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A PRACTICAL GUIDE

งว

647
.B59
1841

TO THE

PROPHECIES,

WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR INTERPRETATION AND
FULFILMENT, AND TO PERSONAL EDIFICATION.

BY THE REV. EDWARD BICKERSTETH,

RECTOR OF WATTON, HERTS.

"We have also a more sure word of prophecy, whereunto ye do well that ye take
heed."-2 PETER i. 19.

FROM THE SIXTH LONDON EDITION, ENLARGED.

PHILADELPHIA:

ORRIN ROGERS, 67 SOUTH SECOND STREET.

E. G. Dorsey, Printer.

1841.

The paging of the London edition is preserved in this reprint in brackets.

A PRACTICAL GUIDE

TO THE

PROPHECIES.

CHAPTER I.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.

NEXT to the moral and experimental evidence of God's word, the evidence of prophecy is, of all others, the most convincing, satisfactory, and even overwhelming, to a wise, learned, and candid mind. There is such an accumulation of proof upon proof in a vast multitude of improbabilities, there is such a chain of evidence for thousands of years, there is such an impossibility in the very nature of things of any forgery; there is such a growing strength in the evidence, from age to age, to our own times, there is such rich spiritual use in the prophecies themselves, that the moral conviction is conclusive; we cannot but say, when the subject has been calmly and completely investigated, the finger of God is visible in this-it is his own word.

[2] And this evidence, arising from the past and the present fulfilment of prophecy, is connected with the most elevating and comforting hopes as to all that is to come; the great things that most concern us as individual believers, and that most concern the church of Christ, are set before us with the distinctness of history, leading us to the full hope of the richest and most enduring blessedness. The past completion, also, of prophecy furnishes us with the best rules for understanding what is yet unfulfilled. If it be said, there are serious differences among Christian interpreters; these, though stumbling to a beginner, are not such as at all materially to weaken our conclusions. The differences are rather, as to the modes or time in which the result shall be accomplished, and the exact

VOL. II.-51

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