Tuesday, July 26, 2016

My Grandfather's Prophecy Book 1

Just after the 1960 election, my grandfather Harry Shepherd (1883-1963) wrote a book titled, Foundational and Fundamental Truth Concerning the Coming of the Lord. My mother, then married almost fifteen years, typed it up since he couldn't type. He would die a couple years later.

In this day of print on demand, no book ever need go out of print, so I've decided to self-publish it. But first I'll type out the book here online. Here is more information on him.

Somehow it seems appropriate that I (coincidentally) start transcribing his book the day after Tim LaHaye passed.
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Foundational and Fundamental Truth Concerning the Coming of the Lord
The treatment of this booklet is based on Four Promises to Abraham Given in Genesis 12:1-4
by Harry A. Shepherd

Rev. Shepherd taught Bible Prophecy in Frankfort Pilgrim College for eighteen years
Price
50 cents

Order from
Rev. Harry A. Shepherd
851½ Third Street
Frankfort, Indiana

Kindly dedicated to Stanley Booher, a student
in Frankfort Pilgrim College, and to Rev. J. W. Adcock,
a Professor, and to my wife, for their kind suggestion
of the publication of the truth in this booklet.
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FOUNDATIONAL AND FUNDAMENTAL
TRUTH CONCERNING THE COMING
OF THE LORD

Much has been written on the great truth of the personal return of the Lord to this earth. Why then should anything further be offered? May we humbly suggest that as far as our reading has gone, the approach and the angle of discussion in this booklet is different from what our reading has encountered in the good material which we have perused. We approach the subject from what we choose to call an Abrahamic angle. In other words God made four promises to Abraham upon which rests as a foundation and from which stems the fundamental truth of the coming of our blessed Lord as well as some other gracious redemptive truth.

I. The Fall of Man a Procuring Cause and a Contributing Cause For the Coming of the Lord
Before proceeding to a consideration of those four promises we suggest that it would be well to try to determine the reason or cause for any coming of the Lord. The reason is to be found in the following truth that the Fall of Man in Eden was a contributing and procuring cause for such coming. The Fall put man where he needed the coming of God to his rescue and redemption. This coming God forthwith put into execution according to Genesis 3:8. The fact that God enjoys the fellowship and social Association of His true followers may cause one to wonder as to the possibility of former comings during the period of Adam's and Eve's innocency in Eden. In the light of Genesis 3:21 it seems that God taught them a blood atonement of a Kinsman Redeemer and proper modesty in outward appearance. Also in His great mercy, compassion and love He sent them forth out of the garden and placed cherubims and a flaming sword about the tree of life to keep them from eating of it and becoming immortal sinners so that they never could be redeemed and saved. Genesis 3:22-24.

In order to verify God's pronouncement and promise Genesis 3:15 that the Seed of the Woman should bruise the serpent's head and it should bruise His heel in the crucifixion and by this verification undo the terrible effects of the fall, the Kinsman Redeemer must come to earth and be associated with the human family. He must also belong to that family but not be involved in its misfortune and wreck through sin and thereby not be infected by the carnal nature. This human connection would give him the right to come to earth and redeem.

As this Kinsman Redeemer was to be of the Seed of the Woman and not of the seed of man His physical gestation must be different from the ordinary reproduction of mankind. According to Matthew 1:18 and 23, Isaiah 7:14 and Luke 1:30-33 the Holy Ghost would be the author and father of this offspring of a virgin. Consequently when He came to earth he would bring his deity and an unsullied and carnality-free humanity with Him. This type and kind of birth and coming would give Him not only the right to redeem but also the abundant power to redeem and save. Praise the blessed Lord! According to the Old and New Testament Scriptures all of this was abundantly fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the Kinsman Redeemer out of the house of David Whose coming maybe seen in God's four promises to Abraham in the long ago...
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Section 2 next Tuesday

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