BREAKFAST BIBLE STUDY

Vagueness in Prophecy

Genesis 21:12 (NIV)

2/1/26

“Christian nationalism is just fascism cloaked in religious garb.”

– Grace Pecker

Finding prophecies in the Bible is easy with the help of the Internet. This week, I picked a passage for Grace and Christian that prophesies about Jesus’ life way before Jesus was born. When I came to breakfast and proclaimed that Genesis 21:12 does just that, Christian raised an eyebrow, and Grace filled me a cup of coffee because she could see I was making notes late last night in my Bible.

“Aren’t you going to argue with me?” I asked.

“Is that the passage where God assures Abraham that through Isaac, Abraham’s offspring will be reckoned?” Christian asked.

“Yep,” I said. “There are a bunch of promises God made to Abraham. Some of them predict Jesus. Some of them predict how great Israel will become.”

“Do any of them name Jesus by name?” Grace asked.

“Not exactly,” I said, “but in one, it says he’ll be a blessing to all nations.”

“How so?” Christian asked.

“In the New Testament letters, it explains that Jesus fulfilled that promise.”

“Those were written after Jesus died,” Christian reminded me. “I believe those are arguments meant to convince believers.”

“Because it’s true,” I said.

“That’s circular logic, buddy,” Christian said.

“But it predicts it way before,” I said. “It’s right in the passage. It doesn’t say Jesus, but they probably needed to keep it a secret.”

“Who’s they?” Grace asked.

“Moses?”

“What’s the passage that follows?” Grace asked.

I read: “‘Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. I will make the son of the slave into a nation also, because he is your offspring.’”

“Hmm,” Grace said, “It sounds like Abraham’s offspring will become two great nations.”

“God means Ishmael and Isaac,” I said.

“The keyword is ‘also,’” Grace said.

“God will make his offspring through Isaac worthy of reckoning,” Christian said. “He will also make Ishmael’s offspring a great nation.”

“I don’t get it,” I said.

“The second part of the passage implies that God is speaking about Israel becoming a great nation,” Grace said. “The word ‘also’ is key.”

“Oh,” I said. “This has nothing to do with Jesus, then. It’s not about a person. It’s about a nation.”

“Jesus was an Israelite. That’s about the only connection you can make from Genesis to Jesus,” Christian said.

“Oh, but it’s just a prophecy about Israel, right?” I asked.

“Written by Israelites,” Grace said. “It’s nation-building propaganda, which isn’t necessarily bad. It’s an origin story, one of many.”

“Moses wrote it,” I said. “I don’t think he did propaganda. He was scolding his people and giving them laws.”

“When did Moses, an Israelite who was raised Egyptian, have the time to write Genesis?” Christian asked.

“Probably in the desert for forty years,” I said. “But it’s still way after Abraham, isn’t it? Which makes me wonder how he knew all those olden stories, growing up Egyptian…unless God told him these stories because they were prophetic.”

“The problem with prophecies,” Christian said, “is that you can’t know if they come true until the events unfold. If Moses wrote Genesis, he wrote the book centuries after Abraham lived. If you look at the hits and misses of modern-day prophets—”

“Watch any televangelist,” Grace said.

“You’ll see they miss a lot, but true believers only remember the hits,” Christian said.

“But Moses probably only had hits,” I said.

“This was written, at least in its current form, not by Moses, but by scribes after Israel and Judah had coalesced into nations,” Grace said. “It’s a nation-building origin myth. My problem with this origin myth is that it has caused conflict and warfare that persists to this day.”

“How come?” I asked.

“Among the three Abrahamic religions, Ishmael and Isaac are perceived in very different lights. Isaac was the father of the Jewish people. In fact, Christians believe that Jesus was a descendant of Isaac. Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad was descended from Ishmael.”

“Wait! So, Jesus and the Prophet Muhammad are related?” I asked.

“That’s why we call them Abrahamic religions,” Grace said. “Abraham was the father of them all, according to tradition.”

“Neat,” I said. “Jesus and Muhammad were like distant cousins. But wait, then why do any of these religions want to fight? Fighting with family doesn’t make any sense at all.”    

“You’re exactly right,” Christian said. “And yet, for thousands of years, those family members have fought.”

In state legislatures across the country, Christian fundamentalists are passing laws meant to force the teaching of the Christian Bible in public schools. From the posting of textually inaccurate iterations of the Ten Commandments on the walls of classrooms to the incorporation of the “Trump Bible” across multiple pedagogical disciplines, these laws and mandates are sweeping the reddest parts of this nation.

The height of hypocrisy is banning books in the name of “protecting children” while mandating one particular book rife with numerous acts of sexual violence and scenes of graphic violence and genocide.

Book bans are dangerous. The Bible is worth reading and exists online and in public school libraries across the country, but proponents of mandating its formal teaching in public schools need to know what it actually says.

Some themes in my books below might not be appropriate for children.