Hard to Understand

Could the Jews of the Old Testament conceive the state of things now existing in the gospel dispensation: God dwelling in the hearts of men instead of a temple made with hands….Could they conceive how Messianic prophecy would be fulfilled? With what apparent contradictions it must to their minds have abounded! How could the 'everlasting Father', 'the mighty God' be born as a child and given as a son? How was the throne and government of David to be ordered and established with judgment and with justice for ever as predicted, when it was foretold elsewhere that restored Jerusalem was to be destroyed by "the people of a prince that should come" against it, and made desolate on account of its sins? How could David's Son be David's Lord, or a virgin conceive and bear a child?

Above all, how could the Messiah, the elect Servant of God, be exalted and extolled and very high, and at the same time despised and rejected, wounded and bruised, stricken, smitten, and laid in a grave? That these difficulties could not be explained beforehand was however no reason why the predictions which suggested them should not be received and believed. And similarly--that we cannot conceive how the Divine predictions about the coming kingdom can be accomplished, is no good ground for our hesitating to believe that accomplished they will be. Messianic prophecy is all fulfilled, and the facts of gospel history shed back upon the ancient predictions such clear light, that to our minds they present little or no perplexity.  

So shall future fulfillments explain all that seems dark and difficult in millennial prediction. Its difficulties are not as great as those involved in the doctrine of the resurrection, which is assuredly held by all Christians, for none such think of making the difficulties attending a belief of this doctrine a reason for rejecting it; why then should the slighter difficulties attending the statements of Scripture as to the future kingdom make us hesitate to receive  them?

--Henry Grattan Guinness (Light for the Last Days, ch. 21).