The future is a funny thing. How can someone predict something that hasn't happened and how does telling is about
keep it from happening or cause it to happen. Every time I think about this paradox, I think about The Matrix.
As Neo waits sits with the Oracle in her kitchen, she tells him not to worry about the vase. A second later, he runs into it and knocks it over. He looks at her astonished thinking she predicted it was going to happen, but the Oracle tells him how much of what happened was because she told him.
There have been prophets and soothsayers throughout the ages that have claimed to tap into some universal pathway that allowed them to see future events. Some of these events actually happened and some didn't. Nostradamus had his infamous quatrains that scholars have been deciphering for decades. Some people say they predicted Hitler and Saddam Hussein, but how much of that is based on hindsight.
Prophecy is always cryptic and open to interpretation. when we have the ability to look back at past events and fit them to the prophecies its easy to assume its validity. Lets take doomsday prophecies, of which there have been many. People take the events of the day and fit them into the mold they want. Earthquakes, floods, disease and famine have been a natural part of civilization for centuries. What makes one earthquake more special than another.
Unless a prophecy spells it out for you directly, take everything with a grain of salt because we can easily be shaping the future to fit the prophecy rather than the prophecy predicting the future.