Three Questions by a Christian and their Answers — Page 44
44 this vain exercise? Here the critic would agree that Jesus as was sure that only God knew and he knew not. Likewise, the reason why so many of Jesus’ as prophecies turned out to be false was his ignorance of matters of the unseen, which caused him to misunderstand and misinter- pret Divine prophecies. For instance, he once said: "In the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye (O my twelve disciples) also shall sit upon twelve thrones. " (See Matthew 20:28) But it is evident from the same Gospel that Judas Iscariot ended up being deprived of the throne. Though he heard the prophecy that he would sit on the throne, this is not what was destined for him. The question is, if Jesus as had truly known beforehand that this man was going to become an apostate and that his end was going to be an evil one, why did he make him the false promise that he would sit on a throne? Similarly, Jesus once saw a fig tree from a distance and went to it so that he could eat some figs, but when he found not a single fig on the tree, he be- came extremely annoyed and cursed the tree in anger, which had no effect on the tree. If he indeed possessed knowledge of the unseen, he would never have gone up to a barren tree to eat its fruit. On another occasion, when a woman happened to touch his cloak, he looked around and asked who had touched him. Had he possessed even a little knowledge of the unseen, it would not have been a great matter to know who had done it.