Hume: “All prophecies are real miracles, and only as such can be admitted as proof of any revelation.” See Wardlaw, Syst. Theol., 1:347. (a) Hundreds of years intervened between certain of the O. T. predictions and their fulfilment. (b) Stanley instances the natural sagacity of Burke, which enabled him to predict the French Revolution. But Burke also predicted in 1793 that France would be partitioned like Poland among a confederacy of hostile powers. Canning predicted that South American colonies would grow up as the United States had grown. D'Israeli predicted that our Southern Confederacy would become an independent nation. Ingersoll predicted that within ten years there would be two theatres for one church. (c) Illustrate ambiguous prophecies by the Delphic oracle to Crœsus: “Crossing the river, thou destroyest a great nation”—whether his own or his enemy's the oracle left undetermined. “Ibis et redibis nunquam peribis in bello.” (d) Strauss held that O. T. prophecy itself determined either the events or the narratives of the gospels. See Greg, Creed of Christendom, chap. 4. (e) Cardan, the Italian mathematician, predicted the day and hour of his own death, and committed suicide at the proper time to prove the prediction true. Jehovah makes the fulfilment of his predictions the proof of his deity in the controversy with false gods: Is. 41:23—“Declare the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods”; 42:9—“Behold, the former things are come to pass and new things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them.”
4. General Features of Prophecy in the Scriptures. (a) Its large amount—occupying a great portion of the Bible, and extending over many hundred years. (b) Its ethical and religious nature—the events of the future being regarded as outgrowths and results of men's present attitude [pg 136] toward God. (c) Its unity in diversity—finding its central point in Christ the true servant of God and deliverer of his people. (d) Its actual fulfilment as regards many of its predictions—while seeming non-fulfilments are explicable from its figurative and conditional nature.
A. B. Davidson, in Hastings' Bible Dictionary, 4:125, has suggested reasons for the apparent non-fulfilment of certain predictions. Prophecy is poetical and figurative; its details are not to be pressed; they are only drapery, needed for the expression of the idea. In Isa. 13:16—“Their infants shall be dashed in pieces ... and their wives ravished”—the prophet gives an ideal picture of the sack of a city; these things did not actually happen, but Cyrus entered Babylon “in peace.” Yet the essential truth remained that the city fell into the enemy's hands. The prediction of Ezekiel with regard to Tyre, Ez. 26:7-14, is recognized in Ez. 29:17-20 as having been fulfilled not in its details but in its essence—the actual event having been the breaking of the power of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar. Is. 17:1—“Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap”—must be interpreted as predicting the blotting out of its dominion, since Damascus has probably never ceased to be a city. The conditional nature of prophecy explains other seeming non-fulfilments. Predictions were often threats, which might be revoked upon repentance. Jer. 26:13—“amend your ways ... and the Lord will repent him of the evil which he hath pronounced against you.” Jonah 3:4—“Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown ...” 10—God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, which he said he would do unto them; and he did it not; cf. Jer. 18:8; 26:19.
Instances of actual fulfilment of prophecy are found, according to Davidson, in Samuel's prediction of some things that would happen to Saul, which the history declares did happen (1 Sam. 1 and 10). Jeremiah predicted the death of Hananiah within the year, which took place (Jer. 28). Micaiah predicted the defeat and death of Ahab at Ramoth-Gilead (1 Kings 22). Isaiah predicted the failure of the northern coalition to subdue Jerusalem (Is. 7); the overthrow in two or three years of Damascus and Northern Israel before the Assyrians (Is. 8 and 17); the failure of Sennacherib to capture Jerusalem, and the melting away of his army (Is. 37:34-37). “And in general, apart from details, the main predictions of the prophets regarding Israel and the nations were verified in history, for example, Amos 1 and 2. The chief predictions of the prophets relate to the imminent downfall of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah; to what lies beyond this, namely, the restoration of the kingdom of God; and to the state of the people in their condition of final felicity.” For predictions of the exile and the return of Israel, see especially Amos 9:9—“For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all the nations, like as grain is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least kernel fall upon the earth.... 14—And I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel, and they shall build the waste cities and inhabit them.” Even if we accept the theory of composite authorship of the book of Isaiah, we still have a foretelling of the sending back of the Jews from Babylon, and a designation of Cyrus as God's agent, in Is. 44:28—“that saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying of Jerusalem, She shall be built; and of the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid”; see George Adam Smith, in Hastings' Bible Dictionary, 2:493. Frederick the Great said to his chaplain: “Give me in one word a proof of the divine origin of the Bible”; and the chaplain well replied: “The Jews, your Majesty.” In the case of the Jews we have even now the unique phenomena of a people without a land, and a land without a people,—yet both these were predicted centuries before the event.
5. Messianic Prophecy in general. (a) Direct predictions of events—as in Old Testament prophecies of Christ's birth, suffering and subsequent glory. (b) General prophecy of the Kingdom in the Old Testament, and of its gradual triumph. (c) Historical types in a nation and in individuals—as Jonah and David. (d) Prefigurations of the future in rites and ordinances—as in sacrifice, circumcision, and the passover.
6. Special Prophecies uttered by Christ. (a) As to his own death and resurrection. (b) As to events occurring between his death and the destruction of Jerusalem (multitudes of impostors; wars and rumors of wars; famine and pestilence). (c) As to the destruction of Jerusalem [pg 137] and the Jewish polity (Jerusalem compassed with armies; abomination of desolation in the holy place; flight of Christians; misery; massacre; dispersion). (d) As to the world-wide diffusion of his gospel (the Bible already the most widely circulated book in the world).
The most important feature in prophecy is its Messianic element; see Luke 24:27—“beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself”; Acts 10:43—“to him bear all the prophets witness”; Rev. 19:10—“the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” Types are intended resemblances, designed prefigurations; for example, Israel is a type of the Christian church; outside nations are types of the hostile world; Jonah and David are types of Christ. The typical nature of Israel rests upon the deeper fact of the community of life. As the life of God the Logos lies at the basis of universal humanity and interpenetrates it in every part, so out of this universal humanity grows Israel in general; out of Israel as a nation springs the spiritual Israel, and out of spiritual Israel Christ according to the flesh,—the upward rising pyramid finds its apex and culmination in him. Hence the predictions with regard to “the servant of Jehovah” (Is. 42:1-7), and “the Messiah” (Is. 61:1; John 1:41), have partial fulfilment in Israel, but perfect fulfilment only in Christ; so Delitzsch, Oehler, and Cheyne on Isaiah, 2:253. Sabatier, Philos. Religion, 59—“If humanity were not potentially and in some degree Immanuel, God with us, there would never have issued from its bosom he who bore and revealed this blessed name.” Gardiner, O. T. and N. T. in their Mutual Relations, 170-194.
In the O. T., Jehovah is the Redeemer of his people. He works through judges, prophets, kings, but he himself remains the Savior; “it is only the Divine in them that saves”; “Salvation is of Jehovah” (Jonah 2:9). Jehovah is manifested in the Davidic King under the monarchy; in Israel, the Servant of the Lord, during the exile; and in the Messiah, or Anointed One, in the post-exilian period. Because of its conscious identification with Jehovah, Israel is always a forward-looking people. Each new judge, king, prophet is regarded as heralding the coming reign of righteousness and peace. These earthly deliverers are saluted with rapturous expectation; the prophets express this expectation in terms that transcend the possibilities of the present; and, when this expectation fails to be fully realized, the Messianic hope is simply transferred to a larger future. Each separate prophecy has its drapery furnished by the prophet's immediate surroundings, and finds its occasion in some event of contemporaneous history. But by degrees it becomes evident that only an ideal and perfect King and Savior can fill out the requirements of prophecy. Only when Christ appears, does the real meaning of the various Old Testament predictions become manifest. Only then are men able to combine the seemingly inconsistent prophecies of a priest who is also a king (Psalm 110), and of a royal but at the same time a suffering Messiah (Isaiah 53). It is not enough for us to ask what the prophet himself meant, or what his earliest hearers understood, by his prophecy. This is to regard prophecy as having only a single, and that a human, author. With the spirit of man coöperated the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit (1 Pet. 1:11—“the Spirit of Christ which was in them”; 2 Pet. 1:21—“no prophecy ever came by the will of man; but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit”). All prophecy has a twofold authorship, human and divine; the same Christ who spoke through the prophets brought about the fulfilment of their words.
It is no wonder that he who through the prophets uttered predictions with regard to himself should, when he became incarnate, be the prophet par excellence (Deut. 18:15; Acts 3:22—“Moses indeed said, A prophet shall the Lord God raise up from among your brethren, like unto me; to him shall ye hearken”). In the predictions of Jesus we find the proper key to the interpretation of prophecy in general, and the evidence that while no one of the three theories—the preterist, the continuist, the futurist—furnishes an exhaustive explanation, each one of these has its element of truth. Our Lord made the fulfilment of the prediction of his own resurrection a test of his divine commission: it was “the sign of Jonah the prophet”(Mat. 12:39). He promised that his disciples should have prophetic gifts: John 15:15—“No longer do I call you servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I heard from my Father I have made known unto you”; 16:13—“the Spirit of truth ... he shall declare unto you the things that are to come.” Agabus predicted the famine and Paul's imprisonment (Acts 11:28; 21:10); Paul predicted heresies (Acts 20:29, 30), shipwreck (Acts 27:10, 21-26), “the man of sin” (2 Thess. 2:3), Christ's second coming, and the resurrection of the saints (1 Thess. 4:15-17).
7. On the double sense of Prophecy.