EXPECTATION OP THE FIRST COxMING OF CHRIST. 93 



Colonel Molony's point seems a strong one that a definite expec- 

 tation was created by the prophecies in the minds of those addressed, 

 and continued to exist until the fulfilment. The modernists, how- 

 ever, assert that prophecy is only the philosophy of a past history. 

 Certainly it is not very difficult to foretell the past. We can all of 

 us predict what the weather was yesterday. These teachers must 

 take their public to be very ignorant of the prophetic Scriptures to 

 ask them to believe as, for instance, Dr. A. B. Davidson does, that 

 " In no prophecy can it be shown that the literal prediction of distant 

 historical events is contained " ; and again, " Special predictions 

 concerning Christ do not appear in the Old Testament " ; and again 

 another, Dr. David Smith, writes, " The prophets never predict 

 far remote events." Why this emphasis on " remote " ? Is it 

 then conceded that the prophets could predict things a month 

 ahead ? But if so, they could certainly do so a year, a decade, or, as 

 our lecturer has shown they do, centuries ahead. 



Canon Driver warns us against supposing that Isaiah was 

 immersed in spirit in the future, as such immersion in the future 

 would be not only without parallel in the Old Testament, it would be 

 contrary to the nature of prophecy " ! 



This is rather like a colour-blind person denying the possibility 

 of a rainbow, as contrary to the nature of colour. I think any student 

 of prophecy could easily find a score of instances to refute the 

 Professor {e.g., Isa. xi, 11; xiii, 17, 18; xxiii, 17; Jer. xxv, 12; 

 Micah V, 2). Peter's description of the prophetic ministry is really 

 equivalent to saying that " the prophets were immersed in spirit in 

 the future " (1 Pet. i, 10-12). 



Dr. A. Jukes said : In our English Bible we have no intimation 

 as to when the Messiah was to be expected, yet there was a wide- 

 spread expectation of His coming at the time of His birth. 



Our English Bible is translated from the Hebrew, with their 

 vowel pointings. The ancient Hebrew had no vowel points, which 

 were added, I believe, about the second or third century a.d. 



We have no ancient copy of the Septuagint, our MSS. being not 

 older than the fourth century a.d., and not till 1772 was the Codex 

 Chisia published in Rome, which seems to have been made before 

 the Masoretic punctuation of the Hebrew Text, and it is stated that 

 without the alteration of a single Hebrew letter the sense of 



