Note 102 — Chapter I · RELATION OF JESUS TO THE IDEA OF A SUFFERING AND DYING MESSIAH; HIS DISCOURSES ON HIS DEATH, RESURRECTION, AND SECOND ADVENT.

According to these theologians, we are on the wrong track in seeking the counterpart of these prophecies forwards, in the result; since it was backwards, on types presented in the past, that the authors looked. A mass of such types was furnished by the Jewish conception of the circumstances which would precede the advent of the Messiah. False prophets and Messiahs, war, famine and pestilence, earthquakes and commotions in the heavens, prevalent corruption of manners, persecution of the faithful servants of Jehovah, were held to be the immediate harbingers of the messianic kingdom. Moreover, in the prophets there are descriptions of the tribulation which would presage and accompany the day of the coming of Jehovah (Isa. xiii. 9 ff.; Joel i. 15, ii. 1 ff., 10 ff., iii. 3 ff., iv. 15 f.; Zeph. i. 14 ff.; Hagg. ii. 7; Zech. xiv. 1 ff.; Mal. iii. 1 ff.), or which would precede the messianic kingdom of the saints (Dan. vii.–xii.), as also expressions in later Jewish writings,102 so analogous with our evangelical prediction, as to put it beyond question, that the description which it gives of the time of the Messiah’s advent is drawn from a circle of ideas which had long been current among the Jews.