Prophecies Don't Predict Anything

Prophecies don't predict anything.  A "prophet" carries a message from God about happenings to be expected, but the expectations are not focused on expectations alone--rather, they are focused on the interplay between human behavior and the responses of God.  A false notion of prophecy might be the scene where Jesus tells Peter to catch a fish that will have a coin in its mouth with which to pay a tax.  A "prediction" that might be called--or a divine display--but it can only be slotted awkwardly in with the components of "prophetic ministry."

Prophecy of any lasting import is that which connects the actions of God with the behaviors of humans.  Moreover, the very notion of pending or suspended judgment entails the contention that the behaviors required of humans by God are known to humans--known, that is, and imperfectly (to say the least) performed.  Imperfection, however, is not the same as absence, and so it is to be expected that prophecies--sweeping or thunderous though some might be--will be fulfilled in proportion across time and space.

Early in Luke, Jesus returns to Nazareth:

And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias.  And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captive, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. (Luke 4:17-19)

 Jesus sits down and then says,

This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.

Jesus' audience would not accept that--if by "that" we intend to mean a conventional prophecy, specific to time and place--and they would be right.  A specific such "year of the Lord" would have to wait until at least 1948, and the place (at least approximately) would have to be Jewish possessions in the Levant.  Of course no such limitations will comport with Jesus' meaning, and the difficulty is only somewhat resolved by Jesus' dissertation to them about the real ways prophetic ministries work out:

But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land; But unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow.  And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elise'us the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian.

Prophecies are fulfilled in a manner roughly (as it seems to us) proportionate to the terms in which they are described: divine actions in response to human behaviors.  Fulfillments are even more roughly (if at all) apparent to us in the context of time and place--to say nothing of the possibility of piecemeal or gradual or nuanced fulfillment.

Prophecies don't predict anything.