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-- ZACHARIAH'S PROPHECY
"Blessed is the Lord God of Israel, For He has visited and redeemed His people, And has raised up a horn of salvation for us In the house of His servant David,
As He spoke
by the mouth of His holy prophets, Who have been since
the world began,
That we should be saved from our enemies And
from the hand of all who hate us, To perform the mercy
promised to our fathers And to remember His holy covenant,
The oath which He swore to our father Abraham:
To grant us that we, Being delivered from the hand of
our enemies, Might serve Him without fear, in
holiness and righteousness all our days.
Here, Zachariah, filled with the Holy Spirit, also speaks prophetically of future events as if they had already taken place -- such is their certainty.
In so doing, he also reminds us that it is the God of Israel who will make these things happen. God will redeem the people of Israel from their enemies, as Mary also confirmed. A horn, as on a fierce animal, represents strength, and it will by the forceful intervention of God that Israel shall be saved and delivered from his enemies -- as we have already read in several prophecies. Let the nations who hate Israel therefore be warned!
Zachariah also refers back to the promises, the holy covenant agreement that God swore to Abraham -- in particular that the land of Canaan would be an everlasting possession to his descendants (Genesis 17:8), and that through his offspring or "seed" all nations of the world would be "blessed" (Genesis 26:5).
Although Paul explains that this latter promise refers primarily to Jesus, the Saviour of all men, of all nations (Galations 3:16), it may also apply literally, if the British-Israel theory is correct --because it has been almost exclusively from the Jewish and Anglol-Saxon peoples that the technology that has transformed the world has emerged, with men such as Michael Faraday, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Henry Ford appearing almost as prophets of scientific enlightenment, offering visions of a better life, freed from the bondage of endless manual labour.