• Title Page
• Pentateuch
• History
• Poetry
• Prophets
  • Lesson 23: Introduction to the Prophetic Scriptures
  • Lesson 24: Joel
  • Lesson 25: Jonah
  • Lesson 26: Amos
  • Lesson 27: Hosea
  • Lesson 28: Micah
  • Lesson 29: Isaiah
  • Lesson 30: Nahum, Zephaniah, Habakkuk and Obadiah
  • Lesson 31: Jeremiah
  • Lesson 32: Ezekiel
• Post Captivity Prophets
• Gospels, Acts
• Pauline Epistles
• General Epistles

Is the kingdom of Israel some day to be restored? Is that people to bear sway on the earth? Will the land be fruitful as of old, and even more so, and the cities be built up and inhabited by them again? Will it be a time of rest for them from enemies and war? Such seems to be the literal construction of these verses. To be sure, James’ words in Acts 15:13-17 are to be reckoned with, which seem to imply a spiritual fulfillment of these promises in the history of the Christian church. But at the risk of stepping aside for a moment from our prescribed path of synthetic teaching to that of interpretation, let us look carefully at those two words, “After this,” in Acts 15:16. James has just said that God was now visiting the Gentiles “to take out of them a people for His name,” i.e. (as many understood it), God is calling out the church from the world to become the body of Christ; and when this is done, when the church or body of Christ is completed and caught up to meet Him in the air (I Thessalonians 4:16-17), then “agree the words of the prophets, as it is written, After this, I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, etc.” The thought is that Israel’s restoration will be literal, as Amos prophesies, but that its time will be after the second coming of Christ, and what is called the “rapture” of the church. The reader will please not understand me to be dogmatizing on this point, or insisting upon any particular theory of interpretation. But there is so much of this kind of teaching found in the prophets to follow, that it seemed necessary at the beginning, and in order to clear the atmosphere somewhat, to present both sides of the case. As we proceed in the other instances you will thus be the better able to form your own intelligent conclusion. May we all be much in prayer for the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, without which our own wisdom at the best is but foolishness.

Hosea

Read Hosea 1:1 for something of the personal history of the prophet Hosea. Whose son was he? In whose reigns did he prophesy? The allusion to four kings of Judah, and but one of Israel, might lead us to suppose that Hosea was a prophet of the first-named kingdom; but the contents of the book show differently, and the four kings of Judah are doubtless referred to for other reasons. If, however, Hosea began to prophesy when Jeroboam II was king of Israel, and continued till Hezekiah was on the throne of Judah,