Once you realize the modus operandi (MO) of authors writing religious texts, the scam becomes obvious. There are a number of tools used by these "so called" prophets, and none of these tools require a miracle or a god's assistance. Humans should be smart enough to test these Divine revelations for scams, but unfortunately, we all too often take the bait; hook, line, and sinker. If there is a natural explanation for anything, we should not accept the unnatural conclusion. If you buy a ticket to observe a performance by a magician, and the magician shows you things that you thought were impossible, should you just accept that  the magician has supernatural powers, or should you consider the possibility that you were tricked? An intelligent skeptic might be so impressed by the tricks, that he devotes his life to learning the tricks so he can fool others. This person could grow up to become an even better con artist than his mentor. On the other hand, gullible people will just be mind-blown by the magicians sorcery. Some religious people might even consider the illusionist to be possessed by a demon. Now, let's expose the prophetic magicians and their bag of tricks. 

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1. Assert that the message came directly from God through Divine revelation.

2. Prophesy both sides of the coin, so you could never be wrong.

3. Give a generic prophecy, so it could be fulfilled in a variety of different ways at different times.

4. Pretend you are writing on behalf of another prophet who lived long ago who predicted the events that have already happened in your lifetime. 

5. Write fictional stories about past events, just to convince modern people of God's miraculous works.

6. Reinterpret old passages to fit new narratives. 

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#1 - Divine Revelation. For some people, all you need to do is assert that you received a Divine revelation from God and they will just believe you. If a person want's to believe in God, yet God has never appeared to them or spoken to them, they will readily accept that God came to another person, primarily because it confirms their desire to believe in God, even if there is no reliable evidence to support it. People who are in positions of authority have the ability to demonstrate their threats of death for unbelievers, because they can simply kill anyone who rebels against the leadership, and then claim that God will punish anyone who opposes the "prophet." There is a good example of this in Exodus 32:26-28, where Moses comes down off the mountain after talking to God and receiving the Ten Commandments only to observe the Israelites worshiping a golden calf. Moses says whoever stands with Yahweh should come to Moses. When only the Levites come to Moses, they are told to take their swords and kill all the others, and in that day 3,000 people died. Did God kill the people or did Moses command the Levites to kill the people? Who demonstrated their power? 

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#2 - Both sides of the coin. The age old superstition is that whenever good things happen, God is rewarding you for good behavior, and whenever bad things happen, God is punishing you for bad behavior. This superstition is expressed in the book of Job, as Job's friends accuse him of wrongdoing or else God would not be punishing him so much. Job holds to his innocence and essentially claims that God is making a mistake. Job said in Job 23:3, Oh that I knew where I might find him! That I might come even to his seat! I would set my cause in order before him, and fill my mouth with arguments. In verse 6 he says, would God contend with me? No, but he would listen to me. In verse 10-11 Job says when God tries him, he will come out like gold, because he has kept God's ways and not turned aside. I bring this up in relation to prophecy, because it makes the case that God does whatever he wants and there is no rhyme or reason to it, even though the Bible does say that God blesses the obedient and punishes the disobedient. Deuteronomy 28:1-14 provides an extensive list of blessings that Yahweh God will bestow on those who obey him, but in verses 15-68 there is an even more elaborate list of punishments Yahweh God will bestow on the disobedient. Therefore, we have a clear precedent that God blesses the obedient and punishes the disobedient, but why do bad things happen to good people, and why do good things happen to bad people? Job even asked this question in Job 21:7. Job asked why do the wicked live, become old, yes and grow mighty in power. We certainly cannot look at our world today and demonstrate how God only blesses those who obey him. If God only blessed those who obey him, then we would all learn how to obey him, but we can demonstrate, both in reality and from the Bible that the wicked prosper and the innocent suffer. Was Jesus innocent? Did he suffer? Did Jesus promise that whoever followed him would also suffer? In fact, the overall concept of the New Testament and Christianity is that the innocent suffer the most. This is a change from the Old Testament Hebrew mindset of punishing evil and rewarding good. Let me give a specific example of prophesying both sides of the coin from the book of Zechariah. Zechariah 12 talks about a siege of Jerusalem and it says that God will defeat all the enemies that come against Jerusalem, but in Zechariah 14 Jerusalem is taken by it's enemies. All you have to do is prophesy the triumph of Jerusalem and the destruction of Jerusalem and you can quote whichever prophecy that fits the narrative. 

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#3 - Be Generic. Another easy tool prophets use to deceive gullible people is simply to prophecy something very generic that could fit any number of different events. This way, they can claim their prophecy was fulfilled to different people at different times. For example, Deuteronomy 18:18 says, I will raise them up a prophet from among their brothers, like you. I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I shall command him. Now, Christians will claim that this was a specific prophecy about Jesus only, but it could also be applied to every Jewish prophet after Moses, including Joshua, David, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, or any of the others. Shoot, I could even say it is about me, even though I am not a Jew. Maybe "among your brethren" is talking about fellow members of the human race, and I am certainly human. 

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#4 - Vaticinium ex eventu.  Vaticinium ex eventu is a Latin phrase that means to prophecy after the event. I find it interesting that vaticinium means to predict or prophecy and the Headquarters for the Christian church is in the Vatican, the city of prophecy...IN ROME! Ex eventu just means after the event. It is easy to predict something if it already happened. For example, I predict the Kansas City Chiefs will defeat the San Francisco 49ers in the 2024 Superbowl with a final score of 25-22. Now, if you are reading this in 2034, you might think I have the ability to foresee the future, unless you are smart enough to consider that I didn't make my prediction until after the 2024 Superbowl had been played. For the record, it is April 2024 and the Superbowl was played two months ago, but now imagine if I specifically made the claim that I was writing this in the year 2020. If you believe my claim to write in 2020, then you would have to believe that I could accurately predict the future through a Divine connection with God. Now, would it be wise of you to believe I predicted the 2024 Superbowl final score in 2020, or should you first consider the possibility that I am being deceptive? Likewise, when Jesus predicted the destruction of the Jewish Temple, which did occur in 70 CE, should you assume Jesus predicted the future, or should you consider that prediction was not written until after the Temple was destroyed? The only way to prove Jesus predicted the destruction of the Temple before it happened would be to have abundant evidence that the prediction predated the event. Unfortunately there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Jesus said anything prior to 70 CE. There is not even any evidence that Jesus existed at all prior to 70 CE, but there is evidence that Christians modified historical documents to insert Jesus into history, such as the Testimonium Flavianum in Josephus Antiquities of the Jews. Overall, the best way to date when Biblical books were written is to look at the events they describe. If an event is a historical event, the best assumption is to conclude the Bible book was written after the events it describes. It is unwise to assume the religious literature is being truthful about who wrote Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel for example. 

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#5 - Write fiction. In 1 Kings 18 we have the story of Elijah's challenge to the prophets of Baal. Elijah claims to be the final prophet for Yahweh after King Ahab had led the northern kingdom astray to worship other gods. Elijah challenges 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah to a demonstration of the gods. Elijah gives the 850 prophets of the false gods from morning until evening to call on their gods to send fire from Heaven to burn up the sacrificed cow on their alter, but nothing happened. Then Elijah calls on Yahweh, his God, to send fire from Heaven and Yahweh immediately sends fire from Heaven to burn up the cow on the alter. Then Elijah has all the false prophets killed. This is a cool story, but it is just a story. It did not happen, nor will anyone demonstrate any such thing today. We are supposed to believe this really happened when we read about it, which would negate the need for anyone to demonstrate God's power today. Why would God need to demonstrate his power today, when all we have to do is believe what we read concerning Elijah from thousands of years ago?

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#6 - Reinterpretation. The primary method of writing the Jesus narrative in the New Testament was simply by reinterpreting the Hebrew Scriptures from a Greek perspective. Every prophecy that is attributed to Jesus in the Greek New Testament is a gross molestation of the Hebrew Scriptures. The Greeks who wrote the NT were actively engaged in multiple wars with the Hebrews who followed the OT between 66 and 135 CE. The world needs to recognize that the New Testament was written by the mortal enemies of the Jews. The Jews were rebelling against Rome, so Rome destroyed the Jews and Jerusalem, then created a Roman religion to replace the Jewish religion that caused the rebellions. The Jewish concept of a Messiah was an earthly king or military general who would liberate Israel from the Roman Empire. This was unacceptable for the Romans, so the Romans tasked their Hellenized Jews who accepted Roman rule to write a story that would present a new concept of the Jewish Messiah. Philo of Alexandria was a Hellenized Jew who had already started the process of interpreting Judaism from a Greek perspective. Other prominent Jews such as Josephus and Tiberius Julius Alexander were directly involved in the Roman-Jewish War, were fully capable of providing the necessary Jewish background to the revised Jewish Messiah. They needed a Jewish Messiah who would hate the Jews, predict the Jewish downfall, and one who would teach submission to Roman authorities. So instead of highlighting the Hebrew Scriptures that told of the victories of Israel, they focused on the passages that told of the punishments for Israel. There is no Hebrew Scripture about a Messiah who would die on a cross, but the traitorous Jews likely told the Roman Emperor that they could assign passages like Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 to a Jewish Messiah whose main goal was to die and pay for the sins of the nation of Israel. Neither Psalm 22 or Isaiah 53 are a prophecy of anything, nor do they concern a Messiah, but the authors of the New Testament simply reinterpreted these and many other passages to be a prediction of Jesus. Jesus represented the Roman perspective that rebellious Jews needed to face the wrath of God, and Rome would gladly be the rod of iron that God could use to chasten Israel. Any Old Testament Hebrew passage you think is a prediction of Jesus, was simply not originally about Jesus. When you hear Jesus say "repent or perish," that is really the Roman Caesar telling the Jews to stop rebelling or die. Gehenna Hell was not a place for souls after earthly death. Gehenna was a literal ditch outside Jerusalem where the Romans burned the dead bodies of the rebellious Jews. 

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