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“WHOSO READETH, LET HIM UNDERSTAND”

MULTIPLE FULFILMENTS OF PROPHECY

DAVID SUTCLIFFE

WHEN WE READ the prophets the message is sometimes unmistakably clear, but sometimes we are all but lost as to the interpretation. We are not alone in this. When God spoke through His prophets anciently the message was at times urgent and incapable of being misconstrued (for example, Jeremiah telling Zedekiah and the people in Jeremiah 34 that Jerusalem would fall to the Babylonians); but at other times the message would have been mysterious, even, in some cases, incomprehensible.

An example from Isaiah

A particular case of this is the prophecy of Cyrus’s taking of Babylon given through Isaiah (44:24-45:8). This speaks of Jerusalem being built and inhabited, of the deep and its rivers drying up, of the temple foundations being laid, of gates not being shut, of treasures to be plundered, and so forth—all in relation to one called “Cyrus” (literally, Koresh), spoken of by God as “My shepherd ... anointed” (literally, Messiah).

At whatever point in Isaiah’s life this prophecy came, Jerusalem was then the established capital of the kingdom of Judah, with the worship of God proceeding (more or less, according to which king reigned) in the temple built by Solomon. The above prophecy would have been completely incomprehensible at the time, unless anyone had the confidence to relate it to the prophecy of destruction given through Isaiah’s contemporary Micah (3:12) and the warnings of desolation through Moses, (Lev. 26; Deut. 28). But even then, what of Koresh ? Was this to be the name of Messiah?

About two hundred years later marvellous things were seen. Jerusalem and its temple had been destroyed and the cities of Judah desolated. The remnant was in captivity in Babylon; and, as the time drew near, perceivable as the end of seventy years’ captivity (Jer. 25:8-14; Dan. 9:1,2), the tidings would come that the great city, with its river, gates and spoil, was being menaced by the advance of the Medes and Persians; and the name of the military supreme commander was Koresh—Cyrus! The method of taking the city is well known, and Josephus (Footnote 1) records that Cyrus, being shown the text of Isaiah’s prophecy, was thereby moved to order the return of the exiles and the rebuilding of the temple (Ezra 1:1-4).

Those who lived through these events would have had a wonderful experience, but evident problems would remain to exercise the thoughtful. There was no restoration of the throne of David. The temple, the best that could be built, was pathetically modest compared with the glory of Solomon’s (Ezra 3:10-13).The restored nation was but a remnant, with powerful enemies round about. And, most obviously, though Cyrus had indeed acted somewhat as a shepherd to Judah, in what sense could he possibly be “Messiah?” Clearly he was not the one whose right it was to be (Ezek. 21:25-27).

About 2,500 years later on it is granted to us to see the answers to the questions that would have seemed impossible to answer at the time of the first fulfilment. The time was to be long, even after Messiah’s first coming and crucifixion. The Apocalypse, with, for example, Paul’s prophetic warning in 2 Thessalonians, speaks of a declension of the holding of the Faith, bringing about in the course of time (seen to be several centuries) a false religious system which it calls Babylon (Rev. 17,18), after the exact likeness of the original of that name, suppressing the Truth and persecuting the servants of God for an appointed time period.(Footnote 2)

A whole picture then emerges which is a rerun, as it were in antitype (that is, in ultimate fulfilment), of the events of the fall of Babylon in B.C. 536 approximately. After all the signs become evident, the Lord returns suddenly as a thief in the night, at a time of abandonment to pleasure, and when both the Turkish Empire and the power of the papacy (the waters of the Euphrates) have been largely dried up—the time of Armageddon (Rev. 16:12-16). The literal, historical Cyrus (Koresh: ‘The Sun’ to a Persian ear; ‘Like the Heir’ to a Hebrew), coming from the east as the dawn sunrising, is seen to prefigure Christ in a marvellous and detailed manner.(Footnote 3) The whole process of the fall of Babylon is a foreshadowing of the events of the end for which we look. The prophecies of the fall of historical Babylon have a dual application: in the short term—or, like a pair of bifocal spectacles, in the short focus—they applied to events of the prophet’s time or his near future; but in and through those events, in the long term, the far focus and the ultimate point, they apply to “the great day of God Almighty” (Rev. 16:14-16).

A systematic pattern

On examination it becomes evident that much of what is called ‘latter-day’ prophecy is like this. In fact it appears to be a systematic pattern. Israel, as the centre strand of it all, has gone through various crises in its history. These have been the subject of prophetic warnings given at the time, and they have been used to foreshadow the great final event, “the time of Jacob’s trouble” (Jer. 30:7), the day of Messiah’s accession to his Kingdom. The prophecies therefore have an application to events which to us are now past; but through those events there is an application to the days to which we look, as a small slide or colour transparency will project onto a much larger screen, where both the overall pattern and the fine detail are more evident. We take here seven instances of this (there are certainly more):

Moses and Egypt Balaam and Amalek Isaiah and Assyria Jeremiah and Babylon Ezekiel and the Scyths Zechariah and Greece Jesus and Rome

The Great Day

Pursuing the figure, it is as if each ‘slide’ contains some colours. If they are all projected together onto the screen the full picture emerges in all its glory. In fact, it would be not merely three-dimensional but four-dimensional, for each incident represents movement of events in time. If only—if only!—we could rightly assemble, interpret and integrate all the pictures we would doubtless have a complete sequence of all the essential events at the Lord’s return (Amos 3:7). Doubtless indeed we shall, pray God, perceive this after the resurrection. Meanwhile we make attempts.(Footnote 4)

1. Moses and Egypt

Israel’s great deliverance from Egypt is representative of the final deliverance of the people, and also of baptism (1 Cor. 10:1,2), itself an earnest of final resurrectional newness of life (Rom. 6:1-10). The Exodus is referred to in this way in various other scriptures, for example, Judges 5:4,5 and Psalm 68:7,8. When Moses announced the plagues each announcement was a prophecy (and very promptly fulfilled). It is notable that the first two were mimicked by Egypt’s ‘black technology’, but the third could not be matched (Ex. 7:22; 8:7,18,19). Also, Israel experienced the unpleasantness of the first three plagues, but no more (Ex. 8:22,23; 9:7). May not this indicate that the nation of Israel will experience the initial phase of the latter-day upheavals, but be saved, via their own sore crisis, before the great storm of Divine judgements breaks over the world? And also that the ecclesia, that is, ourselves, will experience the early stages of these events (as currently), but be taken, similarly for judgement, before the storm really bursts?

In the actual process of exodus, Israel was led by God into a situation of trial (Ex. 14:1-3) such that the cliffs came down to the sea, trapping the nation, with the Egyptian army bearing down on them, “before Pi-hahiroth (‘The mouth of the caves’, that is, sheol), between Migdol (‘The tower’, that is, the Divine name—Proverbs 18:10) and the sea, over against Baal-zephon (‘The lord of darkness’)”—a contest between the God of Israel and the power of the adversary, with death the issue. There was a dramatic deliverance, and when the full reality of this sank in on Israel they erupted in the exultation of the Song of Moses (Ex. 15:1-18). The spirit of this is clearly that which we all feel and experience at baptism, but it is also clearly prophetic. It looks forward to the conquest of the land, and concludes with the expression, literally “Yahweh shall reign for the age and beyond” (v. 18), the ultimate, which the conquest under Joshua typified, when His will shall be done in all the earth. Hence the song of the redeemed is styled in Revelation, gathering all these things up, “the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb” (Rev. 15:3).

2. Balaam and Amalek

This is not the place to expound at length concerning Balaam,(Footnote 5) but his remarkable set of seven prophecies in Numbers 23,24 includes a final group of four, introduced explicitly as advertising “what this people shall do to thy people in the latter days” (24:14). The second of these is brief: “Amalek was the first of the nations (evidently in the sense of the AV margin: the first of the nations that warred against Israel); but his latter end shall be that he perish for ever” (v. 20).

The marginal references send the reader straight to Exodus 17:8-16. Again, the setting is immediately evident. The newborn nation (as it is, essentially, today), having found riches (water in the desert: compare Ezekiel 38:12,13), was murderously (Deut. 25:17-19) attacked by an apparently vastly superior enemy. Victory was gained by Joshua (Gk. Jesus) with a select host (Ex. 17:9), “Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit” (Zech. 4:6), Moses’s hands being held up by Aaron and Hur (Ex. 17:11-13). Surely this betokens the deliverance of the nation at the time of the end (Ezek. 38; Zech. 14) by Jesus and the glorified ecclesia. That such depth of significance is intended is shown by the otherwise rather strange way the occasion is memorialised before Joshua (who knew what had happened well enough) by the building of an altar named Yahweh-nissi, He Who shall be my Banner (Ex. 17:14-16, cf. Num. 21:4-9 and Jno. 3:14,15). This first experience for Israel of an attack in war and Divine deliverance was clearly designed to prophesy of the last, as in Balaam’s prophecy.

This follows through to a second prefiguring: the whole theme of the narrative concerning Esther. There the destruction of all Israel was plotted by Haman the Agagite (Est. 3:1), clearly of the nobility of Amalek in captivity, as Daniel had been of Judah (1 Sam. 15:8; Dan. 1:3-5), and deliverance is effected by the virtuous and beautiful bride (the ecclesia), with the ‘poetic justice’ of the downfall of the enemy (buried in “Hamon-gog”—Ezek. 39:11) and the supreme exaltation of the Prince of Israel, Mordecai.

3. Isaiah and Assyria

As noted above, Isaiah prophesied, both clearly and enigmatically, about Babylon; but the whole of the first part of his prophecy (chs. 1-39) revolves around the sweeping conquests of Assyria, the dominant power of his day. As is well known, Isaiah clearly prophesied of the coming down of the ruthless Sennacherib to punish Judah in the days of Hezekiah (ch. 10). This crisis was resolved by a miraculous deliverance, serving as a foreshadowing of the final deliverance. With the main might of the Assyrian army ravaging Judah and destroying its cities, and a powerful detachment menacing Jerusalem, blasphemously challenging God and threatening terrible siege, Hezekiah was told that not an arrow would be fired against the city; it would be delivered, and a remnant would return and repossess the land (37:29-35). Suddenly 185,000 of the Assyrian army were slain overnight (Isa. 37:36). In some way God sent “a blast” upon him (37:7),(Footnote 6) and the city was delivered.

In the graphic prophecy of this in Isaiah 10 there are unmistakable indications that yet greater events are foreshadowed. The surviving remnant was to rely on their God “in truth” v. 20), and the Assyrian yoke was to be taken off Judah “because of the anointing” (v. 27). Clearly this goes beyond the events of the seventh century B.C., and, reading across the chapter divisions, there is then a clear picture of Christ becoming established in power (11:1-10), the regathering of the rest of scattered Israel (11:11-16), the exultation over that deliverance (ch. 12; cf. the Song of Moses and of the Lamb), and then the destruction of great Babylon (chs. 13,14). All this covers a sweep of nearly two hundred years of history, and foreshadows the miraculous destruction of a ruthless military power, that is, Russia (Ezek. 38; Zech. 14) in the land, followed by the uprise on the ruins thereof of a characteristically false-religious power (that is, papal-guided Europe), to be destroyed in its own place (Rev. 18) by the “Cyrus”.

4. Jeremiah and Babylon

By Jeremiah’s time Assyria had gone. His prophecy, deeply warning the nation in the last days of their independence in the land, concludes with a tour of nine nations: Egypt (46:2), Philistia (47:1), Moab (48:1), Ammon (49:1), Edom (49:7), Damascus (49:23), Kedar (49:28), Elam (49:34) and Babylon (50:1). The final chapter (52), documenting Jerusalem’s fall, perhaps constitutes a tenth.

Again there is a vivid and very specific prophecy of the downfall of Babylon (chs. 50,51), interestingly mentioning “a standard” (50:2), “the sickle” (50:16) and “the hammer” (50:23).

As before, woven into the clearly literal (the near focus) are expressions of greater matters beyond (the long focus). Israel and Judah will be found sinless “in those days” (50:20); there is one appointed, a shepherd before God (50:44); Israel will be an agent of Divine retribution (51:20-23); and great Babylon is portrayed as a golden cup of deranged intoxication, by a change of figure to be cast into a watery abyss (51:7,59-64)—the direct basis of the expressions in the Apocalypse (17:4; 18:21-24).

5. Ezekiel and the Scyths

This is perhaps the least appreciated as regards the historical (short-focus) basis. About two hundred years before Ezekiel’s time the ancestors of the Huns were raiding into northwest China. The Chinese emperor despatched his army to repel them, and sent them off westwards into the territory of their next neighbours the Scyths (Scythians, Saki), who in turn moved west into the territory of the next nation, the Gimmerians (Kimmerians, the Gomer of Genesis 10:2), who moved into Europe, leaving their name in the Crimea and eventually Gaul.(Footnote 7) Some of the Scyths, pushed from the east by the Huns and pushing the Gimmerians to the west, turned south from what is now southern Russia (then known as Magog), found the passes through the Caucasus mountains between the Black Sea and the Caspian, and terrorised the Middle East (see map), producing a state of anarchy which was cleared up by, significantly, Cyrus. The chief of the Scyths was titled ‘Gog’,(Footnote 8) and the descendants of the nation became one of the components of the southern Russian people; they were still identifiable in New Testament times (Col. 3:11).

This is the immediate, short-focus burden of Ezekiel 38,39. Clearly the long focus is the crisis of the latter days. In its simplicity the message is that pressure from China will be a factor in driving the Russians into the Middle East, with deliverance coming at the hand of Christ. Thirty years ago rivalry between Russia and China was intense. It died down, but the current instability in China shows that, humanly speaking, anything could happen.

6. Zechariah and the Greeks

When Zechariah prophesied at the time of the restoration from Babylon, Egypt was settled into being a “base kingdom” (Ezek. 29:14,15), while Amalek, Assyria and the Scyths had disappeared as world powers. Under the Persian Empire the next great future event was the eruption of the Greeks under Alexander (Dan. 8). This therefore forms the immediate, short-focus basis of Zechariah’s “burden” in chapter 9. He is picturing the Greeks coming from the north, through Syria and down the sea coast, destroying the Phoenician cities, especially and finally Tyre, terrifying the residual Philistines and (though this is not prophesied) proceeding to Egypt.(Footnote 9)

Zechariah then describes a complete inversion of the situation, related to the acclamation of Jerusalem’s King riding an ass (9:9; cf. Lk. 19:29-40; 13:34,35). There is then a clear allusion to the resurrection (9:11), a reference to Jerusalem being delivered as the basis of worldwide peace (v. 10), and a prophecy of the whole heart of the Jewish nation being transformed (vv. 13-17). Much more detail follows as direct prophecy in chapters 10-14. Here again, then, Alexander’s movements in relation to Israel formed a basis for representing the latter days.

7. Jesus and Rome

In exactly similar fashion, and as capstone to it all, the Lord, the greatest prophet, spoke in the Mount Olivet Prophecy in the same ‘bifocal’ fashion, using the approaching Roman war of A.D. 68-70 as the foreshadowing of the time of the end and the day of his glory. In Luke’s account (ch. 21) there is a clear separation into the earlier and later events (vv. 6-24 and 25-36). In Matthew (ch. 24) and Mark (ch. 13) the two are closely interwoven after the fashion of the Old Testament prophets. Much has been written in exposition of this prophecy, and it is left to the reader to peruse in detail; but one point may be taken out for exhortation in our day. Jesus told his disciples, that is, the early ecclesia in Jerusalem, that when the crisis came upon them (the short focus) they were to get up and flee for their deliverance. But this itself was enigmatic. How could they flee if the city was “compassed with armies” (Lk. 21: 20,21)?

As with Isaiah’s prophecy of Cyrus, when the time came this became unmistakably clear. The first Roman commander, Cestius Gallus, came with his forces from Syria, reduced the cities of Galilee, and surrounded Jerusalem. Then, inexplicably, he felt he could not take the city and withdrew northwest down the pass of Beth-horon. The unbelieving Jews swarmed out of the city, attacked the Roman army from both ends of the pass and rolled boulders down on them, exactly where God “cast down great stones from heaven” on the fleeing Canaanites when the sun and moon stood still in the days of the first Joshua (Josh. 10:11). But when the believers saw that the siege was apparently miraculously lifted they perceived the meaning of the Lord’s words and, to cries of “Coward!” and “Traitor!”, speedily got up and fled, as commanded, across the Jordan to Pella. They alone escaped, that is, were saved. The Romans came back with a new army under Vespasian and Titus, and made no further mistakes. Jerusalem was terribly destroyed.

It was a matter literally of life and death for those early believers to get the understanding of that prophecy right. Might it not be no less important for us to strive to read the situation correctly, when our time of calling comes? For the days of A.D. 70 surely prefigure ours.(Footnote 10)

Final reflections

The reader is further invited to reflect on the way the Apocalypse is a weave of quotations from and allusions to so much of foregoing Scripture; reflect, that is, upon the way so much of Scripture was written the way it was, and events happened the way they did, so that they would form the substratum for the book of Revelation; to reflect on how the institution of marriage (Gen. 2:21-25) is the prefiguring of the grand purpose of the Christ and his ecclesial bride (cf. the Song of Solomon) and of the presence of God and His temple sanctuary; and to reflect on how in the book of Revelation this representation of surpassing beauty is transformed into the vision of a city so glorious and pure that its very gold becomes transparent (Rev. 21:21).

Let the reader reflect also on how the Babylonians, in ignorance (how came they to do it?) made a parody of it all: their city lay foursquare; it had a wall great and high; it could not have true gemstones for its foundations so they painted the bricks with brilliant lacquers; it had a hundred bronze gates which gleamed like gold; it could not arrange to have a fountain of water of life at its centre, but it straddled the waters of Euphrates, the source of its final ruin; it had a (man-made) mountain of the house of its god, the primeval tower; and it had a paradise of choice trees and fruits on the palace roof, the hanging gardens, the wonder of the world. It deceived the Babylonians, and the world wondered after it. Does any of the false glitter of this world’s religion deceive us? As the Apostle John said, essentially, “Little children, keep yourselves from counterfeits” (1 Jno. 5:21).

FOOTNOTES

1. Antiquities of the Jews, book XI, chapter 1.

2. This is clearly what the Scriptures indicate, it is not a case of the Christadelphian body simply following anti-Catholic feeling generated at the time of the Reformation.

3. Further detail is out of place here, but see, in comparison with Herod’s attempt to destroy Christ, and Pharaoh’s attempt to destroy Moses, Herodotus’s account of Cyrus’s birth and childhood in The Histories, Book 1.

4. Notably also it follows that events of some decades, even centuries, of what is now past history were Divinely controlled in their courses so that they should bear the foreshadowing of the time of the end—a truly staggering principle (Deut. 32:8)!

5. See Eureka, Vol. 1, chapter II section III.7, “The Balaamites”.

6. I. Velikovsky, on page 228 of Worlds in Collision (Gollancz, London, 1950), quotes traditions that that night “stars fell as rain”, that is, there was a shower of meteorites (cf. Josh. 10:11).

7. Chapter 1, T. T. Rice, The Scythians, Thames and Hudson, London, second edition, 1958.

8. Chapters 11,12, Assyria, in The Story of the Nations series, T. Fisher, Unwin, London, 1888. Agag and Gog differ in the original, only the two ‘g’ sounds being common, but the similarity is unmistakable; cp. the English ‘John’, German ‘Johann’ and Greek ‘loannes’. The Septuagint surprisingly translates “Agag” in Numbers 24:7 as “Gog”.

9. The Egyptians suffered cruelly under the Persians on account of repeated attempted rebellions, and the Greeks were welcomed as deliverers. Hence, among other reasons, Alexander’s favour in founding Alexandria. His first successor in Egypt (the first “king of the south” of Daniel 11) was called Ptolemy Soter (Saviour). The Jews were also favoured, and built a temple in the area of Heliopolis which was destroyed on the orders of Vespasian after the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. This is the short-focus basis of the prophecy of Isaiah 19:19-22. See pages 184-7, Dissertations on the Prophecies, Thomas Tegg, London, 1826.

10. See David Sutcliffe, “The Sign of his Coming”, The Christadelphian, July-Sept. 1975, for fuller treatment of this.

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