The Bible and Prediction
The first great moral question which demands an intelligent answer is this: Is there a God? and the second is like unto it: Is this God’s book? Has God spoken to man? No questions can transcend in importance these two, for they form the basis of all spiritual and religious thought and inquiry.
It has been already conceded that the presumption is against the Bible as a divine book. The fact that other books have also claimed to be a supernatural product throws the burden of proof on the Bible itself and its defenders; and this is conceded in the challenge for investigation and in the treatment accorded to honest doubt as perfectly legitimate; but the Bible’s challenge is a fearless one, for it confronts every questioner with evidence that ought to satisfy, and will satisfy, all sincere inquirers after truth. Prediction furnishes a burden of evidence that must stagger any unbeliever, this department of evidence so abounding with proofs, found in the Word of God, itself, as to
make honest doubt impossible.
As this book claims to be a royal message, issued to God’s human subjects, it is of the highest consequence that as such it should be accompanied and authenticated by His royal signature and seal. Moreover, in accordance with the importance of the proclamation and the gravity of the crisis, is the importance that such signature and seal should be obviously affixed to the document, so that all whom it concerns may be satisfied that it issues from the King. Because the Bible claims to be God’s word toman, and to treat of the most serious subjects that can claim our consideration, it is correspondingly necessary that its authentication should be absolutely beyond a reasonable doubt, otherwise it would be unreasonable to believe in and accept it. A supernatural book must have supernatural attestation; the work must show the skilled workman, and be worthy of him; not a botch and a blunder, or a tissue of absurdities, but such as might be expected of its great Author. An enlightened mind honours the bible by demanding such proof. Locke, in his essay on “The Human Understanding,” well says, “to abandon the use of reason in matters of revelation is like putting out the eyes in order to use the telescope.”
There are two conspicuous methods, both supernatural, by which the bible claims to be attested: one is prophecy and the other is miracle. A prophecy — using the word now in the sense of supernatural prediction — is a miracle of word or utterance; a miracle is a supernatural work or performance: and each of them reveals God. A prediction reveals Omniscience, a miracle reveals Omnipotence, both of which are divine attributes; and, therefore, prophecy and miracle are fitting modes of attesting a divine document.
It remains now to be proven that these methods of attestation have actually accompanied this book, and thus demonstrate that it is a supernatural revelation.
Prediction has a special value as appealing to the rational powers, even of the unbelieving. Some other forms of attestation can be appreciated only by the believer, the Bible being something like a cathedral, whose richest beauties can be seen only from within. To understand the stained glass windows of such an architectural monument, it is needful to look at them from the inside, with the sunlight shining through them. But there are other beauties of the cathedral that may be seen from without. Prophecy is intended to call the attention of the reasoning mind to the magnificent and majestic proportions of the Bible, not only as seen from within but from without. Then, by first convincing the reader of its divine inspiration, it prepares him to enter within as a beHever and see other beauties as of stained glass windows, imperial columns, and groined arches.
Prophecy, again, is of special value because it is permanent in its witness. Miracles which belong to a remote age were especially designed to lay foundations for the Christian faith; when such foundations were laid, these particular miraculous attestations would naturally cease in history. If repeated in subsequent ages, their frequency would imply diminution of their force, since the power of a miracle largely lies in the fact that it is extraordinary — an interruption of the ordinary natural process, and, if occurring too often, could, of course, no longer attract attention by its novelty and startling character.
Prophecy, however, is a perpetual miracle. While other miracles lose force in proportion as the time of their occurrence is remote, prophecy increases in force as the interval is the more extended between the prediction and its fulfilment. It is a significant fact that God should have put predictive prophecy as a seal upon His Word, so that any candid doubter, seeking for light, might find it;
and so God perpetuates the evidence through the
69 ages. While the multipHcity and remoteness of miracles would decrease their force, the multiplicity and remoteness of predictions increases theirs.
It has already been claimed that no rational, sensible and candid mind can examine the evidence from prophecy, and yet account for the Bible as a merely human production. Why, then, is there so much doubt? First, because there is so much ignorance, and some of it wilful. Here is this book, containing within itself every necessary attestation of its divine character. Yet how large a portion even of the more intelligent classes spend more time on the daily newspaper than they do on the Word of God! Fictitious literature floods the market, and two-thirds of the books drawn from public libraries are said to be novels, which shows the trend of modern reading. How seldom is any proportionate and discriminating attention given to this divine Book. There would be few skeptics on the earth if this Bible were read as other literature is.
Some who do not entirely neglect this book resort to evasive ways of interpreting its mysteries, such as the poetic method, which sometimes means denying all literal interpretation, and
evaporating predictions into vague and indefinite general statements. Some even venture to explain these predictions as shrewd conjectures, and their remarkable fulfilments as results of fortunate guesses; or they compare them to the forecasts of the weather prophet, who, having the records of the weather for many years previous, and carefully observing the phenomena of the present, is able sagaciously to predict to-morrow’s atmosphere and cloudland. Examination will show how utterly unsatisfactory and untenable such explanations are, and that they all betray a lack of careful and conscientious examination of the subject.
Biblical predictions have been fulfilled in history, and some of them in the history of our own times. They cannot be dismissed as ambiguous, “with double sense deluding,” like the ancient Delphic oracles, for nothing is more clear and unmistakable than the statements found in the Word of God as to future events. These introductory remarks will be vindicated and illustrated as the investigation proceeds.
One remarkable fact is that God has not only
attested prediction by fulfilling it historically, but
has often used professed skeptics to record such
fulfilments. Out of the mouths of enemies of the
Christian religion have come some of the main
confirmations and attestations of the accuracy of biblical predictions! Volney, an infidel, who held the human origin and essential falsity of all religious systems, and scouted all idea of a supernatural revelation, has left on record some of the most accurate observations of facts, verifying many prophecies of Holy Scriptures. He went to oriental lands, described what he saw accurately and carefully and, taking views of ruins, became a sort of photographer of prophecy ;* and Gibbon, the infidel historian, has contributed scores of pages to similar confirmation of the word of God, all unconsciously and unmeaningly on his part. God also took the sun as His coworker and cowitness. The daguerreotype, invented early in the last century, has enabled many who cannot travel to foreign lands, to behold the remarkable fulfilments of prediction, brought near by the magic art of the camera, the sunlight reproducing those scenes of desolation which prove that God’s word has been fulfilled.
We are bidden to search the Scriptures whether these things are so. In the prophecy of Isaiah (xxxiv:16) is a notable challenge: “Seek ye out of the book of the Lord, and read; no one of these shall fail, none shall want her mate: for my mouth it hath commanded, and his spirit it hath gathered
Volney s ‘* Ruins,” published 1794.
them.” This is ordinarily taken to refer to those animals of which the prophet had been speaking, that in the desert of Idumea should hide among its ruins, each one calHng to its mate. But another rendering and reference have been suggested: “Search ye in the writings of Jehovah, and read. Not one of all these (His sayings) shall stand alone; not one (prediction) shall lack its counterpart (in fulfilment). For the mouth of Jehovah hath given (the decree), and His spirit it hath brought (prediction and fulfilment) together.”
Such is God’s injunction, that the reader shall search out the words of Jehovah, as to coming events, and read, and then show one prediction that has not been fulfilled, save only such as may concern events yet future. Not one such prediction stands alone, — not one fails of its mate or counterpart, in the historic events.
Can such coincidence be accounted for on the law of probabilities? Is it possible that these predictions have simply come true by accident? The law of simple and compound probability is familiar to those who know the common principles of mathematics. A single prediction made, concerning future events, may or may not prove accurate; hence simple probability represents the chance of its coming to pass by the fraction, one-half, or one chance in two. For instance, if it were predicted that this will be a year of marine disasters, the prediction has a half chance of accomphshment. But if it be added that these marine disasters will be in the Atlantic Ocean, as each item can have at most only its half chance, we are in the realm of compound probability, and must multiply one-half by itself, which gives us one-quarter chance. If another item be added, that these disasters are to be in February, we have at best one chance in eight; and so on, as each new particular is added, multiplying again by one-half.
In the prophecies about Tyre, Philistia, Babylon, Nineveh, Egypt, etc., there is an average of forty different details in each case, so that one-half must be raised to its corresponding power to express the insignificant fraction of probability that so many particulars will be realized in any one event. The numerator will be one, with a denominator of hundreds of millions. It is needful only to make such a simple calculation in arithmetic, to know that these things could not come to pass by a mere accident. To attempt to throw discredit upon such a body of prediction, shows either the stupidity of the fool or the trickery of the knave.
In applying criteria by which to test prophecy, the more severe the better, that there may be no room for doubt on the part of any candid inquirer. There are four such criteria, but the test will be still more decisive if we add a fifth.
First, Remoteness of Time. In order that there shall be no possibility of any efficient agency on the part of him who predicts the event, in bringing it to pass, there must be such separation between the prediction and the fulfilment that the prophet can have no power, directly or indirectly, to influence the result.
Secondly. Minuteness of Detail. The particulars of the prophecy should be so many and minute that there shall be no possibility of accounting by shrewd guess-work for the accuracy of the fulfilment.
Thirdly. Novelty of Combination. There should have been nothing in previous history which makes it possible to forecast a like event in the future. There must be something new in the combination; something fresh, startling and original in the prediction and the method of its fulfilment, to prove divine intervention.
Fourthly. Mystery of Contradiction. That is to say, when the prophecy is examined carefully, it shall present such paradoxes or apparent contradictions, that it is impossible to understand the
75 prophecy fully until the events have supplied the key to its mysteries.
Fifthly. Clearness of Forecast — that there shall be such perspicuity of statement as not to be ambiguous, but obvious in its general meaning; and that especially, when the event occurs, it shall be seen to correspond without question to the original prediction.
These are confessedly severe tests, and yet by them every prophecy of the Holy Scripture may be tried and not fail. Prediction finds its mate — the historic event; there is close correspondence between the forecast and the fulfilment.
We turn attention, first, to certain prophecies of the Bible which center or cluster about the Jews; noting in advance, that this is true of most predictions. We may put in the center of the whole prophetic scheme, the word “Israel,” for even the few predictions which have to do with the world kingdoms are not disconnected with God’s chosen people — the Jews. The uniqueness of the scheme of prophecy is found partly in this unity: it does not consist of scattered fragments without system, but Israel stands as its crystallizing center.
On the southwest of Judea, lay Egypt and
Arabia; on the southeast, Moab, Ammon and
Edom or Idumea; on the east and northeast,
Babylon and Nineveh, on the north and west, Phihstia and Samaria; and on the northwest, Tyre and Sidon and Phoenicia.
Tyre & Sidon Babylon
Phoenecia Nineveh
N.W. N. E.
Philistia TTT
& Samaria
S.W.
Egypt & Moab, Anunon &
Arabia Edom or Idumae
Thus Israel holds the center, with from ten to twelve nations ranged around. The offence of each of these nations was different and so was God’s method of dealing with them. They all fell under His curse because of something that they had done toward Israel: Egypt keeping Israel in slavery; Philistia drawing off her strength and harassing her from the western border; Edom and Moab and Ammon interfering with her entrance into or progress in the land of promise, delighting in her destruction and decay; Babylon and Nineveh were the lands of captivity; Tyre and Sidon, responsible for the introduction of the worship of Baal into Israel and Judah.
God’s punishment was “poetic retribution.” As the rhyme and rhythm of one line correspond
77 with those of another, in versification, so, in their punishment there was such correspondence between the offence committed and the penalty exacted as showed that they were matched the one against the other, as when Haman swung from the very gallows that he built for Mordecai.
Brevity forbids extensive quotations from the predictions written by Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Nahum, Joel, Daniel, Isaiah, and others, concerning these nations, which occupy scores of chapters.
From the prophecies about Egypt two or three predictions may be chosen as a key to the rest; they occupy the 29th, 30th, 31st, and 32nd chapters of Ezekiel. A few expressions occurring here are very striking: Egypt “shall be the basest of the kingdoms... They shall no more rule over the nations.” (Ezek. xxix: 15.) “I will make the river dry ... I will make the land waste, and all that is therein, by the hand of strangers.” (xxx:12.) And further in the 13th verse: “... and there shall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt.” Here are a few among scores of particulars: Egypt, the largest, most distinguished and most exalted of ancient kingdoms was to become the basest; the Nile Valley, which made it the granary of the world, was to become dry and desert; where for two thousand years there had been a succession of native princes, there was to be no more a prince of its own land. What was more impossible, according to human conjecture? The most enduring monuments on earth had been erected by the Egyptians — witness those artificial mountains, the pyramids; and yet this kingdom that once led the nations of the world, that had the most ancient and most distinguished dynasty, is even now before our eyes the basest of empires. The Nile Valley was the granary of the world; to-day its ancient bed is dry and eighty miles from the present channel, and another of the former beds is nothing but a sand heap, and the sand has drifted over that formerly fertile land until it has threatened to engulf the pyramids.
The story of the Mamelukes that reigned in Egypt is a remarkable bit of historical fact. About the middle of the thirteenth century (1240), these Mamelukes were brought over by the Sultan into Egypt, a band of twelve thousand military warriors trained for arms. Four years afterward, they rebelled; they assassinated the Sultan and elected one of their own number to occupy the Egyptian throne. Even then the succession did not follow in the line of the reigning sovereign, but when he died or was displaced, another slave
79 from a fresh batch brought from Circassia was elected to the throne. There was not a ruler from the native princes of Egypt; and although, when the country was overrun by the Turks (15 17), the sceptre passed nominally from these Mamelukes, they continued as Egyptian Beys until 181 1, when the final blow was struck that demolished their power.
This was poetic retribution, indeed, and could only be traced to the Lord God of Recompenses Who shall surely requite. Egypt had reduced the Israelites to slavery and compelled them to serve rigorously in bondage, and possibly they were the builders of those imperishable pyramids. How did the God of Recompenses requite Egypt? For three hundred years He gave up this country that enslaved His own people, to be governed by slaves, so that there was no more a prince of the land of Egypt — another example of predictions which do not stand alone, but find their companion fulfilments, their counterpart in historic events.
In the prophecies about Philistia two or three
features are prominent: (i). Ascalon, the great
fortress, should be despoiled and destroyed, and be
absolutely without inhabitant; (2) Ashdod, that
resisted the longest of sieges (29 years), should be
despoiled. Ascalon is uninhabited, although the nuns offer a good shelter from the storms of sand and rain with which the Mediterranean coast abounds. Just outside Ascalon is a mud village of the Fellaheen, who, when asked why they did not seek a refuge there, said they believed genii and spirits inhabit the ruins, and they dared not go and live there. And so this great fortress is not only despoiled, but remains Uterally without inhabitant.* As to Tyre, — there was both an insular and a continental city by this name. The former stood on an island in the Mediterranean, half a mile or so from shore, compassed by impregnable walls washed by the sea at their base. This queen city of the Mediterranean could not be taken, as it was supposed. When Alexander followed Nebuchadnezzar in assault upon it, (332, B.C.), enraged that this island stronghold so withstood his power, he built out a mole from the mainland, turning the island into a peninsula. He scraped the ruins from the site of the continental city and carried them into the midst of the sea, in order to accomplish his purpose. Both cities have been destroyed, and exactly as the prophet said, what is left is “a rock for fishers to spread their nets upon.”! When Dr. Alexander Keith visited these sites, and sought
*Zeph. II: 1-7; Zech. ix. 1-8, etc.
t Jerem. XXV, xxvii: Ezek. xxvi-xxviii; Amos i:9-15; Zech. ix: 2-4.
8i a place where he might pitch his tent, he found this
mole as smooth as a rock, and the fishermen at that
very time spreading their nets upon it to dry, and
he took a photograph of it which he has reproduced
in his exhaustive treatise on prophecy.
Herodotus says of Babylon that it had walls
three hundred feet high, and seventy-five feet broad,
so that three carriages could be driven abreast.
There were eight miles of length between the river
gates, the city standing over the bed of the
Euphrates. Cyrus dug a great trench around the
city, ostensibly as a bulwark for defense, but really
to turn the waters into a new channel; and then,
having successfully accomplished this engineering
feat, exactly as was predicted, on a night of revelry,
when the Babylonians were occupied with their
own merriment, thinking their city impregnable,
Cyrus and his army entered, advancing through
the bed of the river, and from both ends of the
channel at once. If, even then, those brazen gates
had been closed, his army, caught in a trap, might
have been destroyed; but this failed to be done and
in their wild mirth the inhabitants were entirely
unprepared to meet the foe. The prophecy
(Jer. LI: 31): “Posts shall run to and fro to inform
the king in his palace that the city is taken at each
end,” was literally fulfilled when, almost simultaneously, the army advanced into the city from each end of this river bed, and the posts, starting from both sides, encountered each other midway as they ran toward the king’s palace. The dismayed people acted like cowards, even the king himself, locked up in his palace, voluntarily opening the doors. God had said: “I will open before him (Cyrus) the two-leaved gates,” (of the palace) as He had also said, “The gates shall not be shut” (the brazen river gates).
Another prediction about Babylon was: “Two things shall come to thee in a moment, in one day, the loss of children and widowhood.”* In the midst of the siege, so determined were they not to be driven to extremities by famine, that they strangled fifty thousand of their women and children, reserving only sufficient to bake bread to carry them through the siege; so that in one day, and as in one moment, the loss of children and widowhood came upon them, and there is nothing parallel to this in the history of mankind.
Thus prediction is fulfilled as it concerns that group of nations of which the Jews are the center, Egypt, Babylon and Assyria; Edom, Moab and Ammon; Tyre, Sidon and Phoenicia. Egypt that reduced Israel to slavery, was punished by becom-
*Isa. XLVn:9. 83 ing the basest of kingdoms, ruled over, about as long as the Israelites were held in bondage, by a race of Circassian slaves. Nineveh and Babylon, the lands of captivity, were to be destroyed, even their site unknown for many centuries. God said He would make Nineveh as a grave, and the great mounds rise on its site like huge graves in a deserted cemetery. Babylon was to be destroyed by the drying up of the Euphrates, and Nineveh by the inundation of the Tigris. There seemed no reason why these decrees should not have been reversed, Babylon’s stream overflowing, and Nineveh’s river drying up, but all took place as announced years before.
Edom, Ammon and Moab harassed Israel on her border by wars and incursions, and by the seduction to impurity, and their punishment was to be without inhabitant. Even the Rock City, whose sculptured temples and strongholds, cut into the solid bedrock, still exhibit marvels in comparison with which even St. Peter’s Cathedral at Rome is a minor achievement — even Petra, exactly according to the decrees of prophecy, is inhabited only by the wild beasts specified in the predictions.
As to Tyre and Sidon, that entangled Israel as well as Judah in Baal and Astarte worship, not only is Tyre like a “rock for fishermen to spread their nets upon,” but the temples and idols of Tyre and Sidon have no representative worshippers. Here, again, are startling prophecies fulfilled to the letter, but we have as yet touched only on the outskirts of this great theme.
The imperial seal of Almighty God is upon His Book. It fills the believer with awe, when he sees that this book has thus upon it the stamp of its Divine Author — the mark of heaven — the impress of eternity. Doubt and indifference can be explained only by the fact of moral depravity. The ruins of Egypt, of Babylon, of Tyre, of Nineveh, all typify this sadder ruin of humanity. The rejection of the Word of God is due more to the heart than to the head. Compelled to confront such a mass of overwhelming evidence, there are those who shut their eyes to the glory that beams from these pages as from the very throne of God,* that they may continue in sin. They deny the inspiration of the Bible because they find it impossible to believe and accept it as an inspired revelation, and yet to go on comfortably in evil-doing. f First men do violence to conscience, and then make shipwreck of faith. Were there no sin in the world, there would be no skepticism. But the time is coming, in the final assizes of the universe,
* Revelation v: 1-5. f I Timothy i: 19.
85 when the solemn question will be substantially asked: “What hast thou to say why sentence should not be pronounced upon thee according to law?” and it will be terrible in that day to be “speechless.” God challenges all men to search His Book, to read and examine, to see whether His forecasts stand alone, unaccompanied by fulfilment; to observe how prophecy finds its mate in history, its counterpart in subsequent events; and so learn that it is because both the utterances of prophecy and the occurrences of history emanate from the same divine Mind, and obey the same decree of His inspiring spirit, that the predictive Word of God, and the providential Work of God, move together in such mystic eternal harmony.