Brief Thoughts on Various Passages.
By John Nevins Andrews
SEVERAL OLD TESTAMENT FACTS WHICH ARE ONLY MENTIONED IN THE NEW.
THE Old Testament does not state the length of the famine in the time of Elijah. He said to Ahab, “There shall not be dew nor rain THESE YEARS but according to my word.” 1 Kings 17:1. But our Lord and the apostle James each give it at three years and six months. Luke 4:25; James 5:17. We have also from James an important fact not given in the Old Testament. It is that Elijah prayed earnestly that the rain might be withheld as well as that it might again be sent when Baal had been put away from Israel. The drought was in answer to his prayer, as well as the rain at the close. It is likely Ahab had heard of this prayer for the drought, and that it was to this he alluded when he addressed Elijah as the one that troubled Israel. 1 Kings 18:17. We are indebted to the New Testament also for another impressive incident in the history of the Old. The book of Hebrews tells us what Moses the man of God said in the presence of God’s glory upon Sinai. “So terrible was the sight that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake.” Heb. 12:21. Well might even Moses tremble when he witnessed the descent of the Lord in fire upon it, and heard the voice of the trumpet exceedingly loud. Ex. 19:16, 18. This was the Father who thus descended. Jesus is to descend in flaming fire, in all his Father’s glory and with the loud blast of that same trumpet. See Matt. 16:27; 24:30, 31; 2 Thess. 1:7, 8. If Moses trembled at that revelation of the Father’s glory, the very counterpart of the second advent, how ought such as ourselves to tremble at the thought of beholding the revelation of the Son of God in flaming fire! To love the appearing of Jesus is indeed the certain consequence of loving him that is to appear. 2 Tim. 4:8. But if we are desiring that event, that it may end our troubles, while we are making no adequate preparation for it, we may consider the words of Amos as addressed directly to ourselves: “Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord! to what end is it for you? the day of the Lord is darkness, and not light. As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on a wall, and a serpent bit him. Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness, and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it?” Amos 5:18—20. Such is an exact representation of the day of God as it will be to the self-deceived. Will it be such to the reader? Another important Old Testament fact is preserved to us in the New Testament only. It is that Enoch, who walked with God three hundred years, and who was then taken to be with God, was a prophet, and that he in express terms predicted the second coming of Christ: “And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” Jude 14, 15. Wicked men will be astonished to find all their ungodly deeds and all their hard speeches preserved in the book of God, for them to answer to in that day. SAYINGS OF CHRIST PRESERVED TO US BY PAUL.
A precious saying of our Lord not on record in the evangelists, is preserved to us by Paul. In his farewell address to the elders of the church of Ephesus, he bade them “remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Acts 20:35. How this admirable saying of the Redeemer breathes the unselfish spirit of the Christian religion! How few of us act as though we believed it! Paul gives us one other of our Lord’s sayings, 2 Cor. 12:9, “My grace is sufficient for you.” THE PROMISE OF THE RESURRECTION AND IMMORTAL LIFE CONTAINED IN THE NEW COVENANT.
Our Lord proved the resurrection by that declaration of the Most High, “I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Ex. 3:6. He declared that God was not the God of the dead (for the dead cannot worship him. See Ps. 115:17; Isa. 38:18, 19); and that these words did therefore prove the resurrection of these men; also that they live to HIM, though dead, simply because that in his purpose they are to live. So God having their names in the book of life calls himself their God, a sure pledge, as our divine Teacher asserts, that they shall be resurrected. Compare Luke 20:37, 38; Rom. 4:17. And now observe the promise of the new covenant; “I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.” Jer. 31:33. This is a promise made to all the subjects of the new covenant. They are, with the exception of the present generation, in the same condition as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, when the Saviour proved their resurrection by this declaration, “I am the God of Abraham,” &c. The new covenant pledges the Most High to be the God of those with whom it is made. Therefore these persons must live, though now nearly all numbered with the silent dead. And when made alive to receive the fulfillment of this promise, they can die NO MORE. Luke 20:36. In the light of this declaration of our great Teacher concerning what is implied in the words spoken at the bush, how precious is the following declaration: “At the same time, saith the Lord, will I be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people.” Jer. 31:1. This is a certain promise that all that are “the Israel of God” shall be made alive with immortal life. Compare on Israel, Rom. 9:6; 11:17, 18; Gal. 6:16; Rev. 21:12. See also this promise involving the resurrection in Rev. 21:3, 7. The time which the Holy Spirit so emphasizes for this thing in Jer. 31:1, is the day of God’s wrath upon the ungodly. See the close of the previous chapter, Jer. 30:22–24. So the hymn is true which declares: “When the foe’s distress comes,
Then the church’s rest comes.”