" I will continue with my study with Emile because that is what God wants me to do! To show him, and all on this thread, in regard to the Old Testament, the truth! If Emile or you choose to accept it, that's God's business!"
Hi Steve. I pray that your wife, unborn child and family as a whole are in physical and spiritual health. I have read all, I believe, of your posts since we last spoke. Since I am short of time, I will try to respond in a general way to the things I read. This will be a quicky so excuse the diorganization.
I was disappointed by some of your posts and even distured by a few.(you erroneously conclude that I and others are against the Old Testament. The old covnenat is dead, not the Old Testament. I feel really insulted by that kind of false talk. You also want to maintain that you could be saved with only the OT during these days of the new covenant. That is an absurd contention. You had to have the knowledge that Jesus Christ had come before you could search the OT to see if it was so. The knowledge that Jesus has already come is the New Testament.
Without that truth, you cannot be saved under the new covenant. We are not living in 500 B.C., but in 2000 A.D. almost 2000 years after Christ established the new covenant. You can twist and turn this reality all you want, but it remains a fact that you had to have the knowledge of Jesus Christ in the New Testament to be saved.) That is the way God has established it under the new covenant.
It seems that our discussion has taken a different turn. You have made several serious mistakes so far. You repeated your error that 'the Old Testament can stand on its on'. Before Christ, that was true. After Christ, that is a serious error. Without Christ, the Old TEstament would be a dead book. Christ came 2000 years agao and abolished the old covenant and Old Testament Temple Judaism and has replaced it with his Body, the holy Christian Church.
I have known the truth of the Old Testament for almost 30 years, and that truth is Jesus Christ and not some mythical fulfillment through modern antichrist Judaism. Jesus is the theme of the OT, and not modern Judaism. Jesus and the salvation of mankind are the reason for the OT, not some worldly and fleshly kindgom established by modern Judaism or even ancient Judaism. The OT was a school to lead mankind through to a knowledge of Christ. The ancient nation of Israel was never the real focus of the Old Testament. They were merely a symbola and shadow of the Kingdom of God. Jesus Christ has always been the theme and the hope of mankind in the Old Testament, not modern Judaism as you imply by trying to steal the prophecies relating to Jesus and his Kingdom Chritian people and give them to modern Judaism. I thank God that he has given you the faith to see Jesus in the Old Testament prophecies.
Our conversation started when you sent me a multitude of prophecies and erroneously implied that they would be fulfilled in modern Judaism. I clearly showed you where they had already been fulfilled in Jesus. Then you mostly avoided those and wanted to go to Hebrew, Jeremiah, Daniel and Revelation. Then you wanted to discuss a few verses in Hebrews. I patiently took you through the whole book of Hebrews to help you understand the verses that you are erroneously trying to apply to modern Israel. I further showed you that the new covenant has already been established and the old abolished. You agree, only to change your mind later to agree with someone who contradicts the Scriptures and tries to claim that the old covenant is still in force equally with the new. Then you shift to endtime prophecies in Revelation, Daniel etc. This obsession with endtime prophecies is a sure sign of a young Christian's immaturity.
Wrestling with the complexities of endtime prophecies before we establish the spiritual realities of the Kingdom of God in our hearts, leads to error. A thorough knowledge and appropriation of the greater premises contained in the new covenant coupled with a thorough knolwedge of both Old and New Ts., are prerequisites before we attempt the prophecies of Revelation, Daniel, Ezekiel etc.
Your searching and fishing to try to justify your theology rather than let the Scritptures explain themselves. Let us start with Romans and go through all the Epistles. Before that, let us read and study the Gospel of St. John or of St. Matthew and then go to the Epistles to understand the meaning of Jesus and his Crucifixion and Resurrection.
We can go through the Gospels and see where the Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled. The Gospel dive us scores of examples of where Jesus was fulfilling the OT prophecies. It is just a lack of knowledge of the New TEstament to insist that Jesus didn't fulfill most of the propheciees that you quoted in your first email.
We would do much better by concentrating on the Epistles in the New Testament that enumerate and explain the better promises of the new covenant. This is where you will learn about the spiritual promises that Jesus Christ has bought for you. These are the spiritual gifts that will establish and enable you to enter into presence through the New and Living Way. After being Born Again, you should seek the baptism of the Holy Spirit and from there the gifts and promises are mostly contained in the the Epistles. There are many things also contained in the Old Testament, but they are almost all upgraded in the New because Jesus was surety of a better covenant with better promises. That's right Steve! The New TEstament contains the reality of the better covenant with better promises. The Old TEstament is the Holy Word of God and must be read and believed, and loved and cherished by Christians. All real Christian Church have done that for 2000 years. The entire history of the ancient nation of Israel lasted approx. 1000 years. The Body of Christ, the Christian Church has a Holy history of twice that period and is based upon Jesus Christ and his blood and not upon the shadows and symbols of animal sacrifices, a symbolic temple representing the heavely Temple and a wordly kingdom as a type of the real Kingdom of God.
Please quit trying to confuse the abolishment of the old covenant with the abolishment of the Old Testament. Also, please quit trying to make modern antichrist Judaism the center and focus of the Old TEstament. Jesus Christ and the salvation of mankind is the center and focus of the Old Testament just as it is in the new.
The theme of the OT is not modern antichrist Judaism! The theme of the OT is not to glorify ancient Israel but to glorify God! God's dealing with Adam and Eve, the sons of Seth, Noah and his sons and the sons of Israel were examples, symbols and shadows of the reality that was to come in Jesus Christ. The reality(Jesus Christ) has come, so please quit trying to go back to the shadow and symbols of that reality. to find fulfillment.
Also,you are distorting the truth about my love of the Old TEstament and other brothers love of the Old Testament on this thread. No Christian has shown hatred of, or lack of faith in the Old Testament. It is the Old Covenant that is dead, not the Old Testament, as you are trying to imply. The Old Testament is fulfilled but the precepts and holy Words are eternal because they are the word of God. I have loved the Old TEstament since the day of my salvation. I read the Old Testament before I read the New. Christianity has loved, upheld, preserved the Old Testament for the last 2000 years.
I suggest a quiet and leisurely study of Gospels and Epistles first and then move to prophecies. To study the Gospel and Episltes, it is essential that we constantly study the Old Test. The bible is one book, both Old and New Ts. This has been the teaching of the Christain Church from the beginning.
May we hold steadfastly to what God has given us, have the strength to abolish what is from our own mind and imagination and have the wisdom to distinguish between the two. Also, that we continue to have the grace to speak in boldness and love, without guile, what is on our heart.
In the love of Christ.
Emile |
