> Okay, I meant to return to this thread sooner, but I've been lazy. I agree with Dave: without any evidence recognizable to both parties, all you have is a bald assertion. Not the sort of thing I want to base my life on.

I think I've not been expressing myself well, and maybe that accounts for a lot of my frustration. I agree that something accepted on faith without any kind of substantiation is not something worth basing one's life on. But I was also not preaching: my purpose wasn't to try to dispense "evidence recognizable to both parties" but to try to illustrate how one can have faith without simultaneously abandoning reason and logic. I don't think it worked out so well. I think I'd have done better using actual communicatable evidence to illustrate this point.

One thing that one can observe is simply the current existence of the nation of Israel. First, a quick overview of the Bible's covenant with Israel, so we all know what we're talking about: In Genesis 15:5, God promises to Abraham that his seed shall number as the stars in heaven. God renews this covenant with Isaac (26:4) and Jacob, also called Israel (35:10-12), who had twelve sons (35:22-26), which would father the twelve tribes of Israel (49:28 and surrounding). Psalm 105:6-10 corroborates this covenant. This covenant is an "everlasting" covenant, as it is repeatedly called.

So one way to disprove the Word of God is to destroy the nation of Israel. Of course, the fact that no one has done that does not in itself *prove* the Word of God; nonetheless, the survival of Israel is pretty astonishing. What are the chances the Bible would have predicted Israel's survival without God actively ensuring it?

Generally speaking, if a culture spends 200 years without a homeland, their culture is absorbed and diffused by the other cultures in which the people intermingle. It's happened many times throughout history -- one nation will lose a war with another, the land is taken over, and the culture of the defeated will disappear over time unless their land is restored to them.

(Outside of Israel, Native Americans are the best exception I can think of to this phenomenon: they've survived just barely over 200 years. Most American Indian cultures, however, have been wiped out, and it is likely that what remains remains because Native Americans were confined and isolated on reservations. This was deplorably unjust; yet, it is likely that the segregation helped to preserve their identity as a culture and people.)

Israel, however, survived 2600 years without a common homeland. Yet their language, religion, culture, and identity as a people have been preserved over the generations, in spite of being scattered across continents and faced with one power after another who sought to destroy them -- less power than has absorbed numerous cultures in the past.

The Pharaoh tried to wipe Israel out in 1600-1500 B.C. During the Spanish Inquisition, the Catholics tried to wipe out Israel, and they were at odds with Israel for 1500 years until as recently as the 1990s. Different Protestant groups have heavily persecuted them over time. The Muslims have made many attempts to annihilate them, both ancient and recent. Hitler tried to exterminate them, killing millions.

But Israel has not been destroyed as a people, a culture, or an identity in spite of spending 2600 years without a homeland and faced with far greater opposition than has destroyed still many cultures, some more expansive, in the past.

(I wish I could remember where I heard that, in studying historical wars for lessons on military strategy, wars with Israel are often thrown out, because Israel's military strategies and their outcomes don't fit in with other wars of the world: their military strategies would appear to be losing ones, yet they survive anyhow, baffling military strategists. But I don't remember where I heard that, so I can't substantiate it, so take that with a grain of salt unless someone else can unearth this factoid as well.)

Moreover, God promised that those that blessed Israel would be blessed, and those that cursed Israel would be cursed (Genesis 12:1-3), and this, too, is born out by history.

To punish Egypt's persecution of Israel, God made Egypt a "brutish" nation (Isaiah 19:11-12), and certainly it is well-known that the civilization of Egypt was once an expansive empire and now is not even close to that.

Once, the sun never set on the British Empire, and while I admit it is circumstantial, still it is intriguing that this Empire is no more shortly after England renegged on the Balfour declaration, which promised after World War I they'd help set up a Palestinian State.

Stalin persecuted the Jews, and the Soviet Union is no more. Hitler persecuted the Jews, and Germany is not the world power it once was.

On the flip side of things, the nation that has been arguably most sympathetic to Israel for a long time and still is is the United States, whose rise to world power in a pretty short period of time is daunting. True, the U.S. has some of the best natural resources on the planet, but even so, a nation to rise to superior power over empires and civilizations that have been around for millennia in just a couple hundred years is pretty astonishing.

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Fulfilled prophecy, to my mind, is both the most and least convincing evidence for pre-knowledge of events. It is least compelling when an ambiguous prophecy is made and only understood after the fact. This is the case with Nostradamus, whose writings are vague, unclear, and often unspecific: I do not believe, although I could be wrong, that any prophecy of Nostradamus was understood until *after* its supposed fulfillment. It is well understood how easy it is to retrofit past events with earlier prophecies that were not understood beforehand.

However, when an unambiguous, unfixable, and against-all-odds prophecy is made and fulfilled, that is supremely compelling. I believe that this is the case with what the Bible has to say about Israel. There was no doubt about the Bible's prophecy concerning Israel. In fact, there isn't just one prophecy but a host of them concerning not just their survival but their role in the times of Christ, the restoration of their homeland, and in the end times, what is still our future; Israel's survival is an implicit prophecy within all of these. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, the Jews in the time of Christ -- they all knew *exactly* what the biblical prophecies concerning Israel meant. The prophecies concerning Israel are quite unambiguous. Unfixable? Obviously. Who but God has the power to ensure a nation's survival for millennia? Against-all-odds? If the runner-up culture for preserving a culture and identity without a homeland is a bit over 200 years, I'd say 2600 years, plus numerous attempts at their destruction, fits the bill there, too.