Part Five
By A. J. Pollack
Prophecies Concerning The Coming Christ
These prophecies are most illuminating and precise. How could writers, centuries apart in different countries and generally ignorant of what each other wrote or would write, give us one complete prophecy with the utmost precision? This indicates a divine power was controlling and guiding their pens – a Master Mind energizing each writer. The Bible is the only book in all the literature of the world which presents this unique and unanswerable testimony to divine inspiration.
A most striking prophecy followed man’s sin in the Garden of Eden. Enmity was put between the serpent and the seed of the woman. That seed was Christ. Satan crushed His heel [something painful] when he led men to crucify the Lord of Glory. But Satan’s apparent victory was actually his utter defeat. That will be seen in the future day when Satan will meet his final doom in the Lake of Fire (Rev. 20:10), thus fulfilling that first prophecy that Satan’s head would be crushed [will be fatal] (Gen. 3:15 JND).
A later prophecy shed more light as to who Christ would be. We read, “Behold the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel” (Isa. 7:14 NKJV). Immanuel means “God with us” (Mt. 1:23) and is another name for God. Isaiah wrote that Christ would be the Child of the virgin, but He would Himself be God.
The prophet throws still more light on the subject of the coming Christ, which historically did not come to pass for over seven centuries. “Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isa. 9:6).
Would any uninspired writer in his wildest dreams pen this verse? It sounds apparently contradictory to speak of the same Person as a Child of days and “the Father of eternity” (JND). How could both statements be true? And yet we know from Scripture that the Child of the virgin, begotten by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, was God manifest in the flesh (1 Tim. 3:16). God as well as Man, yet one blessed Person – the Son of God – a mystery utterly beyond man’s comprehension! Our Lord Himself told His disciples, “No one knows the Son except the Father” (Mt. 11:27 NKJV).
It is an incomprehensible mystery to us, like the following Scripture: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to Me, the One to be Ruler in Israel; whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting” (Mic. 5:2). Here, in a seeming contradiction, is a Baby born in a defined place, Bethlehem, and yet we are told that the One so born was from everlasting. In taking up Manhood our Lord had a beginning at Bethlehem, but the One who had that beginning is God from everlasting, the eternal Son who never had a beginning. The Son was given, not born (Isa. 9:6).
As a last example from Scripture we read: “Come near to Me, hear this: I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; from the time that it was, I was there [there AM I, JND – the assertion of deity]: and now the Lord GOD and His Spirit have sent Me” (Isa. 48:16). We have here the three Persons of the Godhead in fullest concert for the blessing of man. Marvelous truth! The Word sent stands in great prominence in this Scripture. Was this not wonderfully fulfilled when our Lord, as recorded in John, announced 14 times that He was the Sent One of the Father?
To those in the temple who doubted He was the Christ He said, “You both know Me, and you know where I am from; and I have not come of Myself, but He who sent Me is true, whom you do not know. But I know Him, for I am from Him, and He sent Me” (Jn. 7:28-29). The circle is complete. The Lord plainly linked Himself up with the Sent One of Isaiah 48:16.
This forms a suitable finish to our study of the names of God in the Old Testament and affords a pleasing introduction to our study of divine titles in the New Testament. It is in the Person of our Lord that the Old and New Testaments join hands.