Nothing but what was Written!

Nothing but what was written!

By Richard P. Joseph

7/31/2024

Nothing but what was written!

By Richard P. Joseph

Acts 26:22 Therefore, having obtained help from God, to this day I stand, witnessing both to small and great, saying no other things than those which the prophets and Moses said would come—

The Apostle Paul was beaten with rods, whipped with the cat of nine tails, stoned and left for dead and jailed multiple times and then finally executed for simply quoting the Mosaic law and the Jewish prophets.  He plainly admitted that he was not preaching some new doctrine; only the fulfillment of what all Israel was hoping for.  Sort of like us today in America when we quote the constitution, we get persecuted by the communist Democrats.  But back to Paul.  The unbelieving Jews were in a constant state of hope but when that hope finally arrived, they could not bear it.  This would be like a football team that practiced everyday, sweating it out and pushing their bodies to the limit but when game day arrived they locked themselves in the locker room and refused to take the field choosing rather to keep going back to the practice field in a perpetual rehearsal of game day but never participating in the game itself.

But my real point here is that the entire ministry of Jesus is found in the Old Testament.

I used to enjoy listening to David Curtis from Berean Bible Church before he started teaching nonsense and heresy about the flat earth, and he explains this very well in all of his teachings.  He pushes hard for people to understand the Old (or rather first) Testament in order to better understand the New (or second) Testament.  Nothing could be truer.  Summing up what Curtis explains; New Christians,who are very excited to begin studying the bible, start reading, usually, the New Testament first.  In all of their enthusiasm and in their lack of a real mentor, they begin interpreting the scripture as if it were a newspaper that was written yesterday and arrived on their doorstep this morning.  This causes tragic hermeneutic errors.  It is up to us to mentor them such that they understand that the New Testament is only the fulfillment of the Old Testament.  It is not something new or a stand alone “religion”.  It has its beginnings at the creation of the world and before. 

Christianity is not a man made religion like Islam, modern day rabbinical Judaism or Hinduism that just appeared when some smooth talking guru or some warlord came about.  The real biblical story is a real history of God and man and the earth.  It is not something new or man made.  It is a real story that began before the earth was formed.  So in other words, to understand the bible, one must understand the history of our planet.  We don’t just make some philosophy up and create a religion out of it, we really only need to tell the “old old story” of Jesus and his glory.  So, if you are new to the faith or if you have been around for a while, please understand this; you must have a basic understanding of the Old Testament in order to decipher the New Testament.  You can not just pick up an ancient document and decode it without having the combination.  That combination is spelled out in the Old Testament.  The Old Testament, which was written in the ancient Hebrew language and dialect has its very own unique idioms that all of the New Testament writers used.  Once you become familiar with the customs of the ancient Hebrews, the New Testament will open up for you in ways that you have never known before.  Add to that a grasp of the historical setting and now your eyes will be opened to a story that you never imagined and were never taught.  So, stick with me and read my articles with patients until you begin to catch the point I am making.  I am hoping to add some historical perspectives as we go.  I will also post from time to time some of the material that I used to guide me in this endeavor.  You should seriously consider purchasing them.  Your faith is personal and has nothing to do with a religion.  Your faith defines you and is the very breath that you take.  You live and die in it.  It has nothing to do with Sunday, it involves every day.  Jesus is the bread that you eat and you drink his blood spiritually.  It has nothing to do with rituals or holidays, it has only to do with your soul and your life.  It is the very substance that defines you. 

John 6:35 And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.

The Promised Land

 The 

Promised Land

By Richard P. Joseph

7/22/2024

Genesis 12:7  Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your [c]descendants I will give this land.” And there he built an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him

Somewhere around 4,000 years ago God made a covenant with a man named Abram (later changed to Abraham).  This was a unique covenant in that it set Abram apart from all other peoples on the earth.  In Genesis 10 God names 70 nations from the peoples of the earth.  None of these nations were in a covenant with God but ended up being pagan states.  Then in chapter 12 God makes a covenant with Abram, thus making the children of Abraham God’s covenant people.  This, in a sense, formed a comparison and contrast between the people of the one true God, YHWH, and all the pagan nations.  YHWH promised that His covenant would follow a certain pathway (through Isaac and Jacob) that would eventually create the nation of Israel.  The promise also included the land of Palestine as a homeland to the Jews.  As you read through Genesis you find that the chosen people ended up as slaves in Egypt.  God sent Moses to lead them out of slave bondage and into the Promised Land of Palestine.

This trip took 40 years to accomplish.  The reason it took 40 years is because the Jews, who were so accustomed to slavery, actually refused to enter the Promised land immediately and actually wanted to go back into bondage in Egypt.  God, therefore, cleansed the nation of its dissidents and they finally entered a physical promised land after 40 years of struggling in the desert.   While Abraham actually fathered many children, God’s covenant was promised only through the lineage of Isaac and Jacob.  The funny thing is, God ordered Abraham to circumcise all of the children of the promise and also any servant or foreigner that worked for Abraham must also be circumcised.  And during the time of the Exodus, Moses wrote and taught his people the law of God.  All of this history is actually what we call a “type”.  

The type is a physical manifestation of a spiritual truth.  This spiritual truth also has physical attributes.  In this case, the type is a foreshadowing of the coming anti-type.  In other words, the type is a physical picture of the messianic kingdom that was fulfilled in Jesus Christ.  All of the Old Testament laws and prophecies were really about the predicted messiah to come.  When Jesus finally did come, all of those types began manifesting themselves in the anti-type.  

The anti-type was Jesus Christ.  Jesus, himself, declared multiple times that all scripture was to culminate in him.  Here is just one example;  In Luke Chapter 24 we read the story of two of his disciples walking to a city near Jerusalem called Emmaus.  Jesus, after rising from the dead, joins them under surreptitious  conditions. 

Luke 24:27 And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He [g]expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.

Jesus then begins explaining scripture to them, asserting that all scripture was written about him.  Notice the word “Himself” in the passage above.  He was quoting out of the Old Testament things pertaining to Him.  This is the same thing about the promised land.  Here are some comparisons to consider:

It took the Israelites forty years to leave the bondage of slavery to enter into a land where they were finally free.

It took forty years for the true Israelites (those who believed in Jesus) to leave the bondage of sin to enter into the spiritual promised land of freedom in the New Jerusalem.  

Deuteronomy 7:6 “For you are a [b]holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. 

1 Peter 2:9  But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;

The Jews and others rejected Jesus at the beginning of the journey and therefore it took 40 years to enter into the spiritual promised land that we are in today.  The promised land of the anti-type is not a physical city but a spiritual one built on the cornerstone of Jesus Christ.  We are part of that new temple and land.  This is a kingdom where Christ is the everlasting king and we are his people.  The land of the type was finite but the land we are in is eternal.  It has no end.  And we are offered this eternal life with it which we can discuss at a later time.  Jesus established this new covenant at the last supper.  Abraham had to offer up animal sacrifices for his covenant with God but Jesus offered up himself, the lamb of God, as a sacrifice for this particular covenant.  The old covenant with Abraham is completed in Jesus and the new everlasting covenant is consummated by Jesus Christ.    Those called out of darkness and into the light of Christ are now the chosen people.  Not a race or an ethnic group but rather those that are born again into Jesus Christ.  There is no physical promised land today, just a spiritual landscape unbound by any obstacle.