Herald of the Morning
God remained silent for 400 years. After the last Old Testament prophet Malachi proclaimed the Lord’s promise to “send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me” (Malachi 3:1), a dozen generations waited in darkness. Hundreds of thousands of faithful Hebrews lived and died while holding on to a promise that they, their children, and their grandchildren never saw fulfilled.
Imagine this through the eyes of an Israelite at the turn of the millennium, as John the (not quite yet) Baptist still lay nestled in his aged mother’s womb. Since that last prophecy, your ancestors have been ruled by first the Persians, then the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Syrians, and now the Romans. Your forefathers saw no messenger and certainly no Messiah. The sun rose and fell a hundred thousand times over your ancestors, and no words came from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Is this the God to whom you must devote all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength?
Why should you believe that the God of the Patriarchs would ever speak again if He has not spoken for generations upon generations? The 18th century English philosopher David Hume answered this question when he proposed the Problem of Induction. The Problem of Induction posits that we cannot assume a past, consistent pattern will continue without defaulting to circular reasoning. As Bertrand Russell says in Chapter VI of The Problems of Philosophy, “We are all convinced that the sun will rise tomorrow. Why?” Because it rose again yesterday, and all the days before? That’s circular reasoning—we have no guarantee. However, many respond to this by saying that while we cannot guarantee the continuation of a pattern, we can still be fairly confident.
Let’s say I grab a random coin off the street. If I get only heads after a thousand flips, I’m going to be pretty confident I’ve stumbled upon a trick coin. It would be extremely unlikely for this to be normally weighted, as the odds that it is a normal coin would be 1 in 10 followed by 300 zeroes. The rational response is to place your confidence where the evidence points: the hypothesis (“this is a trick coin”) that best explains the observed pattern (1000 heads in a row) is the one you should treat as most probable. This response to Hume is compelling. Even if we cannot guarantee that tomorrow will behave like yesterday, the overwhelming amount of past sunrises makes the continued pattern far more probable than an impending, eternal night. Based on all available evidence, a rational early riser can expect to see the sunrise tomorrow.
The problem is solved! You can now dissuade any growing fears that the sun will not rise tomorrow. This probabilistic solution can assuage your anxieties. That is, unless you are a Jew living right before John the Baptist. For you, the pattern is inverted. God has been silent, and you have been wandering in the darkness for 400 years. The sun has not risen for centuries, so why would it rise tomorrow? The pattern has held for centuries: your God has not spoken. Is it not probabilistically rational to assume that He probably won’t speak again—that the messenger won’t come? Maybe He forgets His promises. Maybe God has abandoned them.
And yet, one day, there was a man in the wilderness, clothed in camel’s hair and fed by locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed the impossible—that, after a hundred thousand nights in a row, the sun is rising again. Pointing towards the long-forgotten horizon, John the Baptist declared that we have a God who is unbounded by human confidence or probabilities. We have a God who does not forget His people.
Would it be rational to be skeptical of a man declaring that the long night is finally ending, especially after dozens of false prophets? Of course. But God is both a God of rationality and miracles. He promises redemption, grace, and mercy. And not only does our Savior offer metaphysical prosperity, but he also cares for our immediate needs. He heals the lifelong lame, leprous, and blind. He multiplies food to feed the hungry. He calms storms to ease the anxious.
The Jewish people waited 400 years for God to send John the Baptist and then Jesus. Most of the Hebrews who held onto the promise of Malachi 3:1 never saw it fulfilled. But some did. The rare, improbable, incredible few got to see the Christ face-to-face. So let us lean into hope. Let us dare to believe we have a God of impossible miracles. Yes, He is still good even when our prayers go unanswered, but we often lose sight of the fact that some people do receive amazing miracles of the heart, mind, and body.
Even after the impossibly long night, the auburn rays will crest the horizon and fill every corner of the darkness. The sun will rise. And the Son, though now he lies nestled in a manger, will rise.