In a previous post, we saw how Jeremiah 33:17-18 was a complete failure. God told Jeremiah that the re would come a time when the throne of David was never empty, a time when the Levitical priests would forever offer sacrificed, burnt animals on the altar. Indeed, the Catholic Douay-Rheims translates it "kill victims continually." The problem, of course, is that Catholic priests are of the line of Melchizedek, not Levi, and the Mass is not killing anyone "continually," rather, it is union with the one sacrifice of Christ. So, even if we ignore the 500 year interregnum before Christ sits on the throne of David, for the last 2000 years, the Messianic age has lacked both Levitical priests and continual animal sacrifices.
Jeremiah isn't the only failed prophet. Isaiah whiffed on several items:
Isaiah 17:1 The burden of Damascus. Behold Damascus shall cease to be a city, and shall be as a ruinous heap of stones.
Damascus is, instead, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.
Isaiah 19:4-5 And I will deliver Egypt into the hand of cruel masters, and a strong king shall rule over them, saith the Lord the God of hosts. 5 And the water of the sea shall be dried up, and the river shall be wasted and dry.
The Nile river has never run dry.
Isaiah 52:1 Arise, arise, put on thy strength, O Sion, put on the garments of thy glory, O Jerusalem, the city of the Holy One: for henceforth the uncircumcised, and unclean shall no more pass through thee.
Obviously, Jerusalem has had uncircumcised men within its walls constantly. Now, this can be explained away by spiritualizing the entire section. One can argue that Sion is a reference to heaven, and the uncircumcised are those whose hearts are not circumcised, i.e., joined to God. So, it would read as only the holy will enter heaven.
Ezekiel suffers similar problems:
Ezekiel 30:10-12 Thus saith the Lord God: I will make the multitude of Egypt to cease by the hand of Nabuchodonosor the king of Babylon. 11 He and his people with him, the strongest of nations, shall be brought to destroy the land: and they shall draw their swords upon Egypt: and shall fill the land with the slain. 12 And I will make the channels of the rivers dry, and will deliver the land into the hand of the wicked: and will lay waste the land and all that is therein by the hands of strangers, I the Lord have spoken it.
In 568 BC, Nebuchadnezzar tried to conquer Egypt, but failed. Aahmes ruled for another generation over a prosperous Egypt and lived to see Nebuchadnezzar die. The Egyptians were not scattered or dispersed.
Ezekiel 29:10-11 Therefore, behold I come against thee, and thy rivers: and I will make the land of Egypt utterly desolate, and wasted by the sword, from the tower of Syene, even to the borders of Ethiopia. 11 The foot of man shall not pass through it, neither shall the foot of beasts go through it: nor shall it be inhabited during forty years. 12 And I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the lands that are desolate, and the cities thereof in the midst of the cities that are destroyed, and they shall be desolate for forty years: and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries.
Egypt has never had a 40-year period in which it was uninhabited.
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