Finding Jesus in the Old Testament

Nathan Jones: For 19 seasons now, our television program has been proclaiming the soon return of Jesus Christ. We believe that glorious event will take place in the near future with the Rapture of the Church. In that regard, Jesus is coming soon for those who have put their faith in Him. It’s an imminent event, meaning that the Rapture could happen at any moment. Are you ready?

Tim Moore: That’s right! The focus of this program is Christ in Prophecy. But, while we wait for what Paul called our Blessed Hope, we believe we should dive into the Old Testament to learn what the Bible teaches about our soon-returning King. So, we’re going back to the future!

Nathan Jones: I don’t think so, Tim.

Tim Moore: Well, maybe not like that.

Nathan Jones: Prophetic clues pointing to Jesus are sprinkled throughout the Bible, in both the New Testament and the Old. In the Old Testament alone, there are 300 general prophecies foretelling Jesus’ First Coming, all of which came true by the way, and a whopping 500 general prophecies prophesying about His Second Coming.

Tim Moore: So, in order to better understand our great God and Savior, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and End, we’re going to spend this episode laying the foundation. And then, in our next episode, we’ll travel to the very beginning, starting in Genesis 1, where the triune God testifies that He is our Creator.

Part 1

Nathan Jones: Tim, when thinking about Jesus in the Old Testament, what are some of the more common references that pop into your head when you think of Jesus?

Tim Moore: Well, I think the most recognizable ones are things like Jesus, or the Messiah I should say, as the Suffering Servant, as outlined in Isaiah 53. You can think about Psalm 110 that refers to the Lord’s anointed being a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. Obviously that referencing back all the way to Genesis. And then the blood of the Passover Lamb during the book of Exodus during the Passover.

Nathan Jones: Those are excellent examples. And it’s interesting that each one falls into the category of what is called Christophany. Folks, if you want to know what a Christophany is, it is meaning, an appearance, or manifestation of Christ. Now, your Isaiah 53 reference of the Messiah as being the Suffering Servant falls into probably the broadest category that most people think of and that is called the prophetical, those are just the outright prophecies that prophecy about the Messiah.

Tim Moore: That’s exactly right, and the second category would be the historical, and you can think about actual people who foreshadowed the coming Messiah. People like Adam, the first man. People like Noah who was delivered from the wrath to come, but was a righteous man, a preacher of righteousness. You can think about Moses who was a deliverer of his people from captivity. King David, the man after God’s own heart. Solomon full of wisdom. And of course, one of my favorites is Joseph who was rejected by his brethren, sent into a foreign land, into a Gentile land, and yet, he delivered his people from starvation, and they found that he ended up being their savior, if you will, in a time of crisis.

Nathan Jones: Excellent, well the third category of Christophany is called ceremonial. Now, Jesus is our Passover Lamb, in other words the Passover lamb signifies that Jesus when He died on the cross, like the blood was put over the doorpost of the Jews in Egypt, Jesus’ blood goes over our sins, and the angel of death passes over.

You will see other examples of ceremonial Christophanies, one of my favorite, the Brazen Serpent, during the Exodus that was lifted up and the people looked at it and they were healed. Likewise, Jesus was lifted up on a cross, and He healed us. There is also the Ark of the Covenant, the way the Ark of the Covenant was designed is to be a physical representation of Jesus Christ. The Feasts of the Tabernacles, the whole feast is about our Messiah living with us, and meeting with us, tabernacling with us during the Millennial Kingdom.

And then all the ceremonies involving the temple and the priest for cleansing rituals point to the Messiah, how He would eventually cleanse us of our sins.

Tim Moore: So many things of the Old Testament do point us to Jesus Christ. Which is why it is a folly to say, “Well, I am a New Testament Christians,” as if we could dismiss the entire Old Testament because the entire Old Testament points to Jesus. It holds relevant lessons that impact our lives today. And people often don’t realize that Jesus and the Apostles cited the Old Testament, because it was the only Scripture that they had. And again, they were citing it because it points to the coming Messiah, time and time again. It is the story of God’s plan of salvation.

But sadly again, too many contemporary Christians see the Old Testament as a collection of disjointed stories. And you know the sad reality, Nathan is that oftentimes we teach our children about Noah and the Ark, David and Goliath, Jonah and the whale, but we do that as stand-alone stories of faithfulness and triumph.

And we have learned and for example, Ken Hamm of Answers in Genesis has a book called, “Already Gone,” where he documents that most young people, too many young people, equate these disconnected stories from the Bible with fairy tales which always begin “Once upon a time.” In other words, they don’t see them as part of an overarching narrative, or anything that makes any sense in a continual, they just see them as isolated stories. And so, Dr. Hamm has documented the dramatic falling away of young people from Christian faith and tied their abandonment of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the poor communication the Church has sometimes used to communicate God’s own testimony of history or His Story.

Nathan Jones: Absolutely. I loved going back, you talked about the story of Jonah and the whale, or the big fish, and most people look at that as for children, and they’ll decorate their nurseries with pictures of that. But it is actually a sign. Jesus said, in Matthew 12, “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Isn’t that amazing? Jonah being thrown into the big fish, and seeming to die for three days, and then come back to life was a sign that Jesus gave to the unbelievers at that time period who questioned His messiahship, He said look for the sign of Jonah, when I am in the ground three days and come back, you’ll know that I am the Messiah.

Tim Moore: And He demonstrated that He didn’t think Jonah was a fable or a legend.

Nathan Jones: Not at all.

Tim Moore: It was a truthful narrative account, a historical account that Jesus referenced as prophetic to Himself. You know that is a great example, Nathan. And casual Christians also fall prey to the idea that maybe Adam was just a mythological figure, perhaps representing some kind of proto-human being that evolved from some kind of pre-human race, over eons of time. But that reflects their secular education, not the biblical truth. Jesus also affirmed that Adam was a real person, as created by God, and partnered with a real Eve. And so, the Bible is true if we will just believe and take God at His word.

Nathan Jones: You taught that in Awana didn’t you?

Tim Moore: Yes, as a matter of fact I think that some people try to separate the historical truth of Scripture from what they’ve learned. And I learned that in a powerful way.

Years ago, my wife asked me to teach through the Old Testament to a group of Awana children. They were studying Scripture; this was third and fourth graders. And she said, “Can you put all the stories of the Old Testament together in sort of the over arching narrative?” And I was delighted to do so. So, we started, as we are going to, in the beginning, and after just a few weeks we had worked our way up through Noah and the Flood, and I told how the Lord led pairs of animals to come to be preserved on the Ark and that they were saved through the Flood, and of course repopulated the earth. And as I mentioned there would have been dinosaurs and all sort of other creatures that we don’t always see today, they are extinct, but they were certainly present in that day and age.

And I had a couple of senior saints of the church who pulled me aside afterwards. They were in the room and they said, “Do you mean to tell me you believe dinosaurs lived at the same time as human beings?” And I said, “Of course.” And they said, “Well, where did you get that idea?” And I said, “Well, Scripture says that the Lord created the land animals on day six, at the same day He created man. And there are references in the book of Job, to behemoth, which sounds just like a land dinosaur, and to leviathan which sounds like a sea creature that we would call a dinosaur today. And those were in existence during the time of Job.” So, I said, “Yes, I believe the Bible.” And they said, “Well we thought dinosaurs lived billions of years ago, long before mankind.” And I asked where did you get that idea?” And they said, “Well, we learned it in school.” And I think this demonstrates that oftentimes people do not connect their biblical knowledge, with what they have accepted as the world’s account of history, even for Creation itself. But really God’s eyewitness testimony is valid and true, and should be our only source.

Nathan Jones: Right. Because often people separate their scientific beliefs from their religious beliefs, as if they are two separate camps. But then you go to some of the greatest scientists in past history, and some of today, and you realize that the order of nature shows there had to be an architect. Just like the Bible is perfectly sculpted with these Christophanies that point to Jesus, that we are talking about, great scientist of history have noticed that there is an order in creation.

Like for instance, Galileo, who developed orbital mechanics. And Isaac Newton, who spent more time studying the Bible than on his scientific experiments but he developed the laws of gravity and motion, he invented calculus, oh, my goodness, and built the first reflecting telescope. Robert Boyle, who developed laws of gas pressures. There was Michael Faraday, who began to understand a link between light and magnetism. Gregor Mendel, who pioneered the science of genetics. One of my favorites, George Washington Carver, who improved agriculture throughout the United States and the world based on his experiments with, of all thing’s peanuts. And Francis Collins, who directed the National Human Genome Research Institute for 15 years.

Tim Moore: You know the beautiful thing is, all of those scientists that you cite, and really all of the early scientist were avid Christians who believed that a God of order had established a world, a creation with order that could be understood. And that is why they investigated and researched, and discovered so many truths about our natural world.

But one of the scientists you list is a personal hero to me. And that is George Washington Carver, because he was born into slavery but found true freedom in Jesus Christ. He boldly shared his faith, throughout his life at every opportunity. And one time in the 1930’s he was invited to testify before the House Ways and Means Committee. He was given ten minutes to offer testimony, and at the end of his time the chairman of that committee said, “Well, this is so fascinating, you take as much time as you want.” An hour and forty-five minutes later, Dr. Carver finished and the chairman said, “My goodness, where did you learn all these things about the peanut?” And George Washington Carver response, you can go back and read the testimony of that committee. He said, “I learned it from and old book.” And the chairman asked “What book?” And Carver replied, “The Bible.” The Chairman asked, “Does the Bible really talk about peanuts?” And Dr. Carver replied, “No, Sir, but it tells about a God who made the peanut. I asked Him to show me what to do with the peanut, and He did.” You know Nathan, George Washington Carver took the Lord at His Word, literally. And that determination to take God at His Word, from beginning to end, is why we are launching this series.

Nathan Jones: Well, Tim, as we go through this series about Jesus in the Old Testament, how should we approach it? How are we going to do that? Are we going to do it in the order of the 39 Old Testament books as we see in Western style? Or the Jewish Bible, are you going to break it up into literary segments?

Tim Moore: Well, what we are going to do is we are going to follow the outline of Scripture as you have it in your Bible. The order of the books that the editors have put together. And they are arranged in the original Pentateuch, and then with the wisdom books, the historical books, the prophetic books. So, we are going to follow the order of the Bible, but as we do so, we are also going to provide you with a timeline relatively demonstrating where in human history these various book, events, and individuals would have fallen in our own human timeline. Because the reality is that the editors of our Bibles did not always insert the books in chronological order.

Nathan Jones: When I was first studying chronology in the Bible, it just blew my mind to learn that Job, which is found in the wisdom books, actually he was a contemporary living at the same time as Abraham and Isaac. So, you should actually find Job in Genesis, but he’s there much later in the Bible. So, I always found it interesting how us Westerners, especially Americans, tend to look at things chronologically from beginning to end. But if you go to other parts of the world, more the eastern mindset they tend to look at things more event oriented, so their Bibles are laid out differently than ours.

Tim Moore: Oftentimes. You know, Nathan, in order to get a picture of where particular books, or biblical accounts, fall in human history, we will reference this timeline from time to time. Our media and graphics team has done their usual fantastic job in creating this visual aid to our dialogue. We have to give a shout out of thanks to Dr.’s Ed Hindson and Tommy Ice for their book, “Biblical Timelines” and to their Christian publisher, Harvest House, which gave us permission to use their wonderful graphics. But even as we share approximate dates to help you understand where the Old Testament books, incidents, and individuals fell in, we want you to understand that we are not emphatic about the exact dates. We just want to give you a relative understanding of where those events occurred in human history.

Nathan Jones: And Tim, you’ve got planned out some very interesting tools that accompany this study to help people in it. Can you tell us about it?

Tim Moore: We certainly do. We are going to be providing on our website a template that helps you record a key verse each week. So, for instance next week we will be Genesis 1 & 2. We would like you to read in advance Genesis 1 & 2 and let the Holy Spirit lay on your heart a key verse that captures that entire segment of Scripture. You record that on this page, and as you go down through the weeks, all those key verses when you string them together, will act like an arch pointing to Jesus Christ. Nathan, and I will also be picking out key verses so we will be following along with you, and sharing those with you on a week-to-week basis. We also want to share another resource that is available from Lamb & Lion Ministries. Although we are not following Dr. Reagan’s “Christ in Prophecy” book exactly, it provides a deep dive to help you understand where Jesus falls in Bible prophecy. So, for those of you who want to dive even deeper to help build a foundation for what we are going to be exploring through the Old Testament we would recommend this following book.

Part 2

Nathan Jones: Tim, a little earlier you talked about an overarching narrative, or a metanarrative, what exactly is that?

Tim Moore: Well, it is kind of like if you went to the forest and you start examining individual trees, and never realize that there is an entire forest I’m standing in. Sometimes we look at individual stories, God’s stories in Scripture, without realizing that they all blend together into an overarcing, or overarching narrative that is His story pointing to Jesus Christ. And so, this is true is so many different ways. Of course, each of us has our own story. And the Lord weaves and blends our story, together with His story, and provides glory to Himself obviously.

Nathan Jones: Oh, that is beautiful. Well, maybe, I think people would like to know, what is your story? How did you encounter the Jesus of the Old and New Testament? What is your testimony?

Tim Moore: Alright, well, my own personal testimony is I grew up in a Christian home. I fortunately had Christian parents who raised me in the fear and admonition of the Lord. And at an early age I understood who Jesus Christ was. I went to Sunday School, and Children’s Church and all those other things. But there was a dramatic moment in my life, I was very young, I was about eight years old when I came to understand fully that I was a sinner. I was hopeless in my own sins. I couldn’t obey my parents adequately; I certainly couldn’t obey the Lord adequately. And it really crushed my sense of hope in myself. But I realized that Jesus Christ offered me salvation from my sins. And I embraced Him as my Savior. I gave my life to Him. And my life was changed from that moment forward.

Now, I have to tell you that didn’t mean that I became perfect from that moment forward. I have failed in many ways. I disappoint the Lord. As I’ve said on this program, if I haven’t disappointed you, it’s because you haven’t known me long enough. But I have purposed to serve Jesus Christ.

Over the course of time, my parents will tell you I inspired to be a preacher, a pilot, or a politician, and the Lord allowed me to pursue the desires that He placed in my heart, with the purpose of serving Him wherever I was. So, I was in the military for a number of years, as a pilot. Eventually He led me into a political role. And then finally He had prepared me through all those different avenues into the role that He would call me into this ministry. And yet, I’ve been serving Jesus Christ for all my life since giving my life to Him. And yet, now I do so more fully in this role. How about you, Nathan? What is your story?

Nathan Jones: Well, my testimony is growing up I was kind of concerned about when people would ask me: Give your testimony because you know I didn’t come from a background of drinking, or drugs, or running around with street gangs, or stuff like that. So, I thought oh, that is going to be a boring testimony. But as I got older, I realized that what a blessing to be raised in a Christian family. Both my parents, my siblings are all saved, know the Lord. My father sold books and Bibles between the publishers. And my grandfather got saved out of the big band era. He’s the first one. On my mother’s side all the way back to the pilgrims.

But I remember having a godly mother, who sat down with me and my sister and she shared the Gospel. I must have been like seven or eight. And I remember accepting the Lord, giving the prayer, and having this elated joy. I was laughing. I was like, “Mom, why am I kind of laughing?” Because even at a young age you could feel that the Holy Spirit moved in you.

Well, that was before the age of accountability. So, by the time I turned to be 12 years old I was in Brigade Boys at the time, and they took us to this horrible movie, babies burning in Hell, they were trying to terrorize us to accept the Gospel. I ran up front and I accepted Jesus again. But I was sure of it then.

By 16, I realized I needed to get baptized. I didn’t believe that baptism was necessary for salvation, but the Lord set as an example, so that we should follow. So, I went to the Tennessee River and I got baptized. Years later I would be baptized in the Jordan River.

So, I was going to go to college, and I went to Penn State University, I was going to be an astronaut. I was going to go through the sciences track. I was taking advance Calculus and Physics, and I just couldn’t hack it. So, I took a year off and worked at a restaurant and I was lost. So, I am like, “Lord, what do you want of me?”

Well, we had a director of a Christian camp in Alaska called Echo Ranch Bible Camp, he came to our church and he said, “Hey, I need counselors to come out to Alaska and share the Gospel with children.” I was like I need a change of pace, so I went with him, accepted the calling and went up as a summer missionary. And it just totally changed my life. I realized that the Lord had called me to full-time ministry. Some of the fellow counselors there were also students at Philadelphia Biblical University, so I was like, okay that is where I was going to go. And the Lord set that path right because that is where I met my wonderful wife, Heather, and I knew I was going to get into ministry.

So, for two years after graduation I went and worked for a mission board. We were going to become missionaries to Brazil and work with street children. And the director of the ministry was like, “Well, I think you need to get some real-world experience first.” Well, I quickly learned that a Bible degree does not get you a real-world job. So, at the time the internet was burgeoning, and starting so I went to tech school and I started learning about the internet and how it was growing. I got a job at an ISP and I was building all these big websites up and down the East coast. But I was like, “Lord, I’m so far from ministry. You sent me to Bible school. You put this calling on my life.”

Well, through the internet I found a megachurch in Kentucky that was looking for someone to take their website and expand it and all. So, I took that position. And we moved to Kentucky, and for six years I continued to develop their internet outreach. They never quite grabbed onto the idea that this could reach beyond their four walls. Until Dr. David Reagan showed up to speak at one of our events, and through a mutual friend, he said, “I want you to come down to Texas and turn my website into a Web Ministry.”

And Tim, I can look back now, and see, oh, that is why the Lord did that. These are the skills He wanted me to have. So, instead of just a small town in Brazil, now I have an entire internet of 4.5 billion people that we can reach out to. And it is funny that you can look back, like you said, that metanarrative, that tapestry, and see how that thread of my life has taken me to where I am today.

Tim Moore: And how the Lord has woven you into His story. And someday you will understand, and we all will how our lives have impacted others. I will say this, you may have a much more dramatic testimony, but the other reality is you don’t have to be in fulltime ministry. Some of the most dramatic impact on lives I’ve ever known came from Christians living their lives wherever the Lord had placed them. In whatever walk of life. Whatever circle of friends. And yet, they testified to the presence of Jesus Christ in their lives, and they were able to connect with people. The Holy Spirit was able to prick hearts, and impact lives for all of eternity. So, our appeal to you is share your own testimony, your story, and allow God to weave that into His tapestry, His story for His glory. What else would you have to say, Nathan?

Nathan Jones: Definitely. Work on your testimony. Because there is a saying, I put in brochure when we graduated from college, a reporter had said it 100 years ago, but it stuck with me, “Is that sometimes the only Bible people read is your life.” So, share your life with other people, and what is doing with you. And how He has given you a metanarrative as part of His overall picture of redemption for the world, and you can lead people to Jesus Christ.

Tim Moore: Amen.

Sign of the End Times: The Rise of the Nones

Tim Moore: King David testified, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”

Foretelling the modern day, the Apostle Paul wrote, “For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools.”

As Solomon wisely observed, “There is nothing new under the sun.”

Clearly fools have been dismissing the existence of God throughout human history.

Still, it is particularly sad when a society abandons God in spite of His manifest blessings, in spite of their claim to trust in Him, and in spite of calling on Him to continue shedding His grace on us.

But that is the trajectory of faith we’ve documented for many years here at Lamb & Lion Ministries. America continues to wander away from our Great Shepherd. When asked about their religious affiliation, more and more young people are declaring themselves to be “nones” meaning that they don’t even consider themselves casual Christians.

Sometimes the drift is insidious. At other times the rush toward secularism is jarring. That occurred recently when Harvard University announced that the 40 chaplains on its staff have elected an atheist to be the new head chaplain.

Greg Epstein is an avowed atheist who has been the humanist chaplain at Harvard since 2005. He also serves at the chaplain at MIT. According to the New York Times, his focus is “teaching students about the progressive movement that centers people’s relationships with one another instead of with God.”

Do not miss his commitment to the progressive movement. You’re already familiar with outspoken progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cory Bush and Bernie Sanders. This ultra-Left fringe of American politics is committed to unlimited abortion on demand, socialist policies at every level of government, the sexual revolution in general and LGBTQ advocacy in particular, and condemnation of Israel. The inspiration for such an unholy mantra is a vehement rejection of God. They consider the God of the Bible to be an oppressive, patriarchal, white-privileging relic of the past that must be rejected and opposed. That is why humanism or atheism is at the core of the progressive movement.

But both science and geopolitics has demonstrated that nature abhors a vacuum. Eventually, that vacuum is filled with something. That is why even atheism is not a genuine claim to no god and no religion. It is simply a willful rejection of the true and living God. Other gods, other beliefs, rush in to fill that void. As I’ve said many times, I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist.

Sadly, because Harvard is so influential in the educational sphere, its drift from its Christian roots into a full-fledged progressive oblivion will impact other institutions. You can expect that other Ivy league schools will soon follow suit, for which of them wants to be affiliated with something so passe as Christianity. And then other public colleges and universities will head down the same path. But, in truth, they already are.

There is another passage that is appropriate given our drift, the societies drift away from the true and living God. Solomon also wrote, “A wise person’s heart directs him toward the right, but the foolish person’s heart directs him toward the left.”

At Lamb & Lion Ministries, we are not espousing a particular political party, but we can clearly discern that the Left in America has become hostile toward Christianity and is in full rebellion against God, against His Word, and against His Anointed. They are eagerly sowing the wind in our nation. Soon we will all reap the whirlwind.

This is Tim Moore for Lamb & Lion Ministries saying, “Godspeed!”

End of Program