Dr. Oakes,  After deep study of the prophetic books, I come to the conclusion that, on one hand, the Bible portrays opponents of Jeremiah & Ezekiel as false prophets and blames them for lying, adultery and wickedness and, on the other hand, its accepted prophets did the same things for e.g. Hosea had an affair with Gomer. Ezekiel used filthy language. Isaiah and others spoke fancy things about Jewish restoration, Zion, etc., which did not materialize. Christian scholars have no choice but to insist that OT is inspired. Otherwise, if they deny its inspiration, the whole building of Christianity will collapse because they think that Jesus fulfilled OT’s false fanciful predictions. Christians take those false visions as symbolic and try their 200% best to fit them into Jesus.  What’s your response?

My response is that these charges against the character of the biblical prophets is false.  In fact, it is so obviously false, that it borders on a lie, plain and simple.  The most basic reading of Hosea will show how false this charge is.  Hosea was married to Gomer, but she became unfaithful to him.  Because God wanted to demonstrate his love for unfaithful Israel, he told Hosea to take his wife back, even though she had been unfaithful to him.  It is libelous and slanderous and blatantly unfair to accuse the honorable Hosea of having an affair! Why would anyone make this false charge?

As for Ezekiel, he DID NOT use filthy language.  If you look at the Hebrew, he did not use “dirty” words.  What the Jews did when they became unfaithful was “dirty,” but Ezekiel did not use dirty words.  He used the common words for common things.  For example, in Ezekiel 23, he used words like prostitute, genitals, lewdness, lust, naked and emission.  These are not dirty words. I am sure that there are lewd words for these things, but you are charging Ezekiel with using these lewd words. This is a false accusation.  These are the common Hebrew words for real things.  What is “dirty” is what Israel did in her sin against God.  All Ezekiel is doing here is describing in strong but clean words the sin of Israel.  It is an outrageous, irresponsible and false charge to say that Ezekiel used filthy language.

As for Isaiah, every single prophecy he spoke came true.  I have looked long and hard and with great care through the entire book of Isaiah and this statement that his prophecies did not come true are simply false.  Period.  Unfortunately, the charge you are making here does not include any specifics, which makes it impossible to refute the false charge.  It is kind of like accusing a person of being a liar, but not having any actual lies to list.  How can anyone defend themselves against such a charge. So, unless you can come up with an actual unfulfilled “fancy” thing, I will simply say this:  Not true!

On your last point, there is an element of truth.  If the prophecies in the Old Testament were not fulfilled, then this would be a really big problem for Christianity.  Again, I have looked carefully and long at many dozens of prophecies throughout the prophets and my study tells me that all of them have been fulfilled.  No exceptions.  There are many dozens of examples that can be found at my web site.  So, what you say in the last part of your statement is true, but the premise behind it—that the prophets prophesied falsely—is not true.

John Oakes