Читать книгу The Literature and History of New Testament Times - J. Gresham Machen - Страница 37

The appeal to prophecy, however, was not merely valuable to the early Church. It is of abiding worth. It represents Jesus as the culmination of a divine purpose. The hope of Israel was in itself a proof of revelation, because it was so unlike the religious conceptions of other nations. The covenant people, the righteous king, the living God, the world-wide mission—that is the glory of Israel. The promise is itself a proof. But still more the fulfillment. The fulfillment was an unfolding. Wonderful correspondence in detail—and far more wonderful the correspondence of the whole! The promise was manifold. Sometimes the Messiah is in the foreground. Sometimes he is out of sight. Sometimes there is a human king, sometimes Jehovah himself coming to judgment; sometimes a kingdom, sometimes a new covenant in the heart; sometimes a fruitful Canaan, sometimes a new heaven and a new earth. But manifold though the promise, Christ is the fulfillment of it all. "How many soever be the promises of God," in Christ is the yea. II Cor. 1:20. There is the wonder. In Christ the apparent contradictions of the promise become glorious unity, in Christ the deeper mysteries of the promise are revealed. Christ the keystone of the arch! Christ the culmination of a divine plan! That is the witness of the prophets. It is a witness worth having.