Chapter IX. A Great Light in Galilee

“Joy in Harvest”

What could be more beautiful than the figure of “Joy in harvest”? It appeals to all who have any experience of the pleasant reward of toil in the ingathering of the fruitful sheaves that p. 143 the bounty of God gives even to the unthankful and the evil. The artificial conditions of crowded life in town and city no doubt have obscured the matter for multitudes, who scarcely ever see anything of the works of God in nature. But this would not be so in Israel. It was not merely that in Isaiah’s distant times the people were more “on the land”; but that there was a divinely appointed exercise in connection with harvest which connected the joy with the Giver of all good—“God my chiefest joy,” as David calls Him. “Thou shalt keep the feast of harvest, the first fruits of thy labours which thou hast sown in the field” (Ex. xxiii. 16). “When ye be come into the land which I give you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring a sheaf of the first fruits of your harvest unto the priest: And he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, to be accepted for you” (Lev. xxiii. 10). Fifty days afterwards the two wave loaves of the first fruits were offered. This was called “the Feast of Weeks” because of the numbering of the seven weeks from the beginning of the harvest.

The offerer of the first fruits of the harvest had a certain form of words divinely appointed in which to memorialise God as the source of all joy. He was to go with his basket to the priest and say:—

“I profess this day unto the Lord thy God, that I am come unto the country which the Lord sware unto our fathers for to give us.”

Then the priest was to take the basket and set it down before the altar, while the man continued:—

“A Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous. And the Egyptians evil entreated us, and afflicted us, and laid upon us hard bondage. And when we cried unto the Lord God of our fathers, the Lord heard our voice, and looked on our affliction, and our labour and our oppression. And the Lord brought us forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with great terribleness, and with signs and with wonders. And he hath brought us into this place, and hath given us this land, even a land that floweth with milk and honey. And now behold I p. 144 have brought the first fruits of the land which thou, O Lord, hast given me.”

And Moses continues: “Thou shalt set it before the Lord thy God, and worship before the Lord thy God, and thou shalt rejoice in every good thing which the Lord thy God hath given unto thee, and unto thine house, thou and the Levite and the stranger that is among you” (Deut. xxvi.).

Thus the “joy in harvest” in Israel was a rejoicing in God for the abundance of a fruitful inheritance, out of which the enemy had been cast by divine judgment, and which had only been come at after generations of affliction, labour, and oppression.

We hear of “harvest thanksgivings”; but where is the like of this? Suppose we take our seat in one of the churches in the golden season of the year, amidst the odours of twining garlands and festoons of ears of wheat, will our thoughts be taken back to that “Syrian ready to perish,” and the mighty works by which God planted the nation of Israel in the land of Promise? Shall we be led to look forward to the coming rejoicings in the same land in the “time of the restitution of all things”? No, we must come to “the place of the Lord thy God” to see these things. The churches belong to the “outer court” (Rev. xi.): they are ignorant of God’s truth and consequently faithless concerning His promises. “The “place of the Lord,” or “the temple of God,” of apocalyptic symbolism is the “one body” “in Christ” by faith and obedience. Here the joy of harvest is rightly comprehended, and, in its full antitypical manifestation, patiently awaited.

The beautiful institution of harvest rejoicing under the law of Moses had not only the object of keeping God always before the mind of the nation as the “Source and Giver of all good” in whom they lived and moved and had their being; but it was “a shadow of the good things to come,” when God shall ultimately fulfil His promises to the fathers, that in Abraham and in his seed all nations of the earth should be blessed. “Thy seed, which is Christ.” Christ speaks of the harvest and its joy. He is himself the antitypical “sheaf of the first-fruits, waved before the Lord the morrow after the Sabbath.” Speaking of his resurrection and the consequent making alive through him of all his people, Paul says: “Every p. 145 man in his own order, Christ the first fruits, afterward they that are Christ’s, at his coming” (1 Cor. xv.). Christ’s people at his coming then will constitute the anti-typical wave loaves, which, as God’s Melchizedek High-Priest, he will present in Jerusalem as an offering before the Lord.

Looking with compassion on the faint and shepherdless multitudes, he said to his disciples: “The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.” He did this himself in sending forth the twelve (Luke vi. 12-13). They came upon the harvest field that had been ploughed and sown by others (Jno. iv. 35, 38). But they in turn became “labourers” in God’s field, and the Lord said to them: “He that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together.”

The time of this “rejoicing together” is introduced to us in Christ’s interpretation to the disciples of his parable of the tares among the wheat. He said: “The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be in the end of this age. The Son of Man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the Kingdom of their Father” (Matt. xiii. 39). This will bring Isaiah and all the prophets upon the scene again, and clear the field of the children of the devil of every type. Then “they that sow in tears shall reap in joy.” For “he that goeth forth weeping bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him” (Psa. cxxvi. 5-6). The Lord Jesus is the kernel of it all, and he was the “great light” which, in fulfilment of the prophecy, made manifest this glorious consummation in Galilee nearly nineteen hundred years ago.

But the prophet said also of the nation in his vision of coming glory: “They joy as men rejoice when they divide the spoil.” The rejoicing of the feast of harvest memorialised deliverance from Egyptian tyranny, and inheritance of the country of the enemies of p. 146 God: for “He gave them the lands of the heathen and they inherited the labour of the people.” This was a great reversal of fortune for the oppressed and down-trodden people. The inheritance came only after long and severe discipline in the wilderness, in which the carcases of a vast multitude of unbelievers fell. After the weeding out, during forty years, of the unfaithful, the remnant went into the land, prominent in which were Joshua and Caleb, the two spies who “wholly followed the Lord” in peril of their lives. Joshua was elevated to leadership of the nation, and had the satisfaction of rejoicing with Caleb when they came into the land. Caleb was then an old man of eighty-five, but as strong as he was at forty, and very confident in God of his ability to clear the Anakim out of his inheritance, which he afterwards did, and inherited their cities. Hebron, one of the best remembered sites in Palestine, is the testimony of it to this day.

These things are the shadow of what is coming on a larger scale. Jesus is the antitypical Joshua who is to give the nation rest. He will come upon the kings of the earth as Joshua came upon the Canaanites, and particularly in the same country, and appropriate the spoil. Caleb and Joshua will then be made strong for ever with all who like them have “wholly followed the Lord” in the wilderness state, and will doubtless view with everlasting satisfaction the scenes of their old encounters in the long past days of their mortal life.

“The Day of Midian”

The reason of the rejoicing is further stated in verse 4. “For thou hast broken the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian. For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise and garments rolled in blood, but this shall be with burning and fuel of fire.” The visitation that is coming upon the latter-day enemies of Israel is to eclipse all previous experiences. So terrible will it be that men’s hearts are failing them for fear in the contemplation of the possibilities involved. They know not the purpose of God, but they know there are terrible times ahead. The “scourge” of the latter-day Assyrian is likened unto the “slaughter of Midian at the rock of Oreb” (Isa. x. 26).

p. 147 The “day of Midian,” in which Oreb, Zeeb, Zeba, and Zalmunna fell before Gideon, is described in the book of Judges, chapters vi. to viii. It is worth while looking back upon it carefully because of the similitude divinely said to exist between the breaking of the yoke of Midian in Gideon’s days, and that greater deliverance of the nation that is coming by Immanuel. We are told that Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and that he sold them into the hand of Midian seven years. When they cried unto God by reason of the affliction, He replied by a prophet that He had delivered Israel from Egypt with a mighty hand, and that they were now only suffering the results of their apostacy.

But, having pity upon Israel, He sent an angel to Gideon with the message, “The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour.” Gideon, not at first recognising the angel, replied: Why, then, this trouble? Where are the Lord’s miracles? He has given Israel into Midian’s hand. Being commissioned to deliver Israel, he pleaded his poverty and incompetence; but was assured of divine help, and as a sign, the bread and flesh of his offering were consumed by fire from a touch of the angel’s staff. On the angel’s departure he feared exceedingly, because he had “seen an angel of the Lord face to face.” “And the Lord said unto him, Peace be unto thee; fear not: thou shalt not die.” Upon this Gideon built there an altar, and called it “Yahweh Shalom” (Yahweh [saith] Peace): a memorial of God’s purpose angelically declared, and a type of that Sar-Shalom—Prince of Peace, of whom Isaiah speaks, and through whom the final deliverance is to come.

Then God commanded him to destroy the altar of Baal and the grove, which he did by night. In the morning, when Baal’s worshippers threatened his life, Joash, his father, saved him by the pertinent plea that they might let Baal avenge himself. When Moses cried to God against Korah and his company, God avenged Himself speedily. But so could not Baal. Then the Spirit came upon Gideon, and he gathered a host out of Zebulon and Naphtali and the adjacent countries where afterwards Christ ministered. On his craving yet another sign of the divine blessing, God granted him his request in the matter of the fleece, wet through one night while the ground was dry, and quite dry next night while the p. 148 ground was wet. But the host which Gideon had gathered was far too great for God’s purpose, the explanation divinely given being, “Lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying mine own hand hath saved me.”

They were thinned down by peculiar processes: 22,000 “fearful and afraid” being first weeded out. Afterwards they were tried at the water. “Three hundred men” out of 10,000, in drinking put their hands to their mouths; and “by these,” said God, “will I save you.” As a final encouragement to face a huge host with his three hundred, God caused him to hear the rehearsal of a dream by a Midianite, and the interpretation of it by another who listened to it, as God’s delivery of Midian into the hand of “Gideon, the son of Joash.” Thus strengthened, he worshipped, and arranged his three hundred in three companies round the host of Midian, with pitchers and lamps in them, and trumpets in their hands. In the night, at a given signal, there was a crashing of pitchers, and flashing of lights, and pealing of trumpets, and the terrible shout: “The sword of the Lord and of Gideon!” A great panic from God took possession of Midian, and they slew each other in their madness; and the remnant fled. Israel guarded the fords of Jordan, and Oreb and Zeeb were slain by them, and afterwards Zeba and Zalmunna by Gideon and his “faint yet pursuing” three hundred. A great spoil was taken and Israel delivered.

Such was “the day of Midian,” that was a picture on a small scale of what is coming under Christ. Attentive readers of the prophets will recognise in their foretellings the same salient features as pertain to the past deliverance. There is the spectacle of Israel in affliction because of apostacy—the angelic ministration to a mighty man of Israel of poor and humble extraction, whose offering was openly accepted by sign from heaven—the revival of the worship of Yahweh and the uprooting of idolatry—the delivery of Israel by a small and very select company, and apart from all human prowess, that the glory of God be not obscured—the panic from the Lord—and the slaughter of the kings, and the taking of the spoil. The prayer of Asaph (Psa. lxxxiii.) introduces this day of Midian (verse 11), and entreats that God will not keep silence, p. 149 but confound the confederated enemies of the Lord, “that men may know that thou, whose name is Jehovah, art the most high over all the earth.”

This prayer will be answered when Christ is manifested upon earth in the character of a “Man of war”; for “when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.” Apart from divine judgments, men will never practically “know” that God is the “most high over all the earth.” Christendom has most completely lost sight of the fact that it is as much a work of Christ to make war upon and prevail against the enemies of God, as to lay down his life in sacrifice—that he is the Lion of the Tribe of Judah just as really as he is the Lamb of God. Throughout the Scriptures this phase of the work of Christ is before us. The earliest intimation is that the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head (Gen. iii.), a process that involves more disaster than befel the seed of the woman when bruised in the heel.

When Moses, on the further shore of the Red Sea, sang in his song of triumph: “Yahweh is a Man of War,” he not only celebrated the triumph over Pharaoh, but prophesied of the ultimate triumph of Christ over all his enemies (compare Rev. xv.). David, in his last words, spoke of Christ’s being pierced with a spear in Jerusalem, and afterwards destroying his enemies there (2 Sam. xxiii.). And in Psa. xlv., apostrophising the King, he says: “Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O Mighty One, with thy glory and thy majesty”; which accords with the vision of the “King of Kings,” in his war against the powers, given in Rev. xix. From end to end the Scriptures find place for this indispensable phase of the work of Christ; and it is only pious unbelief that excludes it, and prays (inconsistently enough, considering the “determination” of God):

“God the all-merciful! Earth hath forsaken\ Thy ways of blessedness, slighted thy word:\ Bid not thy wrath in its terrors awaken:\ Give to us peace in our time, O Lord.”

God will give peace, truly, for which we may be thankful, but not before “the terrors of His wrath” have not only awakened, but p. 150 wrought “desolations” in the earth because of its wickedness, which is so explicitly admitted and defined in the verse above quoted.

The breaking of the yoke of Israel will be thorough; and the “battle of the warrior” (“the war of the great day of God Almighty”) will be sore;

“For unto us a child is born.”

How few connect the ideas as they stand written in Isaiah by the spirit of God! And yet nothing is more plainly revealed than that it is Christ’s especial work to deliver Israel, and that the participation by the Gentiles in their holy things is in the nature of an extension of the divine invitation to outsiders who “were not a people.” There is much need in the days of Gentile complacency in Christendom, and the continuation of the scattering of Israel, to emphasise the “UNTO US.” The matter belongs to Judah. “Salvation is of the Jews,” as Christ said to the Samaritan woman, and Gentiles who participate must become Jews, “Abraham’s seed,” “in Christ,” receiving the “spirit of adoption” in the belief and obedience of the truth in baptism, in which they partake of the “circumcision made without hands,” and become “heirs according to the promise,” and able by “patient continuance in well doing” to “wait for the consolation of Israel” which it is the province of Christ to bring.

Both the Jews and Christendom are away from the truth concerning the child of promise spoken of in this prophecy; and the titles given him are misconstrued by Christendom in the endeavour to accommodate them to Trinitarian theology. When the Jews, in answer to the question of Jesus, responded that Messiah was the Son of David, he propounded to them the further question: “How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord (Jehovah) saith unto my Lord, sit thou on my right hand till I make thine enemies thy footstool? If David then called him Lord, how is he his son?” (Matt. xxii. 43). They could not answer this, because they did not perceive that the son of David was to be also the Son of God; and indignantly rejected the claims of Jesus, though attested by his miracles, by John the Baptist and the voice from p. 151 heaven itself. They knew his proximate origin as they supposed, and could not look beyond or above the flesh.

Christendom has gone to the opposite extreme and transformed Jesus into the second person of the Trinity, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father who begat him; regardless of the impossibility of co-eternity in a “son,” and Jesus’ own express disavowal of co-equality. So regarding him, Christendom is forced into the most extravagant “incomprehensibilities,” as when a hymn speaks of him as

“Strong Creator, Saviour Mild,\ Humbled to a mortal child,\ Captive, beaten, bound, reviled.”

It regards him not as Immanuel (the manifestation of God in Israel) but as the manifestation of an eternally pre-existent Son, and points to some of his sayings, and to some of the prophecies concerning him, in support of the idea. But the fundamental teaching of Jesus concerning God, which is in harmony with Moses and the prophets, must be disregarded to sustain such an idea; and the titles given in this prophecy lend no countenance to it:

“The government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called WONDERFUL, COUNSELLOR, THE MIGHTY GOD, THE EVERLASTING FATHER, THE PRINCE OF PEACE.” Take these seriatim:

“Wonderful”

Had we lived in the days of Isaiah, we could have had but a faint conception of how wonderful the Son of God and of David would prove to be. Standing as we do some two thousand six hundred years further on, when his name has been engraven on the earth for nearly nineteen hundred years, we are better enabled to comprehend the marvel of it; though for the full appreciation of all that it portends, this mortal will have to be swallowed up of life.

Jesus was wonderful in origin, in relation to God and man, and in words and works that are yet only the earnest of greater wonders to come. In the following Scriptures the original word for “wonderful” is the same as that in Isaiah ix. 6, and they direct our attention to wonders that find illustration in Jesus. In Gen. xviii., the birth of Isaac was announced by the angel to Sarah, when p. 152 she was ninety years old, a matter so much out of the ordinary course of nature (v. 11, with Heb. xi. 11-12), that she could not help laughing. But God said by the angel, “Is anything too hard (wonderful) for the Lord?” And in course of time Isaac was born according to promise.

Accepting this record of the altogether miraculous origin of the nation, Israel ought not to find it impossible to receive the testimony concerning Jesus, for it was no harder for God to raise up a Son of God and Son of David by the operation of His spirit on a virgin of the house of David than it was to raise up Isaac to Abraham when he was “as good as dead” and his wife “past age.” The personal “Son of God” has an origin as wonderful as that of the national, of whom God spoke to Pharaoh saying: “Israel is my son—my firstborn: Let my son go.”

When Manoah was visited by an angel who told him of the approaching birth of Samson, being in ignorance of the nature of the “man of God” who instructed him, he said: “What is thy name?” But the angel answered: “Why askest thou thus after my name, seeing it is wonderful?” But the name of Jesus is above every name. Originally made “a little lower than the angels” for the suffering of death, he has “become so much better than the angels as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they” (Heb. i.). He “is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him” (1 Pet. iii. 22). The excellence of his majesty is the theme of the opening of the Epistle to the Hebrews and the basis upon which rests the claim to “earnest heed” on the part of all those to whom the word of God comes by him.

His works were wonderful. A Psalm of Asaph (Psa. lxxv.) says: “Unto thee, O God, do we give thanks, for that thy name is near thy wondrous works declare.” This received superabundant illustration in Jesus, and he appeals to his works as proof that he was indeed Immanuel: God manifested in the midst of Israel. He says: “If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin; but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father” (Jno. xv. 24). One of his wonderful works was the blinding of disobedient Israel (Isa. p. 153 xxix. 14, with John ix. 39), a work inconsistent with the artificial views that are current concerning him. The coming enlightenment of the nation will be wonderful, and will be preceded by the “marvel” of the resurrection of the dead and the bestowal upon his friends of eternal life by the power and authority given him by the Father (Jno. v. 20-30). His name is well called “WONDERFUL.”

“Counsellor”

This is the next on the list of titles, bestowed beforehand by the Spirit of God in the prophet upon the Son promised to the house of David. The root idea of the verb whence the term is derived is counsel, advice, instruction, direction. How necessary a thing is this in all human affairs. What is action without counsel, but a mere drift to chaos and death. “Every purpose is established by counsel, and with good advice make war” (Prov. xx. 18). And whence but from God can counsel come? “O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.” So Jeremiah confessed (ch. x. 23), and so will everyone who attains to anything like a due appreciation of man’s estate. The generations of the race come upon the scene in helplessness and ignorance. From the cradle to the grave they stand in need of counsel. They get a little of a low type, by means of which they get through the days of their vanity with more or less discomfort. But with regard to the “counsel of God” they are for the most part hopelessly ignorant, and therefore depart in sorrow to the oblivion of the grave. This is not a more pessimistic presentation of affairs than that of the Apostle John (1 Jno. ii. 16-17).

Trace back the history of those fleeting generations. Whence came counsel at the first? “It is not in man.” It never was “in man” innately. Yet it has come. The Bible says from God; and there is no other explanation that will stand for a moment. It is not the place to discuss objections. With the prophets in their ministry this was an axiom never to be disturbed, and our concern is only to exhibit the fact, and the developments in the divine purpose in Christ to our own day, and with regard to the perfect day beyond. It is not without reason that the Psalmist, praying for the promised p. 154 intervention of God in judgment, says: “Understand, ye brutish among the people, and ye fools, when will ye be wise? He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? he that formed the eye, shall he not see? he that chasteneth the heathen, shall not he correct? he that teacheth man knowledge, the Lord knoweth the thoughts of man that they are vanity” (Psa. xciv). “With him is wisdom and strength, he hath counsel and understanding” (Job xii. 13). He affirms it of Himself in protest against Israel’s apostacy from Him:—

“Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance? Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being his counsellor hath taught him? With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and showed to him the way of understanding?” (Isa. xl. 12-14). His vast and glorious designs in creation are before us and He has given Israel many proofs that He is indeed “the Creator and Possessor of heaven and earth.” If we reject His testimony we cut ourselves off from “counsel” and life, and are left without any adequate explanation of things as they exist. But let not that be our attitude, but rather that of Paul, who, lost in admiration of the work of God in Israel, and making quotation of this passage in Rom. xi., concludes, “For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things, to whom be glory for ever, Amen.”

God at the first then “taught man knowledge,” instructing him concerning the creation of which he was the crowning feature on earth, and concerning the way in which he was to walk before his Maker. Our first parents were to dress and keep the garden of Eden, and to observe the commandment (suited to their circumstances), that forbade the eating of a certain tree. This was the “whole counsel of God” with respect to man at that stage. The entrance of sin altered all things. It came through the rejection of the counsel of God, and the imputation to Him of ignorance and falsity, which originating with the serpent, was practically adopted by Eve, and by Adam after her, with such disastrous effects. In p. 155 the eyes of the wise of this world, this of course seems a mere childish legend of a benighted antiquity. But to make it appear so, they really have to argue that Christ was an ignorant enthusiast, which no sane man would do. His title “COUNSELLOR” is directly related to God’s purpose to put away the death that entered the world by the sin of Adam and Eve; and all his references to the subject of the beginnings of sin and death are in absolute harmony with the Mosaic record which he so unreservedly acknowledged as divine, and a part of the Scriptures which he says “cannot be broken.”

Having sinned, Adam and Eve took counsel between themselves and covered their nakedness with a device of fig-leaves. But God rejected this, and substituted “coats of skins,” which, necessitating the slaying of animals for their provision, brought a representation of death before them as the wages of sin, and the necessary portion of the “Counsellor,” who, as the “seed of the woman,” should afterwards bruise the serpent’s head, and take away sin and death from the earth. Thenceforward the counsel of God in its direction of human affairs towards the goal of His purpose, as the first of its first principles kept this fact to the front: that “the wages of sin is death,” and that according to divine appointment “without shedding of blood there is no remission,” no effectual covering for sin apart from the recognition of God’s insulted majesty, and the humblest submission to His merciful provisions for reinstatement.

In harmony with these reflections is the history of the accepted offering of Abel (“the firstlings of his flock and the fat thereof”); and the rejected offering of Cain (“the fruit of the ground”). The comment of Paul in Heb. xi. is that Abel’s was “by faith . . . a more excellent sacrifice” than that of Cain, whose faith did not take hold of God’s promise and instruction. Later on, all flesh corrupted God’s way on earth, and He destroyed the world by the flood, reserving only a remnant in which to preserve His purpose for the future. In the lives of the fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the purpose concerning Christ becomes more clearly defined, and they all looked for “the seed” who should be “seed of the woman,” “seed of Abraham,” son of God, offered in sacrifice as Isaac was in figure, raised from the dead likewise as he was symbolically, and who should “possess the gate of his enemies,” and p. 156 with Abraham inherit the land for ever. “Your father Abraham,” said God’s “Counsellor” to Israel, “rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad.” He perceived that the eternal inheritance pertained to the then far distant future, and accepted his position as a stranger and a pilgrim, looking for “a city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”

Under the Mosaic economy, the divinely-appointed ritual contained a central and crowning place for the representation of God’s purpose in the “Counsellor” of His promise and providing. God at the first proclaimed His covenant with Israel in the terrible trumpet voice that sounded the “ten commandments” from Mount Sinai trembling and cloud-enveloped, amid the thunder and lightning that accompanied the divine presence. But “he added no more,” and Moses alone was bidden to draw near, that God might commune with him “face to face.” In this, Moses, the mediator of the Old Covenant, was a type of Jesus, the mediator of the New; God’s “counsellor,” who, having “engaged his heart to approach,” has been caused to “draw near” unto God as the “Governor” of Israel, presently to return (Jer. xxx. 21). But there was to be a special place and method about the approaches to God even of Moses; for God directed him to make the tabernacle in the wilderness and made provision for the mercy-seat with the over-shadowing “Cherubim of Glory” on the lid of the ark of covenant, as a place of counsel from the Most High to Israel. The specification in Ex. xxv. concludes with these words: “There will I meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy-seat, from between the two cherubim, which are upon the ark of the testimony of all things which I will give thee in commandment unto the children of Israel.”

The “communing” was not to be of the kind that passes between man and man, as the discussion of possibly opposing judgments on a matter, one or both of which may be wrong, or more or less open to question. It was the speaking of the word of “command” to Israel. All the “counsel” of God is of this character and cannot be rejected without death as a consequence. Because sentence against evil works is deferred (the purpose of God requiring the free play of human will for the manifestation p. 157 of that pleasing and precious thing, an unconstrained obedience arising out of faith that worketh by love)—because of this, human discernments are dull in this direction, and as has been well said, if men do not often go to the length of saying “there is no God”; they for the most part act as if there were none. If they knew the Scriptures and the power of God, they would be saved from so fatal a mistake.

Apostolic exposition by the Spirit of God connects Christ with the Mercy-seat-throne of God in Israel as the substance of the shadow there outlined. Paul speaks of Jesus “whom God hath sent forth to be a propitiation (“mercy-seat,” literally) through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past through the forbearance of God . . . that he (God) might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (Rom. iii. 26). In Christ then, as from “above the mercy-seat,” and as through the antitypical High Priest of Israel, God communicates His counsel or commandments concerning “the children of Israel” who are not only taken from among the Jews, but also from among the Gentiles by “faith in his blood.”

“Where no counsel is, the people fall; but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety” (Prov. xi. 14). The last half of this proverb is commonly quoted alone, and the idea is thus obscured, if it be not lost altogether. It is often put as though the safety lay in the “multitude” and not so much in the fact that they are “counsellors.” One “counsellor” is worth a multitude who cannot be thus defined, and God’s standard in Christ being taken, the “multitude” of such has in any age of the world’s history been small indeed. The glory of the age to come will be Christ as “counsellor” for God over all the earth and a multitude like him subordinate to him, freed from the weaknesses and inefficiencies of the flesh, and made gloriously competent with him to advise, instruct and direct the world’s affairs to the glory of God the Father. In the guidance of such there will indeed be “safety,” as it is written: “The Lord is exalted; for he dwelleth on high: He hath filled Zion with judgment and righteousness. And wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times, strength of p. 158 salvation: the fear of the Lord is his treasure” (Isa. xxxiii. 6). In the hope of this the Psalmist exulted, notwithstanding the prosperity of the ungodly meanwhile. “Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel and afterwards receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but thee, and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth; but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever” (Psa. lxxiii. 24).

From the preservation to our day of the divinely given and preserved records of the life and work of Christ, we are enabled to see for ourselves what was meant when it was said by Isaiah that his name should be the “Counsellor.” Begotten by the spirit of God of a virgin of the house of David, he was filled therewith in harmony with the prophecy which said: “The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him; the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord; and shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord.”

He was introduced to Israel at his baptism with the direct approval from heaven of the Father Himself. “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” On the Mount of Transfiguration he was similarly divinely accredited to Peter, James and John by the voice from the overshadowing cloud: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. HEAR YE HIM.” And the Father bore witness to him in “works that none other man did;” while the word of his “counsel” overawed even the officials whom an offended and jealous priesthood sent to apprehend him. “Never man spake like this man,” said they, and having his words preserved, we cannot but perceive the truth of their remark. The greatness of the difference between his style of counsel and that of his contemporaries in Israel appears well in the record that tells us that at the end of the “Sermon on the Mount” the people were astonished, “for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the Scribes.” This was in harmony with the Mosaic type in the divine voice from the mercy-seat which communicated through the High Priest “the commandment of the Lord” for Israel.

The Sermon on the Mount contains many illustrations of this “authority.” “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old p. 159 time” (thus and so), “but I say unto you,” is a form of speech more than once repeated, and making more searching application of the commandments (verses 21, 28, 33) than had hitherto been made in Israel; in harmony with his declaration: “I am not come to destroy (the law or the prophets), but to fulfil.” “The Word was made flesh,” says John, “and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” This grace and truth finds expression in all the records of his life and work, whether it be in the assertion of his divine authority, the turning of the situation upon his enemies in controversy with a word, the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom, the healing of the sick, the forgiveness of sins, or the comforting of his disciples as he went forward steadfastly to death upon the cross.

Take for examples of his counsel some of his teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. He proclaimed blessedness upon the poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, the hungerers and thirsters after righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers. He exhorted men to be perfect, as the Father in heaven is perfect; to seek first the kingdom of God; to enter in at the strait gate that leadeth to life; to beware of false prophets; not only to hear but to do his sayings, that they might stand in the day of judgment. He counselled them to forgive to the uttermost; to submit to any form of self-denial rather than lose life eternal. His counsel was rejected by the bulk of the nation, but a few chosen ones gave heed; and he thanked the Father that His purpose was hidden from the wise and prudent and revealed unto babes. He said; “All things are delivered unto me of my Father, and no man knoweth the Son but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matt. xi. 27).

The practical application of this merciful counsel of God is found in the ministrations of the men of Christ’s appointment according to p. 160 his express commandment. He chose his apostles and equipped them as counsellors under him, saying: “I will give you a mouth and wisdom which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist.” And again: “When they deliver you up (to governors and kings), take no thought how or what ye shall speak, for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak; but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.” And so they went forth preaching Christ crucified, and that men might come unto him for salvation in belief of the gospel of the Kingdom, and baptism thereupon into his name, and the taking of his yoke upon them in the obedience of his commandments, which, though it would bring them present persecution, was “easy” by comparison with the bondage of sin which ended in death.

The Apostolic allusions to Christ illustrate Isaiah’s prophecy of the “Counsellor.” Paul says that “of God he is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Cor. i. 30); and that “in him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. ii. 3). If it is not yet obvious to all the world, it is because the purpose of God requires the toleration of a time of evil for the development of His people.

In the book of Revelation, Christ presents himself as the “Counsellor,” according to whose penetrating discernment the whole course of human affairs is being directed from behind the veil. The introduction represents him as “the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead.” With regard to the affairs of his own people in the world, the seven epistles to the seven churches of Asia are eloquent. “I know thy works,” saith he to each of them, and he rebukes shortcomings and sins, commends steadfast faithfulness, and exhorts to repentance where necessary. Even to the Laodiceans he says: “I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment that thou mayest be clothed; and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve that thou mayest see.” The faith of Christ, the righteousness of obedience to him, clearness of mental vision through the application of the word of Christ, are the precious things signified. To this community he continues: “As many as I love I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore and repent. p. 161 Behold I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him and will sup with him, and he with me. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame and am set down with my Father in his throne. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.” The last clause (appended likewise to all the other epistles), brings the counsel down to our own time, though the Lord is absent.

But not only, or chiefly, in the days of his flesh, and during the time of his absence from the earth is he the “Counsellor.” The crowning manifestation is to come, as the prophets testify. “I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning: afterwards thou shalt be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city” (Isa. i. 26); “Behold the man whose name is the Branch; he shall grow up out of his place and he shall build the temple of the Lord. Even he shall build the temple of the Lord; and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon his throne; and he shall be a priest upon his throne, and the counsel of peace shall be between them both” (Zech. vi. 12). God has given the earth into the hands of Jesus as His “COUNSELLOR.” Just as surely as he suffered in Jerusalem, so will he reign there, surrounded by the “counsellors” of his own choice and development. The wisdom and glory of Solomon’s peaceful reign was but a shadow of what is coming under Christ when, as God’s Melchizedek High Priest, he rules the world with righteousness. Meanwhile a faithless world groans and travails in vain endeavours for peace, while rejecting the instruction of the “Counsellor” and pronouncing his rules of action impossible and impracticable. But, as Paul said of the Jews: “Shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect.” By no means. “What though all the world resist Him, God will realise His plan.”

“The Mighty God”

“The Mighty God” was to be one of the titles borne by the virgin’s son who, centuries after Isaiah’s day, was to be the manifestation of God in Israel—Immanuel, God with us.

p. 162 In the ocean of controversy and strife that rolls round his Name, according to his express prophecy, we are safe only in holding fast by his own exposition of the things of God. The root of it all is his doctrine of the Unity and Supremacy of the Father: “The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart” (Mar. xii. 29). Mosaic, prophetic and Messianic teaching all agree in this first principle of all things; and the Scriptures can never be successfully accommodated to a Trinitarian exegesis that utterly rejects it.

The words of Jesus, above quoted, are from Moses: “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord” (Deut. vi. 4). Speaking prophetically of Jesus, the “mighty God” of Isa. ix. 6, Moses said: “The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee like unto me.” And, quoting the word of the Eternal concerning that prophet: “I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I command him. And it shall come to pass that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him” (Deut. xviii. 15). Here then “the Lord thy God” raises up, inspires and commands “the mighty God” of subsequent prophetic allusion. This is in harmony with the teaching of Jesus as we shall see; but is quite irreconcilable with Trinitarian “incomprehensibilities” of co-equality and co-eternity.

The prophets, by whom God spoke by His spirit as He did by Moses, agree with Moses in the proclamation of the unity and unapproachable majesty of God. “I am Yahweh; that is my name; and my glory will I not give to another” (Isa. xlii. 8). “I, even I, am Yahweh, and beside me there is no Saviour” (xliii. 11). “Is there a God beside me? Yea, there is no rock (power), I know not any” (xliv. 8). “I am Yahweh, and there is none else, there is no God beside me” (xlv. 5). These are some examples of the way in which the unity and supremacy of the Eternal Father were enforced on Israel by the prophets, in protest against their apostacy and idolatry. Many others could be given. The apostles, after Jesus, taught the same things concerning the Father and the Son. “There is one God, and one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ p. 163 Jesus” (1 Tim. ii. 5). “The Blessed and only Potentate” (1 Tim. vi. 16). “To us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him: and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him” (1 Cor. viii. 6). Our interpretation of the names and titles of Christ must harmonise with these clear and unmistakable exhibitions of the truth concerning God.

When the “prophet like unto Moses” was raised up by God in Israel, he spoke the words and did the works of the Father, as had been foretold. This often involved him in controversy with his countrymen as to his divine origin and mission, which he defined in terms that were above the comprehension of fleshly animosity; and proved, not only by works of power, but by unanswerable scriptural argument, which they could only seek to silence in procuring his death. A notable instance was that in which he took occasion of the presence of a blind man to proclaim himself the light of the world, to open the man’s eyes, and convict the Pharisees of wilful blindness and sin. He declared himself to be the door of the sheepfold, and the good shepherd who would lay down his life for the sheep, according to the “commandment received of the Father.” His extraordinary words, backed up by the miracle, produced a great effect upon those who were independent of the Pharisees; and a sharp controversy ensued. It culminated, in Solomon’s porch of the temple, in an attempt on the part of the Jews to stone him because of his doctrine concerning his relations to the Father. But as they stood there, with stones for arguments, he said: “Many good works have I showed you from the Father; for which of those works do ye stone me?” They answered, “For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.” But he answered: “Is it not written in your law, I said ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the Scripture cannot be broken; say ye of him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest, because I said I am the Son of God. If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in him” (Jno. x.).

p. 164 So then “being a man” he could nevertheless be called “god”; especially as the Father was “in him” and had “sanctified and sent him into the world.” The eighty-second Psalm, from which Jesus made this quotation, is very enlightening when considered with reference to the “mighty God” of Isa. ix., his controversy with the unjust judges of Israel, and the ultimate establishment of his kingdom with “judgment and justice for ever.” It runs as follows:

God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods. How long will ye judge unjustly (Jno. viii. 15), and accept the persons of the wicked? (Jno. vii. 48: v. 43). Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked (Matt. xxiii. 14). They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course (1 Jno. ii. 11; Ps. xi. 3). I have said ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High (Jno. x. 34). But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes. Arise, O God, judge the earth, for Thou shalt inherit all nations (Isa. ix. 5; Heb. i. 8; Jno. viii. 26; Rev. xi. 15).

The interpolated references indicate the application of the psalm to the time when Immanuel rebuked the apostacy of the “gods,” and declared that they should die in their sins for rejecting him (Jno. viii. 21), and also to the terrible time when they shall see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of God, and they themselves thrust out (Luke xiii. 28).

But the English reader of the Bible, to whom the term “God” almost of necessity conveys the idea of the Uncreate Father, is at a disadvantage in comprehending the import of the prophecy of Isa. ix. 6. The title under consideration is El Gibbor, Mighty God, and the understanding of it will be greatly helped by the following extract from Dr. Thomas’ invaluable exposition entitled Phanerosis, in which the subject of God-manifestation is dealt with in a masterly and exhaustive manner.

“The names of God which occur in the Bible are not arbitrary sounds; and one of the chief imperfections of the English Authorised translation, or rather version, is the slovenly manner in which all the names by which God has been pleased to make Himself known to His people, have been rendered after the fashion of the Septuagint, by the two words Lord and God. p. 165 “These words do not convey the ideas of the Spirit in its use of terms. Lord is of Saxon origin, and signifies monarch, ruler, governor, something supreme or distinguished. The word to which it answers in the Septuagint and New Testament is Κυριος, Kyrios.” The Doctor then quotes Parkhurst’s comments on this word, which he considered to convey the idea of self-existence, and continues: “But if this be the radical idea of Κυριος it fails to represent the meaning of Ail, Eloah, Elohim, Shaddai, Yahweh, for all of which it is often, or rather most frequently and almost generally used. The word Adon is properly enough rendered Lord, or Κυριος in the singular; but not the other words, for which it should never be used. Elohim, Shaddai, and Adonai, are plural names of Deity, and require terms of the same number to express them.

“The common use of God in the English language, is as little justifiable as that of the word Lord. “God” in Saxon, signifies good; a meaning which cannot possibly be extracted from any of the names recited above. God is indeed good, exclusively so, as we are taught by Jesus himself while in the mortal state. In this sense he refused to appropriate the word good, saying to one who styled him so, “Why callest thou me good? No one is good, except one, that is God” (Matt. xix. 17). Jesus was free from personal transgression, and therefore in character good; as he did not refer to character, he could only have had reference to nature, or to God as substance. He is good in the sense of being deathless, or incorruptibility itself; which, when Jesus refused the term, did not define the nature the Spirit was tabernacling in, and was encumbered with. “In me, that is in my flesh,” says Paul, “dwells no good thing.” God, then, whether in the sense of moral or material goodness, while it is a term expressive of the truth, is not a translation of any of the words before us; and where used in their stead, leaves the mind in the dark concerning the things they were intended to convey.”

“To Melchizedek and Abram the alone Good One was known as Ail Elyon, MOST HIGH AIL, which teaches by implication that there were Ailim of inferior rank, station, and power. Melchizedek, King of Jerusalem, was the priest of the Highest Ail, whom he understood and proclaimed to be POSSESSOR OF THE HEAVENS AND p. 166 EARTH. In Gen. xiv. 22, Abram is made by transcribers to call the MOST HIGH AIL by the name Yahweh; though we are expressly told, in Ex. vi. 3, that Abraham did not know him by that name. He knew AIL, and he knew Shaddai; but with any superior or divine being of the name YAHWEH, he had no acquaintance. . . . The use of the word Yahweh is evidence that Genesis was compiled at least 430 years after the events of chap. xv.”

“As often as the word Ail^a passed before Abram’s mind, the idea of POWER, might, strength, would stand out in bold relief. ‘It always,” says Gesenius, ‘presented to the Hebrews the idea of strength and power.’ Nebuchadnezzar is styled in Ezek. xxxi. 11, Ail Goyim, the Mighty One of the Nations; and in Isa. ix. 6, Messiah is termed Ail Gibbor.”

Other illustrations of the use of the term Ail or El are given by Dr. Thomas, but these will be sufficient to show that the Trinitarian doctrine is absolutely unsupported by the phrase “Mighty God” of Isaiah’s prophecy concerning Christ. It is part of the misery of “the times of the Gentiles” and the prevalence of an apostate Christianity, to have even to appear to belittle the greatness of Christ in preserving the truth concerning him from the distortions of a system that confuses us while thinking to honour him. The marvel is that God should raise up in the House of David a man who could bear such titles, in seeing whom Israel should see the Father, so far as that was possible in flesh and blood. But it is not honouring Christ to attribute to him an underived power and excellence which he himself emphatically repudiates. He is “the King of Glory;” but it is of the Father’s appointment. He is the “mighty one” (gibbor), Psa. xlv. who rides prosperously with glory and majesty because of truth and meekness and righteousness; but it is the Father who anoints him and decrees the everlasting stability of his throne: “Unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever, a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, p. 167 even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows” (Heb. i. 8-9). He is the “mighty one” upon whom God “laid help,” and whom He has made His “firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth” (Psa. lxxxix. 19, 27), to whom, though Israel now rejects him, as for ages past they have done, the remnant shall at last return, as Isaiah foretells: “The remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob unto the Mighty God” (El Gibbor) (Isa. x. 21).

“The Everlasting Father”

This rendering in the Authorised Version involves a contradiction in terms. If the term “everlasting” be understood to convey the idea of time without beginning, it is obvious that it cannot be applied either to “Father” or “Son.” “Father” of necessity implies priority and fountain of origin, and therefore a time when fatherhood was not affirmable. “Son” likewise always expresses the idea of emanation, of secondary and derived existence. Even Trinitarianism is compelled to describe Christ as the “Second Person;” and if “second,” how “the Everlasting Father?”

But these words do not convey the true meaning of the title Avi Ad, which is more correctly rendered in the margin of the Revised Version: “Father of Eternity.” This dropping of the definite article, and substitution of a noun for an adjective, favours the clearing away of Trinitarian fog, and leaves us free to enquire of the Scripture in what sense the Son of David and Son of God is described as “Father of Eternity.” Scriptural usage alone can satisfy us as to the mind of God in the matter. His ways are higher than ours, and His thoughts than our thoughts, and consequently His modes of speech are proportionately difficult of comprehension by flesh and blood, which is only too prone to lean on its own understanding and thus to become foolish.

Looking through the Scriptures for light on the subject, we discover that JOSEPH, who was a type of Jesus, in that he was sold by his brethren, and nevertheless in his afflictions went before them to preserve their lives, was made a father to Pharaoh and to Egypt through the divine overruling of those very sufferings. In the dramatic climax in which he made himself known to his brethren he said: “It was not you that sent me hither, but God: and he hath p. 168 made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt” (Gen. xlv. 8). By the revelation of God concerning the years of plenty and the subsequent years of famine, and his wise action in storage of grain, he bought all Egypt for Pharaoh, and became a father and saviour to the nation. This is an illustration of possibilities in connection with the future work of Christ, who even in the days of his flesh could multiply bread miraculously. “All that a man hath will he give for his life.” If heaven’s supplies were stopped for a little while, save through Christ, all the earth would fall into his hands at once. Of course it is revealed that he will subdue the earth by conquest, but the foregoing reflection is not out of harmony with the foretold withholding of rain from any who neglect to come up to Jerusalem to the feast of tabernacles in the age to come (Zech. xiv. 17).

ELIJAH the prophet was a father in Israel. When he ascended to heaven, Elisha, who saw it, cried out: “My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof.” Afterwards ELISHA himself was similarly apostrophised on his death bed by Joash, King of Israel. He wept over the dying prophet, saying, “O my father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof.” And Elisha gave him a parting sign of coming deliverance from Syria, and was angry at the dulness of Joash’s perception when he smote on the ground only thrice after shooting “the arrow of the Lord’s deliverance” (2 King’s xiii.). Of Elijah and Elisha, Israel and the world will hear again by-and-bye; but, though their works were wonderful, greater than either will be JESUS (Avi Ad, Father of Eternity), to whose decease Elijah looked forward on the Mount of Transfiguration as the one great sacrifice, foretold by Moses and the prophets, which, involving the resurrection to eternal life of the righteous victim, should open the way for the immortal and glorious “regeneration” in which “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets” shall be seen shining forth as the sun in the kingdom of the Father.

Isaiah, in a later prophecy, represents Messiah as the Father of the Age to come. In the twenty-second chapter, by the decree for the degradation of Shebna, and exaltation of Eliakim, his successor, he foreshows the same everlasting kingdom of Christ p. 169 upon the throne of David as is the matter of assurance in chapter nine. After denouncing Shebna, the word of God continues (Isa. xxii. 20): “And it shall come to pass in that day that I will call my servant Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah: and I will clothe him with thy robe and strengthen him with thy girdle, and I will commit thy government into his hand: and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the house of Judah. And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open and none shall shut, and he shall shut and none shall open. And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place; and he shall be for a glorious throne to his father’s house. And they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father’s house, the offspring and the issue, all vessels of small quantity, from the vessels of cups even to all the vessels of flagons. In that day, saith the Lord of Hosts, shall the nail that is fastened in the sure place be removed, and be cut down and fall; and the burden that was upon it shall be cut off, for the Lord hath spoken it.”

For a detailed exposition of this prophecy, the reader is referred to Eureka, vol 1, page 375 and onwards. For present purposes it will suffice to note that its terms are appropriated by Jesus in Rev. iii., where he presents himself as “he that hath the key of David, he that openeth and no man shutteth; and shutteth and no man openeth.” And we remember his gracious promise to his disciples concerning the “Father’s house of many mansions” (Jno. xiv.), and his words in prayer concerning the glory bestowed on him by the Father, which he would in turn bestow upon the men the Father had given him (John xvii. 22, 9). A study of this prophecy in the light of the gospel of the Kingdom, in connection with Christ’s past and future relation to Jerusalem, will make very clear the meaning of the phrase Avi Ad of Isaiah ix. 6.

Even under the old constitution the King of Israel was considered as the father of the nation. Even Saul was so addressed by David (2 Sam. xxiv. 11). How much more Immanuel in his day. Even in the days of his flesh he would have been “a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem,” but they would not receive him. But in the day of his power they will be willing, as is foretold p. 170 (Psa. cx.). It was necessary that he should first be “cut off” as the prophets testify; but the condemnation of sin in the flesh having been accomplished in his cutting off, he was raised from the dead for his righteousness sake, and henceforth awaits the satisfaction of seeing his seed, “the offspring and the issue” (Isa. liii. 10: xxii. 24), and the “small and great” vessels of the “great house” of the Father gathered into their destined places (Rev. xi. 18; Isa. xxii. 24; Jno. xiv.; 2 Tim. ii. 20).

Contrast as well as comparison helps to the understanding of the coming glory of the Fatherhood of Christ. Christendom is full of “fathers” and “patriarchs” owning allegiance for the most part to two chief “fathers” of this present evil world: the “Holy Father” of Rome, as the Pope is blasphemously styled, and the Czar as head and “father” of the Russian Greek church. “Peter the Great,” we are told, “in 1721 suppressed the Patriarchate of Moscow and invested himself with the supreme headship of the Russian Greek church.” The present-day treatment of Jews and dissenters by the Russian Holy Synod, and the Papal enormities of many centuries past are the fruits of the fatherhood of Czars and Popes. The Czar, as a first principle of his creed, rejects the notion of the Papal supremacy, which the Pope of course as strenuously, but now quite impotently, maintains. But at the end, the prophets show us that a kind of Herod and Pilate agreement is arrived at between them in the endeavour to get rid of the yoke of the true World-Father of God’s appointment. Imagine them both cut off, and their ignorant and blood-thirsty hierarchies destroyed in all the countries of their occupation, and substituted by the immortal “kings and priests” of Christ’s appointment, owning rejoicing allegiance to him enthroned in Jerusalem, and we see something of the picture that is before us in the title “Father of Eternity.”

With regard to the “Eternity” spoken of in the phrase Avi Ad, the Gospel of the Kingdom tells us that Messiah’s times have a division marked by the cessation of sin and death from the earth. The Kingdom of God in its primary stage: the administration of immortal rulers over mortal populations, is revealed to endure for a thousand years (Rev. xx.). “Then cometh the p. 171 end,” says Paul, when Christ shall deliver up the kingdom to the Father, and God shall be all and in all. This division of the time to come into two ages with these differing characteristics, is expressed in the Old Testament scriptures by the phrase olam-va-ed, the olam and beyond.

Dr. Thomas, in Eureka i., pp. 122-134, has some excellent remarks in exposition of this subject, under the sectional heading of “FOR EVER AND EVER.” The perusal of them in connection with this prophecy will be found very enlightening. Christ is “Father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem,” and to the world at large in the Millennium; but his position of supremacy as the “Author of eternal salvation,” does not then pass out of view, though the kingdom be delivered up to the Father; but continues manifest in the perfect age beyond. “The noun ad,” says a concordance, “only occurs eight times; it is twice rendered everlasting (Isa. ix. 6; Hab. iii. 6); once eternity (Isa. lvii. 15); once it is used with olám, and ad olemái ad is translated ‘world without end’ (Isa. xlv. 17).” A consultation of these passages will show that the marginal rendering of the Revised Version is the correct one, and more in harmony with the things revealed concerning the reign of Christ on earth. Moses said in Ex. xv. 18: “The Lord shall reign for ever and ever” (leolam va ed); and in Psa. xlv. 6, the Spirit says of Christ: “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever” (olam va ed). He is, therefore, Avi Ad, Father of Eternity: Earth’s Possessor and Governor when it shall have passed into the perfect state designed beforehand by the Eternal Creator, “Possessor of the Heavens and Earth.”