Avenging of the Elect

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 11, 1862

Avenging of the Elect.

(Continued.)

THE FATAL MISTAKE OF THE ANCIENT JEWS: OR HOW ERRONEOUS PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETING THE MESSIANIC PROPHECIES OCCASIONED THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF THE WORLD FOR THE FIRST ADVENT OF CHRIST.

Your attention has already been directed to the evident revolution in the method of treating the prophecies that relate to the second advent, since the days of the primitive church, and since the times of the great Protestant reformers. You are now invited for a little while to contemplate another revolution in Biblical exegesis still more remarkable and surprising. It is in relation to the two advents of Christ. It shows that human nature is the same, whether developed through Jewish or through Gentile peculiarities. And the statement and solution of what we are about to relate will aid us in our investigation of the general subject under review.

The ancient Jewish divines had no difficulty in discovering from the prophecies that Messiah should come into the world about the time that our Lord Jesus was born. They had no difficulty in proving that he was to establish a visible kingdom in the world, and reign forever in his own person upon the throne of his father David. But they did not distinguish between the predictions of his first advent to be despised, rejected and slain, and those which relate to his second advent to judge, to triumph, and to reign.

And there is, it must be admitted, not a little ambiguity in the prophecies that relate to these two great events which did not fail to excite the attention and increase the embarrassment of the Hebrew Bible student. Some of the prophecies seem to relate solely to one advent, and others to the other. While some of them just as evidently cover the whole duration of time intervening between the two events, and in some degree associate the two extreme events together. Whether the various events embraced within the same field of prophecy were seen and understood in their true aspect and relations, depended materially upon the standpoint from which the whole succession was viewed.

Prophetic events were usually portrayed, as we may say, perspectively; not in the relative periods of their passing, but in the direct line of their approaching, each partly hidden by its nearest antecedent, and partially hiding in turn the next in the succession. As in looking along an extensive range of mountains, in the line of their greatest extent, we see the more prominent summits successively hiding and hidden in part, and in some cases blended and grouped together without our being able to discover the valleys and lesser eminences that intervene, as we might perhaps from some other position.

In the far-reaching line of the more comprehensive Messianic prophecies, the first and most conspicuous event was the child born, the Son given. Next in order was the government upon his shoulders. Next, the Divine and imperial titles upon his diadem. Next, the endless increase of his government and peace upon the throne of David. And thus, still extending into the future, the kingdom ordered and established with judgment and justice, and so, with perpetually increasing glory, passing into the forever and ever of eternal duration.

Such a splendid perspective prophecy as this, so full of hope and gladness to the Hebrew, and so encouraging to the whole human race, did not fail to become a universal favorite with all the believers of the ancient age, and the inspiring criterion by which to judge of the scope and intention of the other numberless detached and side prophecies, which were, so to speak, as the isolated hills and branching spurs of the more extensive and more connected general range.

But as the enraptured Hebrew soul looked admiringly along this line of glowing prophetic eminences, gazing over the sun-gilded palaces and gleaming towers of beloved Jerusalem, the eye became too fixed in its gaze upon the far-off glories that were so greatly longed for, to peer down into deep, dark Gethsemane, beneath the olives by night, to behold the wretched sufferer there, and recognize the mysterious Son of both God and man, baptized with tears and blood, and perceive that that was Prince Messiah.

And as the ardent Hebrew stood upon the brow of his own beloved Mount Olivet, with Acra, Bezetha, Moriah and Zion bathed in sunlight at his feet, his own magnificent temple—the Lord's house—rose up just between him and Calvary, and its gorgeous cloisters and golden turrets completely hid the bloody cross and the victim expiring there, and the gleaming pinnacles threw their rayless shadows upon the three-fold superscriptions over the victim's head: This is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.

When from another position prophecy afforded the Hebrew another view—a side view, if we may thus represent it—and he beheld a Man of Sorrow, growing up as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground, having neither form nor comeliness, nor beauty that he should be desired: when he was astonished at his visage, because it was so marked with grief, and his form more than the sons of men, and yet he looked like Prince Messiah: when he beheld him despised and rejected of men: when he beheld all the people averting and hiding their faces from him, who nevertheless, seemed to be the long expected One: when he saw him led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep dumb before his shearers: when he beheld his judgment wrested from him in his deep humiliation, and his life taken from the earth: when he beheld his soul laid upon the altar as an offering for sin, and the Lord bruising and chastening him to make an atonement for the sins of others, the most devout and studious of the Hebrew worshippers found himself strangely interested and strangely perplexed, and was constrained to cry out, How can I understand this, unless some man guide me? And he would inquire of the first traveler he met by the wayside—Of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other man?

Even the prophets themselves appear to have been unable to comprehend their own Messianic predictions. They were incited to inquire and search diligently, searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.

And even the angels desired to look into these things, but could not fully comprehend them. And there they stood, age after age, with mute curiosity and profound surprise, gazing downward upon the mysterious mercy seat, and waiting for the veil to be rent asunder, that the light of a new dispensation might illuminate that Divine obscurity, and bring to view things that had been always hidden from the foundation of the world.

As the final result of the embarrassment of the Hebrew mind, the masters in Israel did what was particularly natural for them to do, after they had made void the law of God by their traditions: Finding the predictions of Messiah's coming to judge and to reign over the world so plain and unmistakable as to leave no doubt of their literality; and being at the same time seriously embarrassed by those passages that speak of his sufferings, rejection and death: the former being altogether pleasing to their long cherished hopes, and very flattering to their national pride, as the Scriptures were commonly explained; the latter implying unpardonable iniquity on the part of the people, and ultimate disgrace and desolation, and therefore deeply mortifying and discouraging to their ardently expectant hearts, they generally agreed, it would seem, to interpret those prophecies which refer to his coming to reign in glory among them as being literal, and to be fulfilled in his own person; and those which relate to his rejection and death, which seemed to be inconsistent with the others, they seemed to explain away, as being impersonal and figurative, and applicable only to other persons and other things.

The dreadful result is before us: it forms a part of the world's most lamentable history. He came to his own, and his own received him not. Though they believed in him, and were ardently desiring and looking for him, and probably had no doubt of the truthfulness and propriety of their methods of interpreting the Scriptures, yet as the painful and astounding history shows, when the Messiah came, and was, and appeared, and acted, and suffered and died, just as their own Scriptures had foretold, he found the world, and his own people especially, unprepared to receive him. And the whole resulted from erroneous methods of interpreting the Scriptures; making their own prejudices and preferences the standard of exegesis, and explaining one passage as literal, and another as figurative, one as personal, and another as impersonal, not by any just laws of Scripture exegesis, but as hope, desire, or selfish ambition naturally prompted. Their final destruction was explained by the Lord himself in this single word, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." And, as he said, concerning the law, that they had made it void through their traditions, so he might as truly have said in relation to the prophecies.

THE FATAL MISTAKE OF MODERN CHRISTIANS: OR HOW ERRONEOUS PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETING THE MESSIANIC PROPHECIES WILL OCCASION THE UNPREPAREDNESS OF THE WORLD FOR THE SECOND ADVENT OF CHRIST.

It has already been intimated that a great revolution in doctrine in respect to the second advent has been effected in the modern church, as compared with their first leaders and founders. And you will find that there is a startling similarity with the Jewish declension from the true faith, in consequence of a like departure from the true method of Scripture exegesis, and for similar reasons.

We, too, as well as the Jews, find some things hard to be understood in these Messianic prophecies. And as we know that those which relate to his coming to suffer and to save are strictly personal and literal, because they have been literally and personally fulfilled; and as we are considerably embarrassed with those that relate to his coming to judge and to reign; in these last days—we repeat it, in these last days—it has become very common for our theological masters to consider these predictions of the millennial coming and kingdom as impersonal and figurative in their primary intention, and only secondarily and remotely, if at all, applicable to the person of Christ. The former, relating to the first advent being manifestly literal, and easy of explanation, and the latter, relating to the second advent, being considered of doubtful import, and not easily explained, the constant effort of the expositor seems to be, to interpret these so as to be in harmony with those, on the supposition that both classes of the predictions referred to the same thing in the same dispensation in its primary and ultimate differences of condition.

And thus the second advent prophecies have lost their originally specific character, as literal predictions of real events, and are now, contrary to all the established axioms of general criticism, first of all subjected to the hypothesis of a figurative interpretation, as if we were authorized to conclude beforehand, that what they seem to teach should not be considered as their primary intention. And, for all practical influences, as it is shown by the facts in the case, this very large class of the prophecies are as a dead letter, both to the Church and the world. And a multitude of unauthorized explanations and applications of such prophecies are ingeniously substituted, in the efforts to make them practical, without allowing them to speak for themselves. A very common method is to substitute death, and getting ready to die, as if dying and a preparation for death were, in effect, just about the same as the coming of the Lord, and a preparation for that event.

To all of this a sufficient answer may be given in these words:

1. It is virtually an attempt to improve the revelation that God has given to us in the language of the Holy Scriptures; unmistakably indicating that if we had been consulted by the inspired writers, we could have advised them of better themes, and a better class of terms than they were led to adopt. For, certainly, if speaking of death and of a preparation to die, is more appropriate, and has a better influence than speaking of the coming of the Lord, and a preparation to meet him, then the holy prophets and apostles, and our Lord himself, were not inspired to speak in the best manner for securing the best results.

2. In the second place, to die, and to be prepared for death, is not peculiar to Christianity, as the doctrine of the coming of the Lord is; but is something that all people of all religions are familiar with, and the idea of it does not necessarily imply any direct revelation from God. To make such a substitution, then, is, in effect, ignoring or setting aside, as being of little or no practical use, that which infinite Wisdom has judged to be of sufficient importance as to be made a subject of innumerable and direct revelations. It is, in fact, overlooking and virtually setting aside that which is peculiar to the Christian religion, and by which it is broadly distinguished from all the other forms of religion in the world, and adopting instead, for practical purposes, that which is common to all. Is this to be denied? If it be admitted, what a state of things does it indicate?

3. Finally, to speak in the manner that is usual and necessary for those who make the substitution, is not speaking "as the oracles of God," but instead thereof, preferring the human method before the divine. And this, of itself, is an evidence of inconsistency in the doctrine or method that leads to such a practice and preference. And all this impropriety results from our liability to run to extremes in religion, as well as in every thing else: we have discovered the Scylla on which the Jews were wrecked, and we are veering constantly toward Charybdis.—Buck.

(Concluded next week.)