The Prophecies of the Scripture are reducible to four heads:

(1)

Prophecies relating to Israel in particular.

(2)

Prophecies relating to the neighbouring nations.

(3)

Prophecies relating to the Messiah.

(4)

Prophecies given by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and His apostles.

Prophetic utterances concerning Israel begin with the call of Abraham, and are

continued to Isaac and Jacob. These prophecies foretell that the posterity of Abraham,

Isaac and Jacob, shall possess the land of Canaan, and that though they should lose the

enjoyment of this land for a time, owing to their sinfulness, yet their title to the land

should never be alienated, but that in God's good time they should be gathered back and

given possession of their land, there to continue in peaceful enjoyment to the end of time.

The passages of Scriptures that contain these prophetic utterances are Gen. 12: 7;

13: 14, 15, 15; 15: 18-21; 17: 7, 8; Exod. 3: 8, 17; Deut. 30: 1-5; Jer. 30: 3.

When the original prophecy was uttered, Abraham was an old man, without children, and

had just left the land of his nativity to become a pilgrim in the land beyond the Euphrates

unto which the Lord has led him. That land moreover was held by a number of warlike

tribes, some of them being giants with "cities walled up to heaven", yet the book of

Numbers (chapter 21:), Deut. 2: and Josh. 3: onwards, reveal how exactly these

prophecies began to be fulfilled, while the remainder of the O.T. reveals the fulfillment of

the threat to scatter the children of Israel from their land. We now confidently await the

fulfillment of the third feature--Israel's gathering, restoration and blessing. What has

been fulfilled encourages us to believe that all will be fulfilled in God's own time.

When the days drew near for the prophecy of the captivity of the Jews to take place,

the prophet Jeremiah foretold Nebuchadnezzar by name (Jer. 27: 3-7).  For a

composite prophecy, so written before the event as to produce the feeling of

contradiction, one is referred to the double prophecy of Jeremiah and Ezekiel concerning

the fate of Zedekiah. If we compare Jer. 34: 2-7 with Ezek. 12: 13 we find that

Zedekiah should "see the king of Babylon", yet he should "not see Babylon", that he

should be "carried to Babylon", yet should die in peace and be buried after the manner of

his ancestors, yet that he should die, nevertheless, at Babylon. The history of Zedekiah

reveals a faithful fulfillment of all that was prophesied. He did see the king of Babylon,

who ordered his eyes to be put out, he was brought to Babylon without seeing it, and that

he died there (Jer. 34: 4, 7; II Kings 25: 6, 7).  The only feature that is left

unrecorded is that after his death Zedekiah was given an honourable burial, but in the

absence of any word to the contrary this can be safely assumed.

Prophecies concerning the Nations, occupy a large portion of the prophetic scriptures.

Tyre, Egypt, Babylon, Nineveh, Ethiopia, the successors of Nebuchadnezzar, namely,

the Medes and Persians and the Greeks are named. To give details of these embracive

prophecies is beyond our present scope. To mention them is for the moment sufficient

for our purpose. So marvelously did the fulfillment agree with the prophecy, "that the

celebrated infidel Porphyry, in the second century, could only evade the force of them by

asserting, contrary to all evidence, that they were written long after the event".