Brilliant

I thought of something tonight that I think is just brilliant in God's revelation to the world. We know the Old Testament testifies about Jesus Christ in many ways and that there are numerous prophecies about him in the Old Testament that were fulfilled nearly 2000 years ago. But a very awesome part of that, to me, is that there was such a gap between the last canonical Jewish scriptures and the coming of Christ.

Why do I think this is awesome?

Because of the following annoyance I had tonight. I came across the part in 2 Kings where Josiah found the book of the Law and cleaned up the nation. There was a note pointing to where 1 Kings where a man of God prophesied this was going to happen. It was a pretty specific prophecy. There's a lot of those in the Old Testament that are fulfilled in the Old Testament. Every once in a while when I run across one of those, that nasty little Satanic voice pops in my head and says "well that's way too specific; maybe it was added in or altered later". Now I don't believe that to be true in the least, but that's what happens to make people doubt the word of God and turn away from it -- Satan sows a tiny seed of doubt and, left to grow, it turns believers into unbelievers and facilitates heretical nonsense like the "emergent church" movement. The prophecies in the book of Daniel that have already been fulfilled are so specific that critics often try to do what this seed of doubt encourages and "late date" the book.

This kind of annoyance, these tiny seeds of doubt that the devil could sow in people's minds, cannot exist regarding the messianic prophecies! Sure, people can argue all kinds of things, but there is no way they can argue that the prophecies were written after the events took place. The Jewish Bible was complete, written down in Hebrew, translated into Greek, stored, etc, all before Christ arrived on the scene to fulfill the prophecies about himself that were in it.

Had canonical writings continued all the way through the coming of Christ with things mixing together, you'd have a door open for people to question the legitimacy of those incredibly important messianic prophecies.

Throw in a few hundred years between Malachi and the Incarnation, and you slam that door shut in the devil's face.

Brilliant!

Grace and Peace