Wow, I am amazed that this thread popped back up towards the top after weeks of languishing.
Faith writes:
The fact that there is a modern city in the general vicinity of the ancient location of Tyre doesn't falsify the prophecy of Tyre's total demise. Obviously ancient Tyre is utterly dead. The rock for the spreading of nets that was prophesied exists, and that mere fact makes a fine testimony to the fulfillment of the prophecy
Hmmm. Do you have Google Earth? If not download and install (it is nifty anyhow). In the search field type "Tyre Lebanon". You will zoom to the modern city. To the left of city center is the peninsula that I assume was originally the island part of the city. If you zoom in you can see the beach resorts and hotels covering that part. You can also see a harbor (with boats, some coming in as the photo was taken). From the eastern tip of the breakwater of the harbor look exactly 370 feet just slightly east of due north (1 o'clock). There is a tiny rock used by fishermen to dry their nets. The former island and city in no way is a desolate rock used to dry nets. The desolate rock is a desolate rock and probably has been so since before the prophesy was written. I mean, biblical era Tyre had fishermen, I would assume? So how does it's existence "makes a fine testimony to the fulfillment of the prophesy"?
Anybody reading the account of Ezekial can clearly see that he meant that the great city of Tyre would be stripped bare and never rebuilt and the only use of the place forevermore would be a place to dry nets. No one then or now is going to read it as a prophesy that "Tyre will be attacked and sometimes win and sometimes be defeated but more or less persist and be continuously occupied for thousands of years until it becomes a popular Middle Eastern resort".
More specifically, the Ezekial accounts says that "Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon" would do this and he didn't. The apologetics say that Alexander the Great fulfilled it, but he didn't do it either (he did conquer, but left the people and city relatively intact). So the prophesy never happened.
I found an interesting website,
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that has an interesting if not annoying interface but traces the history of Tyre from founding until now. The key message is continuous occupation. For thousands and thousands of years everyone living there knew they lived in Tyre, whether they considered themselves Phoenecians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Lebanese, etc.
But all of that aside and to the point of my belief statement. My faith was lost because I was lied to. Not because of some statement of this is prophesy that didn't happen. The pastor of my church told us he went to Tyre and saw it was a bare rock fit only for fishermen to dry their nets upon. And yet to do that he had to have stayed at the Tyre Hilton (or whatever) and walked the breakwater or hired a boat to take a photo of the rock he showed us that he claimed was all that remained. That makes him a liar. And a fraud. Do you see the point?
When someone lies to me and I catch them everything they say after that is immediately suspect. So I started looking at what else he had said, the things that seemed suspicious to me but I put those doubts aside. In a moment of clarity I saw that his beliefs, my Catholic upbringing, all of it, was a con. While I was just a kid at the time, I still see the con 25 years later and know THAT moment was the greatest moment of my life.
Doctor Bashir: "Of all the stories you told me, which were true and which weren't?"
Elim Garak: "My dear Doctor, they're all true"
Doctor Bashir: "Even the lies?"
Elim Garak: "Especially the lies"