CHAPTER 5
Ch. 4THE KING IS COME
throughout all the world, that all the nations, according to the prophecy, kept the Feast of Tabernacles together in every place to the God of the prophets, and the Egyptians from that time recognizing God erected tents in every town and country place, which mean the local Christian Churches.
For the power of our Saviour Jesus Christ has pegged them (d) far better than Moses' tents through the whole world, so that every race of men and all the Gentiles may keep their Feast of Tabernacles to Almighty God.
When, then, we see what was of old foretold for the nations fulfilled in our own day, and when the lamentation and wailing that was {)redicted for the Jews, and the burning of the Temple and its utter desolation, can also be seen even now to have occurred according to the prediction, surely we must also agree that the King who was prophesied, (413) the Christ of God, has come, since the signs of His coming have been shewn in each instance I have treated to have been clearly fulfilled.
CHAPTER
From Isaiah.
The Signs of the Times of the Lord's Coining, and the Egyptians' Acknowledgment of the God of the Prophets.
[Passages quoted, Isa. xix. 1-3; xix.
19-21.] This is a passage that I have already partly expounded.
Now if the Egyptians are not seen in our own time deserting their ancestral gods and calling upon the God of the prophets ; if throughout Egypt in every locality, town and country there are not altars erected to the God that was formerly acknowledged only by the Hebrews
; if the idols of (414) Egypt have not been shaken, for that the power of the daemons that hung about them is gone, and the ancient superstition driven from the soul of the Egyptians ; and once more, if there is not intestine war arisen through all the households of Egypt, between them that receive the Lord and worship the God of the prophets and reject their
THE PROOF OF THE GOSPEL
Bk. VIII. immemorial polytheistic error, and them that oppose the (t>) converts of the I>ord in their adherence to the evil of their fathers ; if they do not even now in their efforts to cjuestion their own gods and the idols and them that speak out of the ground and the diviners by familiar spirits,^ make a vain and useless appeal to them because the daemons are no longer able to work in them as they did of old— if all these things are not seen to have been actually fulfilled, why (c) then, you may consider that the prophetic oracle is unfulfilled, and that the Lord that was prophesied has not yet " visited our human life.
But if, on the other hand, we can see the people of Egypt far more patently in actual fact than in mere description, some of them acknowledging the God ofihe prophets, and for His sake renouncing their ancestral gods, some of them raising political dissension against the converts, some of them even now calling upon their gods and images and them that speak from the ground, who no longer can effect aught, and some throughout all Egypt raising an altar to the Lord of the prophets for each local Church, caUing no (d) longer in their troubles and persecutions on beasts or reptiles as their gods, nor on wild animals and unreasoning brutes as their fathers did, but on the Supreme God, retaining Him only and the fear of Him in their minds, praying to Him, and not to the dc'emons, and promising what men should promise God—how can we deny that the prophecies of long ago have at last been fulfilled ? And these foretold that the Lord would come to Egypt not in an unembodied state, but in a light cloud, or better "in light thickness," for such is the meaning of the Hebrew, shewing figuratively His Incarnate state.
Therefore the prophecy ^ Cf. Isa. viii.
19, tovs tyyanrpifuvBovs hal tovs inrh ttis yT\s <^(i:vovvras Tovs Kevo\oyovvTas o'l (k tjjs KoiKias <(>uvovatv (Sept.
See \V. Robertson Smith, "On the forms of Divin.ntion and Majjic enumerated in Deut. xviii.
10, \\" Journal of Pliilolony, xiv.
(1S85), pp.
127 sq.\ J. G.
Frazcr, Folklore in the O.T., "The Witch of Endor,' ii. 524.
In necromancy the wizard cither made the voice appear to come from the tjround or from liis own insiile.
" Tlie witch lold Saul that llie i;ho.st of Samuel rose out of the earth, and throus^h the exertion of her vocal talent she may have caused to issue apparently from the ground a hollow and squeaky voice which the King mistook for the accents of the deceased seer."
For necromancy in third century, see Ilippolylus, Kefiitatio omniinit hercsiuin, liv. 35, ji. 102
((.Jo'.tincjen, 1859^ 2 T« Trpi) Tiiiv airoTf\f(Ti.idTwv fls ii)yov ^5»)
K€X''V'')'»*''<".
Ch. V
A SAVIOUR FORETOLD
goes on to call Him a man that is a Saviour, saying, "And (415) the Lord shall send to them a man that is a Saviour."
Here again the Hebrew is, "And He shall send to them a Saviour, who shall save them."
As the proof is now so clear from this, I consider that there is no question of the time at which the prophecies foretold the Lord's Coming.
I have here only briefly collected the evidence for the time of the Advent of our Lord.
If the other Scriptures were searched at leisure much more could be discovered.
But as I am well satisfied with what I have brought before (h) you, I will now address myself to the other prophecies.
And our next task will be to collect from inspired prophecy the predictions about the earthly dispensation of the Incarnation.^ '
Ttt oiKf vJ/uTjOeVra iu ayOpwirots.