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PROPHECY—ITS PURPOSES

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 13, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 28.

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PROPHECY—ITS PURPOSES.

Prophecy means to foretell. Prophecy is something foretold. But the word in the Scriptures covers a broader field than this; it includes instruction on plain, practical, everyday duty. It also calls to remembrance forgotten or neglected truth. But invariably prophecy is given by inspiration of God—it is “God-breathed;” “for no prophecy ever came by the will of man; but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit.” 2 Peter 1:21.
It is in the more limited, definite, technical meaning of prophecy, that of foretelling, predicting, what is to come, that this and following articles will have to do.
In God’s plan prophecy has two great purposes. There may be others, doubtless there are, but these two are primary.
The first object of prophecy is to reveal the true God to those who are seeking to know; nay, more than this, to compel attention of the careless, and to convince the honest-hearted even among the indifferent ones. That Being who made man, who loves him with an everlasting love, would give him sufficient ground of evidence on which to base his faith. Other gods—and they have waxed and waned in multitudes since sin entered—have been forced to rest their claims on unproved words, or in the corrupt and selfish nature of man. It is a characteristic of false prophets that they demand recognition on their own claim or the asseveration of their dupes. It is “I am John,” or “I am Elijah,” or “I am Christ,” and the only confirmation of their word is the testimony of deceived followers, suggesting collusion, conscious of deception or unconscious in deception.
Not so is the evidence which God offers for our basis of faith. His law is that “in the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established.” That is the Bible law of true testimony. The testimony of these witnesses must agree, and between the witnesses there must be no possibility of collusion. In other words, God writes, records, at least twice all His revelation to man; once in prediction, promise, and precept in His Word; again in the various forms and phases of fulfilment recorded in history and experience.
Note this twofold witness in God’s purposes in giving the “more sure word of prophecy.”
In appealing to His wandering people the Omniscient Father recalls the utter powerlessness and vanity of heathen gods, and thus sets forth a characteristic of His own divinity: “Remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like Me; declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done; saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure. . . . I have purposed, I also will do it.” Isa. 46:9–11.
Men may guess and conjecture, and in a limited way, based on limited knowledge of producing forces and modifiers, declare the effects of causes, the consequences of certain courses, the harvest of certain seed-sowing. This kind of prediction is based on historical analogy and precedent, and on experience. But God knows, knows instinctively, inherently, all laws, all forces, at work, all modifiers of these forces, and all the consequences and effects to follow. They are all written before Him in the inevitable logic of their sequence as tho they had already occurred. He sees the reaping in the sowing.
He has given us many evidences of His omniscience, His all-knowledge. He has predicted with a particularity that carries with it conviction. Note a few of the instances:—
Before great Babylon reached the summit of her glory, God predicted her fall, in which the utter, final desolation of the glory of the Chaldees’ excellency is vividly portrayed. Isa. 13:19–22. How definitely is the doom of Babylon declared hundreds of years before it was fulfilled!
More than one hundred years before Cyrus overthrew Babylon and delivered God’s children, the Most High mentioned him by name. Isa. 44:24 to 45:5.
A different fate awaited the proud, opulent city of Tyre from that of Babylon. She was to be utterly taken away till her site should be “a bare rock,” “a place for the spreading of nets; thou shalt be built no more.” Eze. 26:4, 5, 14.
When Egypt was a flourishing nation, long before the prosperous reign of the Ptolemies, the same prophet predicted that Egypt should become “a base kingdom; it shall be the basest of the kingdoms; neither shall it any more lift itself up above the nations.” And for centuries the predictions of God’s prophets have been written before all the world in the abject condition of Egypt.
One other prediction among many. An anecdote is related of the skeptical Frederick the Great. He asked the court minister for one proof that the Bible was of God. The laconic answer of the preacher was, “Sire, the Jews.” The answer was emphatically sufficient. A volume might be written on God’s promises, warnings, admonitions, predictions, to that people, their scattering, their persecution, their isolation among all peoples, are all revealed in the Word of God, with such definiteness as to command conviction of their truth.
God is. His Word is true. No word shall return unto Him void, or be void of power. “Hath He said it, and shall He not do it?”
“Prophecy a Light to the Wayfarer,” will be considered next week.