p. 388 | PROPHECY

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 2, 1880

PROPHECY.

THERE are in the Bible certain declarations of future events, the probabilities of which were not discernible by human foresight when the declarations were made. Certain events did afterwards take place corresponding to these declarations. A chance coincidence is not sufficient to account for the correspondence.

There are so many examples of the fulfillment of prophecy, that it is difficult to select the most convincing. The book of Isaiah was written about one hundred years before the destruction of Tyre, and the books of Ezekiel, and Amos, and Zechariah about three hundred years before the second fall of that city. This is known just as it is that Milton wrote Paradise Lost, and Chaucer his Canterbury Tales; because there are books bearing their names, internally consistent with such authorship, and attributed to them by universal tradition. Certain predictions are found in Isa. 23, Ezekiel 26, and Amos 1, to this effect: that Tyre would be destroyed by the Chaldeans; many citizens would escape; they would have no rest in their places of refuge; the city would be restored after a time equal to the age of the king who destroyed it—a period of seventy years; it would be destroyed again; it would be burned and cast into the sea, never to recover its pristine importance; it would, however, in time, be devoted to the worship of the true God, and at last become a mere fisher's rock. These predictions have been literally fulfilled.

Tyre was first destroyed by the Chaldeans under Nebuchadnezzar, who lived to be seventy years old. The citizens, with most of their effects, escaped by the sea, while the siege on land was progressing. The conqueror ravaged Egypt and the islands of the sea where the people of Tyre had taken refuge. The city was rebuilt, and destroyed again by Alexander the Great, who threw the remains of the old city into the sea to build approaches for his troops. It has never recovered its importance. It was the seat of flourishing churches, but is now obliterated. The harbor is destroyed. Not a fragment can be found to certainly mark the site, and the Scriptures say: "Though thou be sought for, yet shalt thou never be found." Nearly all the ancient cities have ruined monuments and mounds of rubbish to mark their former sites, but Tyre has not a fragment. A few fishermen dry their nets on the rocks near the place called Tyre, but their poor huts even have not in them a stone of the ancient city. Dr. Burr, in commenting on these prophecies, remarks:—

“Did Nebuchadnezzar, after besieging the city for thirteen years, allow the citizens to escape with their property in order to save the credit of a Jewish prophecy, or for the same reason live till he was seventy years old? Did the Medes and Persians break down the Babylonian Empire just at the end of seventy years, in order to give Tyre a chance to rebuild, and fulfill Isaiah? Did Alexander the Great build his causeway, that the words of Ezekiel might stand good, ‘They shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the waters,’ and ‘though thou be sought for, yet shalt thou never be found’?”

There is but one explanation: Those Jews were real prophets. They spake by inspiration of Him who sees the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done.

The prophecies concerning the Jews have been no less strangely fulfilled. Jeremiah foretold their captivity, “And this whole land shall be a desolation and an astonishment, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.” Jer. 25:11. This prediction was uttered in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, and began to be fulfilled immediately. It was in exactly seventy years that Cyrus issued his proclamation of emancipation. Another prophecy of Jeremiah says: “And will deliver them to be removed to all the kingdoms of the earth; to be a curse and an astonishment, and a hissing, and reproach among all nations whither I have been driven them.” Every one knows whether the Jews have fulfilled and are fulfilling this prediction.

Judea, Idumea, Egypt, Babylon and Nineveh, have all been the subjects of startling prophecies, which have been literally fulfilled. Is there any way to account for the circumstantial predictions in any of these cases, except to attribute such miraculous foresight to divine inspiration? Can the specifications in the case of Babylon, for instance, be mere hap-hazard coincidences? Even when it was the wonder of the world, it might safely have been said that at some time it would fall; but it was to be besieged by a combination—the Medes and Persians under the leadership of Cyrus; it was to be captured in a peculiar manner—by drying up the river Euphrates; two of the gates were to be left open; her rulers were to be drunken; the king and his family were to be slain; the city should cease to be inhabited; the shepherd not make his fold nor the Arab pitch his tent there; it should become pools of water frequented by water-fowls, and what seems contradictory, a den of wild beasts. Babylon fell. Every schoolboy knows the history of its capture; how it was Cyrus who led the armies and changed the course of the river, and surprised, through the gates which had been left open, the drunken revelers. Babylon's subsequent history might be copied from the prediction, and rendered correct by simply changing the verbs from the future to the past tenses.

The prophecies concerning the Messiah, or Jesus, are equally convincing. It is plain that the establishment of the Christian religion and the person of its founder were clearly predicted when neither reason nor experience could have anticipated them; and that the predictions have been fulfilled. It is well known that Shiloh was always understood by the Jews to be the Messiah. He was to come before the sceptre should depart from Judah; while the temple was still standing; at the end of four hundred and eighty-three years from the issuing of an order to rebuild Jerusalem; that his forerunner should resemble Elijah; that he should be of the tribe of Judah, the family of David, and the city of Bethlehem; should first preach in Galilee; should proclaim himself the Messiah; should be rejected, put to death with the wicked, and buried with the rich. All these predictions have been passed into history. That they were written before their fulfillment is as well authenticated as any event in history can be. That they are of such a nature as could not have been foreseen by human sagacity is evident to any one, and to suppose so many coincidences accidental is absurd. Therefore the word of prophecy is convincing evidence of the omniscience of God, the inspiration of revelation, and the truth of the messiahship of Christ.—Selected.