"Produce your cause, saith the Lord; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob. Let them bring them forth, and show us what shall happen; let them show the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them, or declare us things to come. Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know, that ye are gods" (Isa. 41:21-23). "I declare the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure" (Isa. 46:10).
This is Jehovah's challenge to the idol-gods of Babylon to predict future events. He alone can do that. The Lord can declare the end from the beginning, and make known things that are not yet done. The dumb idols of the heathen know nothing concerning the future. They cannot predict what is going to happen. And man himself is powerless to know future events and cannot find out things to come.
Jehovah, who has made this challenge and declaration, has also fully demonstrated His power to do so. He has done it in His holy Word, the Bible. Other nations possess books of a religious character, called "sacred books." Not one of them contains any predictions concerning the future. If the authors of these writings had attempted to foretell the future, they would have thereby furnished the strongest evidence of their deceptions. The Bible is the only book in the world which contains predictions. It is pre-eminently that, which no other book could be, and none other is, a book of prophecy. These predictions are declared to be the utterances of Jehovah; they show that the Bible is a supernatural book, the revelation of God.
Prophecy Neglected and Denied
In view of this fact it is deplorable that the professing Church of today almost completely ignores and neglects the study of prophecy, a neglect which has for one of its results the loss of one of the most powerful weapons against infidelity. The denial of the Bible as the inspired Word of God has become widespread.
If prophecy were intelligently studied such a denial could not flourish as it does, for the fulfilled predictions of the Bible give the clearest and most conclusive evidence that the Bible is the revelation of God. To this must be added the fact that the destructive Bible criticism, which goes by the name of "Higher Criticism," denies the possibility of prophecy. The whole reasoning method of this school, which has become so popular throughout Christendom, may be reduced to the following: Prophecy is an impossibility; there is no such thing as foretelling future events. Therefore a book which contains predictions of things to come, which were later fulfilled, must have been written after the events which are predicted in the book. The methods followed by the critics, the attacks made by them upon the authenticity of the different books of the Bible, especially upon those which contain the most startling prophecies (Isaiah and Daniel), we cannot follow at this time. They deny everything which the Jewish Synagogue and the Christian Church always believed to be prophecy, a supernatural unfolding of future events.
Past, Present and Future
The prophecies of the Bible must be first of all divided into three classes. 1. Prophecies which have found already their fulfillment. 2. Prophecies which are now in process of fulfillment. Many predictions written several thousand years ago are now being accomplished before our eyes. We mention those which relate to the national and spiritual condition of the Jewish people and the predictions concerning the moral and religious condition of the present age. 3. Prophecies which are still unfulfilled. We have reference to those which predict the second, glorious and visible coming of our Lord, the re-gathering of Israel and their restoration to the land of promise, judgments which will fall upon the nations of the earth, the establishment of the Kingdom, the conversion of the world, universal peace and righteousness, the deliverance of groaning creation, and others.
These great prophecies of future things are often robbed of their literal and solemn meaning by a process of spiritualization. The visions of the prophets concerning Israel and Jerusalem, and the glories to come in a future age, are almost generally explained as having their fulfillment in the Church during the present age. However, our object is not to follow the unfulfilled prophecies, but prophecies fulfilled and in process of fulfillment. At the close of our treatise we shall point out briefly that in the light of fulfilled prophecies, the literal fulfillment of prophecies still future is perfectly assured.
Fulfilled Prophecy a Vast Theme
Fulfilled prophecy is a vast theme of much importance. It is equally inspiring and interesting. Volumes could be written to show how hundreds of Divine predictions written in the Bible have passed into history. What God announced through His chosen instruments has come to pass. History is bearing witness to the fact that the events which transpired among nations were pre-written in the Bible, even as prophecy is nothing less than history written in advance. As much as space permits we shall call attention to the fulfilled prophecies relating to the person of Christ; to the Jewish people; and to a number of nations, whose history, whose rise and downfall, are divinely predicted in the Bible. Furthermore, we shall mention the great prophetic unfoldings as given in the Book of Daniel, and how many of these predictions have already found a most interesting fulfillment.
Messianic Prophecies and Their Fulfillment
The Old Testament contains a most wonderful chain of prophecies concerning the person, the life and work of our Lord. As He is the center of the whole revelation of God, the One upon whom all rests, we turn first of all to a few of the prophecies which speak of Him. This also is very necessary. The destructive criticism has gone so far as to state that there are no predictions at all concerning Christ in the Old Testament. Such a denial leads to and is linked with the denial of Christ Himself, especially the denial of His Deity and His work on the cross.
To follow the large number of prophecies concerning the coming of Christ into the world and the work He was to accomplish we cannot attempt in these pages. We point out briefly in a general way what must be familiar to most Christians who search the Scriptures. Christ is first announced in Gen. 3:15 to be the seed of the woman, and therefore a human being. In Gen. 9:26-27 the supremacy of Shem is predicted. The full revelation of Jehovah God is connected with Shem and in due time a son of Shem, Abraham, received the promise that the predicted seed was to come from him. (Gen. 12:8.) Messiah was to come from the seed of Abraham.
Then the fact was revealed that He was to come from Isaac and not from Ishmael, from Jacob and not from Esau. But Jacob had twelve sons. The Divine prediction pointed to Judah and later to the house of David of the tribe of Judah from which the Messiah should spring. When we come to the prophecies of Isaiah we learn that His mother is to be a virgin. (Isa. 7:14.) But the son born of the virgin is Immanuel, God with us. Clearly the prophetic Word in Isaiah states that the Messiah would be a child born and a Son given with the names, "Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace" (Isa. 9:6). The promised Messiah is to be the seed of a woman, of the seed of Abraham, of David, born of a virgin. He is to be Immanuel, the Son given, God manifested in the flesh.
This promised Messiah, the Son of David, should appear (according to Isa. 11:1) after the house of David had been stripped of its royal dignity and glory. And what more could we say of the prophecies which speak of His life, His poverty, the works He was to do, His rejection by His own people, the Jews. In that matchless chapter in Isaiah, the fifty-third, the rejection of Christ by His own nation is predicted. In another chapter a still more startling prophecy is recorded: "Then I said, I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for naught and in vain." This is Messiah's lament on account of His rejection. Then follows the answer, which contains a most striking prophecy: "It is a light thing that Thou shouldest be My servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved of Israel: I also will give Thee for a light to the Gentiles, that Thou mayest be My salvation unto the ends of the earth" (Isa. 49:5,6). Here the revelation is given that He would not alone be rejected by His own nation, but that He would also bring salvation to the Gentiles. What human mind could have ever invented such a program! The promised Messiah of Israel, the longed-for One, is predicted to be rejected by His own people and thus becomes the Saviour of the despised Gentiles. His sufferings and His death are even more minutely predicted.
In the Book of Psalms the sufferings of Christ, the deep agony of His soul, the expressions of His sorrow and His grief, are pre-written by the Spirit of God. We mention only one Psalm, the twenty-second. His death by crucifixion is prophesied. Yet death by crucifixion was in David's time an unknown mode of death. Cruel Rome invented that horrible form of death. The cry of the forsaken One is predicted in the very words which came from the lips of our Saviour out of the darkness which enshrouded the cross. So are also predicted the words of mockery by those who looked on; the piercing of His hands and feet; the parting of the garments and the casting of the lots. In the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, the purpose of His death is so blessedly predicted. He was to die the substitute of sinners. There we find also His burial and His resurrection predicted. All this was recorded 700 years before our Lord was born. In the Psalms we find the prophecy that the rejected One would occupy a place at the right hand of God (Psalm 110:1). He was to leave the earth. David's Son and David's Lord was to have a place in the highest glory, even at the right hand of God, to wait there till His enemies are made His footstool. It is indeed a wonderful chain of prophecies concerning Christ. We could give a very few of these predictions. How they all were long ago literally fulfilled in the coming, in the life, in the death, in the resurrection and ascension of our adorable Lord, all true believers know.
The Jewish People
When Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, asked the court chaplain for an argument that the Bible is an inspired book, he answered, "Your Majesty, the Jews." It was well said. To the Jews were committed the oracles of God. (Rom. 3:2.) These oracles of God, the Holy Scriptures, the Law and the Prophets, are filled with a large number of predictions relating to their own history. Their unbelief, the rejection of the Messiah, the results of that rejection, their dispersion into the corners of the earth, so that they would be scattered among all the nations, the persecutions and sorrows they were to suffer, the curses which were to come upon them, their miraculous preservation as a nation, their future great tribulation and final restoration
