CHAPTER 5

From Isaiah.

The Signs of the Times of the Lord's Coming, and the Egyptians' Acknowledgment of the God of the Prophets.

[Passages quoted, Isa. xix. 1-3; xix. 19-21.]

THIS is a passage that I have already partly expounded. Now if the Egyptians are not seen in our own time deserting their ancestral gods and calling upon the God of the prophets; if throughout Egypt in every locality, town and country there are not altars erected to the God that was formerly acknowledged only by the Hebrews; if the idols of (414) Egypt have not been shaken, for that the power of the daemons that hung about them is gone, and the ancient superstition driven from the soul of the Egyptians; and once more, if there is not intestine war arisen through all the households of Egypt, between them that receive the Lord and worship the God of the prophets and reject their - 148 - immemorial polytheistic error, and them that oppose the (b) converts of the Lord in their adherence to the evil of their fathers; if they do not even now in their efforts to question their own gods and the idols and them that speak out of the ground and the diviners by familiar spirits, make a vain and useless appeal to them because the daemons are no longer able to work in them as they did of old—if all these things are not seen to have been actually fulfilled, why (c) then, you may consider that the prophetic oracle is unfulfilled, and that the Lord that was prophesied has not yet visited our human life.

But if, on the other hand, we can see the people of Egypt far more patently in actual fact than in mere description, some of them acknowledging the God of the prophets, and for His sake renouncing their ancestral gods, some of them raising political dissension against the converts, some of them even now calling upon their gods and images and them that speak from the ground, who no longer can effect aught, and some throughout all Egypt raising an altar to the Lord of the prophets for each local Church, calling no (d) longer in their troubles and persecutions on beasts or reptiles as their gods, nor on wild animals and unreasoning brutes as their fathers did, but on the Supreme God, retaining Him only and the fear of Him in their minds, praying to Him, and not to the daemons, and promising what men should promise God—how can we deny that the prophecies of long ago have at last been fulfilled? And these foretold that the Lord would come to Egypt not in an unembodied state, but in a light cloud, or better "in light thickness," for such is the meaning of the Hebrew, shewing figuratively His Incarnate state. Therefore the prophecy - 149 - goes on to call Him a man that is a Saviour, saying, "And (415) the Lord shall send to them a man that is a Saviour." Here again the Hebrew is, "And He shall send to them a Saviour, who shall save them." As the proof is now so clear from this, I consider that there is no question of the time at which the prophecies foretold the Lord's Coming.

I have here only briefly collected the evidence for the time of the Advent of our Lord. If the other Scriptures were searched at leisure much more could be discovered. But as I am well satisfied with what I have brought before (b) you, I will now address myself to the other prophecies. And our next task will be to collect from inspired prophecy the predictions about the earthly dispensation of the Incarnation.

[A few footnotes renumbered and placed at the end]