The History Of The Christian Church Volume 1, Philip Shaff 1819-1893

CHAPTER I 37 PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY IN THE HISTORY OF THE JEWISH AND HEATHEN WORLD. political, and social institutions and customs pointed to with God, in distinction from the ministers of the letter the coming of the Messiah, and the establishment of his and of traditional and ceremonial mediation. kingdom on earth.

The flourishing period of our canonical prophecy Prophecy, or the gospel under the covenant of the began with the eighth century before Christ, some seven law, is really older than the law, which was added after- centuries after Moses, when Israel was suffering under wards and came in between the promise and its fulfil- Assyrian oppression. In this period before the captivity, ment, between sin and redemption, between the disease Isaiah (“the salvation of God”), who appeared in the last and the cure.60 Prophecy begins in paradise with the years of king Uzziah, about ten years before the founding promise of the serpent-bruiser immediately after the of Rome, is the leading figure; and around him Micah, fall. It predominates in the patriarchal age, especially in Joel, and Obadiah in the kingdom of Judah, and Hosea, the life of Abraham, whose piety has the corresponding Amos, and Jonah in the kingdom of Israel, are grouped. character of trust and faith; and Moses, the lawgiver, Isaiah reached the highest elevation of prophecy, and was at the same time a prophet pointing the people to a unfolds feature by feature a picture of the Messiah— greater successor.61 Without the comfort of the Messian- springing from the house of David, preaching the glad ic promise, the law must have driven the earnest soul to tidings to the poor, healing the broken-hearted, opening despair. From the time of Samuel, some eleven centuries the eyes to the blind, setting at liberty the captives, offerbefore Christ, prophecy, hitherto sporadic, took an orga- ing himself as a lamb to the slaughter, bearing the sins of nized form in a permanent prophetical office and order. the people, dying the just for the unjust, triumphing over In this form it accompanied the Levitical priesthood and death and ruling as king of peace over all nations—a picthe Davidic dynasty down to the Babylonish captivity, ture which came to its complete fulfilment in one persurvived this catastrophe, and directed the return of the son, and one only, Jesus of Nazareth. He makes the nearpeople and the rebuilding of the temple; interpreting and est approach to the cross, and his book is the Gospel of applying the law, reproving abuses in church and state, the Old Testament. In the period of the Babylonian exile, predicting the terrible judgments and the redeeming Jeremiah (i.e. “the Lord casts down”) stands chief. He is grace of God, warning and punishing, comforting and the prophet of sorrow, and yet of the new covenant of the encouraging, with an ever plainer reference to the com- Spirit. In his denunciations of priests and false prophets, ing Messiah, who should redeem Israel and the world his lamentations over Jerusalem, his holy grief, his bitter from sin and misery, and establish a kingdom of peace persecution he resembles the mission and life of Christ. and righteousness on earth.

He remained in the land of his fathers, and sang his lamThe victorious reign of David and the peaceful reign entation on the ruins of Jerusalem; while Ezekiel warned of Solomon furnish, for Isaiah and his successors, the the exiles on the river Chebar against false prophets and historical and typical ground for a prophetic picture of carnal hopes, urged them to repentance, and depicted a far more glorious future, which, unless thus attached the new Jerusalem and the revival of the dry bones of to living memories and present circumstances, could not the people by the breath of God; and Daniel at the court have been understood. The subsequent catastrophe and of Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon saw in the spirit the sucthe sufferings of the captivity served to develop the idea cession of the four empires and the final triumph of the of a Messiah atoning for the sins of the people and enter- eternal kingdom of the Son of Man. The prophets of the ing through suffering into glory. restoration are Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. With The prophetic was an extraordinary office, serving Malachi who lived to the time of Nehemiah, the Old partly to complete, partly to correct the regular, heredi- Testament prophecy ceased, and Israel was left to himtary priesthood, to prevent it from stiffening into monot- self four hundred years, to digest during this period of onous formality, and keep it in living flow. The prophets expectation the rich substance of that revelation, and to were, so to speak, the Protestants of the ancient covenant, prepare the birth-place for the approaching redemption. the ministers of the spirit and of immediate communion 3. Immediately before the advent of the Messiah the whole Old Testament, the law and the prophets, Moses 60 Νόμος παρτειση̃λθενcame in besides, was added as and Isaiah together, reappeared for a short season eman accessory arrangement, Rom. 5:20; comp. προσετέθη the law was “ superadded”to the promise given to Abraham, Gal bodied in John the Baptist, and then in unrivalled humility disappeared as the red dawn in the splendor of the 3:19. rising sun of the new covenant. This remarkable man, 61 Deut. 18:15.