The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

7. GOD’S WITNESSES TO RECOGNIZED FULFILLMENTS

Extensive research such as this, with its voluminous findings, which have been carefully analyzed and organized, inevitably develops certain definite conclusions or convictions by the time the author rounds out his work, and comes to the task of recording his findings in systematic form. PFF1 15.1

For example, your investigator has been brought slowly but irresistibly to the conclusion that prophecy has been progressively understood just as fast as history has fulfilled it, step by step, down through the passing centuries. And, further, that always at the time of fulfillment of each major epoch and event of prophecy there have been numerous men of eminence and godliness, widely scattered geographically, who have recognized that a fulfillment was taking place before their very eyes. They have sensed where they were on the timetable of prophecy, and have left the record of that recognition. Such is the evidence. PFF1 15.2

These men we shall denominate God’s “witnesses” to a recognized fulfillment, and their writings as constituting their “testimony” to that understanding. They bear a confirmatory testimony to the inspired character of Scripture and the foreknowledge of God, through attesting the recognized historical fulfillment of the divine predictions of Bible prophecy. They are the expositors, or interpreters, of prophecy, who have held aloft the luminous torch of truth through the centuries, as pictured in the frontispiece. PFF1 15.3