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"That prophecy is of a prodigious extent; that it commenced from the fall of man, and
reaches to the consummation of all things; that for many ages it was delivered darkly, to
a few persons, and with large intervals from the date of one prophecy to that of another,
but at length became more clear, more frequent, and was uniformly carried on in the line
of one people, separated from the rest of the world, among other reasons assigned for
this principally to be the repository of the divine oracles . . . . . even to the end of time,
or, in St. John's expression, to that period when the mystery of God shall be finished"
(Rev. 10: 7).
When Peter wrote his second epistle, the testimony of prophecy was being discounted
by scoffers who said "Where is the promise of His coming?" This he countered by
saying "No prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation", or as Moffatt has it
"cam by human impulse" (II Pet. 1: 20). The Greek words are idias epiluseos, and
generally speaking bear the translation given in the A.V. But Peter does not appear to be
dealing with how to interpret prophecy, but how prophecy came--for he continues:
"For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God
spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."
If we retain the rendering "private interpretation", its first meaning must be that the
prophecies found in the Scriptures are not the private solutions by the prophets of the
enigmas confronting them, and secondly, that those of us who read and use those
prophecies, must be on our guard that no one "uses" any prophecy merely as a bolster to
support some pre-conceived theory--which alas has become the dreadful fate of many of
these sublime utterances. The completely impersonal character of prophecy is moreover
suggested by I Pet. 1: 10, 11, where we learn that those prophets who spoke beforehand
of salvation, afterwards searched their own writings to discover "what, or what manner of
time the spirit of Christ which was in them did signify".
One simple yet most valuable office of prophecy is to act as "a light that shineth in a
dark place, until the day dawn" (II Pet. 1: 19). Another is that the "spirit of prophecy" is
"the testimony of Jesus" (Rev. 19: 10). Within bounds, we believe we are not far wrong
when we say that the door of prophecy swings on two hinges:
(1) The Return of Christ
and
(2) The Return of Israel.
Associated with these two great issues is the history and destiny of two cities, Babylon
and Jerusalem, and with these two cities, two kingdoms, namely the kingdom of the
Beast, and the kingdom of the Lord. Before proceeding with our studies, the present
moment seems to be the time to pause and consider this term "kingdom". It has been
maintained that our word government comes nearest to expressing the word basileia.
First of all let us consider the classical usage of basileia as set out in Liddell and Scott,
where we shall discover the way in which the ordinary Greek used the term.
Basileia, a kingdom, dominion, hereditary monarchy opposed to tyrranis and
secondly a diadem.
Basileion, a kingly dwelling, palace. The seat of empire, royal city, the royal
treasury, a tiara, diadem.