47. Occult References and Intimations

Occult References and Intimations

Chapter 46 A book proceeding from a divine author would naturally and necessarily be inexhaustible. It could not wear out like all human books, but would always prove an inexhaustible mind where new discoveries are always possible and fresh treasures always reward search. Thousands of years have not revealed all that it contains even under most minute microscopic search and every day brings some new gem of thought to the surface and some new surprise to the student.

Psalms 23. This psalm is most remarkable as expressing both New Testament and Old Testament conceptions of discipleship. Up to the end of Psalms 23:4, the figure is that of a sheep under care of the shepherd; from this point on, that of a son in his father’s house, or at least a subject in the palace of a king, or a guest with his host. The precise difference in the two dispensations is thus here expressed. To the Old Testament saint God was a Shepherd; to the New Testament saint, He is a Father, Sovereign, Host, all in one. And it is not accident, surely, that at the point of transition we find a table and an anointing; for it is at the table of the Lord that the Old Testament Passover passes into the New Testament Lord’s Supper; and at the Pentecost Anointing that the disciple first apprehends fully the Sonship in his Father’s House. It is, furthermore, noticeable that the idea of a blissful immortality was reserved for the New Testament to unfold fully. It was but dimly hinted in the older times; but after the Lord’s Supper and Pentecost came to be clearly revealed and understood. The Death and Resurrection of Christ, His Ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit, were the necessary preliminaries to its full disclosure. So that this Psalm becomes a sort of enigma of both dispensations.

Occult hints of the Trinity are found in unexpected forms and places, not only in that first consultation in the godhead, “Let us make man in our image after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26), and in that strange union of a plural noun “Elohim,” uniformly with a singular verb; but in the so-called “trisagion”—“Holy Holy, Holy,” in Isaiah 6:3, etc. In Matthew 23:7-10, our Lord forbids His disciples to call others, or themselves be called, “Rabbi”—“teacher”—“Father” or “Master.” He uses three separate words, “pater” “didaskalos,” and “kathegetos.” It would seem that the first specially refers to the Father, the second to Himself, the Son; and the third to the Holy Spirit. God alone they are to address and recognize as Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, as “Master,” and the Holy Spirit, as Teacher.

Dr. E.W. Bullinger points out that the name Jehovah is found no less than four times in the Book of Esther, in acrostic form, namely, in Esther 1:20; Esther 5:4; Esther 5:13; Esther 7:7.

Rev. Evert J. Blekkink, of Cobbleskill, N.Y., while verifying the references in the Hebrew Bible, noticed that in 1 Kings 8:42, there is a similar concealment of the name Jehovah.

“They shall hear of Thy great Name, and of Thy strong hand and of Thy stretched out arm.” The italics indicate that in which the Hebrew acrostic is found; and how it is in close connection with the express mention of the “Name.” By way of representing the Hebrew peculiarity to the English eye, he frames a couplet: The stranger shall Learn of Righteous Deeds Wrought by Thy hand for Thy people’s needs.

Just as here, the initials of the name LORD appear, so, in that unique Book of Esther, the Hebrew reader sees the name JeHoVaH, twice in the natural order of the letters, LORD, and twice also, in reverse order, DROL. In two of these instances, it is the initials, and, in the other two, it is the finals that spell for us the Name. Owing, however, to the Hebrew lack of capital distinctions, the eye does not so readily detect the singularity; though it is said that in three ancient manuscripts, Dr. Ginsburg has discovered the acrostic letters written in larger characters than the others. The peculiar manner in which the name was hid, would indicate the fact that none but the covenant people possessed the oracles of God, while at the same time the peculiar manner in which it was shown, would indicate according to the teaching of I Kings, that “the stranger” was yet to learn it. Hidden for the very purpose of being revealed, first to the Jew alone, afterward to the Gentile—and by Him who is the Aleph and the Tau, the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. The Time Element in Scripture is often very important. Vast interests may lie between two consecutive sentences; two conspicuous instances will recur to every student’s mind.

“In the Beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth.”

“And the Earth was without form, and void.” No human being can tell how many millions of years may stretch between these two statements. The first tells of a beginning when God created the present visible order, but gives no hint as to when. The second tells of a condition of the earth when He began the present work of its preparation for the abode of man. But, between the original production and the after reconstruction and preparation, all the ages seemingly demanded by geology, may be accommodated without violence to the narrative.

Again, in Isaiah 61:2 :

“To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord”—“And the Day of Vengeance of our God.” No one who heard or read those words, as originally written or spoken, would have supposed that thousands of years would elapse between the two proclamations. But already about nineteen centuries have passed since the first proclamation was made, when significantly our Lord, having read the first part of this double sentence, abruptly closed the Scroll, and sat down, saying, “This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears” (Luke 4:19), but of the Days of Vengeance He made no mention then, nor until the close of His ministry (Luke 21:22), when He took up the unfinished strain and foretold of a coming time when this also would be fulfilled.

Such examples should make us cautious how we infer that, because two statements are closely connected in Scripture, they necessarily imply an equally close contiguity of events. In 1 Corinthians 15:20-25, four great events are singularly gathered into one view: Christ’s Resurrection; afterward that of those who are Christ’s at His coming; then the End of His Mediatorial Reign, and the destruction of the last foe. No one who first read this letter of Paul to Corinth could have told of the intervals that might lie between these events. After all these centuries, the Saints’ Resurrection has not yet come; and beyond that lies the final conquest of Death as the last Enemy, and the Delivering up of the Kingdom may be the last in the series of events, beyond that age of ages, which seems to stretch even beyond the millennium.

There are occult hints of a peculiar divine method of reckoning time, as first found in connection with the institution of the Passover: “This month shall be the Beginning of Months—the first month of the year to you”—literally, “the head of months,” first in rank as well as first in order. This was a marked change: the seventh month of the civil year becoming henceforth the first of the sacred or ecclesiastical. This simple decree affects all the whole after career of Israel, revealing a new philosophy of history, in God’s reckoning of time when He “writeth up the people” in His register (Psalms 50:6). This marks, also, for all coming time, the establishment of a New Calendar, and includes several particulars:

1. A final break with Egypt. Hitherto the Egyptian mode of reckoning had controlled, the calendar being regulated by the inundations of the Nile. Now this last link was to be severed, and God’s emancipated people was to be also a separated people.

2. A new starting point in history. During the Egyptian sojourn the nation was treated as civilly dead, and the Exodus was regarded as a national resurrection, and the beginning of newness of life—the paschal night, “a night to be much observed”—a birthnight with labor pangs (Exodus 12:42).

Thus the common civil year was, in Jehovah’s dealings with Israel, displaced, and a new era began, dependent upon their new relation to Him as His redeemed people. This prepares us to understand that new philosophy of history, already referred to, according to which all time in which they practically went back into Egypt, and lived in alienation from God and subjection to His enemies was treated as a blank and not honored with any recorded history. How significant that the Lord should in His reckoning take note only of the times when His people were so far loyal to Him as not to be abandoned to the oppressive rule of their enemies. The 490 years of Daniel 9:24, it is hard to make out as accurate unless certain years are omitted when the Hebrew people were practically indifferent and disobedient.

However this may be, certain it is that, from the time of the rejection and crucifixion of their Messianic King, Israel disappears from the records of Holy Writ, especially after the judgment which destroyed their city and dispersed their nation. The deeper significance of all this it is not hard to read. Until we separate ourselves from sin, accepting salvation through the blood of sprinkling, we do not even begin to live and to walk with God, but are dead in trespasses and sins. However, in men’s eyes active and successful, in God’s eyes we are nothing and have done nothing. Despite all accumulations of wealth and learning, honor and fame, we are as He judges us, poor and destitute and dead, having not even seen life; and any day not spent with God and for God has no entry in His Book of Remembrance. This is God’s unique philosophy of history.

Thus God has also His own calendar. He reckons time in a way of His own, and in writing up history often leaves great gaps of silence, chasms of oblivion, where there is nothing worthy of a record. Some of the period of years cannot be made out as accurate without some such omissions or additions as may make His chronology correspond with man’s. The long centuries of sojourn in Egypt have practically no record, nor have the forty years of desert journeying when His people were under the ban; between the two encampments at Kadesh Barnea, little more than a bare list of stations! The four hundred and eighty years between the Exodus and the temple building referred to in 1 Kings 6:1 seem to fall short of the actual time computed to be 573 years, by some ninety-three years. But there were just that number of years during which they were given over to captivity to their foes as recorded in the book of Judges, as follows: Mesopotamia, 8; Moab, 18; Canaan, 20; Medea, 7; Philistia, 40=93. Is this the explanation of an apparent discrepancy? If so, it not only solves an enigma but reveals a principle of God’s philosophy of reckoning. This God of the Bible has His own mathematics. “One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8). “In His sight, a thousand years are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night” (Psalms 90:4). He is not limited by man’s notions of numbers. “One can chase a thousand, and two put”—not two thousand, but “ten thousand to flight” (Leviticus 26:8). In His addition table in this case one and one make not two but ten. As we have found in our studies, there are many proofs that the God of the Bible has His own Grammar. The word “Elohim,” translated “God,” is plural, but it is always joined to a singular verb, as though to hint that, while there are three persons in the Trinity, they are not three Gods, but one God, and so take a singular verb. The gender, number and case of nouns, and the voice, mood and tense of verbs are never found used in the Word of God without a reason which often only close study unveils.

He has also, His own Lexicon. He uses language in a way of His own. For example, in Numbers 21, He calls His pilgrim nation, “Israel” up to the point where their rebellious murmurings began; then, seven times, only “the people,” until they are penitent, humbled and restored to His favor; and then, “Israel” nine times—it is “Israel that” set forward, “sang this song,” “sent messengers to Sihon,” “smote him,” and “possessed his land,” “took all these cities,” and “dwelt in them.” Surely there can be no accident in such reservation of the elect name for the time when they were obedient! The Word of God thus hints that this unique and solitary Being had His own “ways” of thinking and doing everything.

There are also occult scientific intimations and forecasts. The Bible, without being a scientific treatise, cannot avoid incidental references to scientific subjects, and, whenever it touches the domain of general knowledge and universal fact, reveals the omniscient mind, which is behind it, as the general intelligence of an author shows itself in the treatment of special themes. Knowledge cannot be hid, and He Who made the universe never could betray ignorance of His own handiwork.[1] [1] This department finds ample treatment in the author’sMany Infallible Proofs, God’s Living Oracles, etc.

There are in the universe at least Ten Great Forces, to which the Scriptures more or less clearly refer, which may be studied in a definite order, beginning with the lower and more material, and ascending to the higher and more subtle and spiritual. The study of them and especially of their correspondences and mutual relations will amply repay any amount of pains and patience.

Light, Heat, Actinic Life, Electricity, etc., appear to be modes of motion, largely entering into all the operations of the material universe.