- 1. Predictions of God's prophets were always right, since 100 percent accuracy was the mark of a true prophet.
- False. Sometimes the prophets got their message across, and the people changed their sinful ways. That's why God didn't destroy Nineveh even though the prophet Jonah had predicted God would. When people change, God seems to change his plans for them. (See chapter "Did Any Prophets Get Their Predictions Wrong?" page 36)
- 2. The English word for hell in the Bible almost always translates a Hebrew word that refers to a valley in what is now Jerusalem.
- True. The valley is Gehenna. Jews sacrificed to idols there. As punishment, God let Babylonian invaders from what is now Iraq conquer them, level Jerusalem, and exile the survivors. For that reason, Gehenna became a place the Jews associated with God's judgment. (See "The Trouble with Hell," page 328)
- 3. Descriptions of the end of the world track with some of the most popular scientific theories about how the world will end.
- True. Peter says "The heavens will disappear with a roar. Fire will destroy everything in them" (2 Peter 3:10, NIRV). Many scientists say that in about 5 billion years the sun will swell into a red giant and scorch the earth—perhaps even swallowing it up. (See "When God Turns Out the Lights," page 340)
- 4. Many respected Bible experts teach that Revelation's writer used code words not to talk about the future but the past - the suffering of Christians and Jews in his century.
- True. Many scholars see most of the torment related to the Romans crushing a Jewish revolt and destroying Jerusalem in AD 70. A lot of the symbolism tracks very well with that history. For example, in one scene, locusts torment people for five months. That's how long the Roman army besieged Jerusalem. (See "Is Revelation History, Prophecy, or Neither?" page 228)
- 5. The mark of the beast, 666, is the number we get when we add up the letters in Emperor Nero's name as it appeared on Roman coins. (Ancient letters had numerical equivalents.)
- True. If you translate the name and title “Nero Caesar” from Greek, the international language of the day, into Hebrew, the language of the Jews, the letters add up to 666. If you translate from Latin, the language of the Romans, into Hebrew, the letters add up to 616. Both numbers show up in the oldest surviving copies of Revelation—666 in some copies, 616 in others. (See "Beast 2: Nero," page 275)
- 6. Prophet Zephaniah said God is going to burn up the world, killing everyone.
- True. Page 165. Surprisingly, Zephaniah seems to change his tune later, promising that the Jewish nation will become a world leader. Some Bible experts suspect Zephaniah was exaggerating the doom, to express how painful it would be when the Babylonians in 586 BC wipes the Jewish nation off the political map and exiles most of the survivors. Jews began returning about 50 years later.
- 7. People today who call themselves prophets fit the Bible's description only if God is talking to them in visions, dreams, or in person.
- True. Some preachers may call themselves a prophet since they're delivering God's message as it's recorded in the Bible. But Bible-time prophets didn't get God's message second hand. (See "Does God Have Prophets Today?" page 14)
- 8. Prophets seemed to believe that most of their predictions pointed to the distant future, and weren't limited to the prophet's own generation.
- False. Prophets directed God's message to the people of their own day. (See "Did Isaiah Have a Ghostwriter?" page 76)
- 9. God gave the prophet Daniel the ability to understand his visions about the future.
- False. Page 148. Some visions stumped Daniel. Gabriel had to explain some of them for him. But even Gabriel's explanations leave many readers today wondering if someone could explain Gabriel's explanations.
- 10. John's vision of New Jerusalem, which many experts interpret as heaven, is a cube about half the size of the moon.
- True. That's if you take the numbers literally. Many scholars don't. (See "New Jerusalem, the Specs," page 335)
- 11. In some Bible prophecies, Babylon was a code word for the Roman Empire because Romans, like the Babylonians before them, destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple.
- True. (See "Beast 1: Roman Empire," page 274)
- 12. The main job of a Bible prophet was to predict the future.
- False. The main job was to deliver God's message. (See "What Exactly Is a Prophet?" page 12)
