Witnesses to Truth

by Edward Hoare

What did Moses write three thousand three hundred years ago? Turn to Leviticus xxvi. 33: “And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you; and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste.”

What did Isaiah say, writing about two thousand five hundred years ago? Turn to Isaiah vi. 11: “Then said I, Lord, how long? And He answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate.” Turn to chap. xxiv. 3: “The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled; for the Lord hath spoken this word.” Or to chap. xxxii. 12, 13: “They shall lament for the teats, for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine. Upon the land of my people shall come up thorns and briers; yea, upon all the houses of joy in the joyous city.”

What did Jeremiah say, writing about two thousand three hundred years ago? Turn to Jeremiah iv. 26, 27: “I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord, and by His fierce anger. For thus hath the Lord said, The whole land shall be desolate; yet will I not make a full end.” “The spoilers are come upon all high places through the wilderness: for the sword of the Lord shall devour from the one end of the land even to the other end of the land: no flesh shall have peace.” (Chap. xii. 12.)

And what did Ezekiel, writing about the same time, predict of the condition of Palestine during the dispersion, and until the restoration of the people? Turn to his address to those hills of which we have been speaking, in Ezekiel xxxvi. 3, 4: “Therefore prophesy and say, Thus saith the Lord God; Because they have made you desolate, and swallowed you up on every side, that ye might be a possession unto the residue of the heathen, and ye are taken up in the lips of talkers, and are an infamy of the people: therefore, ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord God; Thus saith the Lord God to the mountains, and to the hills, to the rivers, and to the valleys, to the desolate wastes, and to the cities that are forsaken, which became a prey and derision to the residue of the heathen that are round about.”

Here then we have the whole mystery solved, and the whole thing explained. In His sure Word of prophecy our heavenly Father told us what He would do, and the desolate hills of Palestine bear witness that He has done it. We may long to see them clothed once more with the vine and the olive, and we may profoundly pity their lawful proprietors, who look on their lawful home—once so beautiful, but now so desolate! But yet we cannot look even on that desolation without thanksgiving, for it is an evidence to all thinking men of the certain truth of God’s inspired Word. Those who refer to those desolate hills as an argument against the truth forget that the desolation to which they refer is a conclusive proof of the truth of the prophetic Word of God. Thus we are carried by this third proof far beyond either geographical accuracy or historical truth. A book may be geographically accurate, or historically true, and yet not be inspired. But no man can foretell the future. No man can look forward 3,000 years. No man, therefore, could span over all those centuries and tell us ages ago what would be the condition of Palestine in this nineteenth century. But God has done it. We thank God, therefore, for His Word, and we thank Him also for the testimony of the rocks. Nay, more, we may thank Him even for the sneers of such a man as Voltaire, for the very sneers are a proof to the students of the Scriptures that God’s prophecy is being fulfilled, and that God’s Holy Word may be trusted as divine.

But we must not leave the subject there, for we are taught a most solemn lesson as to the desolating power of a righteous God. He who has reduced those fertile hills to desolation, cannot He equally desolate the soul, and reduce the poor ruined heart to a similar condition of barren hopelessness? And will He not do it if His great salvation be neglected? I know that it is the fashion to believe that He is too merciful to punish; but for my own part I find it much more easy to believe that he is too true to declare that which he has no intention of performing. If the Word of God be true, “Verily there is a God that judgeth the earth,” and we cannot doubt that to the guilty sinner He must prove “a consuming fire.” But, thanks be to His Holy Name, if the warnings be true, so also are the promises. If the judgment be certain, so also is the salvation. If the minister of wrath be sure to fulfil the Word of judgment, so also is the blessed Saviour perfectly sure to fulfil the promises of life. If the law condemn with infallible certainty, so also does the Gospel proclaim that the claim of the law is satisfied in the great propitiation by the Son of God; so that any one, even the least and most unworthy of His people, may peacefully rest in the certainty of His never-failing Word, and abide in perfect peace, and perfect safety, in the perfect truth, and never-failing covenant of God.

SCOFFERS.

I propose to call the evidence of an unwilling witness, and to ask the scoffer himself to bear his “testimony to the truth” against which he scoffs. There is no better evidence than that which is given unwillingly—than that of a man who is put into the witness-box in order to prove one thing, and when closely examined is compelled by the force of truth to prove the opposite. Now as a general rule the scoffers desire to dishonour the Scriptures; they ridicule its statements, and deny its inspiration. But I am not sure that, if carefully examined, they will not be found to confirm the Word. Let us then carefully study their evidence, and may God the Holy Ghost bring it home to their hearts and our own!

But before we examine the modern scoffers, we must turn to what the Word of God has said respecting them. Rather more than eighteen hundred years ago the apostle Peter wrote two letters, the first addressed to scattered strangers, and the second to those who had “obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.” In this second Epistle he gave a divine prophecy to all such persons, and told them from God what they were to expect in the latter days. He taught them quite clearly that when they were approaching the end they were not to expect to be like some beautiful ship (with its sails set and its flags flying) sailing gallantly into the harbour, with a bright sunshine, a flowing tide, and a prosperous breeze; but rather like some weather-beaten craft, battered by the storm, beating up against the gale, and almost overwhelmed by the breakers on the bar. And it teaches also that one of the trials of those last days will arise from scoffers. As in navigation the chart may teach that there are dangerous rocks near the harbour mouth, so the prophecy says that when we draw near to the coming of the Lord, there will arise certain persons who will not be afraid even to scoff at the revelation of God. Let us first examine the prophecy, and then we shall be prepared to compare it with the fact. It assures us then of the fact that there will be scoffers, and it gives us a fourfold description of their character.

We shall find it in 2 Peter iii. 3–5: “Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of His coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water.”