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Prophecy viewed in respect to its distinctive nature, special function, and proper interpretation 1866 [Leather Bound]
{ 19.68 x 24.13 cms} Leather Binding on Spine and Corners with Golden Leaf Printing on round Spine (extra customization on request like complete leather, Golden Screen printing in Front, Color Leather, Colored book etc.) Reprinted in 2017 with the help of original edition published long back [1866]. This book is printed in black & white, sewing binding for longer life, printed on high quality Paper, re-sized as per Current standards, professionally processed without changing its contents. As these are old books, we processed each page manually and make them readable but in some cases some pages which are blur or missing or black spots. If it is multi volume set, then it is only single volume. We expect that you will understand our compulsion in these books. We found this book important for the readers who want to know more about our old treasure so we brought it back to the shelves. Hope you will like it and give your comments and suggestions. - English, Pages 528. COMPLETE LEATHER WILL COST YOU EXTRA US$ 25 APART FROM THE LEATHER BOUND BOOKS. {FOLIO EDITION IS ALSO AVAILABLE.} . Complete Prophecy viewed in respect to its distinctive nature, special function, and proper interpretation 1866 [Leather Bound] Patrick Fairbairn
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First published August 11, 2015
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About the author
Patrick Fairbairn
174 books9 followersRev. Patrick Fairbairn, D.D. (University of Edinburgh, 1826) was a minister and theologian of the Free Church of Scotland. He was Principal and Professor of Church History and Exegesis for the Free Church College from its 1856 founding until his death, and was Professor of Theology at the Free Church Theological College in Aberdeen from 1853.
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July 8, 2024
A 19TH CENTURY REFORMED INTERPRETATION OF BIBLICAL PROPHECY
Patrick Fairbairn (1805-1874) was a Scottish minister and theologian, who was Professor of Theology at the Free Church Theological College in Aberdeen, and then the Free Church College in Glasgow. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to a 530-page reprint edition.]
He wrote in the Preface to this 1865 book, “theology has been peculiarly affected by the spirit of the age; and a mode of treatment is now required for the several topics it embraces… Such especially is the case in respect to the subject of prophecy… since objections are laid by the opponents of corrupters of the truth against the argument from prophecy, less on the ground of an alleged weakness in the argument itself… than by attempting to extract the element of… prophecy from Scripture… Contemporaneously… modes of interpretation, views founded on them, have been gaining currency among many students of Scripture, which, if valid, would deprive the argument from prophecy of some of its most important defences…. It is here peculiarly, that this portion of our theological literature has been defective and unsatisfactory. With the view of contributing to supply this defect… the present volume has been composed. Hence, nearly one half of the volume is devoted to the investigation of the principles of the subject… The latter half, which treats of definite portions of the prophetical Scriptures… is conducted strictly as an application of the principles set forth and maintained in the earlier.”
He explains, “as prophecy… has its regular progress and development, there are two considerations that ought not to be forgotten… The one is, that the meaning of a prophecy is not to be restrained and limited by conclusions deduced simply from the historical circumstances out of which it may have sprung, but from the words of the prophecy itself… And along with this, there is the further consideration, that since prophecy has God, and not history, for its author… it must ever have in it something divinely rich and great, reaching… beyond what even, with the help of these, it might be possible beforehand adequately to conceive.” (Pg. 31-32)
He states, “we may confidently infer that the ETHICAL or moral element, not the simply NATURAL, must predominate in its announcements respecting the future. It MAY, and to a certain extent MUST, foretell events in Providence with sufficient distinctness to enable those who have witnessed or become cognizant of their occurrence, to identify them with proper intimations; for otherwise the church could never assure herself that the hopes and expectations it had awakened in her bosom had found their realization. In regard, for example, to the Messiah… it was necessary that it should describe Him by such marks and characteristics as would enable those who waited for His coming to recognize Him when he did come, as the same that had been promised to the fathers… But it could not be in any case the mere occurrences themselves, as … ordinary facts of history, in respect to which they were announced beforehand, or were afterwards to be marked as fulfillments of prophecy. For then they should have belonged, not to the province of religion… but to the region of nature and the world. It is in the moral element that the church moves; and the prominent point in all prophetic intimations respecting her state and destiny, must be something of a moral kind---something that… tends to exhibit the principles of the Divine administration in its dealings with men as subjects of a moral government.” (Pg. 54-55)
He argues, “why, it may be asked, should not the prophetic word… If it is to be understood conditionally, why should it not also speak conditionally?... [In] the case of Nineveh, instead of declaring absolutely, that the city should be overthrown in forty days, should it not rather have taken the form of announcing such a doom, in case the people did not repent? We reply… that in this… God spake as from the human point of view; He took up the case of the city as it stood at the time, and pronounced without qualification or reserve, its appropriate doom; knowing, perhaps, that the very absoluteness and precision of the form was … the ONLY one actually calculated to around slumbering consciences, and lead to serious repentance.” (Pg. 69-70)
He points out, “Indeed, it is difficult to say what a fair and uniform application of the principle of historical interpretation to the style of prophecy would leave us of prophetical fulfillments. Micah, for example, predicted that out of Bethlehem was to come forth He that was to be Ruler in Israel, the Messiah, as King of Zion. But … that Messiah has not yet appeared in the character of the King of Zion, or Ruler in Israel; so that, we should suppose, the predicted coming out of Bethlehem, in the proper sense, had yet to take place… Where do we read, in literal conformity with the Psalmist’s words respecting Him, of His ears having been bored… or of His being heard from the horns of the unicorns? Such things, and others of a like nature, were written concerning Messiah in the Psalms and prophets; and if all were to be ruled by a principle of historiographical literalism, the conclusion seems inevitable that the predicted humiliation of the Messiah has been accomplished but in part by Jesus of Nazareth---a conclusion which could be hailed with satisfaction only by [the] unbelieving…” (Pg. 95-96)
Later, he outlines, “We have… greatly more specific predictions in Scripture, than either of those heathen oracles---predictions which are not based upon any conjectural hypothesis, and far too discriminating to have been framed merely by shrewd inference and deduction from the history of the past.” (Pg. 201)
He notes, “The case of Babylon is… a still more striking example. What merely human foresight could have descried the utter ruin and prostration of such a city? At the time the prophecies were written, she was in the noontide of her glory; and her natural situation was such as might seem to betoken a perpetual continuance of prosperity… Yet the Spirit of prophecy, which guided the sacred penmen, perceived in the first blow that was struck by the victorious Persians, the infliction of a mortal wound… Centuries elapsed in the process… and Babylon continued to sink till nothing remained of all her glory but emptiness and isolation. Does not this again, we ask, bespeak the eye and finger of Omniscience?” (Pg. 207)
He states, “Is it not also a fact that many students of prophecy… comparing what was predicted with what has been done, firmly maintain that Jesus has not yet got possession of the throne promised to Him, and cannot do so till He comes in glory … [in] His kingdom?... Did not the result, then, probe both Him and them to have been mistaken?... We unhesitatingly answer, No---though we should be at a loss to perceive, how such an answer could be given, on the strictly literal principle of interpretation… which holds that prophecy is nothing but history written beforehand… But the case becomes entirely different, if here, as elsewhere, the Spirit of prophecy gave intimation of what was to come, in language appropriate to an ecstatical condition… In that case, the representation must have been, to a large extent, figurative and symbolical… No more should it have been expected, that the Messiah was to be an earthly king on the model of David, than that he should be a prophet on the same level with Moses… he was, of necessity, higher also in the character of His work and kingdom… That He was destined to occupy the throne and kingdom of David, meant simply, that He was, like David, to hold the place of a king over God’s heritage, and to do... what David could do only in the most partial and imperfect manner… Thus, the objection against the fulfillment of prophecy in Christ, derived from his not having assumed the outward appearance of a Jewish monarch, falls to the ground.” (Pg. 228-230)
Of the “144,000” in Revelation 7, he comments, “It is against all probability to suppose, on the hypothesis of the literal reading of the passage, that precisely 12,000 of elect ones were to be found in each of the tribes specified. And if that improbability could anyhow be got rid of, why should only twelve tribes have been specified, and not thirteen, the actual number of the tribes? Is it to be conceived that, while each one of those twelve tribes should furnish 12,000, Dan, the tribe omitted, should furnish none?” (Pg. 246)
He argues, “Even when the kingdoms of this world have become the king of our God and of His Christ, shall the Jewish nation stand out and apart from the rest? Were it actually to do so, it would not be a continuation or a renewal of the past, but the introduction of an entirely new principle into the Church of God… if converted Israelites were still to stand apparat from and above them, it would …[be] something essentially different---something foreign even to Judaism; how much more, then, to Christianity?” (Pg. 258)
He suggests, “as antichrist was shown even in the apostolic age to be a collective designation, such terms as ‘the wicked,’ ‘the man of sin,’ ‘the son of perdition,’ must have been intended to bear a like extent of meaning. They all point back to the vision of Daniel, in which the divine kingdom had its representation in one like a Son of Man; and indicate, that this apostate power would strive to imitate the man-like appearance of the other---would PROFESS to be what it REALLY was; but so far from being, like it, the image of the spiritual and divine, should be rather the impersonation of the sensual and the devilish. It would be a son, indeed, but like Judas, a son of perdition… one gathering up and garnishing with a deceitful show the worse elements of man’s fallen condition, and so, incurring the doom of the heaviest condemnation.” (Pg. 361-362)
He says of Revelation 17, “every essential feature in the symbolical delineation forces on us the conclusion, that it is a fallen and degenerate church which is delineated… the church pre-eminently of Papal Rome… When inquisition is made for the blood of saints and for those who have the mark of the beast, there can be no doubt, among such as know the mind of God, that they will be found in the communion of Rome.” (Pg. 375-376)
He summarizes about the book of Revelation, “If anything further is implied, it should only… be looked for in some general correspondence, as to form, between the symbol and the reality… all precise and definite calculations respecting the periods, as they necessarily proceed upon a disregard for the symbolical character of the book, and upon a too external and political contemplation of the events to which it points… The prophecy was not written to give men to know…the times and the seasons, which the Father has put in His own power… The thousand years’ reign of the saints must be taken… symbolically, and as such it forms a perfect contrast to the comparatively brief and broken sections of time that preceded it… What a contrast to the three-and-an-half days of triumph over the slain witnesses!.. SO LONG is the true church of the Redeemer destined to ride upon the high places of the earth, in comparison with the days in which she was made to see evil.” (Pg. 432-433)
This book will be of keen interest to Preterists, Partial Preterists, those from a Reformed background, or those looking for an interpretation of the entire spectrum of Biblical prophecy that is opposed to the kind of “Left Behind” exegesis so popular today.
Patrick Fairbairn (1805-1874) was a Scottish minister and theologian, who was Professor of Theology at the Free Church Theological College in Aberdeen, and then the Free Church College in Glasgow. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to a 530-page reprint edition.]
He wrote in the Preface to this 1865 book, “theology has been peculiarly affected by the spirit of the age; and a mode of treatment is now required for the several topics it embraces… Such especially is the case in respect to the subject of prophecy… since objections are laid by the opponents of corrupters of the truth against the argument from prophecy, less on the ground of an alleged weakness in the argument itself… than by attempting to extract the element of… prophecy from Scripture… Contemporaneously… modes of interpretation, views founded on them, have been gaining currency among many students of Scripture, which, if valid, would deprive the argument from prophecy of some of its most important defences…. It is here peculiarly, that this portion of our theological literature has been defective and unsatisfactory. With the view of contributing to supply this defect… the present volume has been composed. Hence, nearly one half of the volume is devoted to the investigation of the principles of the subject… The latter half, which treats of definite portions of the prophetical Scriptures… is conducted strictly as an application of the principles set forth and maintained in the earlier.”
He explains, “as prophecy… has its regular progress and development, there are two considerations that ought not to be forgotten… The one is, that the meaning of a prophecy is not to be restrained and limited by conclusions deduced simply from the historical circumstances out of which it may have sprung, but from the words of the prophecy itself… And along with this, there is the further consideration, that since prophecy has God, and not history, for its author… it must ever have in it something divinely rich and great, reaching… beyond what even, with the help of these, it might be possible beforehand adequately to conceive.” (Pg. 31-32)
He states, “we may confidently infer that the ETHICAL or moral element, not the simply NATURAL, must predominate in its announcements respecting the future. It MAY, and to a certain extent MUST, foretell events in Providence with sufficient distinctness to enable those who have witnessed or become cognizant of their occurrence, to identify them with proper intimations; for otherwise the church could never assure herself that the hopes and expectations it had awakened in her bosom had found their realization. In regard, for example, to the Messiah… it was necessary that it should describe Him by such marks and characteristics as would enable those who waited for His coming to recognize Him when he did come, as the same that had been promised to the fathers… But it could not be in any case the mere occurrences themselves, as … ordinary facts of history, in respect to which they were announced beforehand, or were afterwards to be marked as fulfillments of prophecy. For then they should have belonged, not to the province of religion… but to the region of nature and the world. It is in the moral element that the church moves; and the prominent point in all prophetic intimations respecting her state and destiny, must be something of a moral kind---something that… tends to exhibit the principles of the Divine administration in its dealings with men as subjects of a moral government.” (Pg. 54-55)
He argues, “why, it may be asked, should not the prophetic word… If it is to be understood conditionally, why should it not also speak conditionally?... [In] the case of Nineveh, instead of declaring absolutely, that the city should be overthrown in forty days, should it not rather have taken the form of announcing such a doom, in case the people did not repent? We reply… that in this… God spake as from the human point of view; He took up the case of the city as it stood at the time, and pronounced without qualification or reserve, its appropriate doom; knowing, perhaps, that the very absoluteness and precision of the form was … the ONLY one actually calculated to around slumbering consciences, and lead to serious repentance.” (Pg. 69-70)
He points out, “Indeed, it is difficult to say what a fair and uniform application of the principle of historical interpretation to the style of prophecy would leave us of prophetical fulfillments. Micah, for example, predicted that out of Bethlehem was to come forth He that was to be Ruler in Israel, the Messiah, as King of Zion. But … that Messiah has not yet appeared in the character of the King of Zion, or Ruler in Israel; so that, we should suppose, the predicted coming out of Bethlehem, in the proper sense, had yet to take place… Where do we read, in literal conformity with the Psalmist’s words respecting Him, of His ears having been bored… or of His being heard from the horns of the unicorns? Such things, and others of a like nature, were written concerning Messiah in the Psalms and prophets; and if all were to be ruled by a principle of historiographical literalism, the conclusion seems inevitable that the predicted humiliation of the Messiah has been accomplished but in part by Jesus of Nazareth---a conclusion which could be hailed with satisfaction only by [the] unbelieving…” (Pg. 95-96)
Later, he outlines, “We have… greatly more specific predictions in Scripture, than either of those heathen oracles---predictions which are not based upon any conjectural hypothesis, and far too discriminating to have been framed merely by shrewd inference and deduction from the history of the past.” (Pg. 201)
He notes, “The case of Babylon is… a still more striking example. What merely human foresight could have descried the utter ruin and prostration of such a city? At the time the prophecies were written, she was in the noontide of her glory; and her natural situation was such as might seem to betoken a perpetual continuance of prosperity… Yet the Spirit of prophecy, which guided the sacred penmen, perceived in the first blow that was struck by the victorious Persians, the infliction of a mortal wound… Centuries elapsed in the process… and Babylon continued to sink till nothing remained of all her glory but emptiness and isolation. Does not this again, we ask, bespeak the eye and finger of Omniscience?” (Pg. 207)
He states, “Is it not also a fact that many students of prophecy… comparing what was predicted with what has been done, firmly maintain that Jesus has not yet got possession of the throne promised to Him, and cannot do so till He comes in glory … [in] His kingdom?... Did not the result, then, probe both Him and them to have been mistaken?... We unhesitatingly answer, No---though we should be at a loss to perceive, how such an answer could be given, on the strictly literal principle of interpretation… which holds that prophecy is nothing but history written beforehand… But the case becomes entirely different, if here, as elsewhere, the Spirit of prophecy gave intimation of what was to come, in language appropriate to an ecstatical condition… In that case, the representation must have been, to a large extent, figurative and symbolical… No more should it have been expected, that the Messiah was to be an earthly king on the model of David, than that he should be a prophet on the same level with Moses… he was, of necessity, higher also in the character of His work and kingdom… That He was destined to occupy the throne and kingdom of David, meant simply, that He was, like David, to hold the place of a king over God’s heritage, and to do... what David could do only in the most partial and imperfect manner… Thus, the objection against the fulfillment of prophecy in Christ, derived from his not having assumed the outward appearance of a Jewish monarch, falls to the ground.” (Pg. 228-230)
Of the “144,000” in Revelation 7, he comments, “It is against all probability to suppose, on the hypothesis of the literal reading of the passage, that precisely 12,000 of elect ones were to be found in each of the tribes specified. And if that improbability could anyhow be got rid of, why should only twelve tribes have been specified, and not thirteen, the actual number of the tribes? Is it to be conceived that, while each one of those twelve tribes should furnish 12,000, Dan, the tribe omitted, should furnish none?” (Pg. 246)
He argues, “Even when the kingdoms of this world have become the king of our God and of His Christ, shall the Jewish nation stand out and apart from the rest? Were it actually to do so, it would not be a continuation or a renewal of the past, but the introduction of an entirely new principle into the Church of God… if converted Israelites were still to stand apparat from and above them, it would …[be] something essentially different---something foreign even to Judaism; how much more, then, to Christianity?” (Pg. 258)
He suggests, “as antichrist was shown even in the apostolic age to be a collective designation, such terms as ‘the wicked,’ ‘the man of sin,’ ‘the son of perdition,’ must have been intended to bear a like extent of meaning. They all point back to the vision of Daniel, in which the divine kingdom had its representation in one like a Son of Man; and indicate, that this apostate power would strive to imitate the man-like appearance of the other---would PROFESS to be what it REALLY was; but so far from being, like it, the image of the spiritual and divine, should be rather the impersonation of the sensual and the devilish. It would be a son, indeed, but like Judas, a son of perdition… one gathering up and garnishing with a deceitful show the worse elements of man’s fallen condition, and so, incurring the doom of the heaviest condemnation.” (Pg. 361-362)
He says of Revelation 17, “every essential feature in the symbolical delineation forces on us the conclusion, that it is a fallen and degenerate church which is delineated… the church pre-eminently of Papal Rome… When inquisition is made for the blood of saints and for those who have the mark of the beast, there can be no doubt, among such as know the mind of God, that they will be found in the communion of Rome.” (Pg. 375-376)
He summarizes about the book of Revelation, “If anything further is implied, it should only… be looked for in some general correspondence, as to form, between the symbol and the reality… all precise and definite calculations respecting the periods, as they necessarily proceed upon a disregard for the symbolical character of the book, and upon a too external and political contemplation of the events to which it points… The prophecy was not written to give men to know…the times and the seasons, which the Father has put in His own power… The thousand years’ reign of the saints must be taken… symbolically, and as such it forms a perfect contrast to the comparatively brief and broken sections of time that preceded it… What a contrast to the three-and-an-half days of triumph over the slain witnesses!.. SO LONG is the true church of the Redeemer destined to ride upon the high places of the earth, in comparison with the days in which she was made to see evil.” (Pg. 432-433)
This book will be of keen interest to Preterists, Partial Preterists, those from a Reformed background, or those looking for an interpretation of the entire spectrum of Biblical prophecy that is opposed to the kind of “Left Behind” exegesis so popular today.
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