PROPHECY AN EVIDENCE OF BIBLE TRUTH.
By Daniel Nettleton
OBSERVATION teaches us that this world, and all things therein, must have had a creator. The Bible tells us by whom and how all things were made. It is the best and most reasonable story of Creation man has ever had or will have. Let us accept the invitation of the Bible, “O come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.” One of the strongest evidences that the Bible is the Word of God to us is the fulfilment of its prophecy. The Bible was written by the Spirit of prophecy. Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. It came not by the will of man. When we believe and take heed to the prophecy of the Bible, we are not following cunningly-devised fables, but are taking heed to the light that shineth in a dark place. None but God can read the future. “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets.” Amos 3:7. God writes twice every prophecy in His Word, once when the prophets spake and wrote the prophecy—the history of the time to come—and again when in His overruling providence the prophecy is fulfilled. The prophecies of the Bible are like the precious stones and metal that lie hidden in the solitude of the earth. They must be sought and found and brought out and polished before their beauty and utility are appreciated. So the prophecies must be read and studied and compared with history before we can see their fulfilment. We find in the prophecies as definite statements concerning men and nations, written many centuries before they were born, as we find on the pages of authentic history written many years after these men and nations have passed away. We have a prophecy concerning Cyrus, king of Persia, made one hundred and seventy-four years before Cyrus was born. His name, and the work that Cyrus would do in releasing the Jews from captivity, is clearly told. Take the prophecies concerning the Jews. Moses, their great prophet and leader, wrote of their rejection by God, and their dispersion among all nations, as follows: “The Lord shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies; thou shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before them; and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth. . . . And thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all nations whither the Lord shall lead thee.”
These words were written by Moses thirty-three hundred years ago, before the Jews dwelt in their own land, before any of our modern nations were born. They were written in the old Hebrew language, and have been read every day since by that and other people into whose language their scriptures have been translated. Now note their fulfilment. Where is the nation to-day in which there are no Jews? You find them in every nation under heaven. They have been preserved a distinct and separate people all these ages. Other nations rise up and preserve for a time their identity, and then are entirely lost, mingled with other nations. Not so with the Jew, scattered among all nations, persecuted or welcomed as citizens, he never loses his national character; he is forever a Jew, fulfilling the words of the prophet, “The people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations.” This is the Lord’s doings and is marvelous in our eyes. There are other prophecies equally as marvelous. The prophecies of the Messiah are of interest, and profitable for study. Jesus Himself referred to these as evidence of His Messiahship: “And beginning as Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning Himself.” Luke 24:27. The time prophecy of the twenty-three hundred days of Daniel 8 and 9 is positive and very definite in stating the time for the Messiah. Take any reference Bible and look up the references to the words of the prophets, and compare them with the facts concerning Jesus of Nazareth, and you will see His life of ministry is a fulfilment of the prophecy, and so He must be the Christ. In the second, seventh, eighth, and eleventh chapters of Daniel we have the rise and fall of all the great nations of earth foretold. We read of the fulfilment of these prophecies in our histories. The great struggle in which Russia and Japan is now engaged is spoken of by the prophets of the Bible; in fact a complete history of the world is found in the Bible from the beginning to the close of time. The second coming of Christ and the establishment of His eternal kingdom is also plainly told: “And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey Him.” There are people who do not like the Bible and would destroy it if they could, but, thank the Lord, the Bible can not be destroyed. It is indestructible. It came to stay. Jesus said, “Heaven and earth shall pass away; but My words shall not pass away.” Isaiah sang, “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; but the Word of our God shall stand forever.” The enemies of God’s Word have not injured or hindered God’s truth. “We can do nothing10against the truth, but for the truth.” True, the messengers of truth have suffered some, but “Truth crushed to earth shall rise again,
The eternal years of God are hers.”
The truth of the Bible has been arrested and imprisoned, handcuffed and shackled, placed behind iron bars, chained down to stone floors, but it is the truth still, and is on its road to complete and final victory. There are some 200,000,000 copies of this blessed Book. It is spoken and printed in nearly all the languages of earth. The story of the babe in the ark of bulrushes, and the Babe of Bethlehem in the manger, is being told and sung by nearly all the nations of men; and soon the song of Moses and the Lamb will be sung on the sea of glass by the triumphant church of God. The Bible meets the demands for which our souls long. Men in their normal condition long for holiness, for purity. But man is not naturally pure. Facing God’s holy law, every mouth is stopped and all the world becomes guilty before God. We know we can not make ourselves righteous. In this work of making our hearts pure, vain is the help of man. “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.” But God’s Book tells how we may be righteous and pure. When we accept of God’s Word as it is in truth, it works in us righteousness, even the righteousness of God, to all, and upon all them that believe. “This precious book I’d rather own
Than all the golden gems
That are in monarchs’ coffers shown,
Or all their diadems;
Were all the seas one chrysolite,
This earth a golden ball,
And diamonds all the stars of night,
This book were worth them all.”