Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe (an old-earth Creationist ministry) claims that the Bible has thousands of fulfilled prophecies, and he gives us his top 13. Keep in mind that Ross has a doctorate in physics, so he’s no dummy … well, at least not in physics.
Let’s continue (part 1 here).
4. Psalms and Zechariah both predicted the execution of Jesus. They described the crucifixion and correctly stated that no bones would be broken (not true of many crucifixions).
Ross gives three Old Testament references.

• “[Yahweh] protects all his bones, not one of them will be broken” (Psalm 34:20). This is a psalm of praise, and one of the many good things God does is protect his favored people from injury. How is this a prophecy, let alone a flawless prophecy of the crucifixion, resurrection, and atonement of Jesus?
• “They will look on me [that is, God], 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” (Zechariah 12:10). In this chapter, God is listing what he will do to protect Judah from enemies. The only suggestion of the passion narrative is the word “pierced.”
• Psalm 22 is the final citation. I’ve discussed that in detail, but in brief, Psalm 22 is about the woes of Israel, portrayed metaphorically as an abused man. There are as many elements of the psalm that can’t be shoehorned into the crucifixion narrative as there are parallels, hardly what we’d expect from the “100% accurate” prophecy of a god.

It’s ridiculous to imagine that these feeble connections to the Jesus story are anything but imagined, especially when Ross claims that the chance of the Bible saying what it does in this instance without this being a fulfilled prophecy is 1/10¹³. Where is the resurrection? Where is the explanation for Jesus’s sacrifice?
5. Isaiah predicted that Cyrus would destroy unassailable Babylon and free the Jewish exiles. “Isaiah made this prophecy 150 years before Cyrus was born, 180 years before Cyrus performed any of these feats (and he did, eventually, perform them all), and 80 years before the Jews were taken into exile.”
Ross cites three verses from Isaiah (44:28, 45:1, and 45:13) in which God declares that Cyrus is his anointed, who he will help to “subdue nations”; Cyrus will command that Jerusalem be rebuilt; and Cyrus will set free the Jewish exiles held in Babylon without demanding a ransom.
These verses are so glowing and accurate that it’s almost like Cyrus became the champion of the Jews and then they honored him (and gave the credit to God) by writing this account. And that’s indeed what almost surely happened. Isaiah the prophet lived in the mid- to late-eighth century BCE, though he only wrote the first 39 chapters. Chapters 40–55 were written after the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, and the final compilation of the book was only finished around 70 BCE.

See also: 8 Tests for Accurate Prophecy and Why Bible Prophecies Fail

6. Babylon was said to be indestructible, and yet both Isaiah and Jeremiah accurately predicted its ruin. To see why Babylon was considered so formidable, just look at its size. It was 196 miles square and enclosed by a double wall, each of which was 330 feet high and 90 feet thick. “These prophets further claimed that the ruins would be avoided by travelers, that the city would never again be inhabited, and that its stones would not even be moved for use as building material.”
Let’s pause and consider the size of these fortifications. Take Paris’s Arc de Triomphe, and stack another on top. That’s roughly the height and thickness of this wall. Now make it 196 miles long, and then make a second identical wall. That would be a big construction project now, and this was the sixth century BCE.
Wikipedia gives Babylon’s maximum area at 2200 acres, which could be enclosed by a wall just seven miles in circumference. We actually have several contemporary estimates of the size of Babylon’s fortifications, some far more modest than the dimensions Ross cites.
Ross can’t be faulted for inaccurate reporting from ancient historians, but he can be for highlighting data he likes without even acknowledging that contradicting evidence.
Ross points us to Isaiah 13:17–22, which does indeed declare that God will overthrow Babylon and that Babylon “will never be inhabited or lived in through all generations.” Jeremiah 51:26 and :43 repeat that Babylon will be “desolate forever.” But, once again, when we read the verses closely, we find that Ross hasn’t told us the whole story.

• God will destroy Babylon “like Sodom and Gomorrah” (Isaiah 13:19). Unlike prophecy #5, there is no mention of God using Cyrus as his tool. God will personally destroy it in the Sodom-and-Gomorrah fashion, that is, with fire and brimstone.
• It also states that on this terrible day when God opens his can of whoop-ass on Babylon, “The rising sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light” (Is. 13:10), and the land will be made desolate and the sinners destroyed. “I [God] will punish the world for its evil, the wicked for their sins.” The destruction of Babylon is highlighted, but this is just a part of a worldwide (or at least regional) judgment.
• When will all this happen? Isaiah 13:22 tells us: “[Babylon’s] time is at hand, and her days will not be prolonged.” But if Isaiah wrote this part of the book before 700 BCE and Cyrus took Babylon in 539 BCE, Ross must explain the delay.
• Jeremiah 51 also makes this bold prediction: “The sea will rise over Babylon; its roaring waves will cover her.” Didn’t happen. Babylon is hundreds of miles from the sea and about 35 meters above sea level. Ross could argue that this was hyperbole, but to maintain his claim that “the Bible is 100% without error,” he enters dangerous territory. He has given himself permission to decide himself what’s literal and what’s figurative.
• Both Isaiah and Jeremiah were edited after Cyrus, so they’re not even reliable historical accounts.
• Babylon would never again be inhabited? Wrong again. Cyrus didn’t destroy Babylon but used the city, as did the next king, Darius the Great. The New Testament even refers to “The church that is at Babylon” (1 Peter 5:13).

Six prophecies down and seven to go—who’s optimistic that they’ll get any better?
Continued in part 3.

Every cake is a miraculous fulfillment
of a prophecy called a recipe.
— commenter RichardSRussell

Image credit: Wikimedia, public domain

Reasons to Believe is an old-earth Creationist ministry that claims that science supports the Bible and that “the Bible is 100% without error.” Hugh Ross, the founder, gives us 13 of what he says are thousands of biblical prophecies in “Fulfilled Prophecy: Evidence for the Reliability of the Bible.”
Let’s see how lucky number 13 is for Dr. Ross.
He begins:

Approximately 2,500 prophecies appear in the pages of the Bible, about 2,000 of which already have been fulfilled to the letter—no errors….
Since the probability for any one of these prophecies having been fulfilled by chance averages less than one in ten (figured very conservatively) and since the prophecies are for the most part independent of one another, the odds for all these prophecies having been fulfilled by chance without error is less than one in 10²⁰⁰⁰.

I love it when apologists rely on volume over accuracy. (“Okay, I know that most of these UFO reports are crap, but if we say that each has just a one percent chance of being accurate, when you consider the enormous number of them, this is very strong evidence!”) Uh huh. Does that make astrology accurate, too?
Ross again:

The acid test for identifying a prophet of God is recorded by Moses in Deuteronomy 18:21–22. According to this Bible passage (and others), God’s prophets, as distinct from Satan’s spokesmen [mediums and clairvoyants such as Jeanne Dixon or Edgar Cayce], are 100 percent accurate in their predictions. There is no room for error.

I notice that Ross didn’t quote one verse before, which demands death for any false prophet. He’s claiming that all of his prophecies came true perfectly, so consider the upcoming critique to see how he does. Ross says that there is “no room for error”? We’ll return to that claim uncomfortably often to check.
1. The book of Daniel predicts the crucifixion of Jesus. Daniel predicted that the Messiah would begin his public ministry 483 years after the decree to rebuild Jerusalem, that the Messiah would be killed, and that the second destruction of Jerusalem would follow. “Abundant documentation shows that these prophecies were perfectly fulfilled in the life (and crucifixion) of Jesus Christ.”
“Probability of chance fulfillment = 1 in 10⁵.”
I’ve written at length about the various interpretations of Daniel. Christians have several, so Ross would get pushback from other Christians who believe in a contradictory interpretation.
I’ll let that earlier post discuss the details of what Daniel says, but note that the Bible doesn’t record a decree to rebuild Jerusalem, it records four of them.* Apologists pick the one that best serves their calculations and hope no one notices the others.
The interpretation that best fits the facts has the book written, not by Daniel in the sixth century BCE, but by an unknown author around 167 BCE. The atonement and the end of the world was expected in about 164 BCE. (More.)
I would say more about the probabilities assigned to each individual prophecy, but there’s not much to say. Ross justifies these values with little more than that they come “from a group of secular research scientists.” Presumably, Ross wants the fact that they’re not Christian to show that they’re objective, but without their work, we have nothing to evaluate.
How would you even assign a probability to this one given that there’s a plausible and completely natural explanation? There was no fulfilled prophecy, so the calculation is meaningless.
2. The prophet Micah names Bethlehem as the birthplace of the Messiah.
Matthew 2 says that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and cites the relevant verses in Micah 5 as prophecy. But since Matthew had read this “prophecy,” this makes him an unreliable source to report the fulfillment of that prophecy.
There is even a scholarly term for this error, vaticinia ex eventu, which means “prophecy after the event.” It’s revealing that historians needed such a term. This is the kind of error that Christians would spot in an instant in a claim from another religion, and yet Christians like Ross either don’t notice or have a different standard for their religion’s prophecies.
Ross is right that Micah refers to Bethlehem as the birthplace of someone important:

Though you [Bethlehem] are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel. (Micah 5:2)

However, we must read it in context. Micah was written when Assyria was attacking both Israel and Judea. This “ruler” would be the one to lead the fight against the invaders:

He will deliver us from the Assyrians when they invade our land.… Your hand will be lifted up in triumph over your enemies, and all your foes will be destroyed. (Micah 5:6–9)

Does this sound like any part of the gospel story? You still want to pretend that this “ruler over Israel” is Jesus?
This “prophecy” is also given a probability of chance fulfillment of 1/10⁵, which is ridiculous when the natural explanation is obvious and the supernatural explanation doesn’t even fit.
 

See also: What Makes a Good Prophecy (and Why Bible Prophecies Aren’t)

 
3. Zechariah predicts that “the Messiah would be betrayed for the price of a slave—thirty pieces of silver.” The prophecy is fulfilled when Matthew records that very payment made to Judas the traitor.
Actually, Zechariah 11:12–13 laments that God is unappreciated by the people of Israel. There is nothing about a Messiah or betrayal. And then when Matthew 27:3–10 attempts to connect the Judas/30-pieces-of-silver story with the prophecy, it gets the prophet wrong and names Jeremiah instead. (So much for the Bible being 100% without error, as Ross claims.)
Zechariah refers to a potter, not a potter’s field; nevertheless, Ross sees that as an important parallel between Zechariah and Matthew. But when you look at the two stories of the last hours of Judas (Acts 1:18–19 vs. Matthew 27:4–8), you see that they’re incompatible.

• Who possessed and spent the thirty pieces of silver? Acts says that Judas bought a field with the money. Matthew says that Judas returned the money to the priests, which they declared tainted, and they bought the field.
• How did Judas die? Acts says that he died from a fall, while Matthew says that he hanged himself.
• There is a “Field of Blood” in both stories. Why was it named that? In Acts, it was named this because Judas fell and died in it. In Matthew, it was because it was bought with the blood money.

The probability given here is 1/10¹¹, which is ridiculous when, yet again, this is a prophecy after the fact and the claimed connection simply isn’t there.
Ross said that Bible prophecies have “no room for error.” That’s a good criterion, but in that case, these are not Bible prophecies.
Continued in part 2.

Think of how stupid the average person is,
and realize half of them are stupider than that.
— George Carlin

* The Old Testament has four decrees for the rebuilding of Jerusalem, each with a different date (Ross’s calculations use the third one):

• Decree of Cyrus: 538–536 BCE (2 Chronicles 36:22–3)
• Decree of Darius Hystaspes: 521 BCE (Ezra 6:6–12)
• Decree of Artaxerxes to Ezra: 458 BCE (Ezra 7:11–26)
• Decree of Artaxerxes to Nehemiah: 444 BCE (Nehemiah 2:1–8)

Image credit: Modern Event Preparedness, flickr, CC