelites into the kingdom of God. Joshua was yet another alias of the Messiah. But for contemporary Romans, it was Augustus, and he too was a son of God[†].
Mother Shipton’s Prophecies Exposed
Interest in “Mother Shipton’s Prophecy” is not dead, though the “prophecy” itself has been dead as mutton since the year 1881. John o’London reported it as being commonly circulated thus:
Ancient Prediction (Entitled by popular tradition Mother Shipton’s Prophecy). Published in 1448, republished in 1641.
Carriages without horses shall go,
And accidents fill the world with woe.
Around the earth thoughts shall fly
In the twinkling of an eye.
The world upside down shall be,
And gold be found at the root of a tree.
Through hills men shall ride,
And no horse be at his side.
Under water men shall walk,
Shall ride, shall sleep, shall talk.
In the air men shall be seen
In white, in black, in green;
Iron in the water shall float,
As easily as a wooden boat.
Gold shall be found and shown
In a land that’s not now known.
Fire and water shall wonders do,
England shall at last admit a foe.
The world to an end shall come
In eighteen hundred and eighty-one.
These lines spread a kind of terror among uneducated people, and among children. The last couplet gave people the shudders. The New York Journal of Commerce of March 1881 (copied in the Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VIII, Issue 1265, 8 March 1881, Page 2) said it “quite startled the public. If all other important events of the nineteenth century had been so aptly described, why should not the last prediction be fulfilled?”
Yet the rhymes are no older than 1862, when they were written by Charles Hindley, a London bookseller and publisher. The “Prophecy” had long engaged the correspondents of Notes and Queries, more than one of whom had called for proof that it had any antiquity. At last, in the issue of 26 April, 1873, while they were still held in awe, the following announcement appeared:
Mother Shipton’s Prophecies—Mr Charles Hindley of Brighton, in a letter to us, has made a clean breast of having fabricated “the Prophecy” quoted at page 450 of our last volume [the lines quoted above], with some ten others included in his reprint of a chap-book version, published in 1862.
The above mentioned, NY Journal of Commerce claims to have exposed the forgery and extracted the confession from Hindley who did it to make his reissued book saleable. They had sent a reporter to the British Museum to buy reprints of the originals. These they compared with Hindley’s supposed accurate reprint, and proved the discrepancies.
The old prophecies were a vague jumble of local predictions that might have been fulfilled at any or every dacade since their date. All the pointed and interesting predictions in the new issue were not in the old book, and were either interlineations or entirely new fragments, evidently written after the events they were supposed to predict.NY J Commerce, 1881
That prophecies can be written after the events they prophesy is never considered by Christians, yet it is accepted as the whole truth of the matter in the article on Mother Shipton in the Dictionary of National Biography, in which it is stated that this interesting lady “is, in all likelihood, a wholly mythical personage”.
In short, she does not differ a jot from any of the biblical prophets, who are all likely to be wholly mythical, and whose prophecies, if accurate, were written in just the same way as Mother Shipton’s accurate ones—after the events. Remarkably, though, most of the prophecies of the biblical prophets that can be checked were manifestly false, and many more were simply not prophecies, but were written into the Christian New Testament as if they were. The prophecies were not prophecies, and their supposed fulfillment were fictional. Examples are the birth of Christ in Bethlehem, and the virgin birth. There are so many others, all obvious to scholars, and plain to everyone as impossible to confirm, yet Christians continue to believe they are true. It shows the power of childhood conditioning. Dr Collins, head of the NIH is a prime example.
Scriptural Historical Prophecies
Scriptural prophecies, predictions of future events beyond the powers of the natural mind to foresee, have failed. Despite the threat of death to the false prophet in Deuteronomy, even “true” prophets, on several occasions within their own lifetime, failed in their prophecies. Few of them have been fulfilled in any sense, and those required no divine prescience to foresee the result.
Many events have happened in every country, anticipated by studious people, as the result of natural causes such as the ravages and downfall of cities and the overthrow of empires. Jewish prophets were angry because more powerful nations had overpowered Israel and held the Israelites in subjection. They felt that God must eventually right these wrongs to His chosen people and were always prophesying against the conquering nations like Egypt, Assyria and Babylonia. Naturally this was in reality just wishful thinking and many of the prophecies never happened. Babylon, Tyre, Damascus, and other cities belonging to those hostile neighbours the Jews so much envied and execrated, were not destroyed and indeed survive to this day.
The prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, all poured out thunders upon Damascus. Isaiah declared it should be a “ruinous heap” (Isa 17:1). Jeremiah predicted its destruction by fire (Jer 49:27). Damascus still stands, with a large population. It has suffered less by ravages of war and the scythe of time than almost any other city of the east. It has stood over three thousand years without becoming anything like a “ruinous heap”.
The Old Testament prophecies against Tyre and Egypt are failed prophecies. Ezekiel prophesied that Nebuchadrezzar would completely destroy Tyre and that it would never be found again (Ezek 26:7-14, 21; 27:36; 28:19), but two hundred and fifty years after Nebuchadrezzar’s time Alexander had to seige it into submission, having found it a strong commercial city. It still is. Nebuchadrezzar had destroyed only the parts of Tyre that were accessible—on the mainland—his siege of the island acropolis failing. S Jerome, of the fourth century, declared Tyre to be, then, the finest city of Phœnicia and was astonished that Ezekiel’s prophecy had so utterly failed.
Christians try to pretend it is a different city because it has been rebuilt on a slightly different site. You might as well claim that London is a different city after the Great Fire or San Francisco is a different city after the earthquake.
Regarding Ezekiel’s prophecy of the destruction of Tyre, just read Ezekiel 29:17-20. Ezekiel 29 puts Nebuchadrezzar’s siege of Tyre in the past tense, so, the book was not finished until after the events that it ”prophesied!” An author of Ezekiel here admits that he was wrong in this prediction and that the Lord would recompense the king of Babylon with Egypt for his troubles against Tyre! He never…
…got anything from Tyre to pay for the labour that he had performed against it. Therefore says the Lord God… I will give the land of Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar.
Ezekiel admitted he was in error. Never mind, Nebuchadrezzar, Yehouah would give you Egypt instead! But Nebuchadrezzar never conquered Egypt either, as Ezekiel prophesied.
Ezekiel prophesied the fall of Egypt, the desolation of Egypt and the destruction of Egypt, not one of which has occurred. Nebuchadrezzar would lay Egypt desolate—”an utter waste and desolation, from Migdol to Syene, as far as the border of Ethiopia”. No human foot or animal foot would pass through it for 40 years—a severe prediction and one that must have left a historic mark. It has not. Egypt has never been desolate and uninhabited for such a long time, or for any time! It has always been a heavily populated area. How could it ever have been so severely depopulated? In 2,500 years Egypt has been conquered several times but is bigger and more populated than ever.
The prophecy was addressed to a Pharaoh, but he never saw it realised and nor has anyone since. Could it be a prophecy still to be realised? In the fulness of time, all such prophecies will be realised, so they are hardly prophecies, but, in this one, Nebuchadrezzar was Yehouah’s chosen agent of destruction. Not even Nebuchadrezzar claimed he conquered Egypt. How long has Nebuchadrezzar to be dead before bible thumpers will accept that the prophecy was false? The real puzzle is why it is false, since the books of the bible were all written after the prophecies. The answer is that the readers were ignorant and knew no different, just as they are today.
Besides Ezekiel predicting the destruction of Tyre by Nebuchadrezzar, but later admitting that the king’s siege of the city was unsuccessful, Jeremiah predicted an ignominious end for King Jehoiakim (Jer 22:19), yet 2 Kings 24:6 belies this, and Haggai 2:21-23 and Zechariah 4:6-7 prophesied glory for Zerubbabel, yet he seemed to fail. The prophecy of the destruction of Nineveh seems to be negated in Jonah where God rebukes Jonah with:
…should not I have pity on Nineveh, that great city…Jonah 4:10-11
Prophecies about the restoration of the lost tribes and the perpetuity of the throne of David are complete failures.
Daniel, pretends internally to have been written during the exile of the Jews in Babylonia. Yet, in Chapter 11, the author gives a potted history of the struggles between the kingdoms founded by Alexander’s generals in Syria and Egypt from the fourth to the second centuries BC. Sixteen verses cover 323 to 175 BC, twenty five verses cover 175 to 164 BC, the period the author was familiar with. From then on he gets totally wrong proving when the book was written almost to the year. The concerns of the author are those of the second century BC and his attempts to copy Persian chancellery Aramaic, to give it the cachet of age, are an utter failure.
The Destruction of Babylon
Isaiah’s prediction against Babylon yields more proof of the failure of Jewish prophecy. He predicted:
It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation, neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there.Isa 13:20
It never suffered such a calamity. Babylon was not destroyed according to the prophecy. For centuries after Isaiah’s time, it repeatedly resisted some of the most powerful sieges and the mightiest armies led by some of the most skilful generals that ever held a baton—Cyrus, Darius, Alexander the Great, Antigonus, Demetrius, Poliorcetes, and Antiochus. The predictions of Jeremiah 51:8,
Her end has come,
of Isaiah 13:22,
Her days shall not be prolonged,
and the implication of both prophets comparing Babylon with Sodom and Gomorrah (Isa 13:19; Jer 50:40) that desolation shall come upon her in a day were simply wrong[†]Desolation in a Day Thanks here to Kristian O Kristensen for pointing out that this sentence that desolation shall come to her in a day was quoted in a way that made it seem as if it were a biblical citation. Babylon gradually declined by the removal of her inhabitants to other and newer cities.
Jeremiah further predicted that her sea and springs should dry up (Jer 51:38) and then declared the waves of the sea should come upon her (Jer 51:42) and finally that she should sink to rise no more (Jer 51:64). And Isaiah’s prediction (Isa 1:39) of ruin and destruction covered not just Babylon but “the land of the Chaldeans”. It all implies that the whole of the land of the two rivers, Mesopotamia, would be flooded by the sea to a depth of about two hundred feet at least since Babylon is 300 miles inland. Yet the country is a powerful Arab state whose leader is not to everyone’s taste but is able still to cause the USA and the UN considerable trouble.
Babylon eventually fell into ruin all right but Jeremiah’s prophecy was that it…
shall become a wilderness, wherein no man dwelleth,Jer 51:43
and Isaiah’s was that it should not be dwelt in from generation to generation. Yet Babylon has been rebuilt and from 1101 AD has been called the town of Hillah. Hillah is situated within the precincts of ancient Babylon thus proving it is not
a wilderness, wherein no man dwelleth.
What remains of the old town is just north of the new one. Furthermore archaeologists confirm that Arab tents have often been pitched on the old site.
Is the prophecy true or false? Well, eventually all cities will be in ruins, but Babylon was not utterly and finally destroyed suddenly, but declined gradually to be rebuilt at a later date under a new name. It is pure sophistry to pretend that a town which is rebuilt when an earlier one is ruined is a different town. Jerusalem itself has been repeatedly rebuilt, sometimes after total destruction. And it has had different names. It is plainly wrong that no Arab would pitch a tent on the site of Babylon. The prophecy is false.
Nor were the prophecies for the distant future, hundreds of years after the oracle was proclaimed. They were always prophecies pertinent to the day, or to the near future. What comfort or justice could there be in the inhabitants of Egypt or Mesopotamia being punished 3000 years later, when they were scarcely the same race of people that had been oppressing the Israelites?
Messianic Prophecies
The religious history of most countries and religions prophesied the coming of a divine deliverer who would descend from heaven to relieve their depressed state and ameliorate their condition.
Many texts in the Christian bible have been hunted out and marked by diligent priests as prophetic of the coming and ministry of Christ. But an impartial investigation will show that these texts do not have the remotest allusion to Christ, nor were they intended to have. Mostly they refer to events already past when they were written. Others are merely expressions of frustrations with their times and anticipation of better times but are indefinite as to the period or how the desired reformation was to be brought about. A divine man was prayed for and hopefully expected. Jesus Christ specifically is not anticipated or alluded to by the prophecies. It needs the most fervid imagination to distort any text to refer to him.
But many texts have been thus perverted. In Isaiah’s famous prophecy the phrase, “Unto us a child is born” (Isa 9:6) as the context clearly shows, means the prophet’s own child and the tense, “is born”, proves the child was already then born. The title “Mighty God”, found in the text, should have been translated the “Mighty Hero”, thus proving it has no reference to a God. “The Everlasting Father” should have been rendered “the Father of the Everlasting Age”. Other texts quoted as prophecies by Christian writers are also mistakes in translation and no more refer to Christ than to William Gates.
The Jews truly had strong hopes of a Mighty Deliverer arriving amongst them. Some supposed this Deliverer would be a God, or rather a divine-man or a demi-God. Hence, such prophetic utterances as:
Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness.Isaiah 32:1
And all nations shall flow unto Zion.Isaiah 2:2
The Hindu Buddhists long before had similar hopes of the triumph of their religion. Their seers prophesied that at the end of the Cali Yug period, a divine child (God incarnate, an Avatar or Saviour) would be born, who would know all sciences and the divine writings of the Holy Scriptures without the labour of learning them.
He will supremely understand all things. He will relieve the earth of sin, and cause justice and truth to reign everywhere. And will bring the whole earth into the acceptance of the Hindu religion.
The Hindu prophet Bala also predicted that a divine Saviour would…
…become incarnate in the house of Yadu, and issue forth to mortal birth from the womb of the holy virgin, Devaci, and relieve the oppressed earth of its load of sin and sorrow.
Much more similar language may be found in their holy bible, the Vedas. The advent of their Saviour Krishna occurred in exact fulfilment of prophecy found in their sacred books.
And the Chinese bible also contains a number of Messianic prophecies. One prophecy runs:
The Holy one, when he comes, will unite in himself all the virtues of heaven and earth. By his justice the world will be established in righteousness. He will labour and suffer much… and will finally offer up a sacrifice worthy of himself,
He was a god incarnate so a sacrifice worthy of himself meant a sacrifice worthy of a God. A unique creature called the Kilin, the Lamb of God, was seen in the yard with a stone in its mouth on which was inscribed a prophecy of the event. And when the young God, Chang-ti was born in fulfilment of this prophecy, heavenly music, angels and shepherds attended the scene.
In Persia, Zoroaster prophetically declared:
A virgin should conceive and bear a son, and a star would appear blazing at midday to signal the occurrence. When you behold the star, follow it whither so ever it leads you. Adore the mysterious child, offering him gifts with profound humility. He is indeed the Almighty Word which created the heavens. He is indeed your Lord and everlasting King.
The Persian and Chaldean God Josa was considered the fulfilment of this prophecy. And Chalcidus, in the second century, in his Comments on the Timeas of Plato, speaks of…
…a star which presaged neither disease nor death, but the descent of a God amongst men and which is attested by Chaldean astronomers who immediately hastened to adore the new-born deity, and present him gifts.
Prophecy Cannot Prove Divinity
The bible itself shows that truthful prophecy can do nothing toward proving the prophet divinely inspired and a religion true. A heathen could and did succeed as well as the true disciples of the faith. The proof is found in the history of Balaam.
His representation of a star coming out of Jacob and a sceptre out of Judah (Num 24) is often quoted by Christian writers as presaging the coming of Christ, thus making an unbeliever the oracle of a messianic prophecy. The Christian subterfuge that
God might make a righteous man of any nation the vehicle of prophecy,
is not possible here, for the bible declares he was not a righteous man, but the very reverse. He was a heathen of sinful and ungodly habits.
Peter tells us (2 Peter 2:13):
He loved the wages of unrighteousness,
at the very time this so called prophecy was uttered. This negates any Christian plea that he might have possessed the true spirit of prophecy by virtue of being a righteous man and drives us to admit that an ungodly unbeliever can make a true prophecy. How then does prophecy, even if proved correct, show that the prophet is genuine or the religion true?
Another case, and one similar to that of Balaam in its essential points, is found in the New Testament. Caiaphas, whose name means Prophet, though not claiming to be a believer, utters a prophecy in the interest of the Christian religion for which the bible itself gives him full credit as a prophet:
And this spake he not of himself: but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation.John 11:51
According to Matthew 11:20-24 (Lk 10:13-15), Jesus pronounced the judgment of destruction on three cities—Capernaum, Chorazin and Bethsaida—for not accepting his gospel. It seemed to work. They apparently disappeared. But they were unlikely to have been known by these names anyway because they were code words for places better known by other names. If they were never generally known by the names given them in this quotation, they never existed as such anyway. Latterly a town has been excavated and called Capernaum, but it is nothing better than a guess. Josephus, writing only a few decades later, knew no city of that name. Capernaum might have been Nazarene code for Jerusalem itself.
All argument for Christianity based on “the gift of prophecy”, must be invalid. The power to foretell future events is not restricted by the bible itself to any nation, to any religion, to any faith, to any belief, or to any moral or religious qualification. What, then, is prophecy worth, or what does it prove?
