104 THE KEY OF MYSTERIES

LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD.' Even the way in which Christ, shortly before His crucifixion, entered Jerusalem is described by the prophet Zechariah in these words: Rejoice 1 greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy king cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, even upon a colt the foal of an ass.' Isaiah the prophet prophesies of Christ's work, and writes of Him thus: 'And 2 there shall come forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, 3 and a branch out of his roots shall bear fruit; and the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD.' The prophet goes on to speak of Christ as Judge of all men and to predict the complete establishment of His kingdom and the destruction of all wickedness from off the face of the earth, 'for 4 the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.' The prophet Daniel speaks of the same happy time,

1 Zech. ix. 9; cf. Matt. xxi. 1-11; Mark xi. 1-10; Luke xix. 29-38; John xii. 12-15.
2 Isa. xi. 1-2. 3 Cf. Acts xiii. 23; Rev. v. 5; xxii. 16.
4 Isa. xi. 9.
PROOF OF THE DEITY OF CHRIST 105

and of the establishment of Christ's kingdom, when he says: 'I 1 saw in the night visions and behold there came with the clouds of heaven one like unto a son of man, 2 and he came even to the ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory and a kingdom, that all the people, nations and languages should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.' These last words show clearly that there was no room for any one to come after the Lord Jesus Christ, claiming to bring a new revelation, which would render it necessary henceforth to honour and obey him rather than Christ, who Himself also said: 'Heaven 3 and earth shall pass away but my words shall not pass away.'

Other prophecies in the Old Testament teach us that the Lord Jesus Christ, besides being a Prophet and a King, is also the one true Priest, who alone can offer to His Heavenly Father the one and only worthy and acceptable sacrifice for men's sins, of which all the Jewish sacrifices appointed in the Law of Moses were but shadows. He alone, it

1 Dan. vii. 13-14. 2 Cf. Mark xiii. 26.
1 Matt. xxiv. 35; Mark xiii. 31; Luke xxi. 33. The Muhammadan statement that these passages meant merely that Christ's prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem would be fulfilled is confuted in the new edition of the Mizanu'l-Haqq, pt. i, ch. ii, p. 74.