THE GOSPEL IN THE OLD TESTAMENT.
By James White
WHEN all was lost in Adam, redemption through Jesus Christ was immediately offered; hence he is represented as the "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." Rev. 13:8. In the patriarchal and Jewish ages, Christ was slain in figure. In the Christian age he is slain in fact. Jesus Christ is the Redeemer of sinners in all the ages of human probation. "Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." Acts 4:12. We protest, in the name of reason and revelation, against the vague heresy that the law of the Father and the gospel of the Son are opposed to each other, the one designed to take the place of the other; as if people of former dispensations were saved by the law, without the gospel, and those of the present dispensation are saved by the gospel while disregarding the moral law. It was not possible for sinful man in the ages past to secure a fitness for the inheritance of the saints in light by the divine law alone. There is no ability in law to redeem the transgressor. It is not the province of law, human or divine, to pardon the transgressor of law. The moral law is a perfect rule of action, condemning the transgressor, and holding him as such until he shall suffer the penalty. The divine law can do no more for the sinner. It is the gospel alone that offers pardon and salvation. And without the gospel of the Son of God none of the men of the patriarchal and Jewish ages could be saved. When the first sons of Adam brought their offerings to the Lord, Cain in unbelief brought of the first-fruits of the ground. But Abel, in faith of the great Sacrifice for sin to be manifested in the distant future, brought of the firstlings of his flock. Through that lamb, Abel saw the Lamb of God, the Redeemer of the world, and set his hope upon him. In the blood of that firstling, Abel saw the blood of Jesus Christ as truly as we see the dying Saviour in the broken bread and the fruit of the vine at the Lord's Supper. In these emblems we see Christ shedding his blood on the cross for our sins. Abel saw the same in the bleeding, dying firstling which he offered. "And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering; but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect." Gen. 4:4, 5. The sacred narrative states that while Abel's act of faith in the Redeemer to come, sealed his righteous character, cost him his life, and placed him at the head of the holy martyrs of Jesus, Cain's infidelity was regarded as sinful, and was the stepping-stone to the high crime of the murder of his brother, which sealed his character as a vagabond in the earth. The eleventh chapter of Hebrews places Abel at the head of the faithful worthies. Paul speaks, in these emphatic words, of his righteous act of faith in offering to the Lord in sacrifice the type of the Redeemer to come: "By faith, Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts, and by it he being dead yet speaketh." Abel laid hold of the hope that was set before him of the Redeemer to come, and in type embraced Christ. And,309as he set the seal to his faith, in presenting before the Lord the most fitting emblem of the dying Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, high Heaven bestowed the signal witness that he was righteous. And for six thousand years this eminent preacher of the gospel, though dead, has been speaking of his faith in Christ. We pass down the sacred record of the fallen race to Abraham, and there we find the joyful news of redemption through Jesus Christ, to be extended to the nations of the earth, proclaimed to the trusting, obedient patriarch. Paul speaks of it thus: "And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed." Gal. 3:8. The apostle here quotes from Gen. 12:3. See verse 7, chap. 13:14, 15; 17:7, 8; 26:3; 28:13, where this promise is extended to Abraham's seed. The gospel of the Son of God was proclaimed to Abraham in this promise, in that it was really a promise of Christ, as argued by the apostle in Gal. 3:16: "Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, and to thy seed, which is Christ." The gospel was preached to the children of Israel in the days of Moses. In his epistle to the Hebrews, Paul states: "Unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them; but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it." Heb. 4:2. That the gospel was preached to their fathers in a former dispensation, the apostle treats as a well-known fact, and states that it was preached in his day as well as then, making it appear that the gospel of the Son of God was alike common in both the Jewish and the Christian age. He also testifies of the Hebrews in the wilderness, that they "were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and did all eat the same spiritual meat, and did all drink the same spiritual drink; for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ." 1 Cor. 10:2-4. Christ was the leader of the children of Israel, for it was not a common angel of which the Lord said (Ex. 23:20, 21): "Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions; for my name is in him." Such language can be applied to no other than the Son of God. Christ was also with Moses in the Mount Sinai. In that last address of the holy martyr, Stephen, he bears this important testimony. The words in brackets express our convictions relative to the persons meant in Acts 7:38: "This [Moses] is he that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel [Christ] which spake to him [Moses] in the Mount Sinai, and with our fathers, who received the lively oracles to give unto us." The conclusion seems irresistible that the Son of God spoke the ten commandments from Sinai. The children of Israel were called from Egyptian servitude to a land where they would be free to serve the living God. And before they should enter that good land, it was necessary that they should be impressed with the precepts of the moral code, and also with the typical service, which was the gospel of the Son of God in figure. These were represented by the Father and the Son on Mount Sinai. But it was the Son, as mediator between God and man, who spoke the ten commandments from Mount Sinai in the hearing of Moses and the Hebrew fathers. As it is written: "There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." The eternal Father is never called an angel in the Scriptures, while what angels have done is frequently ascribed to the Lord, as they are his messengers and agents to accomplish his work. It is said of him who went before the Hebrews to deliver them, "My name is in him." In all the stupendous events of that deliverance, the mind of the Father was represented in the Son. The typical system was given to Moses by the Son of God in the Mount Sinai. Jesus Christ, the minister of the "true tabernacle," showed Moses patterns of it, and of the vessels of the heavenly sanctuary, that he might know how to form the typical. And as Moses is instructed relative to the tabernacle, even the several parts of the golden candlestick (Ex. 25:31-40), the boards and bars (chap. 26:15-30), and the altar, with its staves, pans, shovels, and other particulars (chap. 27:1-8), he is charged, as quoted by Paul (Heb. 8:5), "See that thou make all things according to the pattern showed to thee in the mount." The church of all the ages is the church of Jesus Christ. He is the world's only Redeemer. Those who shut themselves up to the New Testament, and have the foundation of the church laid at the resurrection, or at Pentecost, are building too narrow a structure. The apostle states the foundation of the true church in these words: "Now, therefore, ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God, and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone." Eph. 2:19, 20. When the angel said to John in Patmos, "The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy," he meant more than expositors generally suppose. His words reach far back to the days of fallen Adam, when the plan of redemption was instituted, and embrace the entire prophetic word of both Testaments.—James White.