THE WITNESSING OF GOD by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jul 22, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 28.

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THE WITNESSING OF GOD

By Editor

THE BASIS OF OUR CONFIDENCE

By the Editor

X. His Twofold Witness Regarding Israel According to the Flesh

HIS infallible witness of God is not concerning a teaching, a city, a law, or a person, but a people,—a continuous people, among whom is found both prediction and fulfilment, but so far apart, so separate in time that there could be no human connivance or collusion between them.

It is manifestly impossible to treat at length the great mass of detail prediction and fulfilment. General statements concerning events conceded by all must suffice.

First, then, we note the promises and prophecies to the great father of the Hebrew people, namely, Abraham. (See Gen. 12: 1-3; 13: 14-17; 15: 5, 6, 13-21; 17: 1-8; 22: 16-18; et al.) God called Abram from all that was dear,—country, kindred, and home, to go to a strange land of which Abram was afterward to learn and to receive. There God promises to make of him a great nation, and to make his name great, and that in and through him should all the families of the earth be blessed. Abram went forward trusting God under various testings. God confirms him with a covenant, and changes his name from Abram to Abraham; tells him that no adopted son, but one of his own blood, should be his heir through whom the promised Seed was to come; that that seed should be numerous; that it was early to become afflicted; that four hundred years would pass before deliverance came (the first promise dating thirty years earlier); and that after that Abraham's descendants should receive the Land of Promise from the river Euphrates to the river of Egypt; that they should dispossess certain named nations, some of whom, if not all, were stronger than the Hebrews.

Time and Territory

All these were clear, distinct, specific promises and predictions concerning Abraham and his descendants. Both time and territory are named, the time when they should be delivered from Egypt, the territory they were to possess, tho they were to meet numerous foes.

The time passes. Abraham dies, Isaac dies, Jacob dies, the twelve patriarchs die. One of them, Joseph, exacts a promise that his body should be taken to the Promised Land when the time came, thus recording his faith. Gen. 50: 25.

Dynasties changed in Egypt. The Chosen People became a nation of ignorant, idolatrous slaves, but God does not forget His promise. 'And the sojourning of the children of Israel, while they sojourned in the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan, was four hundred and thirty years. And it came to pass after the four hundred and thirty years, all the forces of the Lord came forth out of the land of Egypt by night.' Ex. 12: 40, 41, Septuagint. The sojourning included both lands. In our common versions we are told in verse 41: 'And it came to pass at the end of the four hundred and thirty years, even the selfsame day it came to pass, that all the hosts of Jehovah went out from the land of Egypt.' Thus explicitly does God remember the time of the promise.

The Land

The great God leads His people through a man-devouring wilderness for forty years,—a forty years' course in higher education. By miracle and wonderful manifestations of power He preserves them, until at the close of forty years they enter the Promised Land and begin to possess it. The transgressions of Israel restrained God's working until we reach the days of Solomon. Then the promise predicted as foretold in Genesis 15, is recorded, from 'the river Euphrates' 'unto the border of Egypt.' 1 Kings 4: 21.

Nay, more, the very nations whose lands were promised to Abraham are noted in the fulfilment. Tho the Hebrews by backsliding had utterly failed and were thrown into captivity, yet one of their number in the most solemn of discourses—earnest prayer—sets seal to the promise of God: 'Thou art Jehovah, the God who didst choose Abram, and broughtest him forth out of Ur of the Chaldees, and gavest him the name of Abraham, and foundest his heart faithful before Thee, and madest a covenant with him to give the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, and the Perizzite, and the Jebusite, and the Girgashite, to give it unto his seed, and hast performed Thy words; for Thou art righteous.' Neh. 9: 7, 8.

Thus is definitely recorded hundreds of years after the promise was given, the fulfilment of the territory to be possessed by the literal seed of Abraham. But from the days of Solomon onward, that nation began to depart from God. They utterly refused to meet the conditions which the Lord laid down so explicitly in Deuteronomy 27 and 28. By every effort that Divinity could use to move upon their heart to accept Him, God sought to save His people. And so it is recorded: 'And Jehovah, the God of their fathers, sent to them by His messengers, rising up early and sending, because He had compassion on His people, and on His dwelling-place; but they mocked the messengers of God, and despised His words, and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of Jehovah arose against His people, till there was no remedy.' 2 Chron. 36: 15, 16. Then came the Babylonian captivity. All this is expressly foretold in the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, even the very period of time that the Jews themselves should remain captive to Babylon,—seventy years. Jer. 25: 11, 12.

At this time there were two great powers in the earth in whom Israel, turning from God, had trusted at different times. The one was Chaldea on the north, and the other Egypt on the south. Nebuchadnezzar, the mighty general, had swept over the smaller nations, and was on his way toward Egypt. Nation after nation had yielded to his yoke. Israel vainly thought that Egypt would help them. Numerous false prophets rose up against Jeremiah, accused him of a lack of patriotism, told him that he was weakening the hands of the men of war, endeavored to make the people believe in every way they could that Egypt would come and rescue them; but steadfastly Jeremiah tells them that they must yield to Babylon, and altho Babylon should be so defeated that they had nothing but wounded men among them, yet the wounded men would take Jerusalem.

The Captivity and Restoration

The fulfilment came as the prophet declared, and also the restoration at the end of the seventy years, as we learn by the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Then God stirred up Cyrus, the king of Persia, to relieve the Jews and restore them to their own land. Clearly, definitely, according to His promise in Isaiah 44 and 45, God fulfilled to that people just what He had declared.

The last captivity of all, foretold by Moses in Deuteronomy 28, was under the Romans. Its fearfulness is foretold with an exactitude that is amazing. Leviticus 26 covers practically the same ground. If they would obey the commandments of God, God would make them the head and not the tail, as they were in the days of Solomon; if they disobeyed, their enemies would rise up against them, and they would be smitten before them. They should come against them from one way, and should flee before them seven ways. Cursing and discomfiture and rebuke would be upon them. The pestilence would cleave to them. Consumption and fever and inflammation and sword and blasting and mildew should pursue them. Their dead bodies would be food for all the birds of heaven, and unto the beasts of the earth. There should be none to frighten them away. The diseases of Egypt from which He had saved them would again come upon them. Their wives and sons and daughters would be taken captive. They should become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples whither Jehovah should lead them away. Their cities should be besieged in all their gates, and the high and fortified walls in which they had trusted would come down. Nay, more, they would be brought to that condition that they would eat their own offspring in the straitness of the siege. They would be scattered among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth, and there serve other gods. They should find no ease, and there should be no rest for the sole of their foot. All these are told with wonderful detail in Deuteronomy 28, and we need not mention the various ways in which it has been fulfilled. From the time that the Romans scattered the Jews into slavery, and put so many of them to death in 70 A.D., until the present time, the Jews have had fulfilled in their own experience the predictions of God's word.

Another strange thing about these predictions is this, that in all their apostasy they preserved the word of God. The testimony of the prophets was written among that people, held among that people, and yet their superstition was so great that while they perverted God's word by their traditions, they did not assume to change the word or destroy it. Consequently they themselves were the depositaries of the predictions which were fulfilled in their experience. Wherever one goes, wherever one meets the Hebrews to-day, they are an ineffaceable evidence of the truthfulness of God's word. They admit it to-day. The old wailing place by the wall of Jerusalem, where may be found every day Jews from various parts of the world mourning the destruction of Jerusalem, praying for a time of restoration — there is the fulfilment of God's word.

The first witness is scattered all through the prophets, from Moses down; the second witness has been demonstrated in the experience and history of the Jews from the days of Solomon to the present time. Why should we doubt God's word? In the face of all this evidence, what are the puny theories of men that would rise up to discount its marvelous truth? It is that upon which the devout soul can rest and not be afraid. For the same God that uttered the predictions against sin has also given the promises to those who are righteous. And that righteousness in our Lord Jesus Christ is freely offered to all.