The Moral Purpose of Prophecy

The Jews of nineteen centuries ago had all that God had then revealed. And they should have understood correctly what God had foretold. Why did they make such a sad blunder about all the prophecies concerning their Messiah? And when we see great numbers of present-day Christians adopting the very same methods of interpreting the prophecies which were used by the Pharisees, how can we have any confidence that these men know what they are doing?... How can any spiritually minded Christian follow such methods of interpretation in these days of the last crisis of mankind? Every student of the subject has noticed that all the prophecies of both the Old Testament and the New are given in a distinctly Jewish or Palestinian setting. But instead of adopting a crass literalism, so utterly contrary to all of the many cases where interpretations of Old Testament prophecies have been given in the New, why not ask ourselves how any prophecies could have been given to the Jews with any but a Jewish or Palestinian setting or background? Would it not be essential that these prophecies be given in language which would seem to be intelligible to them, at least in some respects? There was really no other way, consistent with the distinctly moral or spiritual purposes for which the prophecies were given. But if we remain true to the declarations of both Christ and Paul regarding the absolute termination of all the special privileges and opportunities of the literal descendants of Abraham, we are obliged to interpret the prophecies, in spite of their Palestinian setting, in the light of the higher spiritual values brought in by the gospel since the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord. This little book deals with all these problems.