Study of Prophecy

California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists · Oakland, Cal. · Apr 15, 1875

Study of Prophecy.

WE have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in your hearts."—2 Pet. 1:19.

PETER records in his Epistles the scene he witnessed on Tabor. Deep and lasting must have been the impression it made upon his mind. He makes a deduction from the scene witnessed on the mount. On it I intend to ground illustrations of the future, so far as delineated in the sacred volume.

But I feel it necessary to explain the words of Peter. The common reading of the passage is, "until the day-star arise in your hearts." Such, however, is not the meaning of the apostles—"a day-star" arising in a believer's heart is not a scriptural idea. The true construction of the passage, in perfect accordance with the Greek, is this: "Ye do well that ye take heed [as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day-star arise]"; there we close the brackets, and then the words, "in your hearts," refer back to the words, "take heed." Therefore the true reading of the words is, "We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed in your hearts, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day-star arise."

Peter speaks in language which many in this generation certainly do not accept. "We have also a more sure word of prophecy;" and he adds, "Ye do"—ill? No. "Ye do"—wrong? No; but "Ye do well to take heed." Too many excellent Christians repudiate every discussion which touches the skirts, or trenches on the merest outlines, of prophetic investigation. Let us show that such an attitude is not scriptural, it is not even rational, and certainly it is not profitable to our souls or conducive to our happiness.

Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, all have written prophecies, some portions of which have been translated into facts, while some of their writings remain still for the future to illustrate, and the historian to record. The last discourse of Jesus to his disciples was a portrait of the things that were to come on the earth. The disciple who loved most, called the disciple of love, was chosen while an exile on Patmos, to pre-write the events of the future. Before him swept past the apocalyptic visions that are every day being translated into facts. The objection we hear constantly urged, sometimes by Christians, always by the profane, is this: Have there not been so many misinterpretations, mistakes, and miscalculations, that we are compelled to shrink from all effort to explain those predictions that relate to the future, until the future is lost in the present, and the predictions are known to be true by our seeing their fulfillment? What, I ask, would be the use of such a theory? When the whole earth shall be covered with the glory of Tabor, we shall not need evidence that God is God, or that the New Testament is true. We shall then read its magnificent pages in the original splendor in which they were once written, and we shall have the evidence of our senses that all God ever revealed is true. But the misinterpretations of the past ought not to be dissuasions from our attempting what we can prove to be a clear and an obvious duty. In the laying of the Atlantic telegraph, the failures of the past serve to stimulate better efforts for the future, as well as contain the elements of future success. Failures are not losses. Every buoy we see floating in the channel over sandbank or shipwreck makes past disaster the ground of future safety. The wrecks of the past make the voyages of the present only more certain, and less liable to peril. But if the misinterpretation of predictions be a valid reason for not attempting to understand them, will not such objection strike much further? The Bible has been misinterpreted; are we therefore to put a padlock upon it? The words of God have been perverted; are we therefore never to read them? Christianity has been turned into dark and overshadowing superstition; is Christianity therefore to be abjured, and its sublime hopes and prospects to be put in abeyance? The abuse of a thing is no valid argument against its use. The mistakes of the past ought to be reasons for greater care, more ardent prayer, but not for neglect of the subject altogether.

It has been urged that the difficulties are so many that they are insuperable. We deny it. Of course the Bible does not make us prophets. The interpreters of prophecy do not assume to be so. We are interpreters of what God has written, not prophets of what he has not written. The books of Isaiah, Daniel, Revelation—the predictions scattered through the epistles—are part and parcel of the inspired word. What is a book written for? To be read. And what is the object of reading? To understand. Is it likely that God Almighty would give us a book that we are not to read, or if we read it that it will be impossible for us to understand? Let us refer to the most difficult and mysterious book in the New Testament—the Apocalypse—how does it open? Does it say, Don't cross the threshold; don't venture to read this book, for you will never be able to understand it; cease reading the New Testament at the end of the Epistle of Jude, and leave the book of the Revelation for perusal after its visions have hardened into history? No such preliminary warning is given. On the contrary, it opens saying, "Blessed is he that readeth," not unfortunate, or mistaken, or fanatical is he that readeth; but, "Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written within." That there may be no mistake about the possibility of understanding this book, it is further called, "The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John." Peter says, "We have a sure word of prophecy," as sure a prediction as facts in history are real. And he says, "Ye do," not ill, but "ye do well to take heed unto it, as unto"—what? A meteor in the swamp, that misleads? a will-o'-the-wisp, that will drive or draw you you know not whither? No; but as unto "A LIGHT that shineth in a dark place," and you are to take heed to it until the bright and morning star appear upon the brow of night, and the Son of Righteousness, that set amidst the clouds of Calvary, rise amidst the splendors of everlasting day, with healing under his wings.

The Saviour's longest discourse was the sermon on the mount of beatitudes, and his next longest sermon was that which he pronounced upon the mount overlooking Jerusalem, when he predicted distress of nations, perplexity, the fall of Jerusalem, the dispersion of the Jews, and all the lights and shadows of that futurity into which we have long ago entered. It is in the course of this prophecy that the disciples said to him, What shall be the sign of thy personal advent; the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world? What did the Saviour answer? Did he rebuke them? Did he say, You have no business with such subjects? Did he say, Go, and practice righteousness, and charity, and love, and truth, but crush all desire to know aught of futurity? Certainly not; he at once proceeded, in a chapter as sublime as it is rich in comfort and thought, to tell them what signs should precede his advent, what circumstances should usher it in, what shadows and clouds should lie broad, cold, and dark, upon the bosom of the earth, until the brightness of his advent came to strike them through with glory. "There shall," he said, "be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars, and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; men's hearts failing them for fear of the things that are coming on the earth. And then"—when? just when you see these things—"then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory." Let us not try to be wiser than the master; read these words, and see if they only are the fanatics who try to understand them; or whether there be not some ground for suspicion that they are the fools that cast ridicule and discredit on them.

The Saviour has assured his people that he will come again. He has not left us finally; we are in an interim condition, between the Christ that was crucified 1835 years ago, and the Christ that will come in the glory of his Father and with his holy angels. All Christians that repeat the apostles' creed believe that Jesus will come personally to our world—that he who breathed our atmosphere before shall breathe it again—that he who raised the dead in Palestine shall raise the dead throughout the whole globe—that he who calmed the tempestuous ocean will stretch his kingly hand over all creation, and there shall be an everlasting and unbroken calm. He will come, in the language of the angel sent to tell the sorrowing disciples upon Olivet, when they mourned his departure from them: "This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come—so come—in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven." Can words be plainer? He rose; in the air, the cloud his chariot, the shechinah his glory, and he disappeared; the cloud will be his chariot again, and he will come, in his own language, "in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory;" or, as the apostle says, "behold, he cometh with clouds and every eye shall see him." "The Lord himself shall descend from heaven"—the Lord himself shall descend from heaven. These are weighty words; we don't appreciate them as we ought. We think too much of death, too little of Him who is the Lord of life and the destroyer of death. We have nothing to do with death but to ignore it; we have everything to do with the Lord of the living, the destroyer of death, and to look for him, worship and adore him.

And certainly in recent time this subject has been investigated by pious, learned, and studious minds, to an extent and with a success with which it never was investigated before. The Evangelical party in the Church of England generally concur in the duty of studying the sure word of prophecy. Growing numbers in other churches agree with them. But if none accepted the study, it would be no matter except a source of sorrow. We are to call no man "Master;" for our rule of belief is not what the most men say, or the best men think, or the fathers have written, or popes have fulminated, but to the law and the testimony; what say the Scriptures? if they speak not according to them, it is because there is no truth in them.

Let this great truth sink deep into our hearts, that He who came personally to die, will come personally to reign. It is no dispute as to the meaning of the second advent; if language has any sense, if grammar is capable of construction, it must be accepted as a literal and a personal advent. How will that sublime scene, it may be very near, startle a world that has no thought of it, and no care about it. A glory in comparison with which Tabor's light was dimness, will flash to every eye, for "every eye shall see him," and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see—some departing like a vision forever; others embracing it with joy unutterable and full of glory, the salvation of our God. But whatever be the contrasting effects, his coming draweth near.—Dr. Cumming.