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the circumstances fully enough to attempt an answer. We have a simpler task, however,
and that is to point out that at last an answer did come, and to show how the two features
of "watching" and "time" entered into it. Instead of Habakkuk being disheartened or
complaining, we find him coupling prayer with watching:--
"I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what
He will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved. And the Lord
answered me, and said, Write the vision and make plain upon tables, that he may run that
readeth it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak,
and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry"
(Hab. 2: 1-3).
The point of the passage is this, there is a time and a season for every purpose under
heaven, and prayer has not been given so that we may retard or accelerate that time, but
to associate us so fully with the mind and will of God that we shall uncomplainingly and
intelligently wait His time.
To Habakkuk was revealed the following facts: facts that must colour all prayer
everywhere:--
1.
God has a time for every part of His purpose.
2.
Prayer is not granted to us that we may importunate God on this matter: we are told
to "wait".
3.
A deferred answer must not be construed as no answer: "at the end it shall speak."
The contemplation of a world of believers all praying concerning varied parts of
God's great purpose, and all desiring certain parts to be fulfilled according to their own
conception of time and place, reduces the whole system of things to chaos. There are
some prayers God cannot answer, and any prayer that includes the slightest idea that
God's "time and season" can be altered by that prayer is doomed to disappointment.
Daniel's example is a good one to follow:--
"I, Daniel, understood by books the number of years, whereof the word of the Lord
came to Jeremiah the prophet, that He would accomplish seventy years in the desolations
of Jerusalem . . . . . and I prayed" (Dan. 9: 2-4).
There is not the slightest hint in Daniel's prayer that he expected that by it he could
prevail upon the Lord to reduce the period of desolations to sixty or even sixty-nine
years. He accepted the word of the Lord, and when the time of its accomplishment drew
near, then, Daniel prayed, confessed the righteousness of the judgment, and was heard.
There are some earnest believers who translate II Pet. 3: 12, "hasting unto the
coming", as "hastening the coming", but this cannot be. The second coming of the Lord
is pivotal to the whole scheme of the future: to imagine that it can be "hastened"
therefore is a delusion. The R.V. reads, "earnestly desiring the coming", which is a
correct rendering. The true explanation of the passage is seen when we perceive in it the
use of the figure hendiadys (the "one-by-means-of-two" figure, whereby emphasis is
placed upon certain words, like "digged and went deep" [Luke vi, 48, R.V.]; "digged