02.00.4. Forward
FOREWORD
These studies in messianic prophecy were first given as class lectures at a minister’s post-graduate course at the Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, Ill. The deep interest evinced in the subject by the earnest students there assembled has emboldened me to offer these studies to a wider audience. The subject is, I feel, timely. For a long time rationalistic scholarship has put the Old Testament aside as a trustworthy revelation. The Graf-Wellhausen theory particularly has made many doubt the veracity of the ancient Scriptures. But the turn of the tide has come. The views of that school have been found untenable. The so-called "settled conclusions" of higher criticism have become unsettled, and scholars are re-establishing the earlier faith in the Old Testament; the writings of Moses and the prophets, as the divine Word in literature. Once again we see that one face, which, far from vanishing, stands out in its majesty and beauty from the ancient pages. Messianic prophecy is coming into its own again. The truth of Christianity rests on the dependableness of the Old Testament. The GOD who in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, is the same who in times past spoke of His Son by divers manners and in sundry places unto the fathers by the prophets. For He was ever the theme which GOD delighted to dwell on. As the delights of the creative Wisdom of GOD - even before its incarnation, were with the sons of men: "Rejoining in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men" (Pro 8:31), so GOD delighted to speak beforehand of Him; the glories of His person, human and divine, and the work for GOD’s glory and man’s happiness, He would in the fullness of time come to accomplish: "Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me" (Psa 40:7).
The traditional veil of prejudice still hides from the eye of the Jew, be he never so pious and intelligent, the glory of the LORD in the Old Testament: "But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same veil untaken away in the reading of the Old Testament; which veil is done away in Christ. But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart. Nevertheless when it shall turn to the LORD, the veil shall be taken away" (2Co 3:14-16). But the hour is not far distant when the lonely and hungry heart of Israel will turn to the LORD; and then will the darkening veil of unbelief be taken away, and the vision of Messiah’s glory in the ancient Scriptures become the witness of a new-born and sanctified Israel to the ends of the earth.
May these unpretentious pages be used by the LORD to hasten that day!
Max I. Reich