Is the Bible accurate?

Ezekiel stood up to speak in 590 BC. Here’s what he said in the 26th chapter of his book:

“Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I am against thee, O Tyre, and will cause many nations to come up against thee, as the sea causeth its waves to come up. And they shall destroy the walls of Tyre and break down her towers. I will also scrape her dust from her and make her like the top of a rock. It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea. For I have spoken it, saith the Lord God.”

Further on in the chapter, it says: “They shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water. I will make thee like the top of a rock. All the princes of the sea shall come down from their thrones and lay away their robes. They shall clothe themselves with trembling. They shall sit upon the ground and shall tremble at every moment, and be astonished at thee.”

Now, if we look carefully at that chapter, seven things are predicted.

I’ll list them for you:

Nebuchadnezzar will take the city of Tyre.

Other nations will participate in the fulfillment of the prophecy.

The city will be made flat like the top of a rock.

It will become a place for the spreading of nets.

Its stones and timber will be laid in the sea.

Other cities will greatly fear the fall of Tyre.

The old city of Tyre will never be rebuilt.

In 586 BC, Nebuchadnezzar certainly came from Babylon and attacked Tyre. His armies laid siege to the city for 13 long years. In 573 BC, his troops finally entered the city, only to find that almost everything of value had been moved to an island off the coast. Many years passed, and the old city of Tyre remained as it had been when Nebuchadnezzar conquered it. But 241 years later, in the time of Alexander the Great, things took a dramatic turn.

Alexander, concerned about the Venetians at Tyre-who had a great navy-feared they might attack Greece and threaten his empire. So, he set out to attack the city of Tyre. When his initial attempt failed, he enlisted other nations he had conquered to contribute their navies for one large attack on Tyre. After a failed attempt, Alexander took down the old city of Tyre, stone by stone, timber by timber, and threw it into the sea. He built a causeway from the mainland to the island using these materials, but it wasn’t sufficient.

So, he scraped the topsoil from the old city of Tyre and threw that into the sea as well.

Once the causeway was completed, the combined navies and troops of Alexander’s empire crossed it and finally brought the city of Tyre to its knees. The old city of Tyre became a bare rock, still used today for drying nets.

Tyre is a remarkable place, with natural springs that produce 10 million gallons of water a day, enough to support any major city in the world. But it has never been rebuilt to this day.

When we compare what Ezekiel predicted in 590 BC with the fulfillment of those prophecies over the centuries, we see that each prediction came to pass step by step:

Nebuchadnezzar did take the city of Tyre.

Other nations did participate in the prophecy’s fulfillment.

The city was made flat like a rock.

It became a place for spreading nets.

Its stones and timber were laid in the sea.

Other cities did greatly fear Tyre’s fall.

The old city of Tyre has never been rebuilt.

This is just one example of the hundreds of predictive prophecies found in the Bible. There is a field of study called mathematical probability, using it to calculate that the chance of Ezekiel being able to predict these events with the knowledge available to him at the time was one in 75 million.

That is astounding!