Prophecy’s Credentials From Its Own Power and Character
The demonstrative proof prophecy receives
From the event is of necessity subsequent to its delivery.
This proof is not available when the message is delivered; but to wait until prophecy is fulfilled involves rejection of the message at the time when given. The capacity of the critic for criticism fails him in the matter of recognizing a message from God.
What, then, are the credentials of a divine message? What is it that causes the message to be known as delivering that which God has to say to man'?
The answer is simple. The credentials of the divine word are in itself. The message speaks to the heart and the conscience, and the heart and the conscience recognize God's voice when His word is delivered. This is the only sign that has been given, and no other than this will ever be given to confirm the authority of the divine message.
And yet it is a sign standing out in such peculiarly bold and divine characters, that every believer is taught, and the skeptic confounded, by its testimony.
It is not too much to say that the testimony of Christ to the whole of the Scriptures as God's written word, and the testimony of the written word to Christ, must either be received as giving the unqualified divine authority to the testimony of each, or both must be absolutely rejected, and the position of denying even the existence of God faced, with its accompanying responsibility.
The mutual testimony of the living mid the written Word to each other is such that no man has or can put them asunder. Let it be said who it is that is the source of such union.
One Divine Prophetic Utterance and Its Power
The whole question of whether man has ever listened to words which were divine, and what the character of them, has been brought into a locus, searched, and answered, by the living power of that one divine utterance in reply to the definite request for a sign,—promising " the sign of the prophet Jonas."
Christ's words certainly were divine. This all must own, unless His Person is openly denied and Christianity rejected. What He said, were the words of the Son of God to man. The announcement, too, was that of His own death. Time was to prove whether the message and He who declared it were divine, but at the time His words had no other confirmation than that which he gave. They were based upon that very part of and incident in the Scriptures that were the most open to the skeptic's cavil. But yet divine credentials were common to both the Scripture referred to and the Lord's reference to it. They both put man in his right place before God and spoke to his heart and his conscience from Him.
They testified that ruin was whole arid complete in man, that " Salvation was of the Lord."
The Prophetic and Inspired Character of Scripture Common to All
It is this power and character that all Scripture possesses. All speaks to man from God, and thus “if they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they hear though one rose from dead." There is no other sign given of the divine authority of the Scriptures than that which the message itself receives from the heart and conscience of man. He who has risen from the dead has thus declared, that if the power of divine truth is not recognized when it is heard, neither would it be if what it speaks of were seen. “Faith cometh by hearing; and hearing by the Word of God." But as if this were more than sufficient, the message seems wholly indifferent to the claims of criticism.
Any incipient critic readily perceives the apparent discrepancy between the period announced in the prophetic message and that found in the history. But in the prophecy language is used which every scholar knows to have been in accordance with time popular and ordinary manner of expressing at such a period. The actual period that history precisely relates between, the death and resurrection of the Lord would he expressed in the same manner as that of the prophetic announcement, in the ordinary language of scholar and unlearned alike. In the history there is historical accuracy. Alford refers to Lightfoot, who quotes from the Jerusalem Talmud, where it is expressly stated that any part whatever of a νυχθήρερον, was reckoned in ordinary speech as a whole. Liddell and Scott always render the word during a day and night.
The difficulties the critic would attempt to make. from scholarship, must find their answer from the same source.
The divine reply of Christ apportions to this evidence precisely and place. Bowing to the divine authority of the divine message is the only way of knowing its demonstrative power and truth.
It is not in the fallen nature of man to believe God. His new nature begins with faith, when he first judges himself' by the divine message that comes to him,—a cause indeed for thanksgiving and joy on account of every soul who through grace is brought to believe God's gospel concerning his Son. "For this cause, we also give thanks to God unceasingly that, having received [the] word of [the] report of God by us, ye accepted, not men's word but, even as it is truly, God's word, which also works in you who believe."
(*1St Thess 2:13. New Translation by J.N.D., published by Morrish Paternoster Sqr.)
The power and character of this message can hardly receive better illustration than from a comparison of the truth found at the beginning with that at the end of the volume which claims to be received us God's Word to man.
In the first chapter that speaks of Man, a he now is, a sinner, we read of him " hiding himself from the "presence of the Lord Gel";' the last chapter of these Scripture speaks of those who know their Savior, and says, "They shall see his Face.”
IS the first statement that speaks of the sinner being brought 'before God, whatever had been his satisfaction or pride in the clothes he had made fin himself away from God, before Him, he can only say, I hid myself because I was naked."
The last statement declares the holy boldness of those redeemed because at that they bear "on their foreheads "—where all call see—not their sins, but "His name," and "have washed their robes."
And lastly, whatever be the sinner's boldness and shamelessness away from God, the conscience can only make the reply when before Him, " heard Thy voice in the garden and I was afraid." What a contrast is found in that quick, eager reply from those who know the love and grace of Him whose last message to them is, "Behold I come quickly." The only response that can be given from those who now know Him is, “Even so, come Lord Jesus."