A former skeptic testifies about Bible Prophecy
There is a prophecy in the Bible about Samaria, the capital city of the northern Hebrew kingdom of Israel when the Jews were split into two kingdoms. This prophecy is given in Micah 1:6, written in about 700 B.C.: “Therefore I will make Samaria as a heap of the field, and as plantings of a vineyard: and I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley, and I will discover the foundations thereof.”
What is predicted about Samaria?
What does history say about Samaria?
According to McDowell,[1] Samaria was attacked by Sargon in 722 B.C., where it fell by the sword. It was attacked again in 331 B.C. by Alexander the Great, and a third time in 120 B.C. by John Hyrcanus. All these conquests caused great destruction in Samaria. Samaria’s final destruction came later on, in 1265 A.D. by the Muslims who defeated the Crusaders protecting the city.
John Urquhart quotes Van Velde: “Samaria has been destroyed, but her rubbish has been thrown down into the valley; her foundations stones, those grayish ancient quadrangular stones of the time of Omri and Ahab, are discovered, and lie scattered about on the slope of the hill”[2] (emphasis mine).
A. J. Monty White, a physical chemist and former atheist, mentions the prophecy about Samaria as one of the things that convinced him the Bible can be trusted: “One of the reasons why I rejected Christianity was because of Bible prophecy. I considered the proclamations of the prophets to be so general that almost anything could be predicted from them. However, it was not long before I was shown that this was not the case. There are four specific predictions in this one verse of prophecy (Micah 1:6) that was uttered in the latter half of the eighth century B.C. The first is that Samaria’s ruins would become a heap of rubble. The second is that the stones used to construct Samaria would be pushed into a valley. The third is that Samaria’s foundations would be laid bare. And the fourth is that Samaria would eventually become a place where vineyards would be planted.
“Although this destruction of Samaria was predicted by the prophet Micah in c. 730 B.C., it was not until A.D. 1265, almost 2,000 years later, that the prophecy began to be fulfilled. No one can argue that the prophet Micah saw this happen and then wrote it down spuriously claiming that he lived decades before the event and so had successfully prophesied Samaria’s destruction. . .Arabs living in the vicinity cleared much of the ruins in order to use the site for agricultural purposes, and in doing so, they dug up its foundations and dumped them into a valley nearby. Today grapevines can be seen growing on this ancient site, just as prophesied by Micah over 2,700 years ago.
“In view of the many fulfilled Bible prophecies, including the prediction of the destruction of the city of Samaria with such incredible accuracy, I began to think that perhaps Bible prophecy could be trusted”[3] (emphasis mine).
Again we see specific, unambiguous predictions, clearly observed to be fulfilled, with the type of observation and facts which could be easily verified as true or false. If the descriptions were colored to make them fit the prophecy, this again could easily be checked out by simply visiting the site. Yet when people have visited these sites they are astonished by the accuracy of the biblical descriptions.
[1] McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, 282.
[2] John Urquhart, The Wonders of Prophecy, C.C. Cook, New York, n.d., 128, as quoted in McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, 282-283.
[3]A. J. Monty White, as quoted in On the Seventh Day, edited by John F. Ashton, Master Books, Green Forest, AR, 2002, 34-35.
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