05.02.04 - Prediction and Criticism

(4) Prediction and Criticism

It may be granted to modern Criticism that too much has been made of particular types, symbols, and prophecies of Old Testament Scriptures, but without endorsing the sweeping statement “that Apologists cannot lay their finger on a single Old Testament prediction clearly referring to Jesus Christ, prefiguring His character and career, and manifestly fulfilled in His mission on earth, which prediction was so intentionally predicted and in tended of Him”: we admit that types, figures, and utterances have been applied to Christ which cannot be said to have been so intended by their authors. It may be admitted, further, that the “ seed of the woman,” of “ Isaac,” the u coming of Shiloh,” the “prophet like unto Moses,” and the “high-priest like unto Aaron,” the “king of David’s line,” the child “ Immanuel” set for a sign, and the “suffering-servant” of Isaiah, may have a meaning and application other than “ Messianic “ in Israel’s history; and yet, in their ultimate significance and meaning, only find fulfilment in the Person, work, and passion of Christ. It may be further conceded to Criticism that even the instances recorded by the Evangelists respecting the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem,” the “ flight into Egypt,” the “ slaughter of the innocents,” the settling at Nazareth,” the “ healing of our sicknesses,” the “ triumphal entry into Jerusalem,” the “betrayal,” “the thirty pieces of silver,” the “arrest,” the “ flight of the disciples,” the “ parting of the garments,” etc, said to be fulfilments of that “spoken by the Prophets,” a- e only the pious reflections and applications of the authors who, acting under the guidance of the Spirit of truth, were led to make this application of them as being in harmony with the teaching of the Prophets, the Law, and the Psalms. When the assaults of Criticism are over, the place of the Old Testament Scriptures in the history of redemption and of Divine revelation, as a preparation for the coming of the Holy One of Israel and the mission He came to accomplish, and as a witness for God and religion in the worKl, will continue in the future as in the past. Men will still continue to regard the Old Testament as a forerunner of the New, and the Jewish religion as preparatory to the Christian, and both as the result of a divine ordering, and the fulfilment of a Divinely-determined purpose. If so, then we need not attempt to indicate the prediction and fulfilment of particular incidents and events; while we find in the general forecast of a coming redemption, of a spiritual and universal religion, as set forth in the Old Testament and fulfilled in the New, an argument for prophecy sufficient to place it among the indubitable evidences of Divine revelation.