I grew up thinking that the Old Testament was all about God and the Jews and not about Jesus and the Church. That's understandable given the penchant for dispensational, Arminian theology in the Christian Church (an independent "denomination" that disparages other, official, denominations, and who take to narcissistically prefacing "Christian Church" with the adjective "First", implying primacy when none is deserved).
In Exodus, Moses is told to tell Pharaoh "Thus says the LORD, Israel is my firstborn son" (Exo 4:22 ESV) in pleading for their release from captivity. Throughout the Old Testament, no firstborn son receives the blessings that firstborn males were supposed to get. Jacob even purposely blesses his second-oldest grandson Ephraim by crossing his arms and placing his right hand on the younger of the two boys. Joseph points this out but Jacob basically says that he knows what he's doing (Gen 48:14).
Earlier in Genesis, a firstborn son kills his younger brother because he didn't like the fact that God was pleased with the sacrifice of the younger and displeased with his own. The Apostles, after the death of Jesus, point out that it was God's firstborn who killed the younger because Jesus told them that God was displeased with their sacrifice because it was insincere, insufficient, and otherwise inferior to the sacrifice of Himself he was shortly to offer up.
What can explain this if it's not divine inspiration? How can these two seemingly unrelated things be so so closely tied up with one another and have spanned millennia in the telling?
If the Bible is simply a cute little book of interesting stories and antiquated codes of ethics, why is there foreshadowing of the death of Christ in the first generation of humans considering the span of time between Moses and the New Testament?
Leave a comment