Importance of Studying Prophecy by Stephen N. Haskell

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 17, 1915

Importance of Studying Prophecy

By Stephen N. Haskell

S. N. HASKELL

The prophet Amos declares, “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.” Amos 3:7. The first announcement of the gospel contained a wonderful prophecy extending over a period of seven thousand years. It reads as follows: “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” Gen. 3:15. From that day to the present, the crushing of the serpent’s head has been a symbol of the fate of Satan.

Christ was the seed that brought salvation to the human family. As he entered upon his mission, he said, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.” Mark 1:15. The life and death of Christ was a literal fulfillment of more than forty prophecies. The gospel message, as given by the Saviour himself, was based on the prophecies previously given. The “time” that Christ declared to be fulfilled was the sixty-nine prophetic weeks which the angel Gabriel made known to Daniel. “Seventy weeks,” said the angel, “are determined [or cut off] upon thy people.” That is, 490 years were given to the Jews as a people, after which the gospel would go to the Gentiles. Sixty-nine weeks extended to Messiah the Prince. Messiah means anointed (John 1:41, margin), and Christ was anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power when he was baptized. Luke 3:21, 22. Seven years more reached to the stoning of Stephen, when the disciples who “were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word.” Acts 8:4. The time when these events took place is given in the margin of the Bible as A. D. 27 and A. D. 34, as foretold by Daniel. Dan. 9:26, 27.

The starting point of the seventy weeks, as given in Dan. 9:24-27, was “from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem.” This was in the seventh year of Artaxerxes, or 456½ B. C. Ezra 7:7, 8. This date was established by more than twenty eclipses, as well as by the New Testament chronology. The time of the crucifixion was foretold even more definitely than this. “The midst” of the seventieth week marking the time of the crucifixion would be half of seven years, or three and one-half years. The month and the day were predicted by Moses

more than fifteen hundred years before—the fourteenth day of the first month, between the two evenings. Compare Ex. 12:1-8 (margin); Matt. 27:46. God is particular in fulfilling his word.

For fifteen hundred years the Passover was celebrated, and every Passover was a prophecy pointing to the death of Christ; but the Jews as a people failed to recognize the time and manner of this event. As Jesus rode into Jerusalem to be crucified, he uttered the following solemn words: “If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.”

The destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman army, and the scattering of the Jewish people from one end of the earth to the other, is a commentary on the preceding scripture. If the destruction of the Jewish nation and its city is the result of not knowing the time and manner of the first advent of Christ, as foretold in the prophecy of the seventy weeks, then how will it be with the Gentile Christians who know nothing of the period in Dan. 8:14, from which the seventy weeks were cut off? The 2300 days, or years, extend 1,810 years this side of the time the gospel went to the Gentiles. The prophecy reads, “Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.” If so much depended upon Israel’s recognizing the events that fulfilled the prophecy of the first 490 years of this great prophetic period, how important that God’s people at the present time be familiar with the events that fulfill the prophecy relating to our time. The Jews were busy with a form of worship, but they failed to look for the fulfillment of the prophecy due in their day, and thus were cast off from being God’s peculiar people. In like manner if we fail to have our attention centered on the fulfillment of the portion of the great prophetic period due in our day, we shall fail to “watch,” and the close of probation will come as a thief to us, and we be lost.

“Satan invents unnumbered schemes to occupy our minds that they may not dwell upon the very work with which we ought to be best acquainted. The archdeceiver hates the great truths that bring to view an atoning sacrifice and an all-powerful Mediator. He knows that with him everything depends on his diverting minds from Jesus and his truth. . . . The subject of the sanctuary and the investigative judgment should be clearly understood by the people of God. All need a knowledge for themselves of the position and work of their great High Priest. Otherwise, it will be impossible for them to exercise the faith which is essential at this time, or to occupy the position which God designs them to fill.” —“The Great Controversy,” page 488.

The typical sanctuary was cleansed by the blood of beasts, but the heavenly sanctuary will be cleansed by the precious blood of Christ. See Heb. 9:11-24. The cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary, or the antitypical day of atonement,—the time of the investigative judgment,—is one of the most important prophecies to which our attention can be called at the present time. Our salvation depends as much upon a knowledge of this subject as did the Jews’ upon a knowledge of the time and manner of Christ’s first advent.

The nations are angry. Earthquakes are in divers places. Every characteristic of the condition of society given in the Word of God as a sign of the last days, is seen wherever we turn. While we do not know the day or the hour either of the ending of probation or of the second coming of Christ, we do know that we are in the last days of the last generation of men.