The Witness of the Law and the Prophets

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park, Washington, D. C. · Jan 10, 1916

The Witness of the Law and the Prophets

The Jewish Scriptures to which Christ appealed consisted of the law and the prophets. Both bore witness to him as the Messiah. Both prepared his way. Both were fulfilled by him.

The moral law revealed the disease for which he brought the remedy. Its precepts were designed to convince of sin. On the other hand, the ceremonial law was suited to typify the remedy for sin. It contained a shadow of the “good things” of the gospel. It pictured the way of salvation.

What the ceremonial law obscurely typified, the prophets more plainly predicted. Both pointed to the coming Messiah. The daily sacrifices of the one and the successive utterances of the other, pointed to “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.”

The fulfillment of the moral law, the ceremonial law, and the prophets, in the character and work of Christ, is a threefold cord of evidence which cannot be broken. He, and he alone, perfectly fulfilled the precepts of the moral law. He, and he alone, fulfilled the types of the ceremonial law. He, and he alone, fulfilled the predictions of the prophets. By his fulfillment of the moral law he became a law. He translated its written precepts into living deeds. With his death the ceremonial system came to an end.—“Creation Centered in Christ,” H. Grattan Guinness, D. D., London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1896, pages 31, 32.