Sermon
The Coming of Shiloh
William Bishop Johnson preaches Genesis 49:10 as a missionary sermon on Christ the promised Shiloh, the certainty of God's prophecy, and the gathering of the nations to his reign.
Attribution
The following sermon is by William Bishop Johnson. It was delivered at the South Side Rappahannock Baptist Association in Virginia on July 23, 1897, and appears as “The Coming of Shiloh: A Missionary Sermon” in The Scourging of a Race, pages 39-49. The text below has been transcribed from supplied page images and formatted for readability.
The Coming of Shiloh
“The sceptre shall not depart from Judah; nor a lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh come and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.” - Genesis 49:10.
We have in this chapter the closing scenes of an eventful life; a father’s benediction upon his children and a beautiful and inspiring prophecy of the precedency, permanency, and prosperity of the ancient and historic tribe of Judah.
Jacob, the central figure of the scene unfolded, stands upon the threshold of eternity; around his dying bed the powers of the world to come array themselves and there falls upon him the breath of clear, exalted prophecy.
From the shadows of his own approaching end his vision swept along the unborn ages, until in prophetic foresight, he beheld his own race, clothed with royalty and dominant over all others. He saw the hand of providence, setting apart Judah, as the conservator of a vital knowledge of God, through all the ages, and clothed with this prophetic authority exclaims: “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah nor a lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh come, and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.”
This is one of the most sublime prophecies ever uttered. It contains:
A Revelation of Christ
The term Shiloh signifies the tranquilizer, the giver of peace, a title that pre-eminently belonged to Him that was to establish peace on earth and good will to men and whose kingdom was to be a reign of peace between God and man–man the rebel and offender and God the offended.
This coming Shiloh was to be the central personage, that was to bring about this happy and beneficent condition of things, and was to give to the world all the prestige, humanly speaking, that a racial connection with Judah could give to him.
An exalted humanity was the divine method of placing Christ within intimate reach of men. A humanity perfectly free from the withering touch of sin and yet able to meet every claim of the law.
Christ was no less a man because he was God; His divinity was one element, his humanity another; and yet both were necessary to a successful establishment of his claims upon men. As a man he must be able to sympathize and comfort; to be tempted and overcome, for “He was tempted in all points, like as we.”
His humanity was real, not a mere shadowy form, but a real body, subject to all the physical conditions to which mankind must conform. His life was one long martyrdom for humanity. He died daily. Every hour had its cross for him. As a man, upon whose heart rested responsibilities like his, his life was a perpetual and systematic self-denial of appetites, natural tastes, selfish inclinations and personal hopes and fears.
In order to meet the demands of the law, he must possess such a body; for no intermediate nature, such as the demigods the heathen were supposed to possess, no immaterial existence, could “magnify the law and make it honorable.” He is called by the silvery-tongued Isaiah, “The Prince of Peace,” because his government subdues the turbulent passions of men, and promotes peace in the world; by Him all that believe have peace with God, their minds are kept in perfect peace and peaceable dispositions predominate their whole lives.
The establishment of a kingdom upon such far-reaching and heaven-blessed principles; the settlement of the claims of divine justice and the amicable arrangement of all difficulties between man and man, was to the dying Patriarch an inspiration and joy forever, and so from the depths of his loyalty to God and race, with his patriarchal eye fixed upon the rapid developments of the future, born of divine inspiration, of Judah’s ultimate glorification, he exclaims, “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, not a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come, and unto Him shall the gathering of the people be.”
He must be a mediator, a middleman, an advocate, and so must understand, not by observation, but by actual experience, the true condition of the parties for whom he advocates.
And so he was to stand, with one hand upon the throne of God, and the other outstretched to a sinful world saying, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Drawing by his spotless character, and the power of the gospel, he preached all men to him.
His divinity was potential in permanently fixing this reign of peace. As a teacher of religion He claimed to be superior to all others. No other system had yet thrown a clear and distinct light upon the great beyond. He was to establish an immortality beyond the grave; not only to reconcile man to God, for time, but to throw open the gates of everlasting life.
Go to your natural religion. Lay before her Mahomet and his disciples arrayed in armor and blood, riding in triumph over the thousands and tens of thousands who fell by his victorious sword. Show her the cities which he set in flames, the countries ravaged and destroyed, and the miserable distress of all the inhabitants of the earth.
When she has gazed upon this scene, carry her within the retirement of his private life. Point out his wives and concubines; his seasons of revelry and dissipation; his adulterous yielding, and hear him allege divine revelation and his divine commission to justify his lust and oppression.
This is the exponent of Mohammedanism, who declared: “There is one God, and Mahomet is His prophet.”
Then view Jesus, humble and meek, doing good to all the sons of men, patiently instructing the ignorant and leading the perverse into paths of righteousness and peace.
Let the sceptic and infidel look into his private life; follow him to the mount and hear his devotions and supplications to God; see his table and view his poor fare; hear him in the midst of poverty exclaim, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the son of man hath not where to lay his head.”
See him injured, but not provoked; consider the patience with which He bore the scoffs and reproaches of His enemies. Lead the devotee of human systems of religion to Christ’s cross. Let him view Him in the agonies of death, and hear His last prayer for His persecutors, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
When the sceptic, infidel, scoffer, and worldling have placed Mahomet on one side, with his carnage and lust, and Christ on the other with His spotless character, ask him, “Which is the prophet of God?” and he will borrow the Centurion’s language as the honest expression of his heart, “Truly, this man was the Son of God.”
If men doubted, they had only to hear Him speak to the diseased and their strengthened limbs told that its grasp had been loosened; or see the sightless eyes of the blind opened, or hear the tongue of the dumb sing.
Did not the winds and waves obey his voice? Could the grave hold its lifeless inmate, when he commanded the dead to arise? No, as a God he speaks, and “great nature’s wheels stand still,” its fiercest elements calm and crouch at His feet like a whipped spaniel, while heaven, earth, and hell are the silent witnesses of the scene. He speaks, and at the sound of his voice the whole earth trembles. It is the voice of the Sovereign of the Skies; it is the Mighty God, the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, the One whose fiat gave form to universal existence, and whose omnific arm holds a boundless creation in its sphere.
By His power every atom that floats in the air; every fiery world that revolves through trackless ethereal realms keeps its course, and nations, kindreds, peoples, and tongues bow in humble reverence at His command, exclaiming: “Thou doest as thou willest in the kingdom of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and no man can say what doest thou.”
He needs no instruments, no mechanical aid, no series of contrivances to assist in the exercise of His will. He commands and the thing is done, whether it be the production of an animalcule, the creation of a world, or the launching of a planet in its orbit.
A vast creation hangs upon his omnific finger to be preserved or destroyed; the earth is his footstool; the heavens his sovereign abode, and eternity the imperial court from which he thunders his decrees for the obedience of his subjects. “Lo these are part of his ways, but the thunder of His power, who can understand?”
The Time of Shiloh’s Coming
We have an emphatic announcement as to the time of the coming of Shiloh.
“The sceptre shall not depart from Judah nor a lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh come, and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.”
This was a staff which kings, governors, and rulers, held in their hands as emblems of authority. It was transmitted from father to son, and thus kept within the family. So Jacob declared, this kingly authority or rule should not depart from the tribe of Judah, until Shiloh, the Messiah, should come.
Homer mentions the sceptre and shows how it passed from father to son, in his description of Agamemnon’s address to the army:
The king of kings his awful figure raised,
High in his hand the golden sceptre blazed;
The golden sceptre of celestial fame,
By Vulcan formed, from Jove to Hermes came.
To Pelops, he the immortal gift resigned,
The immortal gift great Pelops left behind.
Here is the dying Jacob, lifted to the height of prophetic vision, declaring Judah’s sceptre should remain in Judah’s hands till Shiloh came.
It is a historical fact that each tribe of Israel had a rod and each man his name written on it. These rods, corresponding in number to the number of the tribes, were laid away by Moses in the tabernacle, when it was discovered in the morning that Aaron’s had budded; hence it was intended to convey the idea that the tribe of Judah should continue in the exercise of its tribal authority till the coming of the Messiah.
In this sense, every tribe had a sceptre and the promise that Judah’s should remain, implies that all others should depart. History declares that Judah never lost his tribe; the greatest care was taken by every succeeding generation to preserve it.
In the days of Saul and David when Israel was numbered, the tribe of Judah was counted separate from the rest. (1 Sam. 11:8.)
Prophets were employed to record the genealogies of this tribe under the Kings. (2 Chron. 12:15; 13:22.) And the same care was exercised during the captivity in Babylon and while a large portion of the other tribes did not return to the land of their fathers, Judah returned with its integrity unbroken and so remained until the end of time; the whole land and nation receiving its name from Judah, the one being called “Jews” and the other “Judea.” So the tribal constitution did not depart until the predicted era.
Till the captivity, through David’s time, the sceptre was in Judah and so remained till Judea became a Roman province, at the time of the birth of Jesus. At this time Joseph and Mary, the mother of Jesus, went into Judea to pay taxes and the child Jesus was born. An exact fulfillment of the prophecy contained in the text. The sceptre had departed and Shiloh had come.
Prophecy uttered 1,689 years before, had been fulfilled and another evidence was given, that Jehovah purposed to keep His promise made in Eden’s garden, that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head.
When God speaks, the world should listen. He makes no mistakes in carrying out the affairs of His kingdom. He cannot fail. He alone has the power to command and marshals the forces visible and invisible to put his commands into effect.
Generations lengthened into centuries and centuries multiplied themselves by themselves before this prophecy was fulfilled. God’s armies fought upon many a battlefield, painted many a hill and valley crimson with human blood. Patriarchies became kingdoms, kingdoms became empires, and empires, republics and states before the sceptre passed from Judah or the lawgiver from between his feet, and so God’s church waits to-day for the ultimate fulfillment of every prophecy concerning the kingdom of Christ. Nothing will be left out, every detail will be met, every enemy overcome, and victory will perch upon Zion’s banners, while the heavens will clap their hands in joy and earth will send up against the vaulted dome the cry that the foe is vanquished, and universal peace and joy reigns supremely among all nations.
The regal authority retained in Judah, the dispenser or interpreter of divine jurisprudence, sitting between the feet of Him who thundered from Sinai’s smoking heights, the law for the government of men, it only remained to see.
The Gathering of the People
Its effect upon the world. “Unto him shall the gathering of the people be.”
The patriarch saw Shiloh’s standard raised and thronging millions coming and swearing allegiance to its powers. It was a mighty stretch of prophetic vision; a beautiful tribute to the power of Emanuel’s reign to see the people, irrespective of official, social or racial standing, flocking to the standard of the cross.
All these results were to be reached only through one medium–the Gospel. Christ reflected it in his life among men; it burned in every word he uttered; was the most prominent feature in his every act, and the crown of glory in his whole life. He set the ball in motion, and declared that no power should ever be formed, no weapon created, no combination of enemies, however strong, should stop its revolutions.
The glorious Gospel. Before He ascended He gave His disciples their marching orders: “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.” The church must conquer all worlds by this commission. She has no other authority, and wants none. The holding up of Shiloh among the nations of earth until a universal religion shall gather the nations to its standard. “Unto him shall the gathering of the people be.”
This is no wild statement; it is a positive decree of the Infinite God. We live in an age where there are many signs of the gathering people. The story of Christ’s life and death and resurrection is read and preached and sung in more than two hundred of the world’s languages to-day.
The bells of Christian churches ring out upon the air and call a living host of Christians to bow at the feet of Shiloh, whose sceptre is righteousness, and who shall have dominion from sea to sea and from the rivers to the ends of the earth.
The sea of commerce is covered with white-winged messengers, bearing to heathen nations the missionaries of the cross and inviting those who sit in darkness and in the regions of despair to shake off their heathen life and swear allegiance to Calvary’s cross.
The Gospel of Christ has shown its power over every phase of man’s existence–individuals, nations–over humanity itself.
It changed Paul, the persecutor, into Paul, the zealous missionary and martyr for the truth he once despised; it caught John Newton, the slave trader, in its grasp and turned him to a Christian poet and preacher; it sent its arrows deep into John Bunyan’s heart and brought him forth in defense of truth; and thus gave to the world the “immortal dreamer” of “Pilgrim’s Progress.”
It seized Luther, in the depths of Roman Catholic corruption and sin, taught him the evangelical lesson that the just should live by faith, and gave the world the intrepid reformer, the prince of preachers.
It has lifted the king’s crown from his imperial brow and consecrated him to God’s service; the profound intellect has bowed at its feet; the cringing slave secured perfect freedom, and
The weary found eternal rest,
While all the sons of want are blest.
The Gospel has set the world to thinking and kept it thinking during all the centuries. It stirs up men’s souls; opens their eyes; unfetters their limbs, and makes the tongue of the dumb to sing.
And so Shiloh must continue to reign, penetrating all things, shaping human history, standing behind and ruling thrones, quickening men to lead lives of virtue and consecrate their best talent to a cordial service of the Master.
“Unto Him shall the gathering of the people be.”
What an inspiring picture presented itself to Jacob’s enlightened vision. He saw the world a vast and magnificent temple; its foundations set upon the pillars of the universe, while its dome, covered with the draperies of millennial glory, gave shelter to the gathering multitudes that had come to lay their trophies at the feet of Shiloh, Zion’s King.
It was extended from pole to pole, for says Isaiah, “Many shall say, come let us go up to the house of the Lord, and He shall teach us of His ways and we will walk in His paths.”
He saw the worshiping hosts as they bowed in silent reverence at Shiloh’s feet, in token of their willing submission to His authority.
The picture delights my soul. See the prince and peasant, the fine linen and purple, pressed against the beggar’s rags; the giant intellect beside the ignorant fool; the social queen beside society’s outcast; a Mary Magdalene by a Queen of Sheba; a Lazarus and a Dives; the capitalist and laborer; the master and slave; the strong and the weak; the great and the small–all take their places in this universal temple, where the gathering of the people should be.
Here stand the sable sons of Africa, enlightened, redeemed, saved by the blood of the Lamb; the Brahmin from India’s burning strand; the Confucian from the greatest and oldest empire on earth, whose population is one-third the population of the whole world, but she, too, brings her worshipers to Zion’s temple, and bows at Shiloh’s feet; the Mohammedan from Africa, the Buddhist of Asia, the Romanist of Italy, the Indian from North America, and every false religionist among men, all stand in that sacred place and with united voice, ascribe honor and praise to Emanuel.
Let the church of God help to bring about this happy time. For says Isaiah, “It shall come to pass that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established upon the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills and all nations shall flow into it.
“And they shall beat their swords into plough shares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”