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