Bible prophecy or biblical prophecy is typically the prediction of future events based on the action, function, or faculty of a prophet. Such passages are widely distributed throughout the Bible, but those most often cited are from Ezekiel, Daniel, Matthew 24, Matthew 25, and Revelation. Believers in biblical prophecy engage in exegesis and hermeneutics of scriptures which they believe contain descriptions of global politics, natural disasters, the future of the nation of Israel, the coming of a Messiah and a Messianic Kingdom, and the ultimate destiny of humankind.
Some prophecies in the Bible are conditional, with either the conditions implicitly assumed or explicitly stated. Some prophetic passages are depicted as direct statements from God while other statements are expressed as the privileged perspective of the biblical author considered to be a prophet. The Biblical prophets are usually considered to have received revelations from God, subsequently recording them in the relevant writings.
Hebrew Bible prophets often warn the Israelites to repent of their sins and idolatries, with the threat of punishment or reward. Blessings and ruinations are attributed to the deity. According to believers in Bible prophecy, many of these prophecies are viewed as having been fulfilled within later passages.
A second prophetic theme is the coming of a Messiah: Christians believe that these Messianic prophecies are fulfilled by Christ Jesus, while followers of Rabbinic Judaism still await the arrival of the Jewish Messiah and other signs of Jewish eschatology. Most Christians believe many messianic prophecies will be fulfilled with the Second Coming of Christ, though some Christians (Full Preterism) believe that all Messianic prophecies have already been fulfilled. Rabbinic Judaism does not separate the original coming of the Messiah and the advent of the Messianic Age. For details of the differences, see Christianity and Judaism.
Another major theme concerns the "end times", or "last days", particularly according to the Revelation of John. Read more ...
The Bible Code , also known as the Torah code, is a purported set of secret messages encoded within the Hebrew text of the Torah. This hidden code has been described as a method by which specific letters from the text can be selected to reveal an otherwise obscured message. Although Bible codes have been postulated and studied for centuries, the subject has been popularized in modern times by Michael Drosnin's book The Bible Code and the movie The Omega Code.
Many examples have been documented in the past. One cited example is that by taking every 50th letter of the Book of Genesis starting with the first taw, the Hebrew word "torah" is spelled out. The same happens in the Book of Exodus. Modern computers have been used to search for similar patterns and more complex variants, as well as quantifying its statistical likelihood.
Some tests purportedly showing statistically significant codes in the Bible were published as a "challenging puzzle" in a peer-reviewed academic journal in 1994, and later questioned. Read more ...