We can see how remarkable these prophecies are when we look at our attempts to foretell the future. Weather forecasters, market researchers and sales forecasters all do their job by comparing the present situation with similar situations in the past. They do their best, but sometimes their forecasts are wrong. So if we as humans try to foretell the future, we must rely on similar circumstances in the past. Even then we can still only guess at what will happen in the future. But, as we have seen, the Bible makes totally accurate long-term predictions.

In Old Testament times, if we had attempted to predict the future of a people like the Jews, we would have looked at other nations around at the time. We could have based our predictions on nations like the Babylonians and Romans, who rose to the peak of their power and then declined and disappeared. We could have used the Egyptians or Chinese as our basis and forecast that they would rise to their peak, and, after some decline, continue for thousands of years. When the Bible predictions were made, there was no reason, based on past experience, to expect the Jewish nation to have the history it did. It was to rise to its peak, decline and disappear from its homeland for over 1,800 years, and then reappear again in its ancient homeland. Past experience of other peoples would have told us that this never happens.