Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 42

9.—Prophecy

9.—Prophecy.

"He knoweth the end from the beginning."

"Even to prophecy inspiration is not required." Many men prove this correct. Thomas Paine, I understand, once uttered a prophecy without the aid of such inspiration as we are speaking of. It was to the effect that 50 years after the publication of his attack upon the Bible the latter would be an obsolete book. O, yes, men can prophecy, and make fools of themselves too. But Mr Stout reduces prophecy to a mere matter of inductive logic. "Given a certain state of things, a certain result will follow;" this is all he finds in prophecy. Moreover, he considers the prophets of the Bible such poor logicians, that not one of their calculations came true. He knew "not of one, which had been fulfilled." This, again, is the result of his want of interest in examining them. It seems as if he had pinned his reason to the pen of Paine, and sworn to take his words for "the truth." He looks upon that man's work as so infallable as to be incapable of error—to be perfectly "unanswerable." Once more he gives up the "right to examine for himself." Is Paine his Pope? How the mighty has fallen! But I invite him once again to resume his discarded prerogative, and in its power take up a few subjects of prophecy which I shall simply indicate, and I am certain that if he will make the investigation in a candid way he will know more about prophecy than he now does; he will know more of that prophecy which could not possibly be the result of a logical calculation, yet which has been fulfilled. 1st. Let him take up those relating to the fall of ancient Nineveh and Babylon, in which he will find the most minute particulars given. Then let him examine the heathen records of the overthrow of those wondrous cities, and he will find such remarkable cases of the fulfilment of prophecy as will probably surprise him. 2nd. Let him examine the prophecies regarding the land page 27 of Egypt in the same manner, and he will have the same satisfactory reward. 3rd. If he will subject the prophetic utterances respecting Tyre to the same process he will find the same answer. 4th. The prophecies uttered against the Jews will bring him even stronger proof of their Divine origin. And, 5th, the crucifixion of Christ supplies a most emphatic evidence of inspiration in prophecy. This is not the place to bring forward the proof, but if each man would take up the prophecies relating to these subjects for himself, and then read the historical accounts of the occurrences and events referred to, he could not resist the power of the conviction they would force upon him that the Bible is

"Marked with the seal of high Divinity."