FOREWORD

THIS MANUSCRIPT lay penned but not finished for a number of years before my father's death because, as he says in his introduction, 'For a day-to-day biography (of Christ) there are no materials, and only a small number of days are even mentioned.' He had, I think, intended a short life of Christ, but with many another found the chronological problems connected with it a rather formidable barrier to a connected narrative. He got no further than the Wedding Feast at Cana, and for the purposes of publishing this material as a complete study in itself my mother has decided to use the sub-title 'An Introduction to the Life of Christ', and to take it to the point where Christ emerges Victor from the contest with Satan in the Wilderness, prepared and proved, and ready to enter upon His Public Ministry.

       I have heard my father mention, with amusement, the rather pompous young man who, upon his celebrated father's death, used to raise aloft a copy of the Scriptures in the pulpit and say, with hushed voice and bated breath, 'My father's Bible!' All I wish to say about my father's Bible, the fairly new one he was using at the time of his death, is that certain pages in the second half of Isaiah are very thumb-marked indeed in comparison with the fairly clean state of the remainder of the sacred volume!

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       He seemed in his last years strongly drawn to those passages of Scripture to which Christ Himself must often have turned, those verses in chapters 42, 49, 53 and 61 of the book of Isaiah portraying so vividly the course of His earthly life from the Womb to the Cross. In these Christ saw traced out before Him that long period of hidden preparation to be followed by a time of mightily-anointed Ministry: this to end in eventual rejection and apparent failure accompanied by a strong temptation to discouragement; this when overcome was to lead on to that final act of purposeful sacrifice at Calvary, having as its glorious and eternal fruit a full and free salvation to offer to all men.

       It was not just the comforting fact that our Saviour had so truly sat where we sit, and was thus fully equipped to lead us into a personal experience of victory, that drew my father back again and again to these passages. Nor was it even the liberating truth that against all odds He had triumphed absolutely, and so made eternally secure our Heavenly future. It was rather that breath-taking glimpse into the loving heart of the Triune God which this prophetic commentary on the earthly pilgrimage of the Son afforded him. To have a God as utterly unselfish as this—totally dedicated to the happiness of His Creation; perfect in wisdom so that every detail of His redemptive plan was settled in Eternity past—this brought unceasing wonder and delight to my father.

       And so it seems fitting that the last of his writings to be published should be a full-length portrait of the Son, a re-creation from Scripture of all that befell Him from the moment that His Father revealed to Him His plan to create. 'He that hath seen me hath seen the Father', Jesus said, and this book is sent forth with the desire that hearts might be drawn closer to both Father and Son.

John L. Parker
Sheffield

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