CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PROPHECIES OF THE BIBLE.
A PROPHECY is striking, and its fulfillment important, and calculated to produce conviction just in proportion to the improbability, in all human calculation, of its accomplishment. It is this feature of the prophecies of the Bible, their minuteness of detail when speaking of future events, and the particulars which they predict, so contrary to all human calculations, that gives them their striking character, and the fulfillment of which affords such overwhelming evidence of their higher than human origin. As an illustration of this we call the attention of the reader to one item in the remarkable prophecy concerning the Jews, in the xxviiith of Deuteronomy. In verse 64 we read, "The Lord shall scatter thee among all nations; and [verse 37] thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb and a by-word among all nations whither the Lord shall lead thee." The Jews rejected the Messiah; they did not hearken to the voice of that prophet whom Moses said the Lord their God would raise up unto them like unto him [Deut. xviii, 18, 19]; and the threat has been executed upon them. In regarding the fulfillment of this prophecy the thought at once occurs, It would not be surprising that among Christians who believe in the Messiah the Jews should be a reproach, a by-word and a curse for the part they have acted. But how about the heathen, who have never heard of the Messiah, or if they had, would be as hostile to his religion as the Jews themselves? Would the Jews be trodden down, reproached, and despised by them? Improbable as this may seem, such is the prophecy, and such we find also to be the fulfillment. Says Claudius Buchanan in his Christian Researches in Asia, p. 213, "Behold the Hindoo at this day, punishing the Jew without knowing the crime of which he has been guilty. This prophecy is such as must afford a contemplation to infidelity to the end of time."