Customer Reviews

Prophets and the Promise: Being for Substance; The Lectures for 1902-1903

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Mr. Beecher does an excellent job showing and tracing the unifying idea of Scripture. It's a little dry here and there, but very thorough and very informative. When you get done reading you will have a better understanding of what the Bible is all about. The Promise, is of course, the Messiah. Willis shows how the theme of the Messiah is woven through all of the Word, but in particular the prophets. His theory is that the writings of the prophets are not just a random collection of events, but focused and deliberate revelation of the purposes of God through the Messiah. He also shows how his theory holds up in spite of differences of opinion on authorship. Read this and you will have a much better idea of the context of the whole Bible, including the Kingdom of God.

Willis Judson Beecher demonstrated one primary strength throughout "The Prophets and the Promise," that of unflagging consistency. He made the case that all of the prophets and, for that matter, all of the Scriptures describe a single promise, as originally offered to Abraham, recast and rearticulated in various forms throughout the history of Israel, but never compromised or changed. He continually referred to that promise and demonstrated countless examples of prophetic attention to that promise throughout the Old and New Testaments. The comprehensiveness of this case was astounding (to the point of eventually feeling somewhat repetitive and stale). After reading this book, I almost have no choice but to agree with his thesis about the core content of the promise that God made to His people as reaffirmed throughout the entire biblical story.

A few weaknesses were evident to me in Beecher's writing. Of greatest frustration, I thought that he too quickly presumed the absolute certainty of his arguments. He used language like "it is obvious to anyone" when whatever point he was trying to make was definitely not obvious to me. Though the tone of his writing may be more reflective of the era of his writing than his personality or attitude, he came off as rather arrogant and condescending at times, especially to those who might suggest that his arguments were not always entirely airtight. I also found the archaic language (especially of the quoted Scriptures) to be rather cumbersome.

Frankly, I groaned when I saw that I was assigned to read this book, written over 100 years ago, for a seminary class. Though I have really come to appreciate the wisdom of the saints throughout church history and love to wrestle with ideas that have been percolating on the theological landscape long before my time, I always struggle to read primary literature from previous generations. Much to my surprise and relief, I actually found Beecher's book to be rather engaging. As mentioned earlier, I wasn't quite so enamored with his commentary on the Promise (chapters 8-11), as it felt rather redundant to me. However, I was quite intrigued by his reflections on the Prophets (chapters 4-7), as this was mostly new information to me. I was especially interested by his descriptions of the different means through which prophets received their messages (dreams, visions, etc.), as this helped to bring a rather ethereal concept into more concrete terms for me.

Admittedly, I am rather unfamiliar with the world of the prophets, as I have never studied the prophets before and have never even read many of the Prophetic books of the Bible. I suspect that one of the reasons why I have never been drawn to the Prophetic books is that most of the references to those books that I have observed in my Christian upbringing were centered around attempts to connect prophecy to the particular details of Jesus. It was as if the prophets had been given a message that was exclusively intended to function as a predicting tool to describe the Messiah who was to come, largely for the purpose of impressing us centuries later. This game of connect the prophecy dots to show a picture of Jesus has never been interesting to me and seemed to sell the prophets short. What I loved about Beecher was his ability to acknowledge the reality of the predicting aspects of prophecy while painting a very compelling picture for the holistic nature of prophecy that includes so many other aspects. That the content of prophetic messages offered a meaningful and spiritually robust purpose for the original listeners instantly makes the entire genre of prophecy more interesting to me. Beecher's description of the world and ministry of the prophets intrigues me to dig into those books, to understand not only the Messianic predictions but also to hear the timeless prophetic sermons that clarify the wonder of God's promise to His people throughout time and around the world. I am happy to recommend this book to anyone, expert or novice, interested in an old but timeless reflection on the prophetic books of the Old Testament.

I actually picked this book up on the recommendation of Dr. Kaiser, who spoke at Shepherds recently. He stated this work was one of the primary backgrounds for his latest book, so I decided I should read it before taking on Dr. Kaiser's book, which I'll get to after some "light" reading. The book itself was given as a series of lectures in in 1902-1903 at Princeton Theological, back when Princeton was still something of a Christian college.

Rev. Beecher begins with an examination of the nature of the Scriptures as we have received them. Are they reliable? His answer will leave a lot of modern readers, who hunger for a flat "yes or no" answer, a little flat footed. In general, he says, we should accept the Scriptures as we have them provisionally, using what the Scriptures themselves say to judge them. In our modern world, we don't much like suspended judgment, or examining things by what they say. We want judgment now, and we want it based on what we perceive immediately.

The second chapter begins the first section, which is a rather lengthy examination of the prophets. The primary thrust of this chapter is to discover the primary purpose and nature of prophets, based on the names used by those who lived alongside them to describe their work. The next chapter in the section examines an external history of the prophets, including dividing the prophets into different periods of time, to better understand their ministry within the context of the ministry itself. This chapter is very helpful in understanding the objectives of the prophets themselves. In chapter four, Reverend Beecher discusses our concept of what a prophet looked like, and how they ministered. We tend to see Jewish prophets as the world sees the holy men of other cultures: a man with distinctive dress, a man who speaks in round phrases, a man who is "set apart." The author counters this view; the prophets had jobs, and lived apparently normal everyday lives. The thrust of this chapter is that the prophets were citizens with a message, rather than men set apart as some holy caste. The fifth chapter discusses the functions of a prophet, the sixth the message of a prophet, and the seventh the prophet as a writer. The seventh chapter is critical for our understanding of the nature of Scripture.

The eighth chapter begins the second section: The Promise. Throughout this section, Reverend Beecher discusses the nature of the promise given by God through the prophets. The point is clearly made that there are not many promises, but rather one promise. Much of our misunderstanding of modern Christian stems from our lack of understanding about the promise of God, and how it flows down into what we see as promises and laws. Here the author brings these together, showing that there is really only one promise. The author finishes this section by considering the names of the Messiah.

The final point of this entire discussion, bringing together the prophets and the promise into one piece is that the promise is both a nation and a person.

The author concludes by returning to the first question, the validity of the Scriptures, in the guise of discussing the apologetic value of prophecy.

Overall, this is a masterful work, pulling together many different threads into one conclusion --a conclusion the modern Christian would be well advised to pay close attention to.