Chrestomathy

The Hope of All the Earth . . . Or Nothing

"Christianity in its origin appealed to a great Messianic expectancy, the source and spring of which . . . is found in the Old Testament itself. The whole Old Testament is prophetic. Its special predictions form only a part, although an organic part, of the prophetic Scriptures; and all prophecy points to the Kingdom of God and to the Messiah as its King.

"The narrow boundaries of Judah and Israel were to be enlarged so as to embrace all men, and one King would reign in righteousness over a ransomed world that would offer to Him its homage of praise and service. All that had marred the moral harmony of earth would be removed; the universal Fatherhood of God would become the birthright of redeemed, pardoned, regenerated humanity; and all this blessing would centre in, and flow from, the Person of the Messiah.

Such at least is the promise of the Old Testament which the New Testament declares to have been fulfilled in Christ Jesus. And if it were not so, then surely can it never more be fulfilled. For not even the most fanatic Jew would venture to assert, that out of the Synagogue would now come to our world a King reigning in righteousness, a Son of David, a Branch of Jesse; and that the present Synagogue would so enlarge itself as to embrace in its bosom all the nations of the earth. And thus, unless the old hope of the kingdom has been realised in Christianity, it can never be realised at all. Then also is the Old Testament itself false in its inmost principle, and false the hope of humanity which it bears. . . .

"And so it still is, that the New Testament without the Old, and the Old Testament without the New, is not possible. . . . And so we all feel it, when in our Christian services we not only sing the Psalter and read the Old Testament, as of present application, but speak of Abraham as "our forefather". "

Alfred Edersheim, Prophecy and History in Relation to the Messiah (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, [1901] 1980), pp.24--26. (Alfred Edersheim (1825--1889) was born and educated in a Jewish home but later converted to Christianity. His perspective therefore is unusually keen and comprehensive on the subject of Jewish history and Old Testament prophecy and its fulfillment.)