03.09. CHAPTER IX.CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

PART II. THE DIVINE PERSON.

CHAPTER IX.

CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT.

"In the Volume of the Book, it is written of me." Psalms 40:7. The argument from prophecy we have put foremost, because God Himself does. This is the very seal and signature by which the Holy Scriptures are certified by Him, as of divine origin and authority. The author of this Book of Books attached to the volume clear credentials, open to examination, easy of investigation, conclusive in attestation. Other signs of supernatural origin and character there are, which can be appreciated only by prolonged and diligent study, disciplined intellect, varied acquirements; but here is a sign, a seal, a sanction, which lies upon the very face and surface of the document, appeals to the common mind, carries its own verification within the lines and limits of the Word itself. The most ordinary reader may examine the curious predictions of the Messiah’s person and work found in the Old Testament; follow the gradual progress of these revelations from Genesis to Malachi, and trace the prophecies as they descend into details, more and more specific and minute, until at last the full figure of the coming One stands out, as the figure of the Corsican corporal stood out upon the Column Vendome; nay, if he will not only read but search the Old Testament Scriptures, he may trace the Messiah from his birth in Bethlehem all along through his career of suffering and of conquest, as he might follow the career of Napoleon in those memorial reliefs along the spiral bronze that wraps that column. Then with this image clearly fixed in his mind’s eye, he may turn from the Old Testament to the New; and beginning with Matthew, see how the historic personage, depicted by the Evangelists, corresponds and coincides in every particular with the prophetic personage, portrayed by the prophets; let him, after this new image has reached its full outline also, take the New Testament profile of the Christ and lay it over the Old Testament profile of the servant of God; let him note how feature coincides with feature, even to the most minute particular; how in every respect the history fills and fulfills the prophecy. There is not a difference or divergence, yet there could have been no collusion or contact between prophet and narrator, for they are separated by from four hundred to fourteen hundred years. Observe, the reader has not gone outside of the volume itself: he has simply compared two portraits; one in the Old Testament, of a mysterious coming one; another in the New, of one who has actually come; and his irresistible conclusion is that these two perfectly blend in absolute unity. No reasoning is required: instinctively, intuitively, he leaps to the conclusion, by the quick logic of common sense, that one hand drew the image in the prophecies and molded the portrait in the histories, and that hand must have been divine!

Mark also that this conclusion is a double one: it compels the candid reader to accept the prophetic Scriptures as infallibly inspired, and to accept the historic Christ, toward whom these glorious fingers of prophecy point and in whom all these rays of light converge, as a divine person. The apostles and Christ Himself laid great stress upon this argument from prophecy: it was not only the main, but almost the sole argument employed, in the discourses outlined in the New Testament. There was then no need to prove the facts of our Lord’s life, death and resurrection: these things were "not done in a corner," as Paul boldly said to Agrippa. The history needed vindication and verification, no more than day dawn needs announcement. Even the foes of our faith dared not dispute the facts, set forth by the evangelists. An overwise and overnice higher criticism may at the distance of eighteen centuries challenge us to prove to a mathematical certainty that Jesus rose from the dead, but it is noticeable that, during the first three centuries of hot contest, when every step of advance on the part of Christianity was marked with blood, it was not necessary for apologists to defend the fact of the resurrection which even the enemies of the cross had not the boldness to dispute. As in those days the facts were plain, it was only necessary to show their marvelous correspondence with the Old Testament prophecy, in order to carry prompt conviction to every fair mind; and so this was the common method of preaching the gospel, the solid but simple rock-base of argument upon which rested all appeal. Our risen Lord Himself, walking toward Emmaus with two disciples, "beginning at Moses and all the prophets, expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself." They had been despairing at his death, and incredulous at his resurrection; yet he showed them that both his dying, and his rising on the third day, were anticipated for centuries in the prophecies, and so he rebuked at once their despondency and their unbelief, by exclaiming, "O fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?" that is, was it not necessary that all this should be, in order that the Scripture should find its glorious fulfillment! On the day of Pentecost, Peter preached a sermon which overwhelmed three thousand hearers with immediate conviction. The entire basis of his argument was simply this: that in the death and resurrection of Jesus nay, in their very crucifixion of Him, the prophecies, read every Sabbath day in their synagogues, were exactly fulfilled! He showed them how David, foreseeing that Christ should rise, had uttered the mysterious words of the sixteenth Psalm; how that Joel, foreseeing the outpouring of the Spirit, had long ago written of the very Pentecostal blessing they were then witnessing. And it was by this appeal, in which prophecy and history met in one burning piercing point of convergence, that those thousands were pricked in their heart.

We trace Peter’s discourse in Solomon’s porch, and in the palace of Cornelius; Stephen’s address before his stoners; Paul’s speeches and sermons, in the synagogue at Antioch, in Persia, and in Thessalonica, where "three Sabbath days he reasoned out of the Scriptures, opening and alleging that Christ must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead," and that this Jesus whom he preached was the anointed one. We follow this same Paul till he comes before Agrippa; his appeal still is, "Believest thou the prophets?" And when we get our last glimpse of him at Rome, he is still "expounding and testifying concerning the kingdom of God, persuading concerning Jesus, both out of the law of Moses and out of the prophets, from morning till evening." And so it was with Apollos, the golden mouth of Alexandria. Accomplished as he was in all the oriental learning, he chose this one all-convincing theme, and "mightily convinced the Jews, publicly shewing by the Scriptures that Jesus is the Christ."

Why was this argument from prophecy then so common, so mighty, now, alas! so seldom used with real force and power? Why was this great argument chosen, out of all the armory of weapons, to defend an assaulted faith and compel the very assailants to surrender? Because this argument is unanswerable; because it is perpetual in its force, and because it is applicable always and everywhere. And that we may all feel its mighty suasion, let us patiently enter somewhat into particulars. The prophecies and references to Christ in the Old Testament, which are expressly cited in the New, either as predictions fulfilled in Him or as previsions applied to Him, number three hundred and thirty-three. These are passages of scripture, some of which contain in themselves a little group of predictions, including several particulars, so that they stand out in the firmament of prophecy, not like single stars, however bright, but like constellations in which are clusters of radiant suns.

These prophecies may be divided into two great classes: first, those which portray Christ in His human nature, His lineage, career, sufferings and glory; in His successive manifestations until the end of the world; secondly, those which describe His character and offices, human and divine. Each class may be divided again into some twenty subdivisions, covering with astonishing fullness and exactness the most minute particulars; the audacious pen of prophecy, with the calmness and boldness of conscious inspiration and infallibility, adds feature after feature and touch after touch and tint after tint, until what was at first "a drawing without color," a mere outline or profile, comes at last to be a perfect portrait with the very hues of the living flesh. This mysterious coming One is to be the seed of the woman, born of a virgin; He is to be of the family of Noah, and branch of Shem; of the race of the Hebrews; of the seed of Abraham in the line of Isaac, through Jacob or Israel; of the tribe of Judah, the house of David. He is to be born at Bethlehem, after a period of seventy weeks* from the issue of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem; His passion or sufferings, His death on the cross, His embalmment and entombment, His resurrection on the third day, His ascension into the heavenly glory, His second appearance in glory at the "regeneration," and His last appearance at the end of the world, are all included in the delineation of His humanity and human career as the Son of Man.

*Properly heftades, or divisions of seven. The second grand division of these Messianic prophecies includes His double character as the Son of God while yet the Son of Man; as the Holy One or Saint; as the Saint of Saints, the righteous or just One, the Wisdom of God, the Oracle or Word of the Lord God, the Savior or Redeemer, the Lamb of God, God’s servant, the Mediator, Intercessor, Advocate or Daysman, Shiloh or Apostle; Prophet like Moses; Priest, High-Priest like Aaron; King like David; Prophet, Priest, King in one, like Melchizedek; Chief Captain or Leader like Joshua; Messiah, Christ or Anointed; King of Israel and God of Israel; Jehovah, Lord of Hosts, and, as though all titles were exhausted, as "King of Kings and Lord of Lords."

I. The first class of predictions which arrests our attention is Direct Prophecy concerning the august personage known as the coming Messiah. The gradual unfolding of this flower of Messianic prophecy is marked by three stages or periods of development. The first ends with Moses, and may be called the Mosaic; the second centers in the reigns of David and Solomon, and may be termed the Davidic; the third closes with Malachi. and may be called the properly prophetic, and, because here prediction rises to its loftiest altitude, the climacteric. These three periods correspond, in plant life, to seed, bud, and full-grown flower.

1. The Mosaic period gives us the great germ of all that unfolds, afterward, into the perfect and fragrant bloom in the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valley. In Genesis 3:15 we are told that the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head. To feel the full force of this germinal prophecy, we must stand where our first parents stood. The awful fact was before them that the serpent had fatally stung humanity at the very heart, and brought death into the world, and all our woe. Eden was lost, God’s favor forfeited, and innocence forever gone. That deliverance could come at all was wonderful; that it could come by the seed of her who led the way in the first sin was more wonderful still; that it should not only bring healing to lost man, but a crushing blow to the very head of the serpent-tempter, was most wonderful of all. Yet all this was mysteriously wrapped in that first enigma of Messianic prediction. There was to be a triumph of humanity over the evil principle represented in the serpent, and exhibited in the fall. And now this seed-prophecy, puts forth its slender blade, and begins to branch out into particular predictions. The general, vague promise narrows down; the deliverer is to come of the posterity of Shem; later still the promise grows more specific, and limits this deliverer to the descendants of Abraham, then of Isaac, then of Jacob, then of Judah, and finally of David. The prophecy thus branches out into more and more minute particulars, until the ramifications of the prophetic tree reach the tiniest twig; and yet, with each new descent or ascent into particulars, the prophecy becomes the more impossible of fulfillment if no divine purpose and power are behind it. The prophecies of the Mosaic period branch out into other particulars beside those of pedigree. Not Abraham’s seed alone, but all the families of the earth are to be blessed in this coming One. He is to be a Shiloh, the peaceful or pacific One, and unto Him, as a sceptred Ruler, the people are to gather. He is to be a prophet like unto Moses, yet clothed with higher authority and gifted with higher wisdom. Lawgiver, Leader, Ruler, Redeemer Rex, Lex, Lux, Dux.

2. The second stage of Messianic prophecy has been called the Davidic. Here, he who was to be a leader and a lawgiver like Moses, is to be a king of war like David, yet a prince of peace like Solomon; only his kingdom is to be without succession and without end, which could be true only of some order of royalty higher than human. In the Messianic Psalms, various aspects of the dignity, royalty and divinity of this coming King are set forth. He is God’s anointed Son. His sceptre sways even the heathen: redeemed humanity constitutes his chosen bride and the day of the nuptials is the feast day of the universe. Psalms 2:1-12 Psalms 45:1-17, Psalms 22:1-31, etc. His empire is to be as wide as the world, as long as time, yet it is to be spiritual, conferring peace by righteousness. He will be the friend of the poorest and most obscure. Like rain on the mown grass, His rule shall distil blessings that make the barren soil fertile. Liddon sees in these prophecies in which his name is represented as enduring and propagating, a hint that He himself shall be out of sight, ruling invisibly in his church. His people are clad not in a panoply of steel but an armor of beautiful holiness, serving willingly. This King is also a priest, anointed with the oil of celestial gladness, fairer than the children of men, yet himself a son of David.

3. Messianic prophecy soars to its summit in the third and properly prophetic period, represented by Isaiah, whose writings furnish us the "richest mine of Messianic prophecy in the Old Testament."* From the fortieth to the sixty-sixth chapters, inclusive, we have one continuous Messianic poem, a most wonderful production even for an inspired pen. This sublime song is not a mere rambling rhapsody, without link or joints of connection, but a continuous symmetrical discourse in poetic parallels, setting forth for future ages the complete character and career of this servant of God. The first five verses of the fortieth chapter contain the germ of truth unfolded in the whole poem, viz: the pardon of iniquity, the revelation of divine glory, and the ultimate blessing to all flesh, which are to come by this mystic Servant of Jehovah. The discriminating reader may within the compass of this poem find Christ in his three offices, prophet, priest, king; will behold, crystallizing about the atonement, all the great truths of Redemption, and may trace in outline all the future course of redemptive history.

*Liddon, "Divinity of Christ" p. 83. A singular refrain, repeated in the same words, "there is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked," and at the very close of the whole poem, repeated in more terrible terms: "their worm shall not die," etc., divides the poem into three cantos or sections; and in the very center of the middle book, to mark the very jewel which occupies the innermost shrine, what do we find? that fifty -third chapter, in the compass of twelve verses, fourteen times declares the truth of vicarious atonement, that this man of sorrows bore our griefs, carried our sorrows, was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement laid upon Him brought our peace, and the wales on His back assure our healing. Observe, we advance just half way from that fortieth chapter to the sixty-sixth, and in the very heart of the Messianic mine, we find one glorious central chamber, blazing with rubies it is flooded with light, but the light is blood-red! The Spirit is conducting us to the doctrine which is central both in prophecy and history, that Jesus died to save sinners.

Around this central chapter cluster many other subordinate but starry glories. This Servant of God, called from his mother’s womb, upon whom God puts His spirit, is anointed to preach good tidings to the meek, to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captive. The Jews have always narrowed down salvation to the chosen seed, but He is to be a light to the Gentiles, and salvation to the ends of the earth.

Under his rule, "the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf, and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them." There is to be a transformation even of disposition, that very stronghold of sin within us. Coarse, rough, savage, cruel natures are to be changed, to the gentle, tender, mild and generous. Wolfish rapacity and ferocity, leopard-like cunning and treachery, lion-like violence and cruelty, are to be subdued; and the childlike spirit is to reign in human hearts. A prolonged study alone can reveal the minuter beauties and glories of this last and greatest period of Messianic prophecy. Yet with what boldness does the inspired pen tell us how He who poured out his soul unto death, bared his back to the scourge, was led as a lamb to the slaughter; and even depict him, standing before his judges, dumb as a sheep before the shearers. This is only Isaiah. But after him, in the sacred canon, stretch three hundred years of prophecy, adding new and startling particulars to these direct predictions, until Micah elects Bethlehem as the one among the thousand cities and villages of Judea, where the coming one shall be born; and Daniel tells us that it shall be after seventy weeks from the going forth of the commandment to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, an enigma now of easy solution. The decree of Cyrus dates 457 B. C.; add the thirty-three years of Christ’s ministry and you have 490 years, just seventy heptads of seven years each.

We are not surprised when Liddon triumphantly affirms that the human life of Messiah, His supernatural birth, His character, His death, His triumph, are predicted in the Old Testament with a minuteness which utterly defies the rationalistic insinuation that the argument from prophecy in favor of Christ’s claims may after all be resolved into an adroit manipulation of more or less irrelevant quotations. No amount of captious ingenuity will destroy the substantial fact that the leading features of our Lord’s human manifestation were announced to the world some centuries before He actually came among us.

We have barely touched upon the outskirts of the theme: the vast field lies yet before us.

II. The testimony of indirect prophecy is even more wonderful. We must be content with only a glimpse, leaving our readers to explore for themselves, while we indicate only which way lie the openings to these galleries of wonders.

What we have termed indirect prophecy may include:

1. Poetry not primarily or apparently Messianic.

2. Ceremony, in which are typical foreshadowings of Christ.

3. History, in which we can now see a hidden allegory; or historical personages, types of some aspect of Messiah’s character.

4. Paradoxes, which only the facts of Messiah’s history can unlock.

5. Undesigned coincidences which are accidental, so far as man is concerned, yet providential.

I. Prophetic Poetry. Take, for instance, the Psalms. Where such a man as William Alexander, Bishop of Derry and Raphoe, has left his footsteps like prints of gold, we may well hesitate to attempt, within such narrow limits, even an outline of argument. In his "Witness of the Psalms to Christ and Christianity," the Hampton lectures for 1876, he has given a magnificent specimen of both expository and apologetic literature. With the peculiar insight of a Christian scholar, he first applies six grand criteria as tests of single prophecies:

1. Known prior promulgation;

2. Sufficiency of correspondence;

3. Remoteness, chronological and moral;

4. Non-isolation;

5. Characteristic, but not over-definite particularity;

6. Worthiness of spiritual purpose.

Then he divides the Psalms into the subjectively, objectively and ideally Messianic, and then shows how our Lord’s character and life are there delineated, and how the character of Christian disciples and of the Christian church is clearly portrayed in poems that antedate Christ’s coming by a thousand years. As a specimen of the Witness of the Psalms to Christ, let us take Psalm XXII. There is nothing here, as in direct prophecy, to hint its designed application to the Messiah. It is, on its face, simply the wail of some sufferer abandoned to the malice of his foes. Yet set Jesus within it, and, like a blazing light in a cavern, he makes it all literally radiant with meaning. The opening cry: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!" was the last of seven sentences uttered on the cross "that voice of utter loneliness in the death-struggle, which the noble-hearted rationalist, Schenkel, confesses to be that entirely credible utterance, because it never could have been invented."* * Alexander, 19. Who is this forsaken one? Observe the peculiarities of his position, circumstances, character, sufferings, and see what key fits this complicated lock. Five particulars arrest attention, which closer study might increase again five-fold:

1. He is abandoned, scorned, abject, and crying out from anguish a reproach of men.

2. He is surrounded by enemies, fitly typified by bisons, strong ones of Bashan, lions, and dogs.

3. His suffering somehow involves fierce thirst.

4. Death is its consequence and finale.

5. There is a piercing of hands and feet which suggests, if it does not compel, the cross, which was not a Jewish mode of punishment, and had no parallel in the times of David. A closer view multiplies the particulars of correspondence. This sufferer is laughed to scorn; passers-by shoot out the lip and shake the head, saying, "He trusted in Jehovah, that He would deliver him; let Him deliver him, seeing He delighted in him;" and we recognize the exact anticipation of what took place at Golgotha. His sufferings are described in language that would not fit any Jewish mode of punishment. "I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint! my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. I may tell all my bones; they look and stare upon me. They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture."

We must leap the gulf of a thousand years to find, at Calvary, the solution of this poetic enigma. The psalmist, probably unconsciously, was drawing a picture of a crucified Christ for future believers to interpret. It is the hanging by those pierced hands and feet that disjoints the very bones; the Roman spear-thrust that lets the heart melt in the midst of the bowels like wax, and the blood and water pour out from the riven side; it is the stripping off of the raiment that leaves the dying nude sufferer to count his very bones, made more prominent by the extension of the crucified body and the wasting pangs of crucifixion; and when they parted His garments, casting lots for the seamless robe, the last correspondence was unwittingly added to complete the fulfillment of prophecy. The scholarly bishop calls attention to another feature of that twenty-second psalm, which others have overlooked. It is a psalm of sobs. The anguish of the sufferer shows itself by broken cries, and the gifted writer asks, "Who can construe a sob?" The very grammatical structure of the psalm hints that He who hung in mortal agony was too exhausted to speak, save in fragmentary sentences. The Hebrew is full of pathos. "My God, my God! why hast thou forsaken me? Far from my salvation! .... Words of my complaint!" .... And yet the agony of this sufferer is not all. He who is thus brought into the dust of death is yet to declare Jehovah’s name unto his brethren, in the midst of great congregations to praise Him; and, stranger still, that sorrow is somehow linked to the ends of the world, and a people yet to be born are to be blessed by that vicarious agony. Will any candid reader say that the crucified Savior is not mysteriously set forth in that psalm?

Christ is everywhere found in the Old Testament, as the scarlet thread is everywhere found in the cordage of the English navy, cut it where you will. The Bible may be divided into four departments, as to the matter contained therein, viz: Prophetic, Poetic, Didactic, Historic. We have already found Him to be the great theme of prophecy. Beginning at Moses, to Him give all the prophets witness. Even the minute details of His life are anticipated in prophecy; but that He should be found elsewhere in the Word is a double marvel. Yet in Luke 24:44, He Himself told His disciples, "All things must be fulfilled which are written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning me." As these three popular divisions comprehend the whole Old Testament, the Master’s words assure us that not only in prophecy and poetry, but in the law, we shall find prophecies of Him. The whole Old Testament is the book of Christ and His salvation.

Take the five books of Moses: Genesis tells of the ark saving from the flood of wrath; Exodus, of the Passover, in which the sprinkled blood brought deliverance; Leviticus, of sacrifice, the day of atonement, the year of jubilee; Numbers, of the serpent lifted up for a look of faith to bring healing; Deuteronomy, of refuge from the avenger of blood. Not only are all these symbols of salvation and types of Christ, but there is a constant development of doctrine. These types betray an order, a progressive unfolding of the truth. First, there is salvation from wrath it is by blood, by sacrifice of substitute; then it both puts away the penalty and the guilt of sin; then it ends in the jubilee of cancelled debt and release from bondage. A step further and we learn that it is all conditioned on a believing look of faith, and provides escape from pursuing justice. Sacrifice ends in atonement, and atonement in jubilee. The indirect prophecies foreshadowing the person and work of Christ cover far more ground than direct prophecy or devout poetry. In fact, open where you will, you may begin at that same scripture and preach Jesus.

2. The rites and ceremonies of the Levitical economy are comparatively meaningless until you set Him in the midst of them, to interpret them. The cross was a center of radiance, and casts its beams backward to the first sacrifice, and forward to the last supper. A single example of the foreshadowing of Christ’s sacrifice in the Levitical rites may be given from the Day of Atonement, in Lev. 16. Here the main central figures are two kids of goats, so nearly alike as to be practically identical, and distinguished, as some say, by a scarlet cord or ribbon tied about the neck of the scapegoat. One is offered for a sin-offering; the other is presented alive; over his head, while the high-priest’s hands are laid heavily upon it, the sins of the people are confessed, and then he is led away far into the wilderness, that he may never find his way back to the camp. He is called "Azazet" i.e., removal. Even a child may see here a pictorial presentation of the twofold result of Christ’s atoning work: first, the expiation of guilt; secondly, the removal of our offenses as a barrier to fellowship with God, as though even the memory of them were annihilated; and the two goats are, as near as may be, alike, because both represent different aspects of one reconciling work. A studious examination of Old Testament rites, in their relation to the atoning work of our Lord, prepares us to understand the mysterious words of the Apocalypse, and why it was that the Lamb which had been slain was the only being in the universe found worthy to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.* It is a tribute to the interpreting power of the blood of Christ. The Lamb slain is the only key to unlock the mysteries of inspired poetry and prophecy, sacrifice and symbol. The whole book is seven times sealed up, till we apply to it the blood; then the seals are loosed, and the mystic signs may be clearly read.

* Revelation 5:5.

3. Even the historic books are indirect prophecies. First, because they prepare for and point toward Him. They tell of a chosen man, family, tribe, nation, out of whom, as the consummate flower of this historic elect race, comes a divine Leader and Lawgiver, the Founder of the Church of the world. The centuries are marshaled by an invisible Power, and take up their march toward the cross of Christ; there they all find both their rallying and radiating center. Reading history in the light of the cradle at Bethlehem and the cross of Calvary, all its pages are illumined with new significance. In hundreds of instances Old Testament history seems designedly typical. Events have a double meaning one apparent and present, another hidden and future. Paul himself says of the record of Sarah and Hagar, "which things are an allegory" hinting that, behind the actual narrative of facts, there is a prophetic finger pointing to the future. Scripture biographies, like those of Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Elijah and Elisha, David and Daniel, reveal so many points of correspondence between these men and the Redeemer, that we cannot but regard them as typical characters who foreshadowed Christ in the various aspects of his many-sided character. The three reigns of Saul, David and Solomon, each of forty years, that sacred number, unmistakably forecast the three periods of church-history - the Jewish, ending in apostasy; the Christian church militant; and the Christian church triumphant in the millennial reign. Can any careful reader avoid seeing Christ in the paschal lamb? When the lamb was roasted, a spit was thrust lengthwise through the body, and another transversely from shoulder to shoulder; every Passover lamb was transfixed on a cross. When Moses lifted up the serpent, it was not on a pole, but on a banner-staff, i.e., a cross. Our Lord himself teaches us to see in Jonah sacrificed for the salvation of the ship’s crew, and for three days borne down into the depths in the belly of the great fish, and then thrown out upon the land a typical prophecy of His own death, burial and resurrection. And so full does Old Testament history seem to be of Christ, that there is a risk of carrying this perception of resemblance and analogy to a fanciful extreme, like those who in the Greek word for fish, ιχθυς, find the initials of a redemptive sentence, Ιησους χριστος θεου υιος σωτρ.

If Christ be patent in the New Testament, He is as surely latent everywhere in the Old. There are, as far back as Genesis, hints of at least a duality of persons in the Godhead; and as the doctrine of one God was the great ark that God’s people bore through the ages, this cannot be a relic of polytheism. What means this joining of a singular verb to a plural noun Elohim; the consultation over man’s creation, "Let us make man;" the threefold blessing by the priests in Numbers; the threefold rhythm of prayer and praise in the Psalter; the adoring chant of worship to the Most Holy Three in One by the cherubim in Isaiah? May there not be occult as well as explicit references to the Trinity?*

* Liddon, 48. When we read of one supreme Angel of Jehovah, in whom was the Holy name of God; the Angel of His Presence, who saved His people; a personified Wisdom of God, who so mysteriously corresponds to the Logos in John we claim the privilege of seeing at least a dim and cloudy image, sometimes taking on more distinct and definite features of the Christ whom we adore, and whom, having not seen, we love, and seem to see forevermore from Genesis to Malachi; so that every page becomes like an album-leaf glorious with some new portrait of the Son of God.

4. Special attention ought at least to be called to the Paradoxes of Prophecy, in some respects most remarkable of all the witnesses to Christ to be found in the Old Testament. A paradox is a seeming contradiction; no real absurdity is involved, but it presents an enigma which, without the clue, may be impossible of solution. The Old Testament abounds in paradoxes about the Messiah, which were, and still are, absolute mysteries, except as the New Testament helps to solve them. This coming One was to be son of God and yet son of man; born of a virgin yet his birth holy and immaculate; his form one of transcendent beauty and loveliness, yet he was without form or comeliness, his visage marred; he was to be a man of sorrows, acquainted with griefs, yet anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows; he was to be the son of David yet David’s Lord; the king of war, yet the prince of peace, etc.

If his garments were parted among the soldiers what occasion was there to cast lots on his vesture, to determine to whom it should fall? The crucifixion scene solves the problem they did part his raiment, but when they came to the seamless robe, they assigned by lot, what they were ashamed to destroy by rending it.

These paradoxes abound in all parts of the Old Testament prophecies. Sometimes they are grouped so closely and in such plain terms as to remind us of oriental puzzles, like the oracular responses or the mystery of the sphinx. For instance in Isaiah 9:6, this Messianic personage is first called a son, born to Israel; and yet what a fourfold name is applied to him? the wonderful or miracle, counselor, the Mighty God, the Father of Eternity, the Prince of Peace! A child, born as a son to a family of Israel, yet having infinite Power, and Wisdom; and this son of time is the Father of Eternity, this weak babe is the God of All Might.

Isaiah 53:1-12 presents the most startling of these paradoxes. In fact they seem designed to present a prophetic enigma which only the person of Christ can solve.

He was cut off from the land of the living, a young man and without offspring, and yet he shall prolong his days, and shall see his seed, and they shall be so numerous that even his great soul shall be satisfied. He is to be put to death as a despised malefactor, to make his grave with the wicked, and yet the sepulchre of the rich is to be his tomb. He is to be scorned and rejected of men and yet to justify many, and though himself treated as a transgressor is to make intercession for the transgressors.

If one can imagine a series of paradoxes more completely perplexing than these, what would they be! The solution, furnished in the double nature of the God-man, seems to us now, simple enough. But let us put ourselves by an effort of imagination back two thousand years in history and with the eyes of a devout Jew read these prophetic problems. How utterly hopeless all effort to explain or reconcile such contradictory statements. In fact the later Jewish doctors had recourse to the invention of a double Messiah as the only clue to these mazes.*

*Liddon, 86.

He was to be emphatically overwhelmed in adversity, and in mortal sufferings pour out his soul; and yet to see the pleasure of the Lord prosper in his hand; and while himself a victim, a worm crushed under the feet of his persecutors, he is to triumph over his victors, and divide the spoils like a universal conqueror. This divine riddle waits seven hundred years for an interpretation. Then, at the time and place indicated, a babe is born of a virgin, being conceived of the Holy Ghost; in the flesh he was a man; in the spirit, he was God; in outward surroundings lowly, poor, obscure; in essence having the glory, dignity, riches of God; a man of sorrows yet filled with the unfathomable peace of God; David’s son according to the flesh, yet the Lord of David according to the spirit. Dying on the cross, yet a young man, he travailed in soul and brought forth a seed so numerous that they shall outnumber the sands of the seashore; died as a criminal, and as a criminal his body would have been flung over the walls to be burned like offal in the fires of Topheth: but when his vicarious sufferings were finished, no further indignity could be permitted even to the lifeless body, and so it was tenderly taken down, wrapped in clean linen by gentle hands, and laid in a rich man’s sepulchre, wherein never yet man was laid. Only a virgin womb could conceive, only a virgin tomb receive, the body of God’s immaculate son. The lines of an Ionic column were once supposed to be parallel: but it was found that if produced to a sufficient distance above the capital, they at last touch. These prophetic paradoxes are like stately Ionic columns in the structure of Revelation. Their lines seem parallel, and we seek in vain any point of convergence. But projected into the centuries, they meet at last in Jesus of Nazareth, the only solution of their seeming contradictions.

How is it that, with such overwhelming proof that Jesus is in the Old Testament, any candid mind can escape the conclusion that a divine pen traced the prophecy and a divine person fulfilled the prophetic portrait. It would seem that in spite of a criticism that is destructive of everything yet constructive of nothing; in spite of a skepticism that would take away our Lord so that we know not where they have laid him, every honest man must say, the Scriptures could not have foretold the Christ if they were not inspired of God; and the Christ would not have been so foretold, the center of such converging rays of glory, if he had not been all he claimed. The sad fact is that we have yet to meet the first honest skeptic, or even destructive critic, who has carefully studied the prophecies which center in Christ. There is an amazing ignorance, if not indifference, as to the whole matter. Whatever attention is given to the Scriptures by such minds, is directed to the discovery of errors or blemishes, as though an astronomer should be so absorbed in the spots on the sun as never to consider the sunlight that floods creation and makes the spots visible. The discovery of an error in transcription, a mistake in names, figures or grammatical construction, is heralded from pole to pole; while it never occurs to these critics and skeptics, that this book must be a miracle in itself, since its slightest blemishes can attract the microscopic inspection of the scholars of all the ages!

"But," says some wise owl, "perhaps, after all, these multiplied correspondences are only accidental." Accidental? Do such objectors understand the laws of simple and compound probability? If one prediction be made and that only a general one, it may or may not be fulfilled, i.e., the chance of its fulfillment is represented by one- half. The moment another particular is added, each of the two predictions having one-half a chance of fulfillment the fraction representing the probability of both proving true is 1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4. We have passed from simple to compound probability. Now the possibility of a thousand particular predictions, centering in one person at one time, is as 1/2 raised to its thousandth power: a fractional probability too small for figures to represent.

Some ways of meeting the argument from prophecy are so unfair and uncandid that they deserve a reference, only to show how desperate is the hatred of evil hearts toward the Word of God. Porphyry found such remarkable prophecies in Daniel, that while he admitted that history had accurately verified them, even in the slightest particular, he resorted to the trick of suggesting that so exact a record could be written only after the events; and Voltaire used the same trick to evade the proof from New Testament prophecy. In this case, God has not left even this needle’s eye for such camels to squeeze through. For there is a gap of four hundred years between Malachi and Matthew. God permitted the spirit of prophecy so early to die out, and the Old Testament canon to close centuries before our Lord was born. There was a design in it. He meant that there should be no chance of collusion between the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament evangelists. There must be a long period of absolute silence between the utterance of prophecy and its fulfillment, that there might be no doubt as to the inspiration of the prophecy and the divine character of the Son of Mary.

Bolingbroke resorted to a more cunning, but not less dishonest evasion. He admitted that the death of Christ was distinctly foretold in Isaiah 53; so distinctly and with so minute detail that it forced him to believe that Jesus, by a series of pre-concerted measures actually brought on his own crucifixion merely to give disciples who came after Him the triumph of appeal to the old prophecies.

Modern criticism tries another way of breaking the force of this evidence, viz. by taking each individual prediction and saying of it, this is simply a chance coincidence, and worthless in itself as an evidence. As though one were buying a huge hawser, to hold a ship at her moorings, and should untwist it, take up strand by strand and break it with his fingers and then say to him who would sell the cable, "it is worthless: there is not a strand in it that would hold a ship a moment." Just so, but the strength of a cable is the strength of its strands braided together; and the strength of prophetic evidence is the united testimony of all these predictions. Any one might be insufficient: all in one, irresistible!* *see Gibson’s "Foundations."

Before we leave this astounding argument from prophecy, let us take one more rapid glance of review over the whole field of the evidence. At first, one germinal prediction, that branches out into minutest ramifications till the tiniest twig is reached, each minute particular increasing, in geometric ratio, the impossibility of a chance fulfillment. Jesus of Bethlehem is born and as every particular of his history corresponds with every particular of the prophecy, every branch and twig of the prophetic plant of renown grows radiant till the plant becomes a Burning Bush, and like Moses we lose our shoes and veil our eyes, for the place is holy ground.

"In the volume of the Book it is written of me." Yes, there is only one Book, and only one person - the Book manifestly written for the person; the person manifestly before the Book, to inspire it; after it, to crown and complete it. There are, as Luke said to Theophilus, "many infallible proofs." Among all external, historical proofs, prophecy is the unanswerable argument. Among all internal and experimental proofs, the one all-sufficient is the person of Christ. Abraham saw His day afar off, and was glad; Moses wrote of Him, David sang of Him, and all this is so plain that, as our Lord said, "if they believe not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead."

Even history was prophetic. "Each victory, each deliverance, prefigured Messiah’s work; each saint, each hero, foreshadowed some separate ray of His personal glory; each disaster gave strength to the mighty cry for His intervention. He was the true soul of the history, as well as of the poetry and prophecy, of Israel."*

*Liddon, 93.

Sir Joshua Reynolds closed his splendid lectures on art by saying: "And now, gentlemen, I have but one name to present to you: it is the incomparable Michaelangelo." And so all the prophets and poets, priests and historians, of the old covenant, seem to stand in reverent homage, pointing to the manger, the cross, the rent tomb, and the opening heaven, and uttering one incomparable name.

God has set His "golden milestone" in the forum of the world, and all roads of prophecy and history terminate there.

There are those who call themselves Christians who, instead of feeding on the pure milk or strong meat of the Word, are devouring the chaff or imbibing the poison of an unsatisfying, godless science or skeptical philosophy, or who pay a modern antichrist to retail the blasphemies and sneers of Voltaire and his age, in their ears; and yet they wonder at their own doubts. Nothing seems certain. They question whether the Bible be not, after all, the work of man, and whether Jesus be not at best only a myth or a mystery; whether death be not a leap in the dark, and heaven a dream of excited fancy. Poor, deluded souls! As though a disciple could grow strong and walk erect in the conscious confidence of an unshakable faith, who breathes only the stifling atmosphere of a prayerless life, and feeds on husks fit only for swine, while God’s manna, every morning fresh, may be gathered in the fields of the Word. The sovereign cure for all doubting disciples is to immerse themselves in the Word of God, as a vessel is dipped in the sea till it is filled and overflows. Nothing but God’s own truth can displace the uncertainty of skepticism.

How sublime is the attitude of our Lord himself! Standing forevermore with his hand on the Jewish canon, He calmly looks both opponents and disciples in the face and says: "Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life; and they are they which testify of me."*

* Liddon, 96.