(Continued)
This acted with such power that the mass of Jews were found as a whole pervaded by it everywhere, as were the Samaritans down to the woman at Sychar. Never was it more general than at the time the Lord was in their midst, though their unbelief was really at its lowest, as they proved, when to their eyes He had no beauty that they should desire Him. Indeed their soul loathed Him, because He did not then take His world-kingdom, exalt the Jew, and destroy the Roman. Even His own followers had to bear His reproof, “O foolish and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to suffer these things [their stumbling block], and enter into his glory? And beginning from Moses he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:25-2725Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: 26Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? 27And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. (Luke 24:25‑27)).
It may be urged that the minute circumstances, of which we have had but a selection as they occurred to one's memory, are peculiar to Christ, but that outside His person prophecy takes into account broad maxims, which can only apply in a measure, because of the mixed condition of man, and are not adequately fulfilled save in Him. But the fact is that the theory is true nowhere; and its effect is to destroy the truth, as far as men strive to carry it out. Prophecy often launches out, even at an early day, into the magnificent and solemn display of the Lord coming in judgment of the quick, the habitable world, as we read in the Epistle of Jude, who was enabled by the inspiring Spirit (whatever the means) to give us the testimony of Enoch; not as in the spurious Ethiopic book which betrayed its source by its inability even to make a correct use of scripture. Enoch “prophesied, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with myriads of his saints to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their works of ungodliness which they have ungodly wrought, and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him” (vers. 14, 15). At a later epoch Moses spoke all the words of his wondrous song, as given in Deut. 32, which testify to the same consummation, when Jehovah shall judge His people, and repent Himself for His servants; and the nations shall rejoice with His people, and He will make expiation for His land, for His people.
Take another instance, which in a brief compass illustrates the nature of prophecy in symbol as well as in simple language; as elsewhere figures are employed to give vividness. In Hos. 3 (where we are spared the usual insinuations against the alleged early date), under the prophet's purchase of a woman beloved yet an adulteress, Jehovah set forth the relation of guilty Israel, no longer to be idolatrous, yet not properly wife. The words that follow are plain and terse. “For the sons of Israel shall abide many days without king and without prince, and without sacrifice, and without pillar, and without ephod and teraphim Afterward shall the sons of Israel return, and seek Jehovah their God and David their king, and shall come with fear unto Jehovah and unto his goodness at the end of the days.” Here we have a description of the most surprising facts which no human mind could have devised beforehand, and conveyed in the most precise terms; verse 4 in course of fulfillment to this day: verse 5 awaiting it in that auspicious day which all the prophets hailed, and all saints of Old Testament or New ought surely to expect.
Who before Hosea distinctly conceived for Israel's history a state of things “without a king, without a prince"? One, if godly, might well have thought of national disaster and humiliation, but what of the pledges to David and his posterity? But even if he had discerned the probability and danger of royal eclipse in Psa. 89:30-3230If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments; 31If they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments; 32Then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes. (Psalm 89:30‑32), what more opposed to his feelings and stranger to his mind than a religious anomaly without parallel among his brethren and so hard for the few to conciliate with a divine ritual from the ever-living and true God? Alas! he knew already how prone the chosen people were to lapse into idolatry and how grace had as often intervened to recall from false gods. But here is announced a condition altogether unique, a religion neither divine nor idolatrous, but a wretched negation, “without sacrifice, and without pillar, and without ephod and teraphim.” Even D. Kimchi interprets this justly enough, if not fully, saying “Without sacrifice refers to God, without pillar refers to idols, without ephod refers to God who declares the future by Urim and Thummim, without teraphim refers to idols who declare the future according to the opinions of those who believe in them.”
Sacrifice beyond controversy is and has ever been the foundation of all true worship since sin came in. It had an authoritatively spiritual place in Judaism. Christianity has it perfectly and forever in Christ. And as the ephod points to the ministry of the high priest in Israel, so we have now Christ High Priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek, the Son of God passed through the heavens. But the Jew has nothing! neither sacrifice to purge sins, nor high priest to intercede for them: the astonishing spectacle before all eyes and for long centuries of a people that hate the idols they once loved, yet without the divine worship and service which their law demands imperatively. Never did such a state enter the imagination of Israel before Hosea, nor did it come to pass till long after him. Yet here it is predicted beyond a doubt as a lasting state, and so it has been and is. But the last verse is equally clear and conclusive to faith that they shall as a people return, not to their land merely (though this is certain from all scripture), but to Jehovah their God and to David their king, who can be none other as the context demonstrates than the Messiah. “And so,” says the great apostle, “all Israel shall be saved” (Rom. 11:2626And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: (Romans 11:26)). None can deny the national and unparalleled religious ruin of Israel according to prophecy: why should any stop there and entirely disbelieve their restoration, not only as a nation but to be the earthly center of all the nations for the word of Jehovah in Zion? But how, we may ask, were either of these stupendous changes, in ruin or in blessing, within man's horizon when Hosea wrote with such startling plainness of speech?
Psa. 22 is just as striking as Isa. 53, for its first half sets out prophetically, as if a fact before us, the Messiah rejected, suffering, crucified, starting with that most wondrous of truths from His own lips to which atonement alone gives meaning—His God abandoning Him when in the deepest abyss of need and shame. But so it must be when God for us, as for the Jew, made sin Him Who knew no sin. For if sinners are to be forgiven righteously, or justified, it must be on the righteous basis of sin judged as it deserves, and of God then glorified about it in an adequate sacrifice: so that He can be righteous in blotting every sin of the believer from before Him. And as the sufferings were unfathomable, so is the glory in divine answer to them; as our Lord said in a still deeper way looking on to both. “If God be glorified in Him (the Son of man) God will glorify Him in Himself and will straightway glorify Him.” Righteousness set the risen Christ, the Second man, at God's right hand on high, as He declared His Father's name to His brethren. Blessing unbounded flows through His atoning death. In the midst of the congregation He praises, as in John 20:19-2219Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. 20And when he had so said, he showed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord. 21Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. 22And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: (John 20:19‑22), Heb. 2:1212Saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee. (Hebrews 2:12). By and by the “great congregation,” when all Israel is saved, will re-echo His praise. Nor this only, but all the ends of the earth follow. For the day will then have come, not for gospel testimony as the church is now, but the kingdom is Jehovah's and He is the ruler of the nations as an actual fact. All mortals shall bow before Him, from those most at ease to the utterly destitute hitherto, and that not of the then generation but of those to be born, to whom it shall be declared that Jehovah hath done this—His infinite work transcending all before and after.
Neither David is here, nor any that ever lived or died, but only the Messiah Who once for all suffered for sins, Just for unjust, that He might bring us to God: Who is glorified on high while the church is being gathered, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ; and Who, after receiving them to Himself changed into His glory, will come to make good the kingdom according to the prophets, to the joy of heaven and earth. Who but God could have conveyed these anticipations, wondrous beyond all comparison? It is an eminently feeble effort to ascribe such a psalm to the Exile or later, in the desire of taking it from the greatest of the Psalmists; but put it where you will, you cannot silence the voice of God in His word, sounding across the ages, and still witnessing of glories to come in Christ the Lord. Fully owning the true and sound application of the principle to the gospel (as in Rom. 15:1010And again he saith, Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with his people. (Romans 15:10)), one is bound to look for the fulfillment at the end of the age, when Jehovah will no longer hide His face from Israel, and they are not only reduced to the utmost extremity, but turn in repentance to Messiah whom they slew, saying “Blessed be He that cometh in the name of Jehovah.”
Indeed, it is on this coming age that the prophetic word converges: so much so that 2 Peter 1:2020Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. (2 Peter 1:20) pronounces, as a thing we ought to know, that no prophecy of scripture is of its own interpretation. Far from being thus isolated, as it must have been if it emanated from the human mind or will, it forms part of the great scheme which, as the Father counseled it for the glory of His beloved Son, the Spirit reveals in the prophetic word which centers in His coming kingdom. So, in contrast with His action in the Christian and in the church, the Holy Spirit in
Rev. 19:1010And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me, See thou do it not: I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus: worship God: for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. (Revelation 19:10) is designated the “spirit of prophecy” and said to be the “testimony of Jesus.” In the Acts and the Epistles He acts as the power of communion on the ground of known redemption. The truth is that the earliest book of scripture completely refutes the assumption of such contemporary interests as blind to the future of God, and illustrates what the last book of scripture proves as matter of fact, that prophecy exhibits the greatest variety of form according to God's wisdom.
The first in Gen. 3:1515And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. (Genesis 3:15) is worthy alike of Him who spoke and of Him who was spoken of, as it disclosed the end from the beginning, the judgment of the subtle foe, the suffering grace and overwhelming power of Him who would deign to be the woman's Seed. It was sovereign grace, Satan's irremediable overthrow and punishment; while it was conveyed in terms adapted to an earthly people, and in view of divine government with present results, like the law as a whole. On the other hand, in Gen. 6:7, 137And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. (Genesis 6:7)
13And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. (Genesis 6:13), Noah is divinely warned of things not seen as yet, both on the ground of special relationship and on that of His nature; while Gen. 7:44For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth. (Genesis 7:4) follows up the general intimation with precise details; and as it was predicted, so was it punctually fulfilled, as scripture expressly affirms. No history could be more precise or circumstantial in few words. Gen. 9:25-2725And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. 26And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. 27God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. (Genesis 9:25‑27) is a luminous prophetic sketch of the world, with both divine names and in its requisite place as ever: no sketch more opposed to appearances for centuries: none more verified as time rolled on; yet to be proved absolutely true in the day of Jehovah, as later prophets declared to the ear of faith. This, however, may be said to be only a vast outline. But to take only one instance more, what of Gen. 15, when “the word of Jehovah came unto Abram in a vision"? Can any prediction be conceived plainer and surer? Yet it stretched over more than four centuries and defined the relative position of the chosen race and of the nation they were to serve in affliction, but at length to triumph over by a judgment unequivocally divine. Nay more, it maps out the limits of another land-the land wherein the father of the faithful was a pilgrim, which was by Jehovah's covenant to be given long after, when the usurpers of the inheritance (enumerated in full detail) should be judged, as the old oppressor of the heirs had been. Who can say that these predictions have been answered only in Christ's person? Who can deny that they are particular facts, yet accomplished to the letter in the Egyptians, in the Amorites, in the Jewish people, and in their land?
But a more advanced and unscrupulous school of unbelief have now the popular ear, who to get rid of God's inspiration plead that the prophets were shrewd politicians that observed closely the movements of history and saw in the rise and fall of nations the exhibition of a divine purpose (Canon Driver's Lit. Old Testament, 200). Is any man bold enough to think thus of Abram or of Gen. 15? Is the situation, presupposed by this prophecy, that of the patriarch's age? Is it the fraud of a human book or the revealed truth of God? The circumstances foreshown are wholly different from Abram's then, and they change from a quasi-exile in sorrowful bondage to a coming out with great substance, and a subsequent conquest; not one of which conditions were yet existent. Yet here in this brief and clear prophecy all beyond dispute is of its essence and substance instead of being alien to its spirit. How did any one of these vast changes arise out of the circumstances of the time? The system, calmly stated at home and violently abroad, is nothing but a distressing libel on scripture, and rank rebellion against God, under the show of a critical investigation of the record that leaves untouched the divine inspiration and authority of scripture. But he is a simpleton who trusts these smiling augurs, who, in their own imagined processes of literary composition, lure one another and their followers on to the deadly sin of undermining God's history and denying prophecy in any genuine sense.