Prophecy Speaks (E.A.Rowell).pdf

e true. All prophecy everywhere is like that — amusing, sometimes ingenious, but never
worthy serious attention. But you make great claims for it.”
“Bible prophecies are worthy of consideration because they are as far from Delphic
utterances as midday from midnight,” replied Mr. Dare. “Bible predictions burn all bridges.
If the thing does not happen, no apology can be offered.
“Every other part of the Bible has been criticized in elaborate detail by unbelievers,
but when it comes to prophecy, sceptics the world over content themselves with a wholesale,
jaunty, contemptuous denial, as though it was of no consequence.”
“Will you Christians risk anything on prophecy? What of consequence is at stake to
believers?” asked Mr. Emerson.
“Just this: The Bible bases its whole claim to credence on the accuracy of its
forecasts. Why have unbelievers never made a detailed study of them, so they might expose
the fraud of prophetic chicane to the deserved contempt of the public, if the prophecies are
what you claim?
“You, Mr. Emerson, along with other sceptics, despise prophecy. There were many
such believers in Paul’s day. To them and to you he said: ‘Despise not prophesyings. Prove
all things; hold fast that which is good.’ 1 Thessalonians 5:20, 21. Here you are challenged
above all things to prove prophecy; that is, test it, and if it proves true, hold fast to it.”
“But wherein are prophecies better evidence than miracles?” asked Emerson. “I
thought that Christ used miracles to convince, and that Christians today appealed to these
miracles as the strongest evidence of Bible authenticity.”
“Christ repeatedly appealed to fulfilled prophecy as evidence His contemporaries
might accept,” answered Mr. Dare. “Fulfilled prophecy is especially adapted as a test, for we
are nineteen hundred years from the latest Bible book and thirty-three hundred years from the
first.
“You may look back at the miracles of the Bible through the mists of time and declare
them improbable, if not impossible, but the opposite is true of prophecy. Those beholding
His miracles were convinced by them, while many of the prophecies that were unfulfilled
were apparently opposed to all reason and probability, and might in those days have been
made an excuse for rejecting Christ.
“Obviously, miracles performed twenty-five hundred years ago cannot be seen now,
so they are often flatly denied. A prediction, however, made twenty-five hundred years ago,
and which was contrary to all analogy, and a stumbling block at the time, but which was
recently fulfilled, is evidence even more convincing than a miracle — such a fulfilled
prediction is the greatest of all miracles, and was so admitted by the sceptic Hume.
“Other evidence can be falsified, changed, lost, memory may fail, conflicting
statements may cloud the issue; passion, self-interest, dishonesty, any one of a thousand
things, may impair proofs. But prophecy relates to history, and history is recorded fact.
“How was God, through all the shifting interests of the world, the engrossing
allurements of the new demands of each new generation, the dying interest in that which is
gone, and the eagerness for that which is to come — how was God to give those of us who
live today unimpeachable testimony of events so remote as three thousand years ago? How
was He to satisfy a reasonable demand for proof? And above all, how was God to give
increasing and strengthening proof as we get farther and farther from the event itself?
“God has devised an absolutely new method of proving His Word, one that cannot be
gainsaid, that cannot be counterfeited, that has no duplicate in all the history of the world,
that increases in power with each passing year, that is stronger each tomorrow than it was
yesterday.”
David Dare paused and looked searchingly at his large audience. No one took the
occasion to press in with remarks, so he continued:
7