Chick Tracts: Where’s Rabbi Waxman?

Here’s another hilarious Jack Chick gospel tract!  Jewish Rabbi Samuel Waxman is shown a list of scriptures that *prove* that the Jewish messiah has already come, in the form of Jesus Christ.  Rabbi Waxman, of course, is terrified of being disowned by his people if he accepts these scriptures, and tries to put them from his mind.  He soon dies, and instead of being accepted by Yahweh, he . . . dun dun dun . . .goes to hell (surprise, surprise).  There’s even a little bit of dialogue when the Rabbi asked God whether all of his good works will count for anything, and God berates him for being so presumptuous as to think that the Almighty would care how we mortals behave.

I decided to hit this one because I’ve never met a Christian who denied that Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophecy; the assertion of fulfilled prophecy is practically universal among all varieties of Christian.  If I were a Christian, I would think that genuine fulfilled prophecy would be one of the few objective measures by which one could verify the Bible as both accurate and divinely inspired.  Many Christians have claimed that there are as many as 300 fulfilled prophecies in the Old Testament.  This tract lists 27, though presumably Jack Chick wouldn’t call it a complete list.  Let’s take a look at some of them.

Isaiah 9:6-7:

For to us a child is born,
       to us a son is given,
       and the government will be on his shoulders.
       And he will be called
       Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
       Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and peace
       there will be no end.
       He will reign on David’s throne
       and over his kingdom,
       establishing and upholding it
       with justice and righteousness
       from that time on and forever.
       The zeal of the LORD Almighty
       will accomplish this.

First off, this passage doesn’t specifically mention Jesus Christ at all.  Get used to this, it’s a common theme.  Secondly, these verses clearly describe the “messiah” as being a king or other ruler of government.  Jesus never ruled as part of a government.  He never “reigned on David’s throne,” because he was never a king at all, in the governmental sense.  The verses also state that this government will have no end, and that the messiah-king will reign forever.  Again, the Bible itself claims that Jesus does not reside on earth now, and that he hasn’t ever since soon after his resurrection.  The only way a follower of Jesus could claim that he fulfilled this verse is to claim that Jesus is a “spiritual” king, and is reigning over the “spiritual government” of God’s people to this day.  These are completely unverifiable claims, and are clearly not what the verses are talking about.  If these verses are prophecy, they are failed prophecy (or, at the very least, prophecy yet to be fulfilled).

Micah 5:2:

“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
       though you are small among the clans of Judah,
       out of you will come for me
       one who will be ruler over Israel,
       whose origins are from of old,
       from ancient times.”

 This verse is commonly cited as prophecy that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem.  This verse simply doesn’t say this.  This verse discusses a clan of Judah, and elsewhere in the Bible, this clan is specified as being the famous line of Davidic kings.  Especially if we read Micah 4, it’s clear that this “prophecy” simply refers to a king rising from the Davidic line to restore Israel after it’s destruction by Babylon.

Isaiah 7:14:

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.

A couple of problems here – first, any skeptic who has looked at this verse before already knows that the word used here is not the Hebrew word for “virgin.”  The word actually used is “almah,” which actually translates correctly as “young woman.”  If the author wanted to convey a virgin giving birth, the only correct word to use would have been “bethulah,” if I remember correctly.  And, of course, this verse claims that the child messiah’s given name would be Immanuel, not Jesus.  Um . . . this seems very obvious to me . . .

Zechariah 12:10:

“And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son.

Chick’s little description of this prophecy describes it like this:  “Pierced through hands, feet, and side.”  Obviously, this verse doesn’t mention anything as specific as the body part that was pierced, or the circumstances of the piercing.  This verse is in the past tense, describing something that has already happened, and the surrounding verses make the context clear; God was lamenting how wounded he was by Israel’s refusal to obey him.  Also, isn’t it obvious that virtually everyone is “pierced” by something at some point in their life?  Especially considering this time period and culture?  A prophecy of someone being “pierced” is just downright pathetic.

Psalm 34:20:

He protects all his bones,
       not one of them will be broken.

Trying to base prophecy on some small bit of a huge heap of metaphorical poetry is truly sad.  Depressingly, this happens constantly with supposed Biblical prophecy.  Let’s look at the surrounding verses for context:

16 the face of the LORD is against those who do evil,
       to cut off the memory of them from the earth.
17 The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them;
       he delivers them from all their troubles.
18 The LORD is close to the brokenhearted
       and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
19 A righteous man may have many troubles,
       but the LORD delivers him from them all;
20 he protects all his bones,
       not one of them will be broken.
21 Evil will slay the wicked;
       the foes of the righteous will be condemned.
22 The LORD redeems his servants;
       no one will be condemned who takes refuge in him.

It’s painfully obvious that these verses are describing how Yahweh will take good care of those who trust him, and destroy evildoers.   If verse twenty is a prophecy, verse nineteen is a failed prophecy, as God obviously didn’t “deliver” Jesus from crucifixion.

Every one of these prophecies (the ones I mention above, and all the others on the list) suffer from one pervasive, seemingly obvious problem – we have no way of verifying that the gospel accounts are accurate in these details, and they almost always have the possibility of being self-fulfilled.  One such prophecy, for example, seems to state that the messiah will ride into his kingdom on a donkey, while the gospels claim that Jesus once rode into a city on a donkey.  We have not one, but two simple, naturalistic explanations for this:  Firstly, the “Jesus Legend” that was developing in 1st Century Israel was known to people who were obviously familiar with the Old Testament.  This kind of claim, that Jesus once rode into a city on a donkey, would be extremely easy to drop into a Jesus story, eventually making it’s way into a gospel.  Alternatively, perhaps there was a historical Jesus, and he actually did ride into a city on a donkey!  Even if we somehow verified this, there’s no reason that Jesus or his followers couldn’t have gotten the donkey simply because they were familiar with the Old Testament, and this Old Testament verse about a donkey.

Every such Biblical prophecy I’ve ever heard ends the same:  Naturalistic explanations are just overwhelmingly probable compared to a claimed deity causing genuine prophecy to be fulfilled.  If anyone has heard of any better ones than these, let me know.  I’d like to take a look at them!