01.13. Spirit of Prophesy (Nicholson)

XIII. THE SPIRIT OF PROPHECY. BY BISHOP W. R. NICHOLSON, D.D. THE subject assigned me is The Spirit of Prophecy. Shall we take this to mean the characteristic qualities of prophecy, as when we speak of the spirit of a book? Or shall we understand that the Holy Spirit is meant? Practically what is the difference? If we investigate the characteristics of prophecy, it is no other than the work of the Holy Spirit we shall be considering, since he, the author of prophecy, has made it just what it is. On the other hand, if we fix attention directly on the Holy Spirit as self-revealed in prophecy, the qualities of his work therein are what must be examined. The difference is not material. Forasmuch, however, as the object in view of this conference is to identify, venerate and glorify the Holy Spirit, I shall interpret our subject as if it read, The Holy Spirit as he is in Prophecy.

Prophecy, as here used, must have the meaning it bears in common parlance predictive prophecy. Since, if not thus restricted, it includes every subject in the Bible; the prophets having been teachers of the whole revealed will of God. With closer accuracy, then, we read our subject thus, The Holy Spirit as he is in Predictive Prophecy.

I shall not stop to prove that the predictions of the Bible are genuine miraculous previsions of the future. The wealth of proof on that point no drafts of infidelity can diminish. That truth I assume and lay down as a postulate. Neither shall I waste our time in adducing proof of the Holy Spirit being the author of those predictions. The Bible, with authority, ascribes them to him, and common sense decides that no human sagacity could so have foreseen the future. This also we start from as a postulate. And now with the miraculous predictions of the Spirit before us, our concern is reverently to study him therein; learning something of his prophetic revelations and of our consequent obligations, and how we may become yet more enriched in Christian experience. In the first place, the Holy Spirit in prophecy means that we shall understand him. This remark has much the look of a truism; for why, otherwise, should he speak to us at all? But it has been called in question. It is the key to our subject; and certainly, for the honor of the Holy Spirit, we are in duty bound to settle this question one way or the other. The Spirit in prophecy means to be understood. Some difficulties there are, of course, in the interpreting of prophecy. We cannot always make sure of a particular application, nor of a particular chronological relation. But we can make sure, almost without exception, of the main fact predicted. And is it not just the same as regards the Gospel itself? That " by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all sinned," is a plain statement of fact, and we receive it; but is there nothing in it that is not understood? Who can thoroughly explain the Federal Headship of Adam? That Jesus Christ " bore our sins in his own body," and made expiation of sin, is a declaration clear as light, and we receive it; but is there nothing in it that is not understood? Who can convert into a sunbeam the inscrutable philosophy of the Federal Headship of the Second Adam? And also here and there in non-prophetic Scripture are there not even statements that are confessedly obscure? But who is so presumptuous as to turn rare difficulties into universal objections, and thence to infer that all Scripture is not understandable? Let prophecy be fairly dealt with. If there be the devoutly desirous mind, if pains be taken to ascertain the grammatical common sense of words and sentences, and to compare Scripture with Scripture, if there be patience, and perseverance, and the prostration of the will at the feet of God’s will,’ ( then one shall as surely know, in the main, the prophetic mind of the Spirit, as that the Spirit has so expressed his mind at all. All this, however, is no more than the Gospel itself requires in order to its being understood. As in the Gospel, so in prophecy, the Spirit speaks on purpose to be understood. He himself describes it as "a lamp shining in a dark place;" but what sort of a light is that by which we cannot see? He calls it " a sure word of prophecy:" but how do words assure us if they give us not their meaning? " Ye do well/’ he says, " that ye take heed to it:" but how can we heed what we cannot think of? The Holy Spirit even shows us that his own honor is involved in our being able to understand his predictions:no prophecy, says he, ever came by the will of man, but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Ghost, and therefore it is that prophecy is as a light in a dark place that is, is not a darkening of counsel by words without knowledge (2 Peter 1:19-21). He expressly tells us the purpose of predictive prophecy:"to show to his servants the things which must come to pass" (Revelation 1:1); but what kind of a showing is that which does not show at all? He pronounces a special blessing upon those " who read and hear the words of the prophecy, and keep the things which are written therein " (Revelation 1:3); but how can he bless our reading and hearing what we cannot know, and how^ shall we keep what we have not got? So obvious is it that the Spirit’s predictions are a reflection of his own mind to our minds, and that his use of prophetic language is fraught with a Divine frankness and perspicuity.

Moreover, his providence in the past is a historic demonstration. Refer to any prophecy fulfilled. Lay alongside Deuteronomy 28:1-68 the history of the Jews 1500 years afterwards, more than 3000 years afterwards, and did ever mirror give back more accurately the face of the beholder, than the actual sufferings of that people the very words of the Spirit in their plain grammatical sense? He called Cyrus by name more than 150 years before his birth, and said that he would open before him the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron, that he might deliver the elect people from Babylon, and say to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built, and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid; and did not the identical Cyrus appear on the stage of action at the proper time, and were not the things foretold done to the very letter? When, in words so many, in oracles so lofty, all along the ages so vast, the Spirit had pre-written the life and doings of Messiah, did ever pen of history record more exactly events of the past than pen of prediction events of the future? Even the least events were minutely measured by the words of prediction, and were such an answer to the words as is a river to each little crook in the channel; the thirty pieces of silver, the spitting, the scourging, the thirst, the vinegar, and all the rest, being as strictly in occurrence as they had been in prediction. Statements, too, that might well have seemed inadvertences in the use of words as that Messiah should die as a malefactor and a slave, an object of hatred, a butt of ridicule, and yet that he should have honorable burial were accomplished in every word. And, O wonderful! the Virgin Motherhood did that prediction mean just what it expressed? A virgin mother! Impossible. Against all experience, against creation’s laws. And learned conceit wags its head, mouthing the criticism, Figurative, Mystical. Ah, but the Holy Spirit had said it, and in the simplest, frankest way possible; and when, 700 years afterwards, the time had come, a virgin mother Mary WAS. Can demonstration go further, that the Spirit means us to interpret his predictions according to the established usage of language? But you say, There are figures of speech in prophecy. Yes, and do not yourselves abound in the use of figures? Are they not the current speech of daily life? When the Holy Spirit predicted that the future Messiah would say, " Many bulls have compassed Me," " Dogs have compassed Me," are not the figures instantly detected and clearly interpreted? When Cyrus is represented as addressing Jerusalem and the temple, is not the meaning self-evident? And if, in any instance, it be doubtful whether there be a figure, a patient examination of the connection will generally be satisfactory. But you say, the symbols of prophecy they at least are riddles insolvable. Well, look at the Colossus of Daniel the metallic image. The prophecy itself interprets it. And so it is with many symbols. When, however, symbols are left unexplained, not seldom a comparison of Scripture with Scripture will make them plain; the symbolic interpretations given, so many and various, being examples of interpretation, and, besides, what is foreshown in symbol being foretold in other forms elsewhere. Patience, perseverance and humility will rarely fail to bring you in contact with the essential fact in the symbol, and advance your instruction in righteousness. And now shall we embrace that obnoxious dictum, that unfulfilled prophecy can be understood, even in the main, only after the fulfillment? Does the Holy Spirit say so? Where? Just the contrary, as we have seen. It is expressly unfulfilled prophecy that he characterizes as a lamp shining in a dark place; that he declares to be for the purpose of showing his servants things to come. Nor is there a single accomplished prediction whose words have not been grammatically realized. Only take the terms of prophecy in their obvious sense, and you cannot but rightly anticipate the events, although the fulfillment is ahead of you. When we read, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will put the tribes of Ephraim with Judah, and will gather the children of Israel from among the nations whither they have gone, and will bring them into their own land, and make them one nation in the land, and they shall walk in My judgments, and shall dwell in the land that I gave to Jacob, wherein their fathers dwelt, they and their children and their children’s children forever, yea, I will be their God and they shall be My people, and My sanctuary shall be in the midst of them forevermore (Ezekiel 37:1-28); do not the words absolutely shut off all interpretations save one? When God said to David, I will make thee a house, and thine house and thy kingdom shall be established forever (2 Samuel 7:1-29), I will not lie to David (Psalms 89:1-52), I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom and the throne of his kingdom forever (2 Samuel 7:1-29), of the increase of his government and peace no end upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and justice even forever (Isaiah 9:1-21); are not the words a very sunshine in their clearness? And when the Spirit lets us hear the angel Gabriel assuring Mary that her virgin-born should have the throne of his father David (Luke 1:1-80), and writes for us two gene-, alogies of Jesus, whose united testimony is a redundancy of proof that he is that offspring of David to whom was bequeathed David’s kingdom, and when the Spirit adds that Jesus is as a nobleman gone into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and to return, and that upon his return he will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down, and that the Son of man, having come in his glory, shall then sit upon the throne of his glory (Luke 19:1-48); Matthew 25:1-46; Acts 15:1-41; is there a human intelligence that does not instantly see what these communications naturally and irrepressibly mean? And by the fact of the literal fulfillment of every predicted circumstance of Messiah’s first coming, does not the Holy Spirit protest against the taking in a non-natural sense what he says of the kingdom to be set up at Messiah’s second coming? It is David’s throne, David’s kingdom, the Christ is to occupy. This does not refer to Christ’s blessed reign in our hearts, for never did David so reign; nor to the Son of God’s reign in the third heaven, for never did David so reign. The language of the prediction demands that he, the virgin-born, whose name is The Mighty God, shall visibly reign on the earth as David’s lineal successor, only incomparably more gloriously; that he shall reign as a man, yet in his majesty as God, with judgment and justice, in purity and holiness, in love and blessedness. When we read that there shall be a new earth and a new atmosphere (2 Peter 3:1-18),. so glorious that the former, the present visible creation, shall not be remembered nor come into mind (Isaiah 65:17); that there shall still be nations dwelling- on the earth after the stupendous conflagration foretold by Isaiah and Peter; that the fire shall be for perdition of ungodly men, which perdition shall be inflicted upon certain multitudes, while yet there shall be those that escape (Isaiah 66:19); that the risen saints, having returned with their Lord, shall be associated with him as kings and priests for the benefit of the nations, and with him shall rule the nations (Revelation 1:6; Revelation 2:26; Revelation 3:21); that the animal creation shall be so adapted to the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox (Isaiah 11:1-16) can you imagine a greater explicitness of statement? Does the Spirit not speak as meaning to be understood? But you say. I have always thought of that tremendous conflagration as sweeping away from the earth all the inhabitants. Whence, then, did you get the thought? Not from what the Spirit tells you; for he declares the very opposite. But you continue, It is absurd to construe literally the statement that the lion shall eat straw like the ox; it is contradictory of the lion’s nature. Well, if it is figurative, what does the figure signify? To find out this were like hunting for the lost pleiad, and would require the telescopic vision of a superhuman mind. Against the lion’s nature? Yes, and it is against the nature of a virgin to bear a son; but the Holy Spirit once said that so it should be, and so it was. But you say again, What mistakes students of prophecy are constantly making with regard to the date of the Lord’s coming. Have their mistakes come, then, from simply being guided by the words of the Spirit? On the contrary, his express words are, " It is not for you to know the times and the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power." Signs of the coming are given us, but the date is hidden. Comparatively few, however, are the students of prophecy who are so unwarrantably betrayed into such mistakes. In fine, the Spirit’s expressed purpose is to show us things to come. His predictions are obvious ideas, for he bids us give heed to them. His predictions are light, for so he names them. His predictions are grammatically simple and clear, for so his providence has demonstrated them. If, then, we have no interest in prophecy, we dishonor the Holy Spirit. If we take no pains to understand what he has been at so much pains to cause us to understand, we fail so far forth to put ourselves in communication with him. And, saith the Lord, " Them that honor Me I will honor." The intelligible mind of the Spirit is the spirit of prophecy. In the second place, the Holy Spirit in prophecy gives us a great deal to understand. In fact he crowds the Bible with his prophetic communications. And, by the way, the abundauce of them is further confirmation of their explicitness; for why should they be so immensely many, if, for the most part, we cannot understand them? Does the Spirit pleasure himself at puzzling us with enigmas? a cynical pleasure long drawn out. But to the point before us.

Certainly he is graciously revealed in his other teachings. His adorable relations in the Godhead his office as the Comforter ’his ministration of salvation to individual souls, in all this he is the very and wonderful love of God. And yet to himself all this has not seemed to be enough. He would instruct us as to the future," and more and more enrich us with his own thoughts and purposes. And that his prophecies are so very many, illustrates how important to us he regards them as being. The proportion of prophecy in the Bible is enormous. Excluding the merely historical parts, the predictions occupy perhaps two-thirds of Scripture; and if also we exclude the predictions that have been fulfilled, those yet to be fulfilled are, as to the remainder of Scripture iii preponderating proportion. Now this is a remarkable status of the. Word of God. We might have argued that the truths of personal salvation must have the precedence in amount of space. On the contrary, the Holy Spirit has argued that saving truth is as the foundation, prophetic truth as the superstructure; that the constituent parts of a superstructure, like the bricks in a building, are to the stones of the foundation as many to one; and that just as a foundation without its superstructure serves not its purpose, so saving truth without the prophetic truth is in an imperfect condition, being detached from its proper development. The exceeding proportion of prophecy in Scripture, then, is a most instructive fact. What stores of sacred learning the Spirit has thus been treasuring up for us! So that if it seem not to us that, for our highest Christian wellbeing, we are dependent, in no small degree, on so large an array of Scripture, we are no less than at war with the mind of the Spirit.

What variety of subjects, too, within this wide range of unfulfilled prophecy! Nations, empires, individuals; judgments, blessings, glory; doctrines, experiences; the dappled history of the Church along this dispensation; the restoration of Israel; the great apostasy with its truculent aspect; the rise, character, development, and overthrow of the imperial Antichrist; the Christ as coming again, his Epiphany and Parousia; the judgment of the nations, the judgment of Christendom; the First Resurrection; the risen saints joint kings and priests with their Lord; the kingdom established, the throne of the great King earth’s central splendor; the supreme effusion of the Holy Spirit; earth’s renewal, the world’s millennial blessedness; the final outbreak of rebellion, the final subjugation, the sudden, complete, everlasting eradication of evil; the kingdom of the Christ, the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, one kingdom, in unquestioned sovereignty; the tabernacle of God on earth, God dwelling with men, no more death, neither sorrow, nor any more pain. An immensity of interests. Momentous subjects all. Verily a vast deal concerning the future the Spirit has given us to understand.

Now wherefore? Because in this fore-written history of the times to come, our own personal interests, as Christians, are illustrated and enforced. Our souls are touched on every side. Our knowledge is increased; not a vague generality of knowledge, like as that we shall be happy hereafter, but. knowledge made up of many facts, bristling all over with salient points; and knowledge is power. Our historic instinct is gratified; for as in the history of the past we have an intellectual pleasure in noticing how the principles of human action, as exemplified in events, have been characterized as good or bad, so in this predictive history of the future, what high mental satisfaction in observing the consummate results of the very principles now at work and influencing mankind.

We see that ultimate is the consecutiveness of sin and perdition, of godliness and glory; and we expand into the sublime thought, that God’s universe is one organic whole in the interest of truth, and law, and justice, and righteousness, and love. Our feelings with regard to the great hereafter are illumined, stimulated, intensified; for as, like a panorama, these tremendous events are acting before us in prophetic vision, the greatness of the scenes is thrown back upon ourselves, for we shall be there, and we are lifted into the majesty of conviction, and the glow of self-respect. Meanwhile all present things take on a subdued look, the world’s businesses, excitements, and friendships lie low, comparatively, in our estimation. We are breathing a purer air. Our trust in God’s providence is quickened and enlarged; for in these ultimate events, as being the harvest of the ages, we see how minute must be now his observation of men, and yet how all-comprehending the sweep of his plan, and we warm into acquiescence in the present sovereign control of affairs. Our appreciation of the whole Bible is promoted; for even its non-prophetic revelations, in the light of this predicted future, shoot forth into charming display. This effect was produced by certain predictions already accomplished: there, for instance, was God’s revelation of the Levitical Ritual; it was prediction that vindicated the Divine wisdom therein, and made consummate both priest and victim in him who should be wounded for our transgressions. And so as to predictions yet to be accomplished. How poor were the significance of Israel’s calling as a peculiar people, except for prediction exalting them into the children of the Better Covenant, into the radiating centre of the world’s salvation, into a predominant position among the peoples of the ages to come! What, to us, were the value of God’s revelation, that David should be king, did not prediction reveal his appointment therein to be type and earnest of the Messianic King? That the blood of Jesus Christ cleauseth from all sin is a most gracious revelation; but it is prediction that designates the far-reaching magnificent consequences of that cleansing, making the grandeur of result answer back to the grandeur of cause (the atonement), and lighting up the truth with a noontide of splendor. That the believer is one with Christ, as the branch with the vine, is a Divine assurance most grateful; but prediction is the arithmetic of its preciousness, and sums it up in a far more exceeding and eternal wealth of glory

Yes, the Blessed Holy Spirit has good reasons for the abundance of his predictions. He knows our needs, and his benevolent mind sympathizes with us. No wonder that his prophecies loom within the Bible horizon in Alpine proportions. No wonder that from Genesis to Apocalypse they stud the expanse of revelation like stars in the sky, and make of the Bible a luminous whole. No wonder that here and there, again and again, they shine like the sun in the heavens, turning night into day, melting winter into summer, vivifying truth with foliage and color and fruit. No wonder that out of the bubbling spring of the Protevangelium the woman’s promised seed on and on, all the way to the gorgeous vision of the New Jerusalem, they have flowed like a fertilizing Nile, meeting indeed in their course with many a cataract of calamity foretold, but watering the deserts of human thought, and causing sorrowing souls to blossom like the rose.

If, then, we turn away from earnest, humble, patient, devout study of prophecy, slighting the wonderful things which the Spirit has given us to understand, substituting there for our own guesses and worldly prejudices, are we not contemning his wisdom, are we not grieving his love? And if we find ourselves bemoaning a lack of spiritual power, and that our churches, like the fig tree in Gospel story, while putting forth leaves of outward prosperity, are yet without fruit, would the cause be far to seek? For if the Bible of the Spirit is a lamp to our feet, the prophecies of the Spirit are the brightness of its flame; if the Bible of the Spirit is a tower into which the righteous runneth and is safe, the prophecies of the Spirit are at once the massiveness and the loftiness of the tower. The instructive mind of the Spirit is the spirit of prophecy.

Thirdly, the Holy Spirit in prophecy is pre-eminently a witness for Christ.

It is his own declaration that " the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." He does indeed bear witness to Christ in the non-prophetic Scriptures; as in the law of God, in the truth of the Atonement, in justification by faith, and otherwise. In the prophetic Scriptures, however, not only is all this essentially included, but the Christly testimony is more; more in bulk, since the predictions are so numerous, more in completeness, since the predictions are the unfolding of the final issue. For what were salvation without its consummation? Somewhat of a torso a decapitated blessing; a present good, yet partial, because without a delineated future. The Christ is but defectively revealed, except he is seen in the advancing final results of his work. A prophetic witness to Christ the Holy Spirit has been from the beginning. Doubly so in the Old Testament, wherein his predictions embraced both comings of Christ; singly so in the New Testament, wherein his predictions are limited to the returning Christ; but wherein, in attitude intent, and with index finger, he is evermore pointing us onward to the Christly glories, and with voice urging us to utmost devotion in hastening the day of God. His predictive testimony to Jesus is what the Spirit loves to maintain. The Gospel of Jesus is the Gospel of "the Spirit. But the Gospel of Jesus is the Gospel of the kingdom; for he told his disciples that to preach the kingdom of God was that for which he was sent (Luke 4:43), and accordingly, as it is said, he did go everywhere preaching the Gospel of the kingdom (Matthew 4:23). Now what Jesus preached the Spirit preaches, for he had the Spirit without ^measure. The Gospel of the Spirit is the Gospel of the kingdom. It was the delight of Jesus’ heart, it is the delight of the Spirit’s heart.

What, then, is the Gospel of the kingdom? The Gospel of repentance, faith, forgiveness, acceptance, eternal life, is not that it? Yes, but also it is more. Personal salvation from sin, reconciliation with God, is indeed essential to one’s entrance into the kingdom; for the kingdom, in the person of the great King, is grounded on his redemptive sufferings and priestly functions. But just as the Saviour’s expiation of sin is itself not the kingdom, so the believer’s personal salvation is itself not the same as his investiture with the kingdom. Every saved man is sure of the kingdom; but his being saved and his having the kingdom, while linked together as cause and effect, are two distinct things. The Gospel of the kingdom is the good tidings of the kingdom; and while in those good tidings is included the Gospel of salvation by faith in the atoning Saviour, they are also our assurance of the perfection of that Gospel; they are the ultimate expression of the efficacy of redemption, the fulness of the Spirit’s statement of salvation, the glory of the Saviour at the highest point of conception. This is what the Spirit in prophecy is so actively engaged in testifying of Christ. He works to lift our eyes up and away from that inadequate view of the Saviour, that the church is his kingdom. Instead, he fastens attention to the nobleman’s return from the far country, bringing his kingdom with him, as the transcendent expression of Christ. He commemorates to us the Thessalonian believers, who, having " turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God," did then complete their Christian position by taking the attitude of " waiting for his Son from heaven." Thus two-fold is the purpose of his predictive testimony to Christ: first, to teach us, and prompt us to, a yet greater and worthier honoring of the Saviour, both as to the efficacy of his saving work and as to the final consummation of his triumph as Saviour; and secondly, thereby to bring us into a more complete expression of experience and character. Hence the pains the Spirit is at to make the Gospel of the kingdom attractive; sketching that scene of royalty in such colors as to the appreciative eye are vivid realizations; representing the King in his beauty, around him the risen saints crowned and enthroned, earth at her jubilee, holiness ruling the world, and Jesus, the Lamb of God, the glory of it all. Not to study the Spirit in prophecy, therefore, is so far forth not to study Christ. Nor are we fully in communion with the Spirit, if, in defiance of his teachings, we are yielding to that worldly notion, so prevalent in the church, of social progress gradually dissolving in universal blessedness, and so we are not yearning for and expecting that Epiphany from heaven, the miraculous introduction into the earth of the kingdom of God. Oh, there is a thrilling sense of redemption in the prophecies. When Jesus, in the way to Emmaus, expounded the predictions concerning himself, the hearts of the disciples burned within them; and when the Holy Spirit, whose own was the burning power of those words of Jesus, speaks to us of that same Jesus in the sublime oracles of the future, what a blaze of power should be in our hearts! The Christly mind of the Spirit is the spirit of prophecy.

Fourthly, the Holy Spirit in prophecy glorifies himself.

It is the prerogative of Deity to make a display of the Divine glory. As the Father asserts his Eternal Majesty, and the Son, while yet in submission to his Filial relation, asserts his equality with the Father, so the Third Person of the adorable Trinity, while yet in submission to his Processional relation, asserts his equality with both the Father and the Son. Not otherwise could the Eternal Three in One enter into communication with men; and it were a forfeiture of the Divine character of the Spirit’s revelations, if he himself were hidden in them out of sight. It is what we should have anticipated, then, that his sublime oracles of the future would have upon them the impress of his own Personal glory.

We find, accordingly, that he does assert himself in prophecy with a surpassing solemnity. " The blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. Whosoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit shall not be forgiven, neither in this age, nor in that which is to come." This warning was spoken by the Lord Jesus in honor of the Holy Spirit, but the Spirit himself inspired the evangelist to write it. Now there is a prediction in it; for in addition to its being said, that the man committing that sin shall never be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come, it is of course implied that if there shall be one committing that sin in the age to come (and the Scripture is express that there will be more or less of sin in the millennial age), he shall not be forgiven. So much of a prophetic word is in it, and it is the Spirit’s solemn assertion, in connection with the age to come, of his own Eternal Majesty, his adorable sacredness, and of how indispensable, in the salvation of men, his power shall continue to be. But he further asserts it with a surpassing sublimity. What wonderful works of grace he prophetically ascribes to himself. True, every word -of the present salvation is the Spirit’s self-assertion of his glory; but nowhere else, as in the Gospel of the kingdom, is his self-assertion so glorious. What a wonder it were, if a whole nation, without the exception of a single individual, were converted to God. But that very marvel of Almighty power and grace is no dream. His own predictions claim that he will pour upon the seed of Israel the spirit of grace and supplication, and they shall look on him whom they pierced, and shall mourn as one mourneth for an only son (Zechariah 12:10); and he will put his law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts, and none shall say to another, know the Lord, for they shall know him from the least of them to the greatest of them, and their iniquity shall be forgiven, and their sin be remembered no more (Jeremiah 31:33-34); and they shall inherit the land forever, the branch of his planting, the work of his hands, that he may be glorified (Isaiah 60:21). Yet what is a whole nation’s conversion to God, as compared with that of a world? when Israel’s light shall flood the globe, and kings shall come to the brightness of her rising (Isaiah 60:1-22), and all peoples, made willing in the day of his power, shall remember and turn to the Lord, the skies pouring down righteousness, salvation growing up from the earth, the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance forever (Psalms 22:27; Isaiah 45:8; Isaiah 32:17). Nor is this all. For as once the Spirit moved upon the dark face of the deep, and there was light, so, his predictions assure us, he will again move upon what he calls this groaning creation; and at his touch, " the mountains skipping like rams, and the little hills like lambs," all things shall become readjusted, creation’s groans be hushed, earth appear in a new garniture of beauty, beasts of the field and fowls of heaven and creeping things of the ground transformed, neither carnivorous beast nor poisonous creature desecrating God’s world for evermore, and we, though now so opaque in person and character, shall brighten over the laughing earth into a light like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal (Romans 8:1-39; Hosea 2:1-23; Isaiah 11:1-16; Revelation 21:1-27).

Now what transcendent works of the Spirit. Topmost achievements of his grace and power. And has he told us of them without designing to win us into a larger appreciation of his preciousness to us, and thereby to promote our worshipful reverence of him? These prophetic splendors, as though a mere background, do but project into view the seraphic intensity of the trinal ascription, Holy, Holy, Holy! The adorable mind of the Spirit is the spirit of prophecy.

Fifthly, the Holy Spirit in prophecy is the minister of righteousness. As in precept, doctrine, exhortation, so in prediction, his purpose is to draw us away from sin, and advance us in righteous living. The one pervading theme of his prophecies is Christ; every one of them, if not directly, then indirectly, referring to him. And what but Christ is the power of righteousness? Any event seen to be connected with him, even if distantly, is a stream of holy influence; just as the woman felt his health-giving virtue while yet touching but the hem of his garment. - Read the harrowing prophecy, still in process of fulfillment, of the calamities of the Jews, and does not the cheek tingle at that continuous doom of unchristianness? Witness the prophecy of the Four Great Monarchies, and while you see beforehand that gigantic image ground to powder, and are in the midst of the confused dust of gold and silver and brass and iron and clay, you stand aghast at the devouring jealousy of a Holy God when Christ is rejected. But in his direct prophecies of Christ how signally the Spirit serves the cause of righteousness. Forewarning us of yet fiercer conflicts with the world-rulers of this darkness, the spiritual armies of wickedness, he averts unhappy forebodings, and magnifies the free grace of the Gospel as the power for service, by assuring us that the great dragon, the old serpent, called the Devil and Satan, the people of God shall overcome by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. Picturing the peeled and suffering Jews looking upon him Whom they pierced, he makes us see that they become all righteous by the blood that cleanseth. Arraying before us the Ancient of days sitting, his garment white as snow, the hair of his head like pure wool, his throne fiery flames, his wheels burning fire, he shows us the Son of man coming, coming to the Ancient of days, coming with the clouds of heaven, giving the wicked nations to the burning flame, receiving dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples and languages should serve him; and we turn with horror from the atheistic sentiments now so threatening among the nations, and clasp the faith of Christ as our only refuge from ungodliness and anarchy and perdition. He writes down for us that word of Jesus, "Behold, I come quickly," and associates with it the prophecy:" He that is unrighteous, let him do unrighteousness still, and he that is filthy, let him be made filthy still, and he that is righteous, let him do righteousness still; " and we see that character at the last is a fixture, projecting itself into the eternal state, and we think of the only force that betimes can revolutionize character the blood that takes away sin, the faith in Christ that works by love.

Moreover, what express emphasis the Spirit puts upon prophecy in its bearing on a holy life. Does he warn against the loss of the soul? " The Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels." Does he speak of subduing the lusts of the flesh? " When Christ, your life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory." Does he command sobriety of life? "Yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night." Does he exhort us to patience in the midst of sufferings? "The coming of the Lord draweth nigh." In fine, would he have us deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world? "Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ."

Now the predominant sin of the church is love of the world. It invades our thoughts, supplies our motives, captivates our affections, damages our religious service; rules in our families, is the keynote of our social arrangements; deadens the spirituality of deacons, elders and vestrymen, poisons the meditations of the preacher, robs the sermon of its unction, shuts off the congregation from the demonstration of the Spirit and of power. Against it the Spirit warns. But precept and exhortation are not enough. We need vividness of impression. We need to SEE the working out of worldly principles and methods. It is the Spirit’s prophecies that supply this need. His brilliant coloring of the world’s approaching catastrophe, his panorama of the final disasters of our boasted civilization, his startling prevision of the miraculousness of the introduction of God’s kingdom into the earth these are the teachings that break the spell of the enchanter, and for the sleepiness of mere hearsay substitute the very sight of the roaring lion of the tribe of Judah. Worldliness cannot live in the prophetic fires of the Second Coming.

Thus is it that prophecy is pre-eminently the ministry of righteousness. And it is largely because of the neglect of it, largely because the Spirit’s fore-written history of events to come is unstudied, unthought of, unknown, that Christians’ lives are so far away from Gospel living, and the churches are cold and formal. The holy mind of the Spirit is the spirit of prophecy. In the next place, the Holy Spirit in prophecy is the Minister of joy.

Certainly he is the Spirit of joy outside the prophecies. But all the joy of present salvation is not sufficient for our wants. So the Spirit himself has decided, since, by reason of his itemized predictions, he multiplies the joy. Certainly we can trust God, though we see not a step before us. Yet knowledge is good. The specifying of one’s blessednesses is an enhancement of the blessedness. Hence the size of the Bible; including so many things solely for the purpose of amplifying our sensibilities.

One joy of prophecy is that of knowing God’s plan as to the varying fortunes of the Gospel. What are now the Gospel’s circumstances in Christendom? With an eye to its spiritual power, do we see it in the ascendant? The facts are the other way. Multiform denials of the faith. The very basic elements of salvation rejected, contemned, ridiculed, even in high places of the professing church itself. The disproportion in Christendom as regards a personal profession of the Gospel enormous. Certainly there are more true Christians in the world to-day than ever before; but also there are more people in the world than ever before, and the disproportion is as huge as ever. And as regards the minority making the profession the ratio of spiritual reality to unreality microscopic; a minority within a minority. A tiny lump of sugar in a gallon of coffee. And has it not always been so? The three thousand at Pentecost, in itself a magnificent triumph, was but a minim out of the myriads in Jerusalem that day. And to-day more than a billion of mankind know nothing of the saving virtue of the Lord Jesus. Whence is our comfort as regards the destiny of the Gospel? If you point to Japan, and say, Behold, a mighty nation getting ready to proclaim Christianity as the national religion, at once the bluff fact strikes us in the face that they are fascinated by the material prosperity of Christendom; and obtrusive is the inference, as is that of a theorem in geometry, that, having nationally adopted Christianity, they will only have become like the other so-called Christian nations. Or if you say, In spite of this outlook, we have the word of our God that the Gospel shall ultimately prevail, I answer, Yes, even a general assurance from God we clasp to our hearts. But how much more assuring it would be, if God were so good as to lay before us his plan for the future of the Gospel. And God has been so good. We learn from the prophecies that the state of things around us is just what was foretold from the beginning; and also, as to what is yet before the church, that atheism and blasphemy and moral corruption will be holding high carnival at the time of the Lord’s coming, and the Antichrist, the Colossus of falsehood and crime, shall then be at the acme of his imperial sway; but that then him, the man of sin, the son of perdition, the lawless one, the Lord Jesus shall destroy by the Epiphany of his coming.

Then shall Christ reign, putting all enemies under his feet, and the succession of the redeemed be as the dewdrops daily issuing from the womb of the morning.

Pessimism, you say? No, not pessimism, but optimism of the most effective kind. While recognizing what is patent to every eye, the never-diminishing numerical majority against the Gospel, we yet know God’s plan, and we triumph in the assurance of the all-conquering Epiphany of Jesus out of heaven.

Here, then, is history written before. We see the mile-posts of the future. Trees in the great black forests are notched to blaze the way of the coming jubilee of the Gospel. Things are not at loose ends. God’s purpose is fixed, his eye watchful, his hand over all. It is our joy of specific knowledge; the joy of particularized assurance; a balm for depression, a cordial for our fears. Accordingly, in times of persecution, the Church has always found her refuge in prophecy. With the early Christians ill their conflicts with pagan Rome, with the Waldenses in their conflicts with papal Rome, the very service-book, the vade mecum, was the Apocalypse. A joy it is to be apprised beforehand of the course of events leading on 10 victory. We have but to stand in our place, and give our testimony. God will take care of his Gospel.

Another joy of prophecy is that of anticipating completed redemption. What is completed redemption? The salvation of a soul is that not redemption? Yes, and glorious indeed; still only partial redemption. A whole world of saved sinners, is that not redemption? Yes, and yet more glorious; still only partial redemption. The advancement of all saved sinners to the honors and the glories with which the boundless God may 11 the eternal state, is that not redemption? Yes, and more and more glorious; still only partial redemption. For are we to consider man apart from his home? How incongruous, if a drunkard were reformed, and elevated to respectability and dignity, while yet his home were left in the disgraceful condition inflicted by his drunkenness; the house still infested with filth and disorder, the window panes shattered and ragged, the fences broken down, the garden overrun with weeds, unkempt and uncared for. What is home? Is there a forlorner wretch than the man without a home? Now has not earth been fitted up as the home of mankind? When God expended upon it his six days’ creation work, arranging it, furnishing it, making it very good, did he mean it for only a temporary abiding place? And when sin came, did it strike the inhabitants only? Didn’t it wrench and impair the frame of creation? Even the atmosphere was worsened; for now it made necessary to man the wearing of clothing. In his Edenic state the esthetics of his soul were inconceivably higher, purer, sweeter, so that the clothing, which is now so much an expression of the beautiful, would have been in that superior condition of being an impertinence, a smear; his conceptions of fitness and beauty being so far above the present possibilities of culture, as a Raphael’s Madonna the daub of a Hottentot. Man fell not only from holiness into sin, but also, and by consequence, from the heaven of the science of the beautiful into a beggary of thought and feeling. And the point is, that the chill, piercing winds of winter, themselves the result of man’s sin, and making clothing a necessity, are ever reminding him of this downward transition, as though they were a sort of human conscience, and themselves a part of the human self. Milton stated it none too strongly:

" Earth felt the wound, and nature from her seat, Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe That all was lost." And now when redemption came, did it stretch forth the uplifting hand to the inhabitant alone, and not also to the home? Besides, forasmuch as the scenes of inconceivable beauty that draped the unfalleu earth were what touched into consummate action the pure aesthetics of unfallen man, it follows that the restitution of earth to at least its original beauty is a condition precedent to regaining for man his lost sense of the beautiful. The redemption of man himself takes along with it the redemption of the earth. Not till then will redemption have been completely realized. And this is what the Spirit in prophecy authorizes us to anticipate. The creation, he says, groaning and travailing in pain together until now, is waiting, in earnest expectation, for the manifestation of the sons of God; having been made subject to vanity in hope that itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God (Romans 8:19-22). Thus the inhabitants and their home: the one the reflection of the glorious freedom of the other. So fixed and sure is this purpose of God, the earth and its atmosphere are represented as thrilling with hope, and stretching out the neck in longing to catch the dawning of the day of regeneration. That deliverance will be somewhat as when the worm has become a butterfly: so much more beautiful now than before. Crisp and delightful as is often now our morning air, and charming as are so many landscapes, the earth then shall be so far superior to what it is now. Matter, which ranges from iron ore or granite rock to the imponderable ether pervading the universe, is capable, by the manipulation of God, of taking on a heavenly magnificence. Matter the Eternal Son of God took into personal union with himself, and lo! with a brightness above that of the midday sun it dazzled to blindness Saul of Tarsus. Matter, sown in corruption, shall be raised in incorruption; sown in dishonor, shall be raised in glory; sown in weakness, shall be raised in power; sown an animal body, shall be raised a body with Divine life from the Spirit. And then " the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be seven-fold " (Isaiah 30:26). And yet " the moon shall be confounded and the sun ashamed, when the Lord of hosts shall reign in Mount Ziou, and before his ancients gloriously " (Isaiah 24:23). And so " we look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness" (2 Peter 3:13). That will be redemption completed.

Now is not this a joy of anticipation congenial to the human soul? next to that of friendship with God, the greatest joy conceivable? Says Dr. Chalmers, in his sermon on the new heavens and the new earth, To think of our future locality as " a lofty aerial region, where the inmates float in ether, or are mysteriously suspended upon nothing, where every vestige of materialism, is done away, certainly tends to abate the interest with which we might otherwise look to the perspective that is on the other side of the grave." " It altogether holds out," he continues, "a warmer and more alluring picture of the elysium that awaits us; when told, that there will be ground to walk upon, beauty to delight the eye, music to regale the ear, smiles that play on the human countenance, accents of kindness that fall in soft and soothing melody from the human voice." It only needs that matter shall be clarified of the evil effects of man’s sin, to bring it into heavenly harmony with heavenly man, and to make the earth a heavenly seat of the kingdom of heaven for which we are praying. O joy that warms the heart, that contents us to bear the whips and stings of suffering, that makes heavenly-mindedness attractive! The joyous mind of the Spirit is the spirit of prophecy.

Finally, the Holy Spirit in prophecy is the promoter of Christian foreign missions. In one of his most important oracles he foretells that " this Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations, and then shall the end come." Not when the Gospel shall have been truly received by all nations, but when it shall have been preached as a witness to them; not when the world shall have been converted, but when it shall have been evangelized. The nearer, then, we are to that great objective point, the evangelizing of all nations, the nearer we are to the end of this world-age; nearer to that revelation of glory, of which the scene on the Mount of Transfiguration was the earnest and demonstration. Not universal success in converting men, but universal activity in calling them to conversion is the crisis of the world’s history.

Now what a motive is this for the urgency of aggressive Christian work. The Church’s business is to testify the Gospel " whether men will hear, or whether they will forbear." Her success is to be measured, not by the number of her converts, but by the extent and thoroughness of her testimony, and by her taking out of the nations a people for his name (a very little flock it may be), Acts 15:14. And grand success it is, even though her converts be not more than as one grain of wheat in a bushel of chaff; for merely by her spread of the Gospel message she is hastening on the day of the Lord. The heathen may reject the missionary’s good tidings in as large numbers as do the evangelized masses of Christendom. The churches at home may grow worldly, the tares everywhere luxuriant, the goats multiplying faster than the sheep. Churchmen may call in question the claims of world -evangelization, and, by statistical figures, which are said, by a grim sarcasm, not to lie, prove to their own satisfaction that missions are a failure. In heathendom, as in Christendom, pride may deify the human intellect; science, so-called, may wag its cerberus heads at the crucified Jesus, and philosophy, perverted, with its Briareus arms, essay to unseat the Lord God Almighty. Discouragement may cloud the prospect to those true-hearted stewards of the Gospel who, unfortunately for themselves, are dwelling in the low valley of unprophetic Christian thought. But to the workers on the mountain top of prophecy, how farreaching the view, what a horizon of triumph; for when, by God’s blessing, in spite of indifference or ridicule, the faithful shall have testified the message amongst all peoples, the Lord Jesus himself shall take care of the rest. He will come, he will come! His arrows shall be sharp in the heart of the King’s enemies; going forth conquering and to conquer on behalf of truth and meekness and righteousness. And how much the sanctified enthusiasm of this prophetic prospect has had to do with the progress and achievement of foreign missions may be seen in such names as Marty n, Wolf, Heber, Gutzlaff, Bettleheim, Duff, J. Hudson Taylor and his 300 missionaries in China, Guinness, Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftsbury (clarum and venerabile nomen), and others:men, whether in foreign lands, or workers at home for the cause, hot with missionary zeal, and students of prophecy, sympathizers with the mind of the Spirit. But why speak of lesser names? The greatest missionary of the Christian ages, he who dwelt with rapture on creation’s hope of the manifestation of the sons of God; who did not believe that Christian culture and civilization would gradually develop into the millennium, but emphasized the predicted falling away in the professing church, and the perilous times in the last days; who was ever looking for the Epiphany of the Lord’s presence, and the miraculous introduction of his kingdom; what were his labors as a foreign missionary? From the falling of the scales off his eyes at Damascus, till he sat behind the grated windows of Nero’s prison; whether journeying in deserts, traversing seas, beaten with stones, clanking his chains; whether on the beach at Miletus, or scaling Mount Olympus, or on Mars’ Hill, or in a Philippian prison; who can compare with him as to work done and difficulties encountered? At that marvelous recital forced from him by his detractors " In labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft; of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one, thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and day I have been in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness " can we help exclaiming with Erskine in the British Parliament, " Great God, what a salary for a faithful minister! " But his love of Christ and his prophetic faith bore him onward. And triumphantly he carried the Gospel of the kingdom from Antioch to Illyricum, from the Euxine to the pillars of Hercules; and in less than a quarter of a century he had evangelized twenty nations, besides the islands of Cyprus and Crete. The missionary mind of the Spirit is the spirit of prophecy.

Look back now over this rapid sketch. The spirit of prophecy is a composite of characteristics, Divine and human, a focus of excellencies; for like a sun-glass, prophecy converges to a point the Spirit’s rays of light and heat, and sets the soul aflame. The intelligible mind of the Spirit, the instructive mind of the Spirit, the Christly mind of the Spirit, the adorable mind of the Spirit, the holy mind of the Spirit, the joyous mind of the Spirit, the missionary mind of the Spirit, these are the spirit of prophecy. Take away what of the Holy Spirit prophecy gives us, and, comparatively, how little we should know of him. Would we have a livelier enjoyment of his fellowship? O Blessed Spirit of God, who art thyself our patient, gentle, untiring Companion and Friend, by day and by night, without whom never a spiritual consolation felt, never a duty well done, never a trial sweetly borne, never a triumph in death, and by whom not seldom we are rapt into a speechless pleasure of worship, can it be, by this love of thine, that we have the heart to slight what thou hast been at pains to teach us? We hear thee say, " He that hath my Word, let him speak my Word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? " With bowed heads and smitten hearts, reverently, lovingly we answer thee, Amen and Amen!