by J. C. Philpot The essential nature of the prophetic office. The peculiar, and what we may call the primary and essential character of the prophetical office, is sometimes, we think, not clearly understood. The leading idea of a prophet is usually considered to be that he is one who predicts future events. This certainly is one part, and a very important part, of the prophetical office; but it is by no means the primary or essential feature--and indeed, as regards that office as sustained by the Lord himself, it was quite a subordinate feature. The primary and essential character of a prophet is that he SPEAKS for God. He is as God's mouth, (Jer. 15:19,) to speak God's words. This is plain, not only from the derivation of the word in both the Hebrew and Greek languages, but from several passages in the word of truth. Take for instance the following Scriptures—"Then the Lord said to Moses— See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet. You are to say everything I command you, and your brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out of his country." (Exod. 7:1, 2.) We point out the parallel expression, which so fully proves the truth of our assertion that the primary and essential idea of a prophet is that he speaks for God—"You shall speak to him and put words in his mouth; I will help both of you speak and will teach you what to do. He will speak to the people for you, and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God to him." (Exod. 4:15, 16.) The Lord's words to Jeremiah, when he called him to the prophetical office, bear most closely also on the same point—"Then the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; and before you came forth out of the womb I sanctified you, and I ordained you a prophet unto the nations. Then said I, Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak, for I am a child. But the Lord said unto me, Say not, I am a child, for you shall go to all that I shall send you, and whatever I command you you shall speak." (Jer. 1:4-7.) The distinguishing feature of Jeremiah's call to the prophetical office was that the Lord "put his words in his mouth." These words were words of authority and power; and thus by them he instrumentally rooted out, and pulled down, and destroyed, and threw down the enemies of God and godliness, and built and planted the Lord's own peculiar people. This was surely a much wider and more authoritative commission than if he had been sent merely to predict future events. It is perfectly true that he predicted the seventy years' captivity, the destruction of Babylon, and the return of the children of Judah to their own land, with other prophecies, some of which are still unfulfilled--but this was only a part of his prophetical mission. Similarly, when the Lord called Ezekiel to the prophetical office, he said to him, "You shall speak my words unto then, whether they will hear or forbear." (Ezek. 2:7.) And again, "And he said to me, "Son of man, listen carefully and take to heart all the words I speak to you. Go now to your countrymen in exile and speak to them. Say to them, 'This is what the Sovereign Lord says,' whether they listen or fail to listen." (Ezek. 3:10, 11.) The leading, the characteristic feature of a prophet, then, was that he came to the people with a "Thus says the Lord" in his mouth; that his words were not his own words, but God's words, and his message the express message of the Lord of hosts. This view of the fundamental character and position of a prophet may prepare us to see a little more clearly into the peculiar suitability of such an office, and the wisdom and mercy of God in providing such a means of speaking to the children of men. Man, being created in the image and after the likeness of God, was, from the very constitution of his intelligent being, made capable of receiving direct communications of the will and good pleasure of his heavenly Creator. Thus, in Paradise God walked and talked with Adam, instructed him into the knowledge of his will, and set before him a precept what to do, and a prohibition what to shun. (Gen. 2:16, 17.) In this state of innocence and happiness there was no need of a prophet to speak for God to man, as the Lord himself communed directly and immediately with him as the pure and intelligent creature of his hand. But when Adam sinned and fell, this mode of direct and immediate communion of man with his Maker was at once cut off. Man, stripped of his native purity and innocence, felt his nakedness and shame, and, full of guilt and terror, fled from the voice of the Lord which he once had heard with delight, to shelter himself from the indignant eye of Justice amid the trees of the garden. But O, the unparalleled mercy and goodness of the Lord! Where sin had thus abounded--there did grace much more abound; for in the very garden where man had so awfully and wilfully sinned and fallen, there mercy was revealed, and the very trees which had been witnesses of the fall, and had in vain sheltered guilty Adam from the wrath of his justly incensed Creator, now witnessed the first promise of redemption by a Mediator of God's own providing, one no less than his own Son, in due time to be made of a woman—of the seed of that very woman who had first sinned and then dragged the man down with her into the pit wherein she had herself fallen. The former way, then, of direct and immediate communication between God and man being cut off by sin, the glorious plan of redemption, which had lain from all eternity in the bosom of God, now provided a new way whereby God could once more commune with man. A Mediator having been provided, and a ransom found through and by his blood, a way was made whereby, no longer as before, immediately--but mediately, communion might be re-opened on a different footing, and resting on a surer and more blessed basis. This, then, is the foundation of the prophetical office, first in the Person of the Mediator, and then in inspired men sent of God as witnesses of him. We like to trace truth up to its eternal source, and to show the strong foundations on which the ordinances and appointments of God rest. There is in all the ways and works of God unspeakable wisdom; and when we can see this wisdom not only, as in creation, full of harmony and beauty, but as in the covenant of grace, replete with love and mercy, it has a blessed tendency to satisfy the mind with the fullest persuasion of the certainty of revealed truth, and to draw up the heart and affections to the Lord in the spiritual enjoyment of it. This must plead our excuse if we seem to any of our readers to have at all wandered from our subject. Now no sooner was the covenant of grace brought to light in the first promise, than it was acted upon, at first indeed dimly and obscurely, but ever with increasing clearness, until fully revealed in the Person and work of the Son of God, when, by appearing in the flesh, he brought life and immortality to life. Thus, in a sense, Abel, the first martyr, was also the first prophet, for he testified for God and for the way of salvation through the atoning blood of the promised Mediator, when he "brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof." The Apostle therefore says of him, "by faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts—and by it he being dead yet speaks." (Heb. 11:4.) "He being dead yet speaks." He spoke for God, as a prophet of the future, when he offered unto him a more excellent sacrifice than Cain; and "he yet speaks" for him as a prophet of the past, for his testimony being recorded in the sacred page, it still utters its voice as a witness for the way of salvation through the blood of the Lamb, wherever the word of truth is borne. Thus, as there is no speech nor language where the silent voice of the starry heavens is not heard, (Psalm 19:3,) so wherever, in the providence of God, the Bible is carried, in every tongue and to every nation, does Abel still speak as a silent prophet, and as one who sealed his testimony with his blood, to those who have ears to hear his voice. But if the instance of Abel be somewhat obscure, the next that we shall adduce is stamped clearly enough by God's own testimony. Enoch, certainly, was a prophet of the Lord, as Jude plainly testifies, and one of his prophecies, as yet unfulfilled, is preserved for us in the word of truth. He walked with God, and he spoke for God. "And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousand of his holy ones." (Jude 14.) What a clear view was given him of the second coming of the Lord Jesus in all the glory of the Father, attended with ten thousand of his holy ones, "to execute judgment upon all;" and how distinctly he saw the character and predicted the end of all those base creatures which, under the cloak of a profession, have ever infested, and will in the last days still more awfully infest, the Church of God. Noah was the next prophet recorded in the word of truth, for he was "a preacher of righteousness;" (2 Pet. 2:5;) and the blessed Lord himself spoke in him by his Spirit when he preached by him unto the spirits now shut up in their awful prison, awaiting the judgment of the great day, even those rebellious and disobedient antediluvians against whom Noah testified, both by word and deed, when he prepared the ark to the saving of his house. (1 Pet. 3:18-20; Heb. 11:7.) But time and space will not admit of our pursuing further this subject, or to trace out the stream of prophecy from its original source down to the close of the canon of the Old Testament. Let these two observations on the general character of prophecy suffice: 1. It pleased God to choose a people for himself in the seed of Abraham, to whom he might make known his will, and he therefore raised up a succession of prophets among them to be as his mouth, to speak to them in his name. As they, in thus testifying of him, had continually to predict coming judgments or to promise future blessings, the idea naturally attached itself to the office of a prophet, that he was one sent to foretell future events--but always in connection with the primary feature of his character--that he was specially sent by God, and spoke in his name and by his special authority. To foretell the future was indeed necessary to their office, and the fulfillment of their predictions was a proof of God's speaking in and by them. The following words of Moses throw the clearest light on the whole subject—"But any prophet who claims to give a message from another god or who falsely claims to speak for me must die. You may wonder, 'How will we know whether the prophecy is from the Lord or not?' If the prophet predicts something in the Lord's name and it does not happen, the Lord did not give the message. That prophet has spoken on his own and need not be feared." (Deut. 18:20-22.) 2. "The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy," (Rev. 19:10,) both in the Old Testament and the New, and thus the whole series of prophets testified to the Person and work, grace and glory of the Son of God. To testify of him was the delight of their heart and the theme of their tongue. They themselves indeed did not fully understand the full import of their own prophecies--but they know that salvation by the promised Messiah was the theme of them all, as the Apostle Peter declares—"Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things." (1 Pet. 1:10-12.) In similar language he testified to the same truth when, almost immediately after the day of Pentecost, he spoke unto the people in the porch of the temple—"Starting with Samuel, every prophet spoke about what is happening today. You are the children of those prophets, and you are included in the covenant God promised to your ancestors. For God said to Abraham, 'Through your descendants all the families on earth will be blessed.'" (Acts 3:24, 25.) Thus, too, our blessed Lord reproved the two disciples journeying to Emmaus with the slowness of their heart in not seeing and believing that which the prophets had testified of him. "You are such foolish people! You find it so hard to believe all that the prophets wrote in the Scriptures. Wasn't it clearly predicted by the prophets that the Messiah would have to suffer all these things before entering his time of glory? Then Jesus quoted passages from the writings of Moses and all the prophets, explaining what all the Scriptures said about himself." (Luke 24:25-27.) Blessed Interpreter! blessed interpretation! O that he would do to us by his Spirit and grace what he afterwards did to all his disciples just before he was parted from them and carried up into heaven! that he, even he, would open our understanding that we might understand the Scriptures, and under his divine teaching, as the Prophet of his Church, might sit at his feet and hear his words, and know in sweet experience that they are Spirit and they are life to our soul. |