“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17 NIV).
In our look at the various objections that have been raised to 2 Timothy 3:16-17, we now come to the subject of Biblical promises that have yet to be fulfilled. For example, a critic might object to the God-breathed nature of the Scriptures by pointing to certain Biblical promises that have not yet come to fruition. However, this objection ultimately fails for an important reason: just because a Biblical promise has yet to be fulfilled doesn’t mean that the Bible is mistaken.
To illustrate this point, let’s consider a passage from the book of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah. Around 700 BC, the prophet Isaiah spoke of a man named Cyrus who would build Jerusalem and lay the foundation of the Temple (see Isaiah 44:28-45:7). That may have sounded like a mistake to the people of Isaiah’s day if we consider the fact that the city and Temple were fully intact during that period.
However, Jerusalem was later destroyed by the invading Babylonian army around 586 B.C. A few decades following this, the city and Temple began reconstruction under an arrangement with a Persian king named Cyrus just as Isaiah had predicted more than a century earlier (see Ezra 1:1-3). Thus, the Word of God was validated and shown to be accurate with the passage of time.
We should also note that the Bible anticipates this kind of objection and addresses it in the New Testament book of 2 Peter…
“First, I want to remind you that in the last days there will come scoffers who will do every wrong they can think of and laugh at the truth. This will be their line of argument: ‘So Jesus promised to come back, did he? Then where is he? He’ll never come! Why, as far back as anyone can remember, everything has remained exactly as it was since the first day of creation'” (2 Peter 3:3-4 TLB).
In light of these things, we can have confidence that God will fulfill all His promises, even those that have yet to be fulfilled. Even a questionable Biblical character named Balaam acknowledged this reality when he once remarked, “…God is not a man, that he should lie; He doesn’t change his mind like humans do. Has he ever promised, Without doing what he said?” (Numbers 23:19 TLB).