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A Prophet Like Moses

by Christine Egbert

In Hebrews 10:7 Jesus (Yeshua) quoted one of the Psalms, “Then I said, ‘Behold, I come to do Your will, O God. In the scroll of the book (Old Testament) it is written of Me.’” In spite of the fact that the entire Old Testament is about Jesus (Yeshua), in 2017, Christian Pastor and evangelist Andy Stanley told his congregation that “Christians need to unhitch their faith from the Old Testament.”

When one omits studying the first 75% of God’s WORD, one is doomed to misinterpret the final 25%. As the late Brad Scott wrote in his book, The Tanakh: the Dictionary of the New Testament, “All the words and teachings of the New Testament are defined in the Tanakh (the Old Testament).

Paul himself cited 93 (roughly 1/3) of the 300 Old Testament quotes found in the New. Since Andy Stanley has unhitched his faith from the Old Testament, should Deuteronomy 4:2, which says, “You must not add to the word that I am commanding you or take away from it,” be removed? Would Andy Stanley thus recommend that Christians remove all 300 of those OT quotes from their New Testaments as well?

But this unhitching from the Old Testament isn’t new. It’s been going on, more and more, for nearly 1900 years. Here is an excerpt from an article on a Christian website called Crosswalk.com titled “Why Don’t Pastors Preach From The Old Testament?”

  • Many pastors feel more comfortable with Greek than with Hebrew.
  • Most biblical training focuses on New Testament interpretation.
  • For some there may be theological reasons why they don’t preach from the Old Testament. Perhaps they view everything before Matthew as “preparation” (which in a sense it is) and therefore not worthy of extended attention from the pulpit (a sad mistake, in my opinion).
  • But my primary thought was that most seminaries specialize in teaching pastors how to preach the epistles. Our methods work best with Romans, Ephesians and the other Pauline epistles.

Who Coined The Term OLD TESTAMENT?

“Old Testament” was coined by a heretic named Marcion, who lived between 85 C.E. and 160 C.E. Marcion believed that the deity who sent Jesus into the world was a higher deity than the God of Judaism. Jesus, Marcion taught, came into the world to free mankind from the LORD (Yahweh), that wrathful “Old Testament” God of the Jews.

Yet, in Paul’s letter to Timothy (2 Timothy 3:16) he wrote that “All Scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, for reproof, for restoration, and for training in righteousness, so that the person belonging to God may be capable, fully equipped for every good deed,” and when Paul wrote “all Scripture”, there was no New Testament in existence.

In John 5:39-40, Jesus (Yeshua) told some unbelieving Jews that they search the Scriptures (the Old Testament) believing that in them they would find eternal life, yet they refused to come to Him, the very One about Whom the Scriptures (Old Testament) are written, so that they might attain life.

In verse 45, Jesus (Yeshua) warned these same unbelievers who claimed they hoped in Moses, that Moses would one day accuse them before the Father. Why? Because had they, in fact, believed Moses, they would have believed Him, for Moses wrote about Him.

In Deuteronomy 18:15, Moses wrote: “The LORD (Yahweh) your God will raise up for you a PROPHET like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You MUST listen to (shema/hear and obey) Him!”

Deuteronomy 18:18-19 says, “I shall raise up a prophet to them from among their brothers, one like you, and I will put My Words in His mouth, and He shall speak to them all that I shall command Him. And it shall be whoever will NOT listen to My Words which HE shall speak in My name, I will require it at his hand.

Hebrews 10:7 says, “Then I said, ‘Behold, I come to do Your will, O God. In the scroll of the book (Old Testament) it is written of Me.’”

Psalms 40:8-9 “Then I said, “Here I am, I have come—in the scroll of a book (Old Testament) it is written about me. I delight to do Your will, O my God. Yes, Your Torah (Old Testament) is within my being.”

In Luke 24:25, Jesus (Yeshua) said to them, “Oh foolish ones, so slow of heart to put your trust in all that the prophets (Old Testament) spoke!”

In Luke 24:27 it says that “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, Jesus (Yeshua) explained to them the things written about Himself in all the Scriptures (Old Testament).” Remember that there was no so-called New Testament when this was written.

In Acts 18:28 it says, “For he (Apollos) powerfully refuted the Jewish people in public, demonstrating through the Scriptures (Old Testament) that the Messiah was Jesus (Yeshua).”

Acts 3:19-24 says: “Repent, therefore, and return—so your sins might be blotted out, so times of relief might come from the presence of the Lord and He might send Jesus (Yeshua), the Messiah appointed for you. Heaven must receive Him, until the time of the restoration of all the things that God spoke about long ago through the mouth of His holy prophets. Moses said, ‘The LORD (Yahweh) your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from among your brothers. Hear and obey Him in all that He shall say to you. And it shall be that every soul that will not listen to that Prophet shall be completely cut off from the people. Indeed, all the prophets who have spoken from Samuel on have announced these days.”

Echoes of Marcion

Tragically, much of Marcion’s heretical and anti-Semitic rhetoric still echoes throughout mainstream Christianity today. Listen to Andy Stanley and you will hear it for yourself. From Genesis through Malachi, the Hebrew Scriptures, which Jesus (Yeshua) said are all about Him, are pejoratively referred to as OLD, while more and more stand-alone New Testaments are bought and read by Christians every year. No wonder there is so much confusion and so many denominations. When Christians throw out 75% of God’s word, how can they expect to correctly understand the last 25%?

In spite of John 3:16, which says, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,” far too many Christians see the Father, the God of the Old Testament, as wrathful, forgetting that the Son, Jesus (Yeshua), said that His doctrine was His Father’s and that He came ONLY to speak His Father’s words and do His Father’s will.

Jeremiah 6:19 “Hear, O earth! See, I will bring disaster on this people—fruit of their schemes—for they did not listen to My words and rejected My Torah.”

Hosea 4:6 “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Since you rejected knowledge, I will also reject you from being My priest. Since you forgot the Torah of your God, just so I will forget your children.

Isaiah 8:20 To the law and to the testimony, if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

1 Kings 2:3-4 “Keep the charge of the LORD (Yahweh) your God, to walk in His ways, to keep His statutes, His commands, and His judgments, and His testimonies, as it is written in the Torah of Moses, so that you may wisely do all that you do, and that wherever you turn the LORD (Yahweh) may establish His Word which He spoke to me, saying, ‘If your sons take heed to their way, to walk before me in truth, with all their heart and with all their soul, you shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel.

One day we will all have to give an account of the words we have spoken, so I will close with this piece of advice. Do not demean 75% of God’s written WORD—repent if you’ve been guilty. For “All Scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, for reproof, for restoration, and for training in righteousness, so that the person belonging to God may be capable, fully equipped for every good deed.” NEVER forget, the entire Old Testament is about JESUS (YESHUA)! If you can’t find Him in the first 75% of Scripture, pray! Ask the Messiah to reveal HIMSELF to you. He’s on every page!

1 Comment

  • Terri Dickerson
    Posted May 6, 2021 11:17 am 0Likes

    Wonderful article — as usual. Thank you Christine!

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