No.13. Prophecy and its Fulfillment.


Among the subjects that demand the “balance” for their interpretation and the appreciation of their value, must be numbered Prophecy and its fulfillment.

The following paragraphs written by Horne, in his “Introduction” are worth reproducing:

“The knowledge of future events is that object, which man, with the greatest desire, has the least ability to attain. By tracing cause and effect in their usual operations, by observing human characters, and by marking present tendencies, he may form some plausible conjectures about the future; and an experienced politician, who is thoroughly acquainted with the circumstances, interests, and tempers both of his own community and of those who are his neighbours, will frequently anticipate events with a sagacity and success which bear some resemblance to direst prescience, and excites the astonishment of less penetrating minds. Still, however, he is limited to a kind of contact with present circumstances. That which he foresees must have some connexion with what he actually beholds, or some dependence on it; otherwise his inquiries are vain, and his conjectures idle and delusive; and even within those narrow limits, how often is his penetration baffled, and his wisdom deceived. The slightest intrusion of uncommon circumstances, the smallest possible deviation from rules, which cannot by any means be rendered exact, destroys the visionary chain which he has constructed, and exposes his ignorance to himself and others. The prescience of the most experienced politician, in short, bears a close resemblance to that of an experienced general or a skilful chess player.”

Prophecy in the sense of an unfulfilled prediction, has little or no meaning or weight apart from its fulfillment, and the demonstration that any prophecy has been fulfilled is an evidence that God is at work, for:

“To foresee and foretell future events is a miracle of which the testimony remains in itself. It is a miracle, because to foresee and foretell future events, to which no change of circumstances leads, no train of probabilities points, is as much beyond the ability of human agents, as to cure diseases with a word, or even to raise the dead, which may properly be termed miracles of power. That actions of the latter kind were ever performed can be proved, at a distant period, only by witnesses, against whose testimony cavils may be raised, or causes for doubt advanced: but the man, who reads a prophecy and perceives the corresponding event, is himself the witness of the miracle; he sees that thus it is, and that thus by human means it could not possibly have been. A prophecy yet unfulfilled is a miracle at present incomplete; and these, if numerous, may be considered as the seeds of future conviction, ready to grow up and bear their fruit, whenever the corresponding facts shall be exhibited in the theatre of the world. So admirably has this sort of evidence been contrived by the wisdom of God, that in proportion as the lapse of ages might seem to weaken the argument derived from miracles long since performed, that very lapse serves only to strengthen the argument derived from the completion of prophecy.”

The Prophecies of the Scripture are reducible to four heads:

(1) Prophecies relating to Israel in particular.
(2) Prophecies relating to the neighbouring nations.
(3) Prophecies relating to the Messiah.
(4) Prophecies given by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and His apostles.

Prophetic utterances concerning Israel begin with the call of Abraham, and are continued to Isaac and Jacob. These prophecies foretell that the posterity of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, shall possess the land of Canaan, and that though they should lose the enjoyment of this land for a time, owing to their sinfulness, yet their title to the land should never be alienated, but that in God’s good time they should be gathered back and given possession of their land, there to continue in peaceful enjoyment to the end of time. The passages of Scriptures that contain these prophetic utterances are Gen. xii. 7; xiii. 14, 15, 15; xv. 18-21; xvii. 7, 8; Exod. iii. 8, 17; Deut. xxx. 1-5; Jer. xxx. 3. When the original prophecy was uttered, Abraham was an old man, without children, and had just left the land of his nativity to become a pilgrim in the land beyond the Euphrates unto which the Lord has led him. That land moreover was held by a number of warlike tribes, some of them being giants with “cities walled up to heaven”, yet the book of Numbers (chapter xxi.), Deut. ii. and Josh. iii. onwards, reveal how exactly these prophecies began to be fulfilled, while the remainder of the O.T. reveals the fulfillment of the threat to scatter the children of Israel from their land. We now confidently await the fulfillment of the third feature—Israel’s gathering, restoration and blessing. What has been fulfilled encourages us to believe that all will be fulfilled in God’s own time.

When the days drew near for the prophecy of the captivity of the Jews to take place, the prophet Jeremiah foretold Nebuchadnezzar by name (Jer. xxvii. 3-7). For a composite prophecy, so written before the event as to produce the feeling of contradiction, one is referred to the double prophecy of Jeremiah and Ezekiel concerning the fate of Zedekiah. If we compare Jer. xxxiv. 2-7 with Ezek. xii. 13 we find that Zedekiah should “see the king of Babylon”, yet he should “not see Babylon”, that he should be “carried to Babylon”, yet should die in peace and be buried after the manner of his ancestors, yet that he should die, nevertheless, at Babylon. The history of Zedekiah reveals a faithful fulfillment of all that was prophesied. He did see the king of Babylon, who ordered his eyes to be put out, he was brought to Babylon without seeing it, and that he died there (Jer. xxxiv. 4, 7; II Kings xxv. 6, 7). The only feature that is left unrecorded is that after his death Zedekiah was given an honourable burial, but in the absence of any word to the contrary this can be safely assumed.

Prophecies concerning the Nations, occupy a large portion of the prophetic scriptures. Tyre, Egypt, Babylon, Nineveh, Ethiopia, the successors of Nebuchadnezzar, namely, the Medes and Persians and the Greeks are named. To give details of these embracive prophecies is beyond our present scope. To mention them is for the moment sufficient for our purpose. So marvelously did the fulfillment agree with the prophecy, “that the celebrated infidel Porphyry, in the second century, could only evade the force of them by asserting, contrary to all evidence, that they were written long after the event”.

Prophecies concerning the Messiah, however, cannot be treated in this fashion. They lie so near to the heart of truth, so close to the basis of all our hopes, that if they could be explained away we should be of all men most miserable. Let us tabulate some that are outstanding.

The place where Messiah was to be born, namely, Bethlehem, a little village among the thousands of Judah, was predicted by Micah the prophet (v. 2) 700 years before the event, which is as though someone in 1066 foretold the birth of an individual in some obscure village in England in the reign of George the Third!

The extraordinary character of this birth, namely, that the Messiah should be born of a virgin, was foretold by the prophet Isaiah (vii. 14; ix. 6, 7).

The extraordinary marvelous character of His death, is foretold by Isaiah, in that wonderful chapter, the fifty-third. Isaiah even goes so far as to foretell such details as:

“He made His grave with the wicked ones (plural), and with the rich one (singular) in His death” (liii. 9).

The death and resurrection of the Messiah were foretold with extraordinary exactness. The Psalms reveal that He would not see corruption (xvi. 10), that the instrument of His death should be crucifixion (xxii. 16) a mode of punishment unused among the Jews in David’s time; that He should sit on the right hand of God waiting until His foes be made His footstool (cx. 1), and that He should come again, His feet standing in the last day upon the Mount of Olives, the spot from which the N.T. records that He actually ascended (Zech. xiv.; Acts i.). Finally, for the present section, Daniel predicted the number of years that should intervene from the time indicated in Dan. ix. 25 to the coming of the Messiah the Prince Who should “be cut off and have nothing”, a prophecy which is a never-ending source of wonder to all who take the trouble to compute and examine chronology and history. Christ was born “in the fullness of time”.

The prophecies of the N.T. fall into two great groups. Those which were uttered by Christ concerning His own death and resurrection and which were immediately fulfilled, and those uttered by Christ and His apostles concerning the close of the age and the second coming of Christ, which prophesies necessarily await fulfillment, although the signs of the times, as predicted in I Tim. iv. and II Tim. iii., iv. are most certainly making themselves evident. The Saviour foretold His death, where it should take place, who would be instrumental in bringing it about, and what would precede it. He would be “killed” at “Jerusalem”, and suffer many things of “the elders, and chief priests and scribes” (Matt. xvi. 21). He specified what these “many things” would be. He would be delivered to the “Gentiles to mock, scourge and crucify” Him (Matt. xx. 18, 19). He also foretold His betrayal, indicated the traitor, and moreover, knew that all His disciples would forsake Him in the hour of His extremity (Matt. xx. 18; xxvi. 23, 31); and He even foretold that Peter would deny Him thrice before the cock crew twice (Mark xiv. 30). In every case the prophecy was fulfilled to the letter.

The Saviour just as explicitly foretold His resurrection. He would rise again “the third day” (Matt. xvi. 21), and that after He was risen He would go before the disciples into Galilee (Matt. xxvi. 32; xxviii. 16). The Lord foretold the descent of the Spirit and the enduement of the day of Pentecost (Luke xxiv. 49; Mark xvi. 17, 18), the destruction of Jerusalem with its temple (Mark xiii. 2; Luke xxi. 20-24). It would be a profitable exercise to trace out and tabulate the various expressions, such as: “That it might be fulfilled”, “That the Scripture might be fulfilled”, which are found in the four gospels, so that the close association of “promise and fulfillment” which characterizes the connexion between the Old Testament and the New might be appreciated for its true worth. There are twenty-eight such references where pleroo is used, beside other references and allusions. When all is placed in the balance that can be brought forth from the Scriptures concerning Prophecy and its fulfillment, the reader will possess an evidence for God and His Word, for Christ and His Redemption, that is overwhelming. Let us take courage. The prophecy that has been fulfilled is sufficient pledge to the believer of the prophecy which awaits fulfillment. “None shall want her mate” (Isa. xxxiv. 16).

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(From The Berean Expositor, vol. 38, page 246).

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