Testimony of Christ to the Old Testament 63 betrayal, apprehension, and death took place, “that the Scrip tures of the prophets might be fulfilled” (Matt. 26:56). “Had ye believed Moses,” said our Lord, “ye would have believed Me, for he wrote of Me” (John 5:46). The 41st Psalm pre announces the treachery of Judas in these words: “He that eatetli bread with Me hath lifted up his heel against Me;” and the defection of the son of perdition takes place, “that the Scriptures may be fulfilled” (John 17:12). The persist ent and malignant opposition of His enemies fulfils that which is written: “They hated Me without a cause” (John 15:25). Finally, in discoursing to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, the Lord, “beginning at Moses and all the prophets, expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things con cerning Himself. “And He said unto them: These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms, con cerning Me. Then opened He their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures, and said unto them: “Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day” (Luke 24:44-46). I t is not denied that in some instances the word “fulfil” is used in the New Testament merely as signifying that some event or condition of things corresponds with or realizes something that is written in the Old Testament; as when the words in Isaiah, “By hearing ye shall hear and shall not understand,” are said to be fulfilled in the blind obduracy of the Pharisees. Nor, again, is it denied that “fulfil” has the meaning of filling, or expanding, or completing. But clearly our Lord, in the passages here cited, employs the term in another acceptation. He means nothing less than this: that the Scriptures which He says were “fulfilled” were intended by the Spirit of God to have the very application which He makes of them; they were predictions in the sense ordinarily meant by that term. If the Messiah of the Old Testament
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker