A Common Mistake and Lame Excuse – 1
Alexander Maclaren (1826-1910)
“Son of man, look, the house of Israel is saying, ‘The vision that he sees is for many days from now, and he prophesies of times far off.’ Therefore say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD: “None of My words will be postponed any more, but the word which I speak will be done,” says the Lord GOD’ ” (Ezekiel 12:27-28).
Human nature was very much the same in the exiles that listened to Ezekiel on the banks of the Chebar and in Manchester to-day. The same neglect of God’s message was grounded then on the same misapprehension of its bearings which profoundly operates in the case of many people now. Ezekiel had been proclaiming the fall of Jerusalem to the exiles whose captivity preceded it by a few years; and he was confronted by the incredulity which fancied that it had a great many facts to support it, and so it generalized God’s long-suffering delay in sending the threatened punishment into a scoffing proverb which said, “The days are prolonged, and every vision fails” (Ezekiel 12:22). To translate it into plain English, the prophets had cried “Wolf! wolf!” so long that their alarms were disbelieved altogether.
Even the people that did not go the length of utter unbelief in the prophetic threatening took the comfortable conclusion that these threats had reference to a future date, and they need not trouble themselves about them. And so they said, according to my text, “The house of Israel is saying, ‘The vision that he sees is for many days from now, and he prophesies of times far off.’” “It may be all quite true, but it lies away in the distant future there; and things will last our time, so we do not need to bother ourselves about what he says.”
So the imagined distance of fulfilment turned the edge of the plainest denunciations, and was like wool stuffed in the people’s ears to deaden the reverberations of the thunder.
I wonder if there is anybody here now whom that fits, who meets the preaching of the Gospel with a shrug, and with this saying, “He prophesies of the times that are far off.” I fancy there are a few; and I wish to say a word or two about this ground on which the widespread disregard of the Divine message is based..
Notice that the saying of my text—in the application which I now seek to make of it—is a truth, but it is only half a truth.
Of course, Ezekiel was speaking simply about the destruction of Jerusalem. If it had been true, as his hearers assumed, that that was not going to happen for a good many years yet, the chances were that it had no bearing upon them, and they were right enough in neglecting the teaching. And, of course, when I apply such a word as this in the direction in which I wish to do now, we do bring in a different set of thoughts; but the main idea remains the same. The neglect of God’s solemn message by a great many people is based, more or less consciously, upon the notion that the message of Christianity—or, if you like to call it so, of the Gospel; or, if you like to call it more vaguely, religion—has to do mainly with blessings and woes beyond the grave, and that there is plenty of time to attend to it when we get nearer the end.
Now is it true that “he prophesies of times that are far off”? Yes! and No! Yes! it is true, and it is the great glory of Christianity that it shifts the center of gravity, so to speak, from this poor, transient, contemptible present, and sets it away out yonder in an august and infinite future. It brings to us not only knowledge of the future, but certitude, and takes the conception of another life out of the region of ifs, perhaps, possibilities, dreads, or hopes, as the case may be, and sets it in the sunlight of certainty.
To Be Continued
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD 