Intellectual Honesty… honestly?
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I have been engaged in a number of emails with a reader named Marcia. My previous blog entry contained a part of my email response to her and she left the 5th note on that entry.
Her comment included the following: “It is interesting to me that you talk about intellectual honesty but failed to demonstrate this in your discussion of John MacArthur’s article…”
Really? I fail to demonstrate intellectual honesty?
Let’s recap with a direct quote of the verses that Marcia claimed, “Jeremiah 31:15 … prophesied … that Herod would kill the children in Bethlehem”
Jeremiah 31:15-17 (NSRV) “Thus says the Lord: A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.
Thus says the Lord: Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears; for there is a reward for your work, says the Lord: they shall come back from the land of the enemy; there is hope for your future, says the Lord: your children shall come back to their own country.”
Notice the complete lack of the words: Herod, Bethlehem, Messiah, Mary, Joseph, Jesus, prophesy.
If I were exactly as intellectually dishonest as Christians who make the claim that a verse without the word “Herod” in it prophesied that that “Herod would do something”, I would argue as follows:
Jeremiah 31:15-17 prophesies that Napoleon Bonaparte would invade Jerusalem. Since Napoleon did not invade Jerusalem, as prophesied in Jeremiah 31:15, Jesus could not have been the Messiah.
I’m sure that you think that that claim is ridiculous and non-compelling. So, show me how to argue with that statement, Marcia. I honestly would like to learn how to get such an idea across in a compelling way.
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The reason I said that you failed to demonstrate intellectual honesty, in looking at John MacArthur's discussion on the Jeremiah prophecy, is that you discuss a few points you think prove your point and ignore the full meaning of his article, i.e. the symbolism of this scripture. Read the sections on Ramah and Rachel. Ramah symbolized the place between northern and southern Israel where the deportations into captivity took place. Rachel symbolized the mothers of Israel, weeping for their children, first because they were taken into captivity and later when all the infants younger than two were killed by Herod. This is only one prophecy of hundreds about the Messiah.
I suggested to you previously that you take a look at Josh McDowell's book, Evidence That Demands a Verdict. In fact, I will send you a copy if you so desire. In his book, McDowell looks at 61 prophecies about the Messiah, using statistics. If you look at only 8 prophecies, the statistical chance of one man fulfilling all 8 is 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000. Jesus fulfilled all of the prophecies.