Posted on 10/09/2009 7:40:21 PM PDT by Quix
“THE MOST AMAZING DRAMA that ever was presented to the mind of man—a drama written in prophecy in the Old Testament and in biography in the four Gospels—is the narrative of Jesus the Christ. One outstanding fact, among many, completely isolates HIM.”
“It is this: that one Man only in the history of the world has had explicit details given beforehand of His birth, life, death and resurrection; that these details are in documents given to the public centuries before He appeared, and that no one challenges, or can challenge, that these documents were widely circulated long before His birth; and that anyone and everyone can compare for himself the actual records of His life with those old documents, and find that they match one another to a nicety. “
“The challenge of this pure miracle is that it happened concering one Man only in the whole history of the world.” (D. M. Panton).*
*Scores of other Bible students have called attention to this same amazing fact. We quote from one more, Canon Dyson Hague. He says: Centuries before Christ was born His birth and career, His sufferings and glory, were all described in outline and detail in the Old Testament. Christ is the only Person ever born into this world whose ancestry, birth-time, forerunner, birth-place, birth-manner, infancy, manhood, teaching, character, career, preaching, reception, rejection, death, burial, resurrection and ascension were all prewritten in the most marvelous manner centuries before He was born.
“Who could draw a picture of a many not yet born? Surely God, and God alone. Nobody knew 500 years ago that Shakespeare was going to be born; or 250 years ago that Napoleon was to be born. Yet here in the Bible we have the most striking and unmistakable likeness of a Man portrayed, not by one, but by twenty or twenty-five artists, none of whom had ever seen the Many they were painting.”
To focus attention on the unparalleled wonder of this literary miracle, think for a moment; who could have prewritten a life of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, or any other character, five hundred years before he was born? No where in any of the literature of the world, secular or religious, can one find a duplicate to the astounding miracle of the prewritten life of Christ. “The inspiration of that portrait came from the Heavenly Gallery, and not from the studio of an earthly artist” (A.T. Pierson).
So amazing is this miracle of the pre-written life of Christ and its perfect fulfillment in Jesus of Nazareth that “Nothing but Divine prescience could have foreseen it, and nothing but Divine power could accomplish it.” As the full evidence is presented, all thoughtful readers will agree that “the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:21).
Four Great Truths Demonstrated by This Fact
With no variations or aberrations between the Old Testament predictions of the coming Messiah and the New Testament fulfillment in Jesus of Nazareth, one instinctively leaps to the conclusion that “the Hand that drew the Image in prophecy moulded the Portrait in history”; and the inevitable conclusion to this miracle is fourfold:
(1) It proves that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, for unaided man is neither capable of writing nor fulfilling such a literary wonder.
(2) It proves that the God of the bible, the only One who knows the end from the beginning, and who alone has the power to fulfill all His Word, is the true and living God.
(3) It demonstrates that the God of the Bible is both all-knowing to be able to foretell the future entwined around numberless men who are free moral agents, and all-powerful, to be able to bring to pass a perfect fulfillment of His Word in the midst of widespread unbelief, ignorance and rebellion on the part of men.
(4) It demonstrates that the Person, Jesus of Nazareth, who so perfectly and completely fulfilled all the Old Testament predictions is indeed the Messiah, the Saviour of the world, the Son of the Living God.
Christ Is the Center of History
So CHRIST is seen to be the center of all history as well as the central theme of the Bible. “The Christ of the New Testament is the fruit of the tree of prophecy, and Christianity is the realization of a plan, the first outlines of which were sketched more than 1,500 years before.”* *David Baron, in Rays of Messiah’s Glory, p. 14
Fulfilled Prophecy Is Unique to the Bible
The fact of [so much] fulfilled prophecy is found in the Bible alone; hence, it presents proof of Divine inspiration that is positive, conclusive, overwhelming . . . .
Remember, there were 400 years between the last of the Messianic predictions of the Old Testament and their fulfillment in the Christ of the Gospels.* Many prophecies are of coruse much older than 400 B.C. During the period of 1,100 years, from the age of Moses (1,500 B.C.) to that of Malachi (400 B.C.), a succession of prophets arose, Messianic prediction took form, and all of them testified of the Messiah who was to come.
*[footnote for above]: *The perfect proof of the long period of time that elapsed between the last book of the Old Testament and the first book of the New Testament is the presence in the world of the SEPTUAGINT, a translation of the Old Testament into Greek about 200 B.C. This translation was begun in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, about 280 B.C. and was completed not long after. With a TRANSLATION of the entire Old Testament, as we now know it, made over 200 years B.C., it is obvious that the books of the Old Testament from which the translation was made are still older.
So minute and sovoluminous are these Old Testament predictions and so complete is their fulfillment in the New Testament, that Dr. A. T. Pierson says, “There would be no honest infidel in the world were Messianic prophecy studied . . . nor would there be any doubting disciples if this fact of prediction and fulfillment were fully understood.” “And,” he continues, “the sad fact is, we have yet to meet the first honest skeptic or critic who has carefully studied the prophecies which center in Christ.” (Many Infallible Proofs). Here indeed is “God’s Rock of Ages, Faith’s unshakable standing place.”
”Prophecy” Is God’s Own Method of Proving His Truth
The teachings of the Bible are so peculiar and different from all other religions, and so important—telling us that man’s eternal destiny, for weal or woe, depends on his acceptance of the Christ of the Bible—that we have the right to know whether the Bible is or is not a Heavenly Decree, the absolute and final Word of God, whether its message is fully authorized by the Almighty. If God has given a revelation of His will in the Bible, there can be no doubt that in some unmistakable way He will show men that the Bible is indeed His revealed will; and the way He has chosen to show men that the bible is His Word is a way that all men of average intelligence can understand; and that way is through the giving and through the fulfillment of specific, detailed prophecies.
It is the Divine seal, letting all men know that He has spoken. This seal can never be counterfeited, affixed to the Truth which it attests—for His foreknowledge of the actions of free and intelligent agents, men, is one of the most “incomprehensible attributes of Deity and is exclusively a Divine perfection.”* *Evidences of Prophecy, by Alexander Keith; p. 8
. . .
. . .Justin Martyr said, “To declare a thing shall come to pass long before it is in being, and to bring it to pass, this or nothing is the work of God.”
[a footnote to part omitted above is]: *Many have made an effort to foretell the future—not one, outside of the Bbile, has ever succeeded [at least not in as much detail and not as accurately]. “The extreme difficulty of framing a prophecy which shall prove accurate, may be seen in that familiar but crude rhyme known as ‘Mother Shipton’s Prophecy’.
Some years ago it appeared as a pretended relic of a remote day, and claimed to have predicted the invention of the steam locomotive, the rise of D’Israeli in English politics, etc., etc. . . . For years I tried to unearth and expose what seemed to me a huge imposture, and I succeeded . . .
I traced the whole thing to one Charles Hindley (of England) who acknowledged himself the author of this prophetic hoax, which was written in 1862 instead of 1448, and palmed off on a credulous public. It is one of the startling proofs of human perversity that the very people who will try to cast suspicion on prophecies two thousand years old, will, without straining, swallow a forgery that was first published AFTER the events it predicted, and will not even look into its claim to antiquity.” (Dr. A. T. Pierson, pp. 44, 45, in Many Infallible Proofs.)
”Chance Fulfillment” of Prophecy Is Ruled Out
Desperate atheists and other unbelievers, seeking a way to circumvent the fact of fulfilled prophecy and its connotations, have argued that the fulfillments were “accidental,” “chance,” or “co-incidental.” But when a number of details are given the “chance” fulfillment of prophecy is ruled out.
One writer says, “It is conceivable that a prediction, uttered at a venture, and expressing what in a general way may happen to result, may seem like a genuine prophecy. But only let the prophecy give several DETAILS of time, place and accompanying incidents and it is evident that the possibility of a chance fulfillment by a ‘fortuitous concurrence of events,’ will become extremely desperate—yea, altogether impossible.
Hence the prophecies of heathen antiquity always took good care to confine their predictions to one or two particulars and to express them in the most general and ambiguous terms. Tehrefore, in the whole range of history, except the prophecies of Scripture, there is not a single instance of a prediction, expressed in unequivocal language, and descending to any minuteness, which bears the slightest claim to fulfillment.
‘Suppose,’ says Dr Olinthus Gregory, ‘that there were only 50 prophecies in the Old Testament (instead of 333) concerning the first advent of Christ, giving details of the coming Messiah and all meet in the person of Jesus . . . the probability of chance fulfillment as calculated by mathematicians according to the theory of probabilities, is less than one in 1,125,000,000,000,000. Now add only two more elements to these 50 prophecies, and fix the TIME and the PLACE at which they must happen and the immense improbability that they will take place by chance exceeds all the power of numbers to express. (or the mind of man to grasp). This is enough, one would think, to silence for ever all please for chance as furnishing an unbeliever the least opportunity of escape from the evidence of prophecy.’ (Gregory’s Letters.”* Evidences of Prophecy by Alexander Keith; p.8
[end of page 8 of MESSIAH IN BOTH TESTAMENTS]
I don't know if the above are still operative, or not. I've tried emailing the author from a web search and received no response.
END TIMES PING LIST LEVEL 1 PING.
I hope to add portions of the booklet over time.
This is the first installment.
Please let me know if you believe it to be worth the bother.
According to amazon.com, the author passed away in 1969.
Thank you for posting this.
Thanks.
I didn’t think to look there.
Jesus performed MIRACLES, including raising the dead back to life, yet he was still rejected and put to death. Even satan still believes he has a chance to prevail and intends to take as many with him to the pit of hell if he fails (which we know God has already decreed he will).
The OT prophecies of the Christ have always been intriguing and became a precious part of what the Lord used to win me back from doubt to faith. A truly, honest skeptic could not possibly remain that way in light of God's revealed truth.
QUITE SO. QUITE SO.
THX.
Certainly . . . my copy is falling apart . . . fragile acid laden paper . . . I think I got it in Taipei from a missionary’s pile of books he was lightening his load with.
The copy notes that readers may get additional copies for 50 cents . . . clearly some time ago!
I gather, though that the author’s attitude was to get the word out, not per se to make money.
Thanks for the ping!
Awesome, thanks.
Thanks for your kind reply.
Excellent. Thanks.
THANKS.
http://outdoors.webshots.com/photo/2133832900046255447GANuYO
Look at this beautiful picture. I think that’s what the sky will look like when Jesus comes back.
Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus.
Post 14, ping.
thx.
Very encouraging,
THE TRUMPET by Bill Burns — November 23, 2009:
The Lord says to you today, have you heard My Word? Have you heard My exhortation? Rise up My people. Gather yourselves up and dig for the waters of this season.
... Dig new wells of great and strong anointing, for indeed the anointing will bring the glory and the presence of My kingdom upon your life.
Dig and drink. Sing to the well. Dig and drink. Dig and do not stop. Are you thirsty? Then dig. Are you thirsty? Then take a drink.
For you will find that there is a river of life that flows through My kingdom where trees are planted. Therein lies the mystery and the secret of the promise of My living water.
So I say today let all dryness be gone.
You have walked through the valley of the shadow of death; you have walked through the wilderness; you have walked through the dry places, but now you are coming to the place of living water where springs bubble up out of the depth of My kingdom.
Therefore, I say unto you, dig and drink.
As you drink, life will again enter in to your temple. As you drink, wellness will again come. As you drink the powers of darkness will leave. As you drink the glory of the kingdom will manifest in you, and you will become strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.
So, I say, drink. It is the season for the digging of the wells in the pattern and the type of those that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob dug. Use your faith as a shovel and dig and drink, says the Lord.
Also encouraging,
SMALL STRAWS IN A SOFT WIND by Marsha Burns — Nov. 23, 2009:
Beloved, refuse to allow the voice of the enemy to bring discouragement and keep you from fulfilling your destiny in Me, says the Lord. I have called and chosen you to manifest My kingdom in this time and in this generation.
You live in a critical age where darkness abounds, but My grace and truth abound even more. I will empower you to do the impossible, because with Me all things are possible. Only believe!
Matthew 19:26 But Jesus looked at them and said to them, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
THX THX
SMALL STRAWS IN A SOFT WIND by Marsha Burns — Nov. 27, 2009:
Beloved, this is a time of second chances. You will recognize this path because you’ve been this way before. However, it will be of great benefit to you if you will take the time and put forth the effort to pay attention to details. Discern My work as opposed to the work of flesh or the work of the enemy so that you can respond differently than you have in the past. There are some life lessons here that will serve you well if you will see things in the light of revelation and discern the difference between reacting in the flesh or responding in the Spirit, says the Lord.
Galatians 5:16 I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.
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