# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 09 30_S21
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

21

come true; that is not chance, and whoever would nevertheless pass it off as chance acts contrary to reason. But still more; we would also remind our opponents that the prophecy of Christ stands not merely in one single place in the Old Testament, nor was it given only at one time, but in various books, and at various times; yea, from Adam's time on down to the time of Malachi, the last prophet. That makes it all the more contrary to reason to say that the coincidence of the events with it is accidental. For, to return to the previous illustration; suppose someone found that saying written on the board not once only, but on many different days in succession; would it not then be far more senseless than before to say that it had happened by chance, by the play of a child who neither knew the saying nor even knew how to write?

Thus our opponents must give up altogether either the claim that the coincidence of the prophecies and the events is accidental; or the claim that they hold to reason and let themselves be guided by the rules of common human understanding. Some will now perhaps acknowledge themselves overcome, while others will nevertheless seek to maintain their assertion. This leads us to the second point.

II.

Some opponents will say: To be sure, if it is as you Christians believe with respect to the prophecies and their fulfillment in the New Testament, then there is no doubt in the matter, but it is from God. But we opponents do not believe that it is so. Who knows from whom the prophecies in the Old Testament proceed? Perhaps they were first written by the disciples after that which is reported in the New Testament had long since taken place, and are therefore forged prophecies. To a Christian who is most deeply convinced of the holy mind of the disciples of Christ and of the divinity of the Old Testament, it is dreadful to hear such things; he would like, wherever it is said, to break off at once. But let us, beloved, only be calm, and consider the matter further; for, as has already been intimated beforehand, in the end it will only shine forth the more brightly how holy was the mind of the disciples of Christ, by which they were incapable of any deceit, even of any so-called pious deceit, and how divine is the Old Testament, while on the other side it will be shown how the opponents, who say or assume such things, act contrary to all reason, to which they nevertheless appeal.

No one will surely be so senseless as to assert that the whole Old Testament was composed by the disciples after what is reported in the New Testament had happened; and so far as we know, this has also not yet been asserted by anyone. If, therefore, the opponents pretend that the prophecies proceed from the disciples, the meaning can only be that the disciples, after the occurrence of that which is reported in the New Testament, inserted the prophecies into the Old Testament.

Let us now see who holds to reason and follows the rules of common human understanding: we Christians, who believe that the prophecies of the Old Testament were written by the holy men of the old covenant, in whose books they are found, and at various times, yet all several centuries before Christ; or the opponents, who set up the assertion that the prophecies proceed only from the disciples, and were inserted into the books of the Old Testament after Christ's appearing on earth.

We remind our opponents here of the connection in which the prophecies concerning Christ stand with the other words and parts of the Old Testament which are not prophecies; it is no loose one, but an intimate one; the prophecies form, as it were, the support of the rest, and are inseparably interwoven with it; so that the prophecies in the Old Testament and the rest, which is not prophecy, may be compared, with regard to the connection in which they stand to one another, with the poles of a tent and the tent-cloth, or perhaps with the ground in a piece of damask or flowered linen and the figures in it. Whoever now supposes that the rest of the Old Testament could have been written first, and the prophecies afterwards inserted into it, must also find it quite comprehensible that one first pitches a tent and then sets up the poles; or that one first weaves the ground of a piece of damask complete, and afterwards weaves the figures into it.

But the opponents must assume something still more absurd.

To be sure, many a book has been falsified, and things have been inserted into it by later hands which were not written by the authors. But how would that be possible in the case of the O. T. Let the opponents consider that the writings of the O. T. were a sanctuary to the whole Jewish people, and that it watched over them with great earnestness, yea, with anxiety, that not a single tittle of them should be changed. With the later Jews, those who lived at the time of Christ, this was the case in a still higher degree than with the earlier, precisely because the worship of the latter was for the most part an outward one, and the more they had become estranged from the spirit of the law, the more they held to the letter. How, then, could it come about that here and there whole pieces were put into a book over which a whole people watched, that not a single tittle of it should be changed! And still more. We remind the opponents in whose hands the books of the O. T. were, and under whose special oversight they stood. They were in the hands of the scribes and Pharisees, and the high council had in particular the oversight of their custody. How, then, should the disciples have succeeded in inserting anything, since the scribes and Pharisees and the high council were hostile to them; and in inserting something that bore witness precisely against the Pharisees, scribes, and the high council, and to which the disciples appealed, that Jesus was the Christ, and that those had crucified the Lord of glory! But perhaps it was done, after all, by means of bribery. The keepers at the grave of the Lord let themselves be bribed to be silent, if the Jews would say that Christ's disciples had stolen his body while the keepers slept; why then should not the scribes and Pharisees and the high council also have let themselves be bribed to be silent, if the disciples inserted the prophecies into the O. T.? But whence should the dear disciples have taken the money, who were for the most part poor fishermen, whose Master had not where to lay his head, of whom Peter says: Silver and gold have I none. And even if they had had gold enough, and all the scribes, etc., had been willing to let themselves be bribed, why did the disciples not much rather bring about, or at least along with it, that they should not be forbidden to preach the Gospel of Christ? For the chief men forbade it them, and cast them into prison for it, and scourged them, and persecuted them even unto death. Further, consider also that the Jews were at that time settled everywhere in the known world, and had their synagogues, in which there was an O. T., from which a reading was made every Sabbath. Witness to this is given us not only by general history, but by sacred history, namely the Acts of the Apostles. At the first Pentecost after the ascension of Christ there were present Jews from all parts of the Roman empire, which embraced the earth known at that time; and the Apostle Paul on his great journeys here and there through the Roman empire found Jews everywhere, to whom he first turned with the proclamation, and in whose synagogues he first appeared with the preaching of Christ. To bribe these the Apostles would also have needed to have the means; and these too would all have had to be willing to let themselves be bribed; for only a single one who was not won over was needed to bring the whole matter to light. And should not a single voice have been raised against such a forgery; not a single copy of the O. T. have remained unfalsified, so that no genuine one were any longer to be found; should such a forgery also not have been discovered afterwards? And of all this there is yet no trace to be found; rather the Jews to this very day have the same O. T. as the Christians, and unanimously affirm that they have received it thus, with every word and every syllable, from their fathers before Christ.

(Conclusion follows.)