02.23. Why Christians Should Study Prophecy
XXIII WHY CHRISTIANS SHOULD STUDY PROPHECY
I THIS chapter is in reply to an inquiry as to the right attitude of God’s people towards prophecy, or as suggested in the title, "Why Christians Should Study Prophecy."
1. The most obvious answer is that prophecy is part of the Bible, part of God’s revelation to man. A Christian, in the New Testament sense of the term, is one who has come to know and love God through faith in the atoning merits of His Son, Jesus Christ. Hence he loves God’s Word, and he has not the slightest doubt that the Bible is His Word.
2. But prophecy covers a large part of the Bible. We commonly think of the seventeen books of the Old Testament, Isaiah to Malachi, and one book of the New Testament, Revelation, just eighteen books of prophecy in all. And if this were all, it would be nearly one-third of the whole. But it is not all. Some of the most important prophecies are in the Pentateuch, the Psalms are largely prophetic, and so is the Gospel of Matthew. One of the most comprehensive and illuminating prophecies is in the Acts, and what of 1 and 2 Corinthians and 2 Thessalonians, and the Pastoral and General epistles? Taking it in bulk, more than one-half of the Bible is predictive, so that no further reason seems necessary why Christians should study prophecy.
3. Prophecy has great importance attached to it in the Bible. God justifies Himself as the God of truth by saying: "Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them" (Isaiah 42:9).
Why is Jeremiah, though a political prisoner, directed of God to buy his cousin’s field in Anathoth , To buy it, even when he knows that Jerusalem is doomed and his nation is to be carried into captivity’ To buy it with all the formality of the counting of the money, the signing and sealing of the deed, the calling of witnesses, and the depositing of the papers in safe keeping’ This is the answer: “Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall yet again be bought in this land" (Jeremiah 32:6-15). In other words, Judah was to be restored from her Babylonian captivity and again at the end of this age, and God desired it to be known that it was done by His hand.
"He that eateth bread with me, hath lifted up his heel against me. Now I tell you before it come, that when it is come to pass, ye may believe that I am he" (John 13:18-19). These words of Christ give us the key to prophecy and tell us why Christians should study it. It is revealed so that when it comes to pass we may be convinced that He is the One Whom Be claimed to be, the very Son of God, the Saviour of them that believe and the Judge of the whole earth.
4. Prophecy in its fulfillment is a great strengthener of faith. The older apologists classed it with miracles in this respect. They pointed out that miracles furnished the more impressive testimony for the beginning of the Christian era, but prophecy for its close. In other words, prophecy is an argument whose force is continually growing. Beginning when the first prophecy was fulfilled and increasing as fulfillments increase, its maturity will not be reached till the end of the world. As Prof. S. H. Kellogg reminds us, "the whole of the Old Testament was in the hands of the Jews400years B.C., and yet their predictions were not only borne out by events in His life and work, but are still in process of fulfillment before our eyes. Nor are the essential facts which bear upon this matter at all affected by modern criticism. Let every book be brought down to the latest date which that criticism claims, and still there is a large residuum of veritable prophecy written long, long before the occurrence of the events foretold."
Eighteen hundred years have elapsed since the last book of prophecy was written and during that long period, the leading events of history have proven in a marvellous way that "holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost" (2 Peter 1:1-21; 2 Peter 2:1-22).
5. Prophecy strengthens faith because it so greatly increases knowledge. As the psalmist says: "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him; and he will show them his covenant" (Psalms 25:14). Think what prophecy meant to Noah and his family in the building of the ark. Think how it enabled Abraham successfully to intercede for Lot in Sodom. It sustained Moses in leading the Hebrews out of Egypt and Joshua in conquering Canaan. Again and again it nerved Israel’s arm for battle by the prediction of victory, and if to-day our people knew and believed the prophecies of God, their fear of Germany would be materially diminished. Daniel knew by the prophetic books the number of years that spanned the Babylonian captivity for His people, and as a scholar and statesman, he stood unequalled among all his contemporaries. Simeon and Anna were diligent students of prophecy and God honoured them with an actual vision of their Redeemer. The poor saints at Jerusalem were relieved in the famine of the period of Claudius Caesar as the result of Agabus’ prophesying. Paul’s prophesying in the Adriatic heartened all his fellow-voyagers in their hour of shipwreck.
Some months since, a metropolitan divine uttered a cry of despair over world conditions and the hopelessness of the reformation of mankind j but had he been a closer student of prophecy, he might have spared himself and us part of that despondency. As the late J. D. Herr said at an International Prophetic Conference some years ago: "There is one grand event placed before us on which we can rest our faith and plant our hope amid all the sad disasters and spiritual depressions constantly surrounding the walls of Zion. No seeming defeat of moral reform, no beating back of the armies of truth, no attempt to overthrow the bulwarks of Christianity, shakes our confidence or paralyzes our aggressive efforts. Beyond and above all these is seen the outshining of His power, and we wait in expectancy and humble patience for the appearing of the glory of our Great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Here is the objective point of all prophecy."
6. This reminds us that prophecy, properly understood, is a wonderful inspirer of hope. In other words, pessimism and Bible prophecy do not go together. It is through the latter that we learn the world’s destiny; and become assured that the march of the centuries is towards a legitimate and glorious future. Thus Peter says: "We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn and the day-star arise in your hearts" (2 Peter 1:19).
He is thinking of Christ’s transfiguration on the mount when he says this, which to him was at once a pledge and a specimen of the second coming of Christ in His Kingdom. That event, i.e.,the transfiguration, made the word of prophecy more sure. It was "an indubitable declaration of the personal and official glory of Jesus Christ, a sufficient warrant for all that he and the other apostles said concerning Him." But the point is that in the estimation of the inspired penman, "prophecy" is a "light," a lamp shining "in a dark place." The Greek for "dark" in this instance might be rendered "squalid." O, the squalor of the filthy, blood-besmirched world today! How much it needs light! And the prophetic Word of God is that light. What shall the Church do with it? Hide it under a bushel, or hold it forth for the guidance and the cheer of men? Prophecy is speculation and impractical they tell us; but what can be more contrary to such an idea than the thought of a lamp shining in a dark place? And if the present state of the world is a "dark place," what is the "day-dawn," if not the second coming of Christ to set up His Kingdom f "He shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds." This "star-day" is to rise in our hearts, Peter says. There is, in other words, a moral and spiritual rising that must precede the outward splendour of that day to them who shall behold it. Is this true of the reader of these words? Has he yet received Jesus Christ as his Saviour and confessed Him as his Lord? It is as he does this that prophecy becomes to him an inspirer of hope.
7. Thus Christians should study prophecy because it exalts Jesus Christ. "To him give all the prophets witness" (Acts 10:43). All prophecy from Genesis to Revelation relates to Him directly or indirectly. "0 fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken," said He to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, and then, "beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself" (Luke 24:25, Luke 24:27). The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy (Revelation 19:10). No one interested either in His past history or His ultimate triumph can afford to ignore its study. "God never would have traced the exalted pathway of His Son through the long aisles of the future, had He not desired and expected us by our eye of faith to follow Him."
8. If prophecy thus exalts Jesus Christ, and by exalting Him strengthens the faith and increases the knowledge and quickens the hope of men, it stands to reason that it radically affects their conduct. No surprise is felt, therefore, when we read that the pagans of Thessalonica, "turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God and to wait for his Son from heaven"(1 Thessalonians 1:9-10). We see what prophecy did for them. Peter teaches us that by the "exceeding great and precious promises" (prophecy again), we escape "the corruption that is in the world through lust" (2 Peter 1:4). John declares that "every man that hath this hope in him" (Christ’s Second Coming), "purifieth himself even as he is pure" (1 John 3:1-24), (prophecy again). Indeed, to quote Dr. Rufus W. Clark of honoured memory in Albany, "there is not a duty pertaining to the Christian life that is not quickened and rendered more imperative by the power of this blessed hope; not a virtue that it does not call into highest exercise, not a motive in the human heart that it does not purify and strengthen."
II But if prophecy is, and does all this, why do not Christians study it more generally than they do? Yankee-like, we answer that question by asking another, "Why do not Christians study the Bible more generally than they do?” If they studied the Bible at all, in any serious way, how could they fail to study prophecy? Is prophecy too difficult! Will it be said that God sends a message to mock our humble efforts? His answer is that the longest and most difficult prophecy in the Bible is distinguished from every other part of it by the name of "Revelation." If that is a misnomer, God is responsible for it, since it is in the text. The mistakes and extravagances of theorists are sometimes adduced as an argument against prophecy; but men have wandered away from fundamental doctrines of the Bible and even given "heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons," yet have Christians discarded the study of those doctrines! The truth is, as Dr. John Lillie, the American Commentator, tells us, that among those who really deserve to be called students of prophecy, there is greater harmony on essential points than is found in other departments of theological science, while their divergences on the other band are not by any means as mischievous in character or tendency. A New York clergyman recently said that the Bible Institutes of the country were all teaching the premillennial coming of Christ, and then he sought to disparage the teaching by adding that they were all at variance with one another. Quite the opposite is true. The ten or a dozen Bible Institutes, or schools, which the writer knows will bear out absolutely Dr. Lillie’s testimony.
QUESTIONS ON THE LESSON 1.Name seven reasons why Christians should study prophecy.
2. Define a Christian.
3. Name books of the Bible other than the Prophets so-called, which contain important prophecies.
4. How does prophecy prove God’s truthfulness?
5. How does prophecy differ from miracles as a ground of Christian evidence?
6. Name some illustrations of the bearing of prophecy on spiritual knowledge.
7. For what practical reasons should we expound prophecy?
8. Why do not Christians more generally study prophecy?
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