Heinrich Bullinger
Decades 4.1, vol. 2, pp. 13-19.

The First Messianic Prophecies

The first promises were made to the patriarchs or ancient fathers before the giving of the law: and these again consist of two sorts; for one sort are plain, uttered evidently in simple words, without any types and figurative shadows; the other sort are figurative and couched under types.

The first and most evident promise of all was made by the very mouth of God to our first parents, Adam and Eve, being oppressed with death, calamities, and the horrible fear of God’s revenging hand for their transgression. This promise is, as it were, the pillar and base of all Christian religion, upon which the preaching of the gospel is altogether founded, and out of which all the other promises in a way are derived.

That promise is contained in these words of the Lord: “I will put enmity between you” (meaning the serpent, I say, the devil in the serpent) “and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; and it shall tread down your head, and you shall tread upon his heel” (Gen 3:15). In these words, God promises seed; the seed, I say, not of man, but of woman; and that too, is of the most excellent woman, namely, that most holy virgin Mary, the woman that was blessed among all other women. For she conceived, not by any man, but by the Holy Ghost; and being a virgin still, she was delivered of Christ our Lord. By dying and rising again, he not only vexed or wounded, but also crushed and tread down, the head: that is, the kingdom of Satan — namely, sin, death, and damnation. He took away and made utterly void all the power and tyranny of our enemy and deceiver. Meanwhile, Satan trod on Christ’s heel; that is to say, by his members — Caiaphas, Pontius Pilate, the Jews and Gentiles — with intense torments and death, he vexed and killed the flesh, which was the lowest part in Christ, even as the heel is lowest in the body. For in the Psalms, the Lord says: “I am a worm, and no man. They have brought my life into the dust” (Psalm 22:6, 15). But he rose again from the dead. For if he had not risen again, he would not have trodden down the serpent’s head. But now, by his rising, he has become the Saviour of all who believe in him. Out of this promise is derived that singular and notorious one, which the angel of the Lord recites to our father Abraham in the following words: “In your seed all the nations of the world shall be blessed.” Gen 22.18 But Paul, in his epistle to the Galatians (Gal 3:16), declares in express words that that blessed seed which was promised to Abraham, is ours. Now our Lord is called by the name of Seed because of the first promise made to Adam and Eve, and because he was made incarnate and true man for us.

Nor is this promise repugnant to the first: for although Christ our Lord is here called the seed, or son, of Abraham; yet he is in no other way referred to Abraham than by the virgin, which was the daughter of Abraham and the mother of Christ. Now what good does the son of Abraham do to us by his incarnation? In truth, he blesses us. But a blessing is the contrary to a curse. Therefore, whatever curse we drew from the sin of Adam, Christ heals that in us, and he blesses us with all spiritual blessing. Nor does he bestow this benefit on a few alone, but upon all the nations of the world that believe in him.

The patriarch Jacob, being inspired with the Holy Ghost, foretold what would happen to his children; and at length, when he came to Judah among the rest, he says: “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, and a law-giver from between his feet, till Shiloh comes; and to him shall be the gathering of the people” (Gen 49:10). Look here, in these words the Messiah is not only promised, but the very time when he would be incarnate is also prescribed, with a declaration of both what and how far forth he would be. The kingdom, he says, shall remain under Judah until the coming of the Saviour: and even though the tribe of Judah will not always have kings to govern them, yet it will not lack nobles, captains, lawgivers, learned men and sages, to rule the people. And therefore, the evangelical history faithfully witnesses that Christ came at that time when all power, authority, and rule was translated to the Romans, to whose emperor, Octavius Augustus, the Jews were forced to pay taxes and tribute. Now, Shiloh signifies felicity, or the author of felicity; it signifies plenty, store, and abundance of all excellent things. For Christ is the treasury of all good things. And the Chaldee interpreter, where he finds Shiloh, translates it Christ. Finally, all people shall be gathered to him, as to their Saviour: as the prophets afterward most plainly declared, Isaiah in the second, and Micah in the fourth chapters of their books or prophecies.

Furthermore, the types and figures of Christ are given in Noah preserved in the ark; for in Christ the faithful are saved; as St. Peter testifies (1 Peter 3). Abraham offers up Isaac, his only-begotten son on top of the same mountain where many years after, the only-begotten Son of God was offered on the cross. Joseph is sold to the heathen by his brethren, and cast in prison; but being delivered, he becomes their Saviour, and is called by all the people, the preserver of the Egyptian kingdom. Christ our Lord was prefigured in all these things.

The Later Messianic Prophecies

The later promises also are of two sorts; either openly uncovered, or hidden under a veil or figure as it were. They are contained in the law and the prophets even till the time of the captivity of Babylon. In the third chapter of the Acts, the blessed apostle Peter cites the prophecy of Moses touching the coming of the greatest of all prophets. The prefigured promises of Christ are the sacrifices which Paul briefly declares in a wonderful summary in his epistle to the Hebrews. In the fifth chapter of first Corinthians, he applies the paschal lamb to Jesus Christ (1 Cor 5). Peter does the same in his first epistle. Again, the stony rock that was struck and gushed with water, St. Paul calls Christ (1 Cor 10:4). And in the gospel of St. John, Christ himself says that he was prefigured in the brazen serpent which was lifted up in the desert (John 3:14-15) — I have more fully declared the mystery of this in another place. There are many more like these. I already touched a good part of them when I had occasion to treat the ceremonies and their signification; someone who is inclined may read of it at large there.

The unfigured and uncovered promises are almost without number in the Psalms and the prophets. Indeed, the Lord himself in the gospel of St. Luke testifies that the description of all his office and business is contained at large in the law, the prophets, and the Psalms (Luke 24:44). And when St. Peter had preached the gospel, in which he promised both Christ and the full remission of sins to all who believed, he immediately added this:

“All the prophets from Samuel and those that followed in order, as many as have spoken, have likewise told you of these days” (Acts 3:24). David truly, in Psalms 2, 22, & 110 has notably set down the two natures of Christ: his Godhead and his manhood. Again, he has laid before all men’s eyes his wholesome preaching, his eternal priesthood, his everlasting redemption, and his most bitter death and passion. What shall I say of the prophet Isaiah? By Augustine, no small doctor of the church of Christ, he was very worthily called an evangelist rather than a prophet. So truly did he foretell the state of Christ, that it was as if he had written a story of things already past and done by Christ, and not of things that would be done. Now, he proposes Christ to be very God and very man, born after the flesh of the unspotted virgin, who had to preach the word of life. Like a good shepherd, he had to feed his fearful sheep, to be the light of the Gentiles to the utmost parts of the earth, to give sight to the blind, to heal the lame and diseased; to be betrayed by his own, to be spit upon, to be struck, to be hung between thieves, to be offered up as a sacrifice for sin, and finally to make intercession for transgressors — that he himself being just, he might justify all who believe in his name. Read Isaiah 7-9, 11, 28, 40, 49-50, 53 and also the last chapters of all his prophecy, in which he most fully describes the church or congregation of Christ Immanuel. Jonah bore the most manifest type of the Lord’s sharp death and joyful resurrection. Micah also names Bethlehem as the place in which Messiah would be born, whose beginning (namely, his divine nature) he regards as before all beginnings (Micah 5:2). He also foretells that the preaching of the gospel would be sown abroad from Jerusalem through all the compass of the world (Micah 4:2).

Jeremiah says that God would raise up from David a true seed or branch, that is, the looked-for Messiah (Jer 23:5); and in that prophecy, he alluded to the law concerning the raising up of a seed for the deceased brother. For the virgin, conceiving by the Holy Ghost, brought forth a Son, whose name is Jehovah, being very God in very deed, whom Isaiah calls Immanuel (Isa 7:14), who is the true righteousness of all who believe in him; for by Christ the faithful are justified. In the thirty-first chapter, Isaiah promises in Christ full or absolute remission of sins and abundant grace of the Holy Ghost (Isa 31:33-34), which Joel also did not conceal (Joel 2:28-32). Thus, out of many testimonies I have picked out only these few in number; for the whole of the books of the prophets are occupied in the description of Christ and his offices.

Messianic Prophecies After the Captivity

The last promises concerning Christ were revealed to the prophets by God, and by them they were declared to the church of God, even in the very time of the captivity at Babylon, or else immediately upon their return to Jerusalem. Ezekiel prophesies of the shepherd David, and of the sheep receiving that shepherd. In St. John’s gospel, the Lord himself expounds these prophecies (John 10). The same prophet treats very much about grace, and the frank and full remission of sins through the Saviour Christ, especially in the thirty-fourth, thirty-sixth and thirty-seventh chapters of his prophecy. Daniel, truly, has visions and many dreams; but in them he so sets out Christ to us, that it is impossible to have him better or more evidently and excellently described. In his second chapter, Daniel teaches us about his eternal kingdom, and tells us that Christ would come under the Roman monarchy, at which time the Roman princes, being allied by affinity, would destroy one another mutually in battle. This was fulfilled when Pompey and Julius Caesar, Antony and Octavius Augustus, maintained civil war. Moreover, Daniel’s weeks (Dan 9) are unknown to no man, in which, as it were, he points with his finger at Christ, the coming of Christ, and the reprobation of the Jews because of their disloyalty and unbelief.

Haggai the prophet foretold the manner how the temple would be built, I mean, the true temple indeed: namely, the church of Christ (Hag 2:7-9). Zechariah excellently paints for us many mysteries of Christ; he lays before us the kingdom and priesthood of our Lord and Saviour; he commends to us that one and only eternal sacrifice, which is effectual enough to cleanse the sins of the whole world (Zech. 3, 9, 14). Yes, he prophesies of nothing else but of Christ and his kingdom. Malachi foreshows the forerunner of the Lord, and handles no small number of mysteries concerning Christ. By these we perceive that Paul wrote most truly in the first chapter to the Romans, saying that God promised the gospel before by his prophets in the holy scriptures (Rom 1:1-2).

Now by these holy promises we gather this also: that there are not many or different gospels (although we do not deny that the same gospel was penned by different evangelists); but that there is one gospel alone, and that too is eternal. For the very same gospel which is preached to us today, was preached to our first parents at the beginning of the world. For it is assuredly certain that Adam, Eve, Abel, all the patriarchs, prophets, and faithful people of the Old Testament, were saved by the gospel, which we have declared at large in another place.