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

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 exclusive

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.