And what did Ezekiel, writing about the same time, predict of the condition of Palestine during the dispersion, and until the restoration of the people? Turn to his address to those hills of which we have been speaking, in Ezekiel xxxvi. 3, 4: “Therefore prophesy and say, Thus saith the Lord God; Because they have made you desolate, and swallowed you up on every side, that ye might be a possession unto the residue of the heathen, and ye are taken up in the lips of talkers, and are an infamy of the people: therefore, ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord God; Thus saith the Lord God to the mountains, and to the hills, to the rivers, and to the valleys, to the desolate wastes, and to the cities that are forsaken, which became a prey and derision to the residue of the heathen that are round about.”
Here then we have the whole mystery solved, and the whole thing explained. In His sure Word of prophecy our heavenly Father told us what He would do, and the desolate hills of Palestine bear witness that He has done it. We may long to see them clothed once more with the vine and the olive, and we may profoundly pity their lawful proprietors, who look on their lawful home—once so beautiful, but now so desolate! But yet we cannot look even on that desolation without thanksgiving, for it is an evidence to all thinking men of the certain truth of God’s inspired Word. Those who refer to those desolate hills as an argument against the truth forget that the desolation to which they refer is a conclusive proof of the truth of the _prophetic_ Word of God. Thus we are carried by this third proof far beyond either geographical accuracy or historical truth. A book may be geographically accurate, or historically true, and yet not be inspired. But no _man_ can foretell the future. No man can look forward 3,000 years. No man, therefore, could span over all those centuries and tell us ages ago what would be the condition of Palestine in this nineteenth century. But God has done it. We thank God, therefore, for His Word, and we thank Him also for the testimony of the rocks. Nay, more, we may thank Him even for the sneers of such a man as Voltaire, for the very sneers are a proof to the students of the Scriptures that God’s prophecy is being fulfilled, and that God’s Holy Word may be trusted as divine.