17. THE SCHEME OF THE SEVENTY WEEKS IS THE KEY TO ALL PROPHECY

WE have thus found from the prophecy of the Seventy Weeks—as well as from other parts of Scripture, in which the Lord is represented as breaking His covenant with Israel just before His death—that there has now been for more than eighteen hundred years an entire cessation of God's dealings with the Jews as a nation. A great gap extends—as we understand by the words of Daniel, Zechariah, and the Lord Himself—from Messiah the Prince to the false prince that shall come; from the good Shepherd, Whom the flock abhorred and rejected, to the idol shepherd, whom the majority of them will follow to their own destruction; from Him Who came in His Father's name to that other who shall come in his own name. And during the interval between the true Messiah

¹ Luke xxi. 24.

and the false, Hebrew prophecy is almost entirely in abeyance, and there remain in present operation only one or two fearful utterances which stretch, as it were, here and there across the whole width of the chasm.

Such is the cry of Hosea, which startled the prosperous and haughty times of Uzziah with the fateful words;—“For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim.”¹

Such is the mournful burden of Micah that, because of the smiting of the Judge of Israel upon the cheek, God would give up His people, until the travailing woman should bring forth.²

And such, especially, are the terrible fulminations in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, those words of fear;—“And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other; and there thou shalt serve other gods, which neither thou nor thy fathers have known, even wood and stone. And among those nations shalt thou find no case, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind: and thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of thy life. In the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning! for the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see.”³ ¹ Hosea iii. 4. ² Micah v. 1, 3. ³ Deut. xxviii. 64-67.

THE KEY TO ALL PROPHECY.

With the exception of such passages as these, and the few predictions respecting the Gentiles, all Old Testament prophecy—which invariably refers to the literal Judah, Jerusalem, and Israel—centres upon the events immediately connected with the two advents. For, as Peter tells us, the Spirit through the prophets “testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow”¹—that is, the first coming to suffer and die, and the consequent rejection of the Jews; and the second coming to rule with power, and the consequent restoration of all Israel. The knowledge of this fact is indispensable to a right understanding of prophecy; for events connected with the two great, but now widely separated eras, are often mentioned together, even in the same sentence. Nor is there any confusion in such an arrangement: for had the Jews received Christ at His first coming, John the Baptist would have been Elijah to them,² the

¹ 1 Pet. i. 11.

² It has been supposed by many that John exhausted the prophecy in Mal. iv. 5. But nothing less than the personal appearance of “Elijah the prophet”—or “Elijah the Tishbite,” as the Septuagint has it—can fulfil that utterance. Moreover, his coming must be just before the second advent, “the great and dreadful day of the Lord.” When the Saviour speaks of this subject it is with an ambiguity which can only be dispelled by a knowledge of the Seventy Weeks. On one occasion He says of John;—“And if ye are willing to receive him, this is Elijah which is to come” (Matt. xi. 14). That is, “If you will allow John to do the work of Elijah, he shall be Elijah to you; the Seventieth Week shall follow immediately upon the Sixty-ninth, and then the Kingdom shall be restored to Israel.” But the preaching of the Baptist did not turn the hearts of the Jews; and accordingly, after his death, when the opportunity had passed, the Lord said, “Elijah indeed cometh, and shall restore all things; but I say unto you that an Elijah came just now (ἤδη ἦλθε), and they knew him not, but did unto him whatsoever they listed” (Matt. xvii. 11, 12). Here the coming of the personal Elijah is affirmed to be last Seven Years would have followed immediately, and then the Kingdom would have been restored to Israel. But the unbelief of the Jews separated those things which might have been joined together, and, consequently, the marvellous events of the last Week have not yet begun to take place.

Lest, however, we should feel any perplexity in regard to the interpretation of Old Testament prophecy, the Lord Himself has given us a clue. In the fourth chapter of Luke we may find an account of His visit to the synagogue at Nazareth, where He read a passage from Isaiah, and declared that it was fulfilled on that day in the ears of His audience. The passage runs as follows;—"The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me; because He hath anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind; to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord."¹ When He had read so much, He closed the book; and if we turn to the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah, we shall see in what manner He extracted the passage. He ceased reading in the middle of a sentence, because still in the future; and we are told that he will do what John might have done but did not, and will bring back Israel from apostasy. In the words which follow, the allusion to John shows that his appearance "in the spirit and power of Elijah" was a tentative fulfilment of Malachi's prophecy, preparatory to the offers of the Kingdom which Christ made in the beginning of His ministry, but never repeated after the death of John. For although His entry into Jerusalem marked the time when He would have allowed Himself to be recognised as King, had He not been already rejected; yet His lamentation over the doomed city, before He passed its gates, proves that this was no real offer, because the Jews were irremediably hardened. ¹ Luke iv. 18, 19; Isa. lxi. 1, 2.

THE KEY TO ALL PROPHECY.

its next clause leaps the wide chasm between the first and second advents, and speaks of "the day of vengeance of our God." Unless, therefore, He had closed the book when He did, He could not have said, "This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears."

Before, however, we deduce a canon of interpretation from our Lord's method of procedure, we should be careful to notice that prophecy must always, when it is possible, be taken literally. The Bible is not a riddle, but a revelation. Written to suit the mean capacities of our race while still in the flesh, it is easily intelligible to those who surrender themselves to the guidance of the Spirit. It presents but few difficulties, if we are willing to receive it just as it has been delivered to us, and do not wish to avoid that which is supernatural. And with a few avowed exceptions—such as when the mind that hath wisdom is challenged, or when he that hath ears to hear is bidden to hear—if it does speak figuratively, it employs plain and obvious figures, the purpose of which is to illustrate and make clear, and not to mystify. That what we affirm is true may be seen by the prophecies of the first advent, which, fulfilled as they were with a wonderful literality, should make us wise in regard to the future. Let the following serve as examples.

The messenger.

The virgin mother.

Mal. iii. 1 ... Mark i. 2-8.

Gen. iii. 15;

Isa. vii. 11. ... Matt. i. 18-23.¹

¹ In the prophecy of Isa. vii. 14, the Authorized Version obscures the meaning by omitting the article; for we should read, "Behold, the virgin conceiving." The same mistake occurs in the quotation in Matt. i. 23, but is corrected in the Revised Version. We scarcely need to say that the article is of

The other children of the

Lord's mother.

The riding into Jerusalem.

The thirty pieces of silver.

The potter's field.

The smiting and spitting.

The piercing with nails².

The piercing with the spear².

The garments and vesture.

The vinegar and the gall.

The unbroken bones.

Ps. lxix. 8. ¹ ... Matt. xii. 46,

John vii. 5

Zech. ix. 9. ... Matt. xxi. 1-11.

Zech. xi. 12. ... Matt. xxvi. 15.

Zech. xi. 13. ... Matt. xxvii. 7.

Isa. l. 6. ... Matt. xxvi. 67.

Psa. xxii. 16. ... Matt. xxvii. 35;

John xx. 25-27.

Zech. xii. 10. ... John xix. 34, 37.

Psa. xxii. 18. ... John xix. 23, 24.

Psa. lxix. 21. ... Matt. xxvii. 34.

Psa. xxxiv. 20 ... John xix. 33, 36.

The list might be greatly extended, and there is no reason to doubt that the prophecies of the second advent will be fulfilled as literally as those of the first.

From this consideration, and from the example given the utmost importance, since it points back to some particular virgin who must have been indicated by a previous revelation, and so connects Isaiah's words with the primeval utterance respecting "the seed of the woman." For that unusual expression evidently implies that just as sin came into the world through the woman alone, so far as earthly agencies were concerned, so the Deliverer should be introduced by the woman alone; in other words, that our Lord should be born of a virgin.

¹ In this prophecy—the next verse of which is applied to Christ in the New Testament (John ii. 17; Rom. xv. 3)—the expression, "My mother's children," precludes all attempts to show that the Lord's brethren were either His cousins or His halfbrothers. Without doubt James and Joses and Simon and Judas

(Matt. xiii. 55) were the literal brethren of the Lord, and it would never have occurred to any one to deny so plain a fact, had it not been for the wish to substantiate idolatrous theories respecting

His mother, and to identify her with Isis, the mother of Horus, and yet the ever-virgin. See the note at the end of the present chapter.

² In the passage of the twenty-second Psalm—"They pierced

My hands and My feet—the word כָּאֵר (akin to כָּרֶד כָּרֶד) is found, which signifies to dig or bore through, and is, therefore, most appropriately used of nails. But in Zech. xii. 10, the verb is דָּבָר, which means to pierce with a sword or spear.

THE KEY TO ALL PROPHECY.

above of our Lord's way of dealing with Scripture, we would suggest the following method of interpretation

In any prediction of the Old Testament, regard that which has been exactly fulfilled at the first advent as already past.

Apply all else to the times of the second advent, as literally as the case will allow.

By way of example we may cite the words of Isaiah; —"For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder." Now the Child was born, and the Son was given, at the first advent; but the government did not then devolve upon Him, for He was cut off and there was nothing for Him. He left our world as a nobleman going into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and to return. At the second advent, therefore, will the government be placed upon His shoulder. It is only after the Fourth Beast has been slain, and his body destroyed and given to the burning flame, that the Son of man shall be brought to the Ancient of days, and invested with dominion, and glory, and a Kingdom.¹ So in the thirteenth chapter of Zechariah, the seventh verse refers to the first advent,² but the eighth and ninth to the second; for the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus resulted in the dispersion of the whole Jewish nation, not in the deliverance of one-third of them.

If, then, we apply this process, of which our Lord Himself gives us an example, the Bible becomes a plain revelation, and is no longer a tissue of enigmas. Its every page sparkles with glory, and it is found to be filled with disclosures and instructions which Paul might well compare to gold, silver, and precious stones.

¹ Dan. vii. 11-14.

² Matt. xxvi. 31.