ty
of the visions is to some extent guaranteed by the writer's intense
earnestness and by his manifest belief in the divine origin of his
message. But the difficulty of regarding the visions as actual
experiences, or as in any sense actual, is intensified, when full
account is taken of the artifices of the writer; for the major part of
his visions consists of what is to him really past history dressed up in
the guise of prediction. Moreover, the writer no doubt intended that his
reader should take the accuracy of the prediction (?) already
accomplished to be a guarantee for the accuracy of that which was still
unrealized. How, then, it may well be asked, can this be consistent with
reality of visionary experience? Are we not here obliged to assume that
the visions are a literary invention and nothing more?

However we may explain the inconsistency, we are precluded by the moral
earnestness of the writer from assuming the visions to be pure
inventions. But the inconsistency has in part been explained by Gunkel,
who has rightly emphasized that the writer did not freely invent his
materials but derived them in the main from tradition, as he held that
these mysterious traditions of his people were, if rightly expounded,
forecasts of the time to come. Furthermore, the visionary who is found
at most periods of great spiritual excitement was forced by the
prejudice of his time, which refused to acknowledge any inspiration in
the present, to ascribe his visionary experiences and reinterpretations
of the mysterious traditions of his people to some heroic figure of the
past. Moreover, there will always be a difficulty in determining what
belongs to his actual vision and what to the literary skill or free
invention of the author, seeing that the visionary must be dependent on
memory and past experience for the forms and much of the matter of the
actual vision.

iv. _Apocalyptic as distinguished from Prophecy._--We have already dwelt
on certain notable differences between apocalyptic and prophecy; but
there are certain others that call for attention.

(a) _In the Nature of its Message._--The message of the prophets was
primarily a preaching of repentance and righteousness if the nation
would escape judgment; the message of the apocalyptic writers was of
patience and trust for that deliverance and reward were sure to come.

(b) _By its dualistic Theology._--Prophecy believes that this world is
God's world and that in this world