PROPHECY
Hign up above the sunset of literally a dying world, a
sunset black and lurid, there hung one lonely blazing star - Enoch, the only
saint of God lifted up before us in a prelude to the last judgments, the Epistle
of Jude. There was born into the world a
child who has never died; a man whom the Holy Spirit carefully calls "the seventh from Adam" (Jude 14) - that is, a type of all who
will enter earth's seventh millennium, the "sabbath-rest"
that remaineth, without seeing death, the man who, as the first preacher of
the Second Advent in the oldest extant bit of literature in the world, held
aloft a blazing head-lamp of prophecy pouring a stream of light down five
thousand years; and a man who fulfilled his own peculiar rapture-prophecy by
never dying. His years were three hundred and sixty-five: it was a completed life, a
finished work, an ended discipline, a won crown: it pictured God's year of
grace rounded off with the deathlessness of the rapt.
1 - Prophecy Delivers Us from
Dangerous Illusions
Prophecy
presents us with the fixed termini to which all things are streaming; so that
we understand the present by means of the blazing headlamp in front,
illuminating all the shining lines that run from our very feet up to the far
goal. Dr. Clifford says of the Great War:-
"At first we were stunned when the blow fell upon
us so suddenly and unexpectedly. Speaking for myself, I felt as though I could
not pray for two or three days. The
hopes that had been cherished for half a century and seemed to be approaching
their realisation were speedily and suddenly blighted." Those who ignore or disbelieve prophecy are
under dangerous illusions, and coming events will shake and possibly shatter
the very foundations of their faith. God
does not say that prophecy is a dark place, in which it is unwise for us to
grope: He says that it is the lamp, and the only lamp, that luminates
the darkness of a mysterious and otherwise unintelligible world. How dangerous these illusions are! The religious leaders of Israel never believed for a moment that their
dispensation would end in the awful catastrophe of Calvary:
yet it did. The unimaginable
consequences that can only be averted by prophecy, should lead us to its study
in spite of its difficulties. Says a prophetic student:-
"One excellent man advised me not to trouble
myself about secret things which belonged only to God: he seemed to imagine
that I was seeking in revelation for something not revealed. Another observed that much in Scripture was
purposely concealed in order that faith might be exercised. Here, however, common sense rebelled and
forced me to conclude that if God had really given us a revelation, He must
have intended the teaching to be understood; since any part that was
incomprehensible, of necessity ceased to be a revelation at all. A third bade me beware of the Apocalypse,
which, said he, almost always finds a man mad, or makes him so: whereas we are
distinctly told that the Lord gave it 'that He
might show unto His servants things that must shortly come to pass.' A fourth insisted
that prophecy can only be interpreted by the event. But Noah's prediction was surely intended to
be understood by those to whom it was addressed. I began to perceive that if differences of
opinion, even among good men, as to the particular teachings of the Bible, were
to be converted into reasons for neglecting the study of it,
the Book had been given in vain."
Prophecy disillusions of this world that it may entrance us with the
next.
2. - Prophecy Alone Can Shape the
True Conduct of the Church
A
sharp cleavage now (as ever) sunders the Church of Christ.
Prophecy says that our Lord, employing
the enormous forces of the Godhead will absorb and master the kingdoms of the
world on His return, establishing righteousness; while, according to the
ordinary view, the Church must permeate and leaven society until she has made
the world fit for Christ to return. The
two attitudes are un-reconcilable. "But,"
says the objector, "both you and we look for the same ultimate triumph; you by
revolution, we by evolution; why, then, make such a fuss when our goal is the
same?" Because the practical
issue of the difference between us is what is bringing the Church to the edge
of total ruin. If the task of converting
and mastering the world belongs to the Church, the Church must plunge into
politics, redress all wrongs, reform all kingdoms, and enthrone itself upon the
nations of mankind - the very attempt the Papacy has made;
and since by no torture of exegesis can such conduct be made to square
with the Scriptures, the Scriptures must be abandoned as uninspired and out of
date. The goal of the one is Rome: the goal of the
other is the Apocalypse of the Lord. "Depend upon it, gentlemen," Dr. Chalmers once said to his students as he left the lecture hall,
"the Millennium will come in one day like a
hammer smash." Prophecy
instructs us what forms spiritual perils are going to take; by revealing what
is to come, it prevents our wasting energies on what is impossible and unwise;
it enormously strengthens our faith by showing us predictions fulfilling under
our very eyes and it keeps hope burning deathlessly in our hearts.
3 - Prophecy Foretells Approaching
Evil in Order to Prevent Its Advent
Prophecy
is no easy acquiescence in coming evil: rather it creates what a mother feels
when she sees a serpent gliding stealthily towards the cradle. Edmund
Burke unconsciously expressed the whole philosophy of prophecy when he said:- "If they (the
moderate reformers in the French Revolution) had
thought it possible such things would happen, such things would never
have happened." Had
the Antediluvians believed Enoch and Noah, and turned to God, there would have
been no Flood: the whole world perished because it did not heed prophecy. "The
long-suffering of God waited” (1 Pet. 3: 20) for a repentance which never came. Nineveh's
destruction was foretold, that it might not happen, and - because they believed
- it did not (Jonah 3: 4, 10).
Untold harm is done irreparable harm -
by sceptical doubts expressed by one believer to another, doubts chilling,
bewildering, paralyzing the mind which at the very
moment is opening to fresh truth. Doubts
had better not be propagated. While Rome
(to take a single example) is advancing by leaps and bounds, nine out of ten
believers scout the very idea, with the consequence that, while the Church
doubts and discusses and debates, almost unopposed and unhindered the leaven of
Mystic Babylon does its deadly work. We
ought to pour out our life's blood to resist evil foretold. Thus we can so take heed to the
Lamp shining in the dark place as to defeat all evil prophesied for
ourselves. Prophecy is
the anchor which keeps the soul from despair, and the face filled with the
light of another world; it lives on the table lands with God, looking, like
Deity, before and after; it absorbs the mind of God, the purposes of God, the
plans of God; it walks in the radiant certainty of Divine control, and the
utter triumph of goodness at last.
4 - Prophecy is Bound
by the Holy Ghost upon every Child of God
"Whereunto ye DO WELL that ye take heed" (2 Pet. 1: 19),
that ye "bend your mind" in systematic and continuous study: God
approves, endorses, and commands prophetic study; and even the greatest
prophets studied prophecy, as Daniel studied Jeremiah. "The prophets sought and SEARCHED DILIGENTLY what time
or what manner of time the Spirit of God did point unto, when IT
[HE] testified beforehand" (1 Pet. 1: 10).
Seventeen books of the Old Testament,
four of the New, and immense portions of the rest - it is said, a third of the
Bible - are pure prophecy. Prophecy is
God's mind concerning the future projected into the present; its study brings
us into peculiar intimacy with God, even as Jehovah, when about to destroy Sodom, said,- "Shall I hide from Abraham
that which I do?" (Gen. 18 : 17); and the future that God has revealed is the
future that I ought to know.*
[*
Jude states that mockers at Second Advent truth will abound at the last.
Dr.
A. E. Garvie, in an address which "captured the assent" of the International
Congress of Congregationalists in Boston
(July, 1920), said:- "As
most thinkers to-day have abandoned the idea of fore-ordination, so I am
convinced they must give up the idea of fore-knowledge. All prophecy is conditional, and all
calculations of times and seasons based on a misinterpretation of Daniel and
Revelation may be unhesitatingly discarded as superstition." When an
infidel once interrupted Duncan
Matheson in a Northern town with the taunt, "Well,
when is He coming?" the
evangelist, taking the Bible in his hand, exclaimed, - “Oh, this is a wonderful Book! Eighteen hundred years ago it
foretold scoffers, walking after their own lusts, who would say, Where is the promise of His coming? I call you to witness that this
Scripture has been fulfilled to-day in your ears."]
5 - Prophecy is an Extraordinary
Incentive to Service
No
mightier missionary force has moved the modern world than the impetus which has
put more than a thousand missionaries in the vast land of China.
What did it? Hudson
Taylor says:- "Very
early in my life the Lord's near return gave me to see that the hope of His
Coming is the paramount motive given us for earnest, holy service here. Someone speaks of it as 'cutting the nerve of
missionary effort.' I wish to bear
personal testimony that it has been the greatest personal spur to me in
missionary service." Few
evangelists of this generation have swept more souls into Christ in world-wide
evangelism than Dr. Wilbur Chapman. Dr.
Chapman says:- "I
confess with shame that, prior to reading Mr. Blackstone's 'Jesus is Coming,' I had very little passion for souls. That book completely revolutionised my
thinking, giving me a new conception of Christ, and a new understanding of what
it meant to work for Him." It is said that Mr. Moody never preached a
sermon without the thought that by that sermon the last soul might be called
into the Body of Christ for rapture.
6 - Prophecy Makes This World a
Preparation for the Next
One
of the only two men ever honoured, throughout the history of the world, with
immediate translation to God lived in the midst of a society encompassed with
domestic cares and marriage problems. "Enoch walked with God after he
begat Methusaleh" (Gen. 5: 22).
Marriage is no bar to achieving one of
God's highest honours, and the home can be the nursery of the saint. But Enoch's life proves much more: it proves
that a life can be the most shining in a darkness that is as pitch. "The Lord saw
that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination
of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually," "and the earth was filled with violence" (Gen. 6: 5). One of the most eminent statesmen in Europe, and a
member of the British Cabinet, said:- "People talk about the world on the morrow of the Great War
as if somehow we had all been transformed into a sphere which is definitely
lower than that which we had attained in the days before Armageddon. Never was
there a time when people were more disposed to turn to courses of violence, to
show scant respect for law and country and tradition and procedure than the
present. There never was a time when
more complete callousness and indifference to human life and suffering was
exhibited by the great communities all over the world." Our times demand, exactly as Enoch's, that we
should live at our best; and Enoch not only proves that we can,
but that God takes supreme notice, and puts supreme honour on the best when
others are worst. Oh, that we may
succeed in being most holy in the most unholy times! Prophecy prepares us for the other world;
for it is based on the First Advent, and lives for the Second. "Everyone that
hath this hope set on Him (the returning Christ) purifieth
himself, EVEN As HE IS PURE" (1
John 3: 3).
7 - Prophecy Brings Us into the
Closest Intimacy with God
"Enoch walked with God after he begat Methusalch"; "and
Enoch walked with God": a repetition which is
not a tautology, but an emphasis, revealing the ground of all that followed. God created man that he should walk with Him,
even as they walked together in Eden;
and Enoch walked with God while all others were walking
away from God. Enoch was not, so to
speak, thrown accidentally into God's company; he lived in the society of God;
their aim was one: walking with God
means progress all the time, and being really, actively, eminently,
perseveringly godlike - godly; walking in the ways of God, walking in the
ordinances of God, walking in the commandments of God. To walk with God is simply Old
Testament language for what in the New (Heb. 11: 5)
is to please God. We
must walk with someone ; and "the sum of my experience," said a dying saint, "is this, that the sweetest life is to walk close to God."
"It is
heaven on earth," said Tennant,
the friend of Whitfield, "to live near to God."
Enoch must have paid the
everlasting cost. Mr. Moody has well expressed what walking with God involves:- "I will venture to say that
Enoch in his day, was considered a most singular and visionary man - an
'eccentric' man - the most peculiar man who lived in that day. He was a man out of fashion - out of the
fashion of this world, which passeth away. He was one of those who set their affections
on things above. He lived days of heaven
upon earth; for the essence of heaven is to walk with God. He did not go with the current and the crowd. God and he were companions here on earth, and
they went up together to the world of light and rest; and they walk together
for evermore. Oh, dear friends, though
we may be children of God, how much we shall lose if we sacrifice, for any
earthly thing, that close intimacy with God in this
world and through the ages of eternity." Are we walking with God? It is now or never. Some of the unconverted Greenlanders heard that the world would be destroyed;
and as, in that case, they would have nowhere to go, they expressed the wish to
be converted; but they added, "as it will not be this year, we will come in next season."
But the people at the Flood never
found another season. It is only a constant walk with God that
can meet the emergency of sudden rapture. Every other man walked towards the grave, but
Enoch walked towards life and light and God.
So
we arrive at the tremendous climax. Enoch's
star suddenly disappears in the Dawn. "And he was not"; or as Paul puts it, "he was not found" - happy is the
man who is missed! not found, for his body
was gone: "for God took him";
the Hebrew means, took to Himself (Calvin); and Paul makes
what is meant unmistakable, adding, "that he
should not see death."
Death never dared to look
into the eyes that kindled into immortality. The setting of the statement is extraordinary.
Ten patriarchs, in whose every case but
one the chief thing noted is that he died; in the chapter fullest
of death in the Bible, suddenly, at the seventh name, there comes the flash of
immortality; one deathless life illumines a chapter of constant death. The
manner of Enoch's disappearance must have been secret, for, since he was "not found," he must have been searched for: his
removal was a representative removal, and so shows the secrecy of
the coming flight: we are told that every eye shall see Him descending, but we
are never told that any eye shall see them ascending. God showed in the very dawn of the world that
the body is to be redeemed as well as the spirit [soul]; that godliness is extraordinarily profitable; that
the ultimate home of His heavenly people is in a world beyond; and that
personal holiness, as well as personal faith, is to characterize the removed. "By faith Enoch was translated"
- not only the act of faith, but the life of faith; first saving faith, then
faith step by step as he walked with God; including a passionate faith in
the Second Advent (Jude 14): "and he was not found because God translated him; for before
his translation he hath had witness borne to him that he had been
well-pleasing unto God" (Heb. 11: 5).
What wealth of meaning lies hidden in -
"he was not! "
"He was not" any longer a toiling,
suffering, sorrowing servant of God: "he was not"
any more baffled by Satan, tempted by the world, struggling desperately with
the flesh: "he was not” vexed any more with
the filth and savagery and horror of a devilish world: "he was not" any longer sternly battling in the
midst of an unbelieving Church and a godless world: "he was not" face
to face with the agony of horror-struck multitudes, with faces white with
terror, flying up the mountains.
D. M. PANTON.