Messiah In The Old Testament Episode 1 Introduction
Welcome to Messiah In The Old Testament. Today I have the distinct privilege of introducing to you a brand-new show. It is a show called Messiah in the Old Testament. Now this is a series of programs and in this series, we are endeavoring to showcase all the Messianic prophecies that are found in the Old Testament. This is something that has been a passionate interest of mine for quite some time. I've collected all these prophecies and I put them into a database. And I was just absolutely amazed, once I looked at the numbers, that there were literally hundreds and hundreds, over a thousand Messianic prophecies that I was able to collect. In fact, when I go through the Old Testament an additional time, I'll find new prophecies that I didn't see when I went through them before.
For example, I listen to the Old Testament while I'm driving in my car. I listen to it currently on my Bluetooth iPhone, but back in the day there were eight track tapes with the Holy Bible on it. Then there were audiocassettes with the entire Bible on it and then there were CDs with the Bible on it and then the MP3s I played on the MP3 player of my iPod plugged into an audio jack and now finally MP3s being played through my iPhone. You can even have them now on a little teeny thumb drive, plug them into the USB port on your car and then play the Scriptures.
Every time I go through the scriptures, and I try to do it once a year if possible, and every time I go through, I'm just shocked and amazed that I find new prophecies that I hadn't even considered or thought about before. So, this is one of those situations where this is an ongoing, evolving project. But I have collected quite a few prophecies and that is what we will use as our body to go through our presentations every show.
Now, sometimes on this show you'll hear me use the term Old Testament. Other times you'll hear me use the term Tanakh. Now, these
two terms basically refer to the same body of literature. Obviously, there are differences back and forth. There's some punctuation and some emphasis difference and the order is completely different between the two books. But they are the same body of literature.
Now I have to give you a caveat here because if you're Catholic, Orthodox or if your Ethiopic; your Bibles will have additional Old Testament literature called the Apocrypha. Now the Apocrypha have been around for centuries, even millennia. The derivation [of the Apocrypha] came from a document called the Septuagint.
The Septuagint was a Greek translation of the Hebrew into the common language of the day which was Koine Greek. And there were 72 translators, Jewish translators, six of them from each of the tribes of the 12 tribes of Israel. So, there were 72 translators so this commonly became called the 70 or Septuagint.
The term Tanakh may not be familiar to all of our viewers so let's go through that. Tanakh is an acronym. And it's an acronym made of the letters that can come, the first letter in each of the three sections that are found in the Tanakh. Those three sections are the Torah, the Nevi’im and then the Ketuvim. That stands for the law, the prophets and then the writings. Now if you take the T or the Tav from Torah, and then you take the N or Nun from Nevi’im and then you take the K sound or Kof from the Ketuvim and you put them together. Put some vowels in between and you end up with Tanakh. And it is commonly spelled T A N A K H. So, T for the Tav and N for the Nun and the KH for the Kof.
If you compare the contents of the Old Testament with the contents of the Tanakh and you compare them back and forth, you're going to find that everything that is contained in the Old Testament side is contained in the Tanakh side. I put together a graphic to demonstrate this.
And so, I am going through that right now. So, you’ve got two columns, you’ve got the Tanakh side and you’ve got the Old Testament side. Now, on the Tanakh side you’ve got the first section which is the Torah, that is the law. And if you look on the other side, in the Old Testament side, it says Books of the Law. And you see that the books that are there are exactly the same books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. On the Tanakh side is called the Torah. On the Old Testament side is called the Pentateuch or the Books of the Law.
Now, the next section is the Nevi’im which is the word for prophets. You have two divisions. You’ve got the former prophets and the latter Prophets. In the former prophets we have Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. Now if you look on the other side under Books of History, you'll see Samuel is listed as first and second Samuel and Kings as first and second Kings. Now, in the Old Testament these books are split into two parts, but in the Tanakh they are considered one book. Now then, you’ve got the latter prophets. In the latter prophets are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and then the Twelve. The Twelve refers to the 12 prophets which in the Old Testament you’ll see are the Minor Prophets. So, the Twelve are Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi.
And then you’ve finally got the third section which is the Ketuvim. The Ketuvim is Psalms, Proverbs, Job and then you’ve got this book which is kind of unfamiliar in the Christian world but it's the Megillot.
The Megillot is actually the word for scrolls, and it is a conglomeration of five different scrolls. It is the Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Esther. Now if you go to temple, you'll find in some temples that you have these five scrolls which are kept separate from the Torah and other scrolls and they are kept in their own cabinet. And they are arranged in order that they are read during the year. And certain ones [of the] books are read on certain holidays. For example, during the holiday The Festival of Purim, the book of Esther is read and on the Ninth of Av, Lamentations is read. And then depending on whether you are Sephardic or Ashkenazi, the other books are read during certain times of the years during certain festivals. Then you have Lamentations, excuse me, you have Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles. EzraNehemiah is one single book put together. On the other side you'll see Ezra and Nehemiah are separate books and Chronicles which is one book.
Now let’s go over on the Old Testament side, of course, we have the Books the Law which we’ve already talked about. And we’ve got the
Books of History which is Joshua, Judges, Ruth, First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings, First and Second Chronicles, Ezra Nehemiah and Esther. Then, the Books of Poetry. The Books of Poetry are Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon. Then there are the Books of Prophecy divided into two sections kind of like the Former and Latter Prophets, but these are the Major Prophets and the Minor Prophets. The Major Prophets are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel and Daniel. And then the Minor Prophets are Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, the Twelve. And if you compare, you can do this at home, you can compare every single book on one side is also contained on the other side. It's the exact same body of literature.
Obviously, I did not include the Apocrypha in here, otherwise you be having books like Maccabees and Esdras and Judith and Tobit and Bel and the Dragon and all those other books that are not included in the original Jewish writings. So, most Protestants do not accept those as Canon or as what would be considered inspired books of the Bible. In fact, Martin Luther described the Apocrypha as being books that are good to read to be educated, but not to accept as an inspired word from God.
Now, as we said, we have collected all of these prophecies, put them together. As I said, I was astonished to find that there were over 1600 prophecies, distinct prophecies, that I found that were in my database. Now, I took those prophecies and then put them in chronological order. Now, chronological order is an interesting thing. Chronology has an entire branch of study in the liturgical world. It is just amazing how
strong opinions will fight each other as to which Scripture goes where. For example, where you put the book of Job? Most will agree that Job belongs in the time of the patriarchs, but where exactly in the book of Genesis does that land. There are discussions that go on endlessly as to the chronological order.
So, to settle this, I used a couple references. I used Bishop Ussher, the Prelate of Ireland, and used his dates as a rough estimate of dates. And again, the actual dates are hugely contested and argued. But I used the Bishop of Usher as my baseline and then I used Edward Reese who wrote the chronological Bible as kind of rough view of where to put things. You may agree with the order that we proceed through the Old Testament or you may not agree. But one thing I found that was very interesting, is that the order of books in the Old Testament from Genesis to Malachi roughly correspond to the chronological order. Which I find to be an actual fascinating thing that these are in chronological order. I was never taught that that was the case. I never even consider that that would be the case but actually it is the case.
We have identified four types of prophecy and we put them in a table for you. The first type of prophecy is what I refer to as the ‘near prophecy’ That is a type of prophecy that is given and the fulfillment is much closer so that the fulfillment is near to the time when the prophecy was given. Then there is the next type of prophecy which I call a ‘far prophecy’. That's a prophecy where the fulfillment is stretched out over a much longer period of time so that the fulfillment is far away from the original prophecy. That is what I call a far prophecy. For example, in messianic prophecy, Messiah is portrayed in certain places, for example Isaiah 53, as the suffering servant. Messiah comes and he is beaten and he is pierced and he is broken. He's obviously sacrificed as the sacrificial lamb of God to take away the sins of the world and restore fellowship between God and man. Then there is another set of prophecies which are talking about Messiah who comes as the conquering king. Who comes and takes over, conquers the world, rules the world and sets up an eternal kingdom. These two prophecies are not the same. One is an earlier fulfillment where you have the suffering servant. The other one is a longer fulfillment where you have the conquering King obviously stretching into eternity. That is what I'm referring to as a near prophecy and a far prophecy. Now, additionally, there are prophecies where there are types. Now a type is a person, place or thing who is portraying Messiah or portraying the actions of Messiah. So, a type, for example, Moses. Moses is a type of Messiah, when Moses took the children of Israel out of Egypt and led them out to the promised land, wondered around for 40 years, obviously, but eventually they entered the promised land. That is a portrayal of something that Messiah will do in the future. So, Moses was acting as a type of Messiah, where he saves his people, takes them from slavery and brings them into a land flowing was milk and honey.
So, there are many places throughout the Old Testament where we have types. The final [type of] prophecy is where we have a physical appearance in the Old Testament, where a divine being comes to the earth, interacts with humans and those humans, you know, when it's an angel they will bow down and the angel says, “No no, don't bow down
I’m just an angel.” But there are cases where there is a divine being that shows up and people bow down to worship and they are not stopped by the divine being. In fact, they are called God or Lord by the human person that is interacting and they are not dissuaded from that opinion. I believe that these are situations where Messiah actually comes to earth in physical form and appears. Now, in cases, it’s the Angel of the Lord. That is the person I'm talking about and there are many hugely varied opinions on who the Angel of the Lord is. Obviously, in Jewish tradition, we have a specific angel who is identified as the Angel of the Lord. And some believe that this is a special angel who was assigned to Messiah. You get all kinds of opinions. It is my personal private opinion is that the instances where the divine being appears and is worshiped and is called the Almighty, that is a Messianic Appearance. We treat these as such, as we go through the Old Testament.
Now, when we go through these prophecies episode by episode. I want you to immerse yourself into the stories. Now the nice thing about the Tanakh and the Old Testament is that these are told in story form. And they are very malleable so that you can make a story telling each aspect of Messiah. Each prophecy that’s put forth, there's a story that goes along with it. So, we’re going to be telling you lots and lots and lots of stories as we go through. And I want you to put yourself in those stories. I want you to mentally put yourself in that legion of people that were marching out of Egypt into the desert when the Exodus happened. I want you to be in that throng of people, carrying your unleavened bread on your shoulder. And I want you to live it. I want you to be in the story, not to be an outside observer like, oh whatever. I want you to mentally live the story as we go through it. And I want you to think about how the
characters in the story are reacting to the revelation of Messiah. When Messiah, Messianic prophecies are put forth how does that impact or change their lives. So, I want this to be a dynamic experience as we go through together.
As a matter of reference, we are located here in my studio which is in the basement of my office building. I'm a pediatric surgeon and I practice in the city of Fort Wayne, Indiana. And I have an office where we see our patients, but in the basement I have a studio set aside. This is actually our chapel and you'll notice the things that you're looking at are things that you would expect to find in the chapel. For example, we have candlesticks.
These candlesticks came from decommissioned Cathedrals. We have Gothic candlesticks we have other brass heavy candlesticks. Then we’ve got this lectern. And the lectern and the communion table found behind me are also from decommissioned churches. And then we’ve got our wall hanging back here. Our wall hanging has a dove which of course is symbolic of the Holy Spirit. And then you’ve got the sun with the rays coming out that is symbolic of the Son of Righteousness who rises with healing in his wings. And then you’ve got the stars all around and the stars represent you and me. We are the stars that shine out in the universe.
On my communion table I have an altar cloth and that altar cloth is an actual cloth that was used by a U.S. Navy chaplain. It was used during the Spanish-American war. He was aboard the warship USS Texas. And this was actually the cloth that he used. So, we like to surround ourselves with beautiful and historically fun things, so that when we are in our Chapel, we feel inspired.
So, join me next time. We are going to do a series of creation stories from around the world. So, I’m going to pick creation stories from various cultures. We’re going to go through them and then we are going use them as a means to introduce the creation story that is found in the Old Testament. So, these are really colorful, fun stories that I really enjoyed putting them together.
Thank you for watching our show today. We hope that you enjoyed watching it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. Now, after watching this episode you might be saying to yourself, “Who is this Messiah that Dr. Smith is talking about?
Is he talking about the Christian Messiah? Is he talking about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was born of the Virgin Mary. And then lived a blameless and holy life on the earth, And then was tortured and crucified. And after he died he then was resurrected from the dead after three days. Then after people witnessed this, he was then taken up bodily by Elohim into heaven from the Mount of Olives.
Or is Dr. Smith talking about the Muslim prophet Isa. Isa Ibn Maryam, the messenger, who was sent by Allah to bring a message to the people. The Quran says he that lived a holy and blameless life, was born of the virgin Mary. He fulfilled all the Jewish prophecies in exact accordance. But one difference, instead of being crucified, he then was taken up by Allah into heaven before the Romans laid hands on him. And he awaits there now in the fourth heaven where at the end of days at the day of judgment he will be revealed to all.
Or is Dr. Smith talking about the Jewish Messiah? The Messiah who has not yet been revealed, that the entire Jewish world is waiting for his revelation. Now, the beautiful thing is that you can hold to any of these beliefs. And we can all still learn together about Messiah. We can learn about our Christian Messiah. We can learn about our Jewish Messiah. We can learn about our Muslim prophet Isa who will be revealed. It doesn’t matter what you believe. You can even be an atheist or agnostic and still learn from this program about Messiah. Now, I have to admit I am a Christian so I approach things, obviously, from a Christian point of view. And I promise you, as we reveal these prophecies, which I believe have all been fulfilled through Jesus Christ. Or will be fulfilled when he
comes back, returning in the clouds in the same way he was taken up. I believe that all of this is true, but I promise you I will do my very best to present these prophecies from a neutral point of view. And try to keep my Christian bias to a minimum. Obviously, it will pop up from time to time but I will try to stay only in the Tanakh and try not to get into the New Testament very often. Now, if you want more information about Messiah, we have resources for you.
We have a website which is findingmessiah.org. Now, on that website you are going to find several resources. You will find links to all the videos, all the episodes that we have created so far. You will find links to download the transcripts of any of these episodes. And then you will find a section where you can get more information about Messiah through frequently asked questions. And then there is a section for donation. If you want to come alongside our ministry at Finding Messiah.
Now, there’s going to come a time in this series where you are going to be confronted with the question: What are you going to do with Messiah? Who do you believe Messiah is? Which of these Messiahs do
you believe Dr. Smith is talking about? And Messiah will become real to you if you look at all the information presented and come to your conclusions. So, join us as we continue our journey through the Old Testament Scriptures looking for all the Messianic Prophecies. And join us next time as we reveal those to you.