Did the children of Israel go over the Red Sea? Were they supported miraculously for forty years in the wilderness? Did they arrive at and possess the land of Canaan, as the Scriptures state?
These are miraculous things of the very first magnitude, Can we believe them? If they are true it proves so much that it is bound to determine our attitude to the Scriptures. The Scriptures are so bound up together, that one part stands in relation to other parts, and each part to the whole.
For instance the Passover is a type of the Lord Jesus in connection with His atoning work. So we read, "Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us." (1 Cor. 5:7). Thus the New Testament is linked up with the Old Testament. Christ in His sacrificial work on the cross is stated to be the fulfillment of the type. The blood of the lamb without blemish sheltered the children of Israel from the destroying angel on that memorable Passover night in Egypt. Christ is "the Lamb of God," and He suffered on the cross on the very anniversary of the Passover, as the One, who fulfilled its typical meaning, for which the centuries had waited.
Mark 1.
That the matter of fact be such as may be judged by men's outward senses.
There is no doubt about this mark. To slay the lamb, to sprinkle the blood, to eat of the lamb roast with fire, to journey to Pi-hahiroth, to cross the Red Sea-these were matters there could be no doubt about.
Mark 2
That there should be a sufficient number of witnesses to put the matter beyond the possibility of collusion or fraud.
A handful of people might agree to collusion or fraud, especially for monetary recompense or the realization of unprincipled ambition, and even then, in nearly every case some one of the number would let out the secret. And the larger the number involved, the greater the risk of discovery becomes, till discovery would be certain. A cynic has said that the only way to ensure that three persons should keep a secret is for one to shoot the other two, and even then it might leak out.
But who would suggest that six hundred thousand people, besides children, could agree to practice a deception upon themselves, and pass on that deception to their posterity, and cover it up so carefully that it would be impossible to discover the deception. Such a thing is absolutely impossible. Did ever deception attempt to insinuate itself by such methods?
Our argument is immeasurably strengthened by two things: (1) The vast number of witnesses, a whole nation of men, women and children: (2) the varied events happening, such as the crossing of the Red Sea, the sojourn in the Sinaitic desert over a number of years, and all the observances of their tabernacle ritual. If the matter had been fraudulent, there never was chosen a surer way of courting the inevitable discovery of the fraud than by introducing these two conditions.
Mark 3
That public memorials be kept up in celebration of it, involving outward actions to be performed.
There is certainly no lack of these.
(1) The annual celebration of the Passover.
(2) The whole system of ordinances flowing out of it, as ordained by God through the mediatorship of Moses in the tabernacle, its sacrifices and its constantly recurring feast days.
(3) The five books of Moses in which instructions for all this are recorded.
Again, we say, if the matter had been fraudulent, the very elaborate proof under this head would have rendered the deception impossible.
Mark 4
That such memorials and such actions be instituted and do commence from the time that the matter of fact occurred.
We have full testimony in Scripture that this was the case. We must remember the Bible is not one book but sixty-six books, written by various authors, whose united and cumulative testimony is conclusive.
In Num. 9:5, we find that the children of Israel kept the Passover. This was the first celebration of the feast, and Moses testifies to this.
The Book of Joshua states that when the children of Israel got into the land, they kept the Passover on the fourteenth of the first month. (Chapter 5:10).
The good King Hezekiah caused a Passover to be celebrated, the like of which had not been known since the days of Solomon, thus witnessing to the fact, that the Passover was acknowledged as an institution since that day. (2 Chron. 30).
King Josiah, great grandson to Hezekiah, kept a Passover of which it was said that there was no Passover like it, since the days of Samuel, the prophet (2 Chron. 35), thus tracing its celebration still further back.
Ezra, the priest, caused a Passover to be celebrated by the children of the captivity on the occasion of the dedication of the newly re-erected temple (Ezra 6:19).
The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews referred to Moses keeping the Passover and the sprinkling of blood on that never-to-be-forgotten night in Egypt (Chapter 11:28), as to an event without question among the Jews.
The four gospels contain many allusions to the Passover, and above all bring out clearly the fact that the Lord celebrated the keeping of the Passover with His disciples, and then died as being the fulfillment of the Scripture.
When we come to the New Testament some fifteen long centuries since the Passover night in Egypt, we read, "Now His parents [Christ's] went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover." (Luke 2:41).
"And the Jew's Passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem." (John 2:13).
"Then came the day of unleavened bread, when the Passover must be killed." (Luke 22: 7).
Thus we come to the celebration of the last real Passover by the Lord and His disciples on the night of His betrayal. What were His feelings as He partook of that memorial, which for ages had looked for its fufilment in HIM, and that in connection with all the terrible ordeal of His sacrificial death on the cross of shame?
As the Passover looked forward to the death of Christ, its rightful celebration ceased when our Lord died. Alas, the Jews have refused their Messiah, and to this day in unbelief celebrate the Passover, as still looking forward to its fulfillment. Israel will yet learn that it has been fulfilled by Christ when He died on the cross.
Here then we have the four marks that incontestably prove the truthfulness of the sacred narrative. If all these adduced facts were false, then Christ was false, for a Christ who could make a mistake or a blunder is no Christ at all. The whole fabric of Christianity falls to the ground, if the children of Israel were not sheltered by the blood in Egypt, did not cross the Red Sea, were not sustained in the wilderness, and were not given the land of Canaan for a possession.