The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1
II. Eschatological Emphasis of Old Testament Prophets
Now let us turn briefly to these Old Testament prophets, other than Daniel, and see their emphasis on the long-range plan of redemption, especially its eschatological, or last-day, phase. Brief surveys must suffice, our fundamental objective being to trace the full outline prophecies revealed through Daniel and in the Apocalypse. (On the chronological, placement, or sequence, of the Old Testament prophets, see pages 58, 59.) PFF1 115.2
As noted, we find in the book of Daniel the most comprehensive eschatological and apocalyptic prophecies in the Old Testament. That is the reason for the marked emphasis upon it in this work. But there are other prophecies of a similar character—some very much earlier—in the messages of the prophets of Israel and Judah who were known chiefly as re formers. Yet along with their burden of religious, political, and social reform for their own times, they also gave definite eschatological messages concerning the latter day. PFF1 115.3
Some would make a distinction between “prophecy” and “apocalyptic,” and between “ethical” prophecy and prediction; but these are unjustifiable distinctions. When “the burden of the Lord” came upon a “son of the prophets” or a priest, a plowman or a gatherer of sycamore fruit, he spoke for God. His “thus saith the Lord” might rebuke idolatry or injustice in the palace of the king or in the lowly market place. It might predict the fall of a city or the coming of the Messiah. It might herald the time of the end or the resurrection of the body at the latter day, or perchance the punishment of the wicked. But whatever the emphasis, the ethical and moral element is constantly there. “Thus saith the Lord”—therefore amend your ways. PFF1 115.4
Ezekiel was summoned by the vision of the wheels within wheels to the task of calling a rebellious people back to obedience to God. (Ezekiel 1, 2.) Daniel’s interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s second dream was followed by the admonition, “Wherefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable unto thee, and break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by shewing mercy to the poor.” Daniel 4:27. The essence of the teaching of the prophets on the “day of the Lord,” and the future kingdom, was definitely ethical. First note some of the typical expressions. PFF1 116.1
1. “DAY OF THE LORD,” AND ITS INVOLVEMENTS
Many Old Testament prophetical books contain passages describing “the day of the Lord,” “the latter day,” or “that day.” This day of the Lord is the day of divine, supernatural intervention by which God overthrows His—that is, Israel’s—foes, and introduces the era of future blessedness for His people. Certain of the tremendous events connected at different times with this day-of-the-Lord concept may be listed thus: PFF1 116.2
(1) The coming of Jehovah in power and glory. PFF1 116.3
(2) Convulsions of nature. PFF1 116.4
(3) Fire and destruction—(a) on Israel’s enemies; (b) on the unfaithful in Israel. PFF1 116.5
(4) Desolation of the land. PFF1 116.6
(5) Judgment, or punishment for sin. PFF1 116.7
(6) Resurrection of the righteous. PFF1 116.8
(7) The kingdom of blessedness. PFF1 116.9
(8) The new heaven and the new earth. PFF1 116.10
Many of these concepts, and the very phrases describing them, are later used by Jesus, Paul, Peter, and John, to an extent that surprises many readers of the New Testament when they find such typically gospel expressions coming directly out of the Old Testament. They are tied inseparably together, as a survey will disclose. PFF1 116.11
2. ESCHATOLOGICAL TEACHINGS OF THE PROPHETS
The sins that the prophets combated revealed the popular belief of the day. The Israelites, who were continually going astray after other gods, neglecting or corrupting the worship of Jehovah, and disregarding His moral code, were all too frequently inclined to think of Him chiefly as a national God, after the pattern of the various patron gods of the heathen. They often offered sacrifices in the expectation that in return He would prosper and protect them, and they were looking for a glorious day of the Lord merely in the form of a day of triumph over their enemies. PFF1 117.1
The prophets, along with their appeals for repentance, and for social and individual righteousness, tried to replace this distorted, nationalistic view of the future kingdom with ethical and spiritual concepts. They presented Jehovah as the righteous Judge of all the world; and the future kingdom came to be conceived of as a regenerated nation composed of true Israelites and representatives from other peoples. In some cases the Messiah was thought of as the visible head, but was not always included in the picture. Doubtless the popular conception of the masses remained rather materialistic and nationalistic, but the spiritual leaders maintained the higher view of the Messianic kingdom to come, Charles says: PFF1 117.2
“According to the prophets, this kingdom was to consist of a regenerated nation, a community in which the divine will should be fulfilled, an organised society interpenetrated, welded together, and shaped to ever higher issues by the actual presence of God.” 3 PFF1 117.3
3. JOEL, AMOS, AND HOSEA SPEAK
It has been mentioned that the Old Testament prophets seem chiefly to have been sent with special message in times of crisis. Let us note them. PFF1 117.4
JOEL, who does not tell us when or where he lived, 4 pictures the day of the Lord in vivid terms: PFF1 118.1
“Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in My holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand, a day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness.” “The day of the Lord is great and very terrible; and who can abide it?” Joel 2:1, 2, 11. PFF1 118.2
He exhorts to repentance, if perchance the doom may be averted, and the Lord may drive away the northern army and restore the bounties of nature which have been withheld. Then he looks forward to the latter day, when “your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,” and when there will be “wonders in the heavens and in the earth,” “before the great and terrible day of the Lord come.” Verses 28-30. Then the remnant will be delivered—those that call Upon the name of the Lord. The nations will be judged, and “the Lord shall roar out of Zion, and utter His voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake.” Then a holy, cleansed Jerusalem will be God’s dwelling place forever. (Joel 3.) PFF1 118.3
AMOS, a native of Judah and one of the earliest prophets who can be dated, was a shepherd and a gatherer of sycamore fruit. He denounces the sins of the surrounding idolatrous nations, likewise those of Judah, and especially those of Israel, whose iniquities he enumerates and whose captivity he foretells. God is not to punish Israel’s enemies and let that apostate nation go free. ‘’Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord! to what end is it for you? the day of the Lord is darkness, and not light.” Amos 5:18. Thus he attacks the popular conception of the day of the Lord as a day of the triumph of Israel’s God over Israel’s foes. But God is “the God of hosts” (Amos 4:13; 5:27), who, “in that day ... will cause the sun to go down at noon, and ... will darken the earth in the clear day” (Amos 8:9). The day of the Lord is to vindicate not Israel but righteousness. Yet, in spite of the dark picture presented, the last verses of the book give hope of a restoration from captivity. PFF1 118.4
HOSEA, probably an Israelite, also pleads with Israel to repent, and draws a beautiful picture of the forgiveness of God. He predicts the Assyrian captivity of Israel, and mentions punishment for Judah, but says nothing specifically about the day of the Lord as such. However, he holds forth the hope of a future state of righteousness and happiness which, if taken as literal rather than poetic language, depicts something like the Messianic kingdom. (Hosea 1:10, 11; 2:16 ff; 3:5; 14:4-9.) Hosea furnishes one of the relatively few Old Testament statements of the hope of the resurrection: PFF1 119.1
“I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction.” Hosea 13:14. PFF1 119.2
4. ISAIAH PORTRAYS GLORIES OF NEW EARTH
ISAIAH directs his warnings sometimes to Israel and the various surrounding nations, but particularly to Judah, and in some passages the judgment of Judah broadens into a general World judgment. (Isaiah 2, 24, 26, 34.) The resurrection is clearly taught in chapter 26: PFF1 119.3
“Thy dead shall live; my dead bodies shall arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast forth the dead.” Verse 19, A.R.V. PFF1 119.4
This passage appears in connection with a reference to the “strong city” into which “the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter in.” Isaiah 26:1, 2. The second section of the book 5 beginning with chapter 40, changes the theme from doom to redemption. It looks beyond the captivity, and tells of Cyrus, before the return of the exiles (Isaiah 44, 45), and of the doming of Christ. The mission of Christ at His first advent, His role as the suffering servant, and His final triumph are all foretold. (Isaiah 61:1, 2; 42:1-6, 19-21; 9; 50; 52:13 to 53:12.) PFF1 119.5
The book of Isaiah transcends Jewish nationalism. Its sublime prose-poetry, with its promises of forgiveness, of redemption, of resurrection, and of the new heavens and the new earth, not only has lent color to the New Testament writings, but has continued to inspire the church down through the centuries furnishing comfort and hope for the Christian warfare, spiritual food for personal devotions, and themes for uplifting religious music—as witness some of the best-loved gems from Handel’s Messiah. PFF1 119.6
There are many prophecies of the redemption of regenerated Israel, and of a future state of happiness, couched in poetic terms and described by vivid figures of speech, This is not the place to go into an analysis of them, or to attempt to separate those which were fulfilled in the return, after the Babylonian captivity, from those which refer spiritually to the Christian church, or from those which point to the last days, or to the new heavens and the new earth and therefore the future age, or from those possibly regarded as conditional. 6 Inasmuch as Jesus applied some of these—with an obviously spiritual meaning—to the kingdom of grace established at His first advent, extreme caution may well be observed to avoid applying these kingdom prophecies of Isaiah, and others as well, to a temporal, earthly state centered in an earthly Jerusalem. PFF1 120.1
It was for that Very materialistic reason that the Jews rejected their Messiah. They hated Him for saying, “Many shall come from the east and west, and shall, sit down with Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast, into outer darkness,” Matthew 8:11, 12. And the Pharisees and priests sought to lay hands on Him when He trapped them into pronouncing their own sentence in the parable of the vineyard, and then came out with the open declaration: “Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.” Matthew 21:43. They refused to accept His spiritual kingdom of the righteous of all nations—although they could have read it in Isaiah (Isaiah 26:2; 14:1; 49:1-12; 56; 60; 66:18-23)—in place of their expected kingdom of fleshly Israel. And the same sort of misunderstanding marred the extreme Christian chiliasm which the early church rejected. 7 PFF1 120.2
5. MICAH, NAHUM, AND HABAKKUK SPEAK
MICAH bears messages to Samaria and Jerusalem of approaching destruction and restoration—and points out Bethlehem as the birthplace of the Messiah—but he does not include much along eschatological lines. NAHUM, who pronounced the sentence of doom Upon Assyria’s proud capital, is concerned principally with the punishment of Nineveh, except as the Lord’s vengeance on His people’s enemies can be considered typical of the general punishment of the wicked. PFF1 121.1
And HABAKKUK warns of the coming of the Chaldeans (Habakkuk 1:6) and rebukes sin, but he rises to a new height in his glimpse of the great truth that “the just shall live by his faith” (Habakkuk 2:4). He sees the time when “the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (verse 14), but he gives no hint as to how or when this is to come to pass. Chapter 3, the prayer of Habakkuk, is full of poetic imagery which pictures the punishment of the nations and the salvation of God’s people. PFF1 121.2
6. ZEPHANIAH’S AND JEREMIAH’S PROPHECIES
ZEPHANIAH, contemporary of Jeremiah, prophesies the desolation of Judah (Zephaniah 1:1-13), which serves as the theme for his warning of the approaching day of the Lord, “a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness,” in which “neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them” (verses 14-18). But after God’s indignation is poured out upon all the nations, when “all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of My jealousy, ... then will I turn to the people [A.R.V., “peoples”] a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve Him with one consent.” Zephaniah 3:8, 9. In preparation for this great day God calls for heart preparation, in the surviving remnant who will “trust in the name of the Lord” and “shall not do iniquity.” (Verses 12, 13.) He designates them as “all ye meek of the earth,” and invites them to seek the Lord and righteousness so as to be “hid in the day of the Lord’s anger.” (Zephaniah 2:3.) This prophecy definitely applies the future kingdom to a spiritual, not a racial, Israel, and places it after the fiery judgment on the whole earth. PFF1 121.3
7. JEREMIAH, INTRODUCER OF TIME PROPHECY
JEREMIAH, the king’s counselor who both prophesied and witnessed the fall of Judah, denounces the apostasy of Israel and the idolatry of Judah. He trumpets the warning of the foe from the north 8 (Jeremiah 1:14, 15; 4:6, 7; 10:22; cf. 25:9) who would depopulate the cities of Judah. Although the book deals principally with the captivity and the restoration after 70 years (Jeremiah 25:9-12), there are several passages which obviously go beyond immediate fulfillment to the Messiah’s kingdom (chapters 23 and 33, for example). PFF1 122.1
Jeremiah lays down a principle concerning the conditional fulfillment of prophecies which should throw light on some of the controversy in the early church, and in modern times as well, over certain material details which were never fulfilled literally in postexilic Judaism. He quotes God as saying: PFF1 122.2
“At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; if that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; if it do evil in My sight, that it obey not My voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them.” Jeremiah 18, 7-10. PFF1 122.3
The spiritual lesson of the relation of God to the individual heart (in the new covenant, Jeremiah 31:27-34) emphasizes each soul’s final responsibility, which has a bearing on final rewards and punishments, but there is no mention of the resurrection as such. PFF1 122.4
8. EZEKIEL ON INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY TO GOD
EZEKIEL, a priest, was himself an exile in Babylon before the final fall of Jerusalem. He seeks to warn and encourage his fellow exiles and their countrymen still in Judah just preceding the end of the kingdom. This book is in the “apocalyptic” form, that is, in symbolic visions, such, for example, as a wheel within a wheel (Ezekiel 1:16; 10:10); the winged creatures with the faces of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle (Ezekiel 1:10); the personification of Israel and Judah as faithless wives (Ezekiel 16). The prophet also acts out some of his messages in object-lesson demonstrations—his portrayal of the siege in miniature on a tile (Ezekiel 4:1, 2), his lying on one side and then the other for so many days, representing so many years (verses 4-6), and his dramatizations of the privations of the siege (verses 9-17), and of the departure of the exiles (Ezekiel 12:3-7). PFF1 123.1
Ezekiel goes even further than Jeremiah in teaching the individual responsibility of the soul to God: “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” Ezekiel 18:4. And he surpasses Isaiah’s brief declaration of the resurrection of the body in his graphic portrayal of the vision of dry bones which are reclothed in flesh by the Lord’s command and filled again with the breath of life. (Ezekiel 37.) This can be applied both to the spiritual resurrection of Israel’s hopes, and also to their resurrection from the grave, after which their restoration to their homeland is to take place. (Ezekiel 37:11-14.) PFF1 123.2
Looking for a return from the Babylonian captivity, he outlines elaborate plans in the vision of the restored temple, plans which, because of the failure of ancient Israel, were never carried out in full detail after the Exile. Once or twice he speaks of the future kingdom under the shepherd, or “My servant David” (Ezekiel 34), and of the moral restoration—the giving of hearts of flesh for hearts of stone (Ezekiel 11:19), a figure reminiscent of Jeremiah’s new covenant (Jeremiah 31:33). Most of his messages, however, seem to be directed primarily to the exiles of his own day. PFF1 123.3
9. GLOOM AND GLORY OF LATTER DAYS
ZECHARIAH presents his message after the first return from Babylon. In several symbolic visions the judgments of the Lord upon the heathen are presented. Zechariah looks forward to the Messianic era, in which he expects many Gentiles to become converted and share in the joys of the kingdom (Zechariah 2:11), which is to be established “not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit, saith the Lord of hosts” (Zechariah 4:6). Moral uprightness is required as a condition of the Messianic kingdom. (Zechariah 7:9-14; 8:15-17.) Chapter 9 contains a beautiful description of the Messiah’s dominion; its spiritual character is manifested in the fact that the New Testament applies it to the triumphant entry of Christ into Jerusalem. (John 12:14, 15.) Thus there is a blending of gloom and glory for the latter days. PFF1 124.1
MALACHI rebukes the wrongdoing of priests and people, comparing their polluted offerings unfavorably with the offerings of the heathen. (Malachi 1:7-11.) The Lord Whom they seek, the desired Messenger of the Covenant, will “suddenly come to His temple,” but He will come in judgment. “Who may abide the day of His coming? and who shall stand when He appeareth? for He is like a refiner’s fire.” Malachi 3:1, 2. God is coming in judgment against evildoers and oppressors of the poor but He offers forgiveness if they will return to Him, and blessings if they will be faithful with the tithe. (Malachi 3:5, 7, 10.) The final chapter describes vividly “the great and dreadful day of the Lord,” the day “that shall burn as an oven,” consuming all the wicked, like stubble, to ashes, leaving them neither root nor branch; after this, “unto you that fear My name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in His wings.” PFF1 124.2
Such are the eschatological glimpses of the “last things” as given by the various prophets of old. Let us now turn to the more complete and comprehensive prophecies of Daniel. PFF1 124.3