Pat Thirteen – Confidence in GOds Word: As It Is Writtten

➡ Jim Pugh, through the Ministry of God as Government, discusses the importance of having confidence in the Bible’s authenticity. He emphasizes that the Bible doesn’t need to prove its truthfulness, as its content and power are self-evident. Pugh also highlights the meticulous preservation of the Bible’s original text over centuries, assuring that current translations are accurate and trustworthy. He concludes by stating that the Bible’s authenticity is further supported by the existence of 25,000 ancient manuscripts, demonstrating a uniform consistency of translation across centuries.
➡ The text discusses the preservation and accuracy of biblical texts, particularly the New Testament, despite early persecution of Christians and destruction of scriptures. It highlights the discovery of ancient manuscripts like Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, and the consistency of these texts with thousands of quotes from early Church fathers. The text also compares the abundance and consistency of biblical manuscripts with other ancient literature, emphasizing the Bible’s superior preservation. Lastly, it discusses the abrupt ending of Mark’s Gospel, dismissing various speculations about its brevity and suggesting that the evidence of Jesus being the Son of God was already sufficiently proven.
➡ The text discusses the ending of Mark’s Gospel in the Bible, which some people believe is abrupt and incomplete. It mentions that early church members added optional endings, but these are not included in the oldest manuscripts. The text also points out inconsistencies and awkward transitions in these added endings. Despite these additions, the author suggests that Mark’s original ending, filled with awe and amazement, is fitting and aligns with the recurring themes throughout his Gospel.
➡ This text discusses the awe-inspiring nature of Jesus Christ, as depicted in the Bible. It emphasizes the importance of focusing on Christ’s teachings and actions, rather than seeking quick fixes for personal issues. The author suggests studying the Old Testament to find prophetic representations of Christ, as understanding these can deepen one’s knowledge of him. The text concludes with the idea of continuing to explore Christ’s presence in the Old Testament for as long as possible.

The following teaching is by Jim Pugh through the Ministry of God as Government. If you have never listened to one of our many podcasts and wish to see all the topics taught through this focused subject Discussions ministry, Please go to www.goddessgovernment.com to find the inventory of all the subject podcasts. Now welcome Jim Pugh as he presents another historical study of truth from history, Bible, Scripture or current events. Welcome to our audio version of our spiritual focus Discussion Subjects. This is part 13 of hearing the Word of God. The title of today’s discussion is Confidence in God’s Word as it is Written.

If you’re going to argue against the Biblical position on eschatology, we want you to actually argue against the biblical position and not against some caricature of it from the past. So this is what you’ll have to answer if you want to retain your millennial status. You have to be able to handle what the arguments are in Christ’s prophetic plan, and there are some available around here for you today. But that’s the past and we’re not going there again. We’ve solved that problem. Onto other things God doesn’t try to prove the Bible to be true. He simply declares the truth.

I have never tried to prove to anyone that what we are reading and what we are hearing is God’s Word. I haven’t needed to do that because Scripture is its own peerless advocate. Its accuracy and its truthfulness, its clarity, its power are obvious. As its content accumulates and the weight of it increases and increases and increases and correspondingly, doubt diminishes and disappears. For those not exposed regularly, consistently to the truth and power of Scripture, some rational defenses may help them, can help them. But for those who are constantly, regularly, systematically brought into the depths of Holy Scripture, it builds its own case.

And eventually what you have is concrete reinforced with rebar that you can stand on a foundation that does not move. I’m far more interested in you getting from me the implications rather than application. The Holy Spirit can do the application. I want people to feel the burden of the implications. So while I desire to explain the meaning of Scripture, I couldn’t keep the passion out of it, as I can’t now, because the passion is the fire of my own heart. And the passion is also the desire for the people of God to see the implications of this step into the realm of obedience and no blessing.

Mark is where you might begin, right? Because it’s a newspaper version of the life of Christ. You know the elements and the characteristics of the book of Mark. Short, to the point, very few didactic sections. It’s the story, and it’s quick and it’s fast. The most common word is immediately, immediately, immediately, immediately. And that’s a great place to start. But it’s where I ended. And really, in one sense, I could have died. Because that’s the only thing I ever really planned to do was the New Testament. Not thinking I’d ever finish it or that I’d stay in one church, which would force me to keep moving through the New Testament.

But here I was at the end. Mark ends this powerful history of our Lord Jesus. He does what the other writers do. He ends at the resurrection, essentially. I mean, that’s the last great event. And then, of course, Matthew, Luke and John give us some of the appearances of Christ after the resurrection. But they all sort of end up at this great monumental event of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And Mark is there in chapter 16, verses 1 to 5, there’s the testimony of the empty tomb. That’s testimony that Jesus is alive. And then in verses five through seven, there’s the testimony of the angels who affirm that he’s alive.

And then in verse 8, there is eyewitness testimony from the women going off to the apostles. So you have Mark ending with this eyewitness account, which again, sort of fits his newspaper approach to everything. You have testimony of an empty tomb, testimony of heavenly angels, testimony of eyewitnesses. And it stops. And verse eight ends. They went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had gripped them. And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. That is a passive form of a verb. That is the verb phobio that is used, for example, in Homer, to speak of fleeing or being put to flight.

And maybe we ought to handle it that way so that we don’t think it means they were scared. There was a reason why they fled. And we know the reason because the rest of the writers tell us they fled to the disciples to tell them Jesus was alive. So Mark ends so abruptly. Trembling, astonishment, awe. I mean, look at the verbs in verse eight. Trembling, astonishment, flight, or fear, if you will. The evidence has overwhelmed them. They’re stunned. They’re stunned into silence. And so is Mark. And he drops his quill. The question of confidence in Scripture then comes right to the surface here, doesn’t it? Right to the surface.

I assumed it for decades. My people assumed it. I don’t think I can remember in 51 years anybody ever coming to me and saying, I’m not sure the Bible’s true. I have some questions about the authenticity or the manuscripts that are the basis of our text. I don’t think I’ve ever had that kind of conversation. And the reason is because every text has carried in itself the burden of authenticity and carried it well. Does this change anything? How do you handle this kind of text? And is the Bible in fact true? Beneath the surface of your cherished Bible is a long history of careful preservation of the original text.

We don’t have the first autographs, the actual ones written by the first and only authors of Scripture. We don’t have those. But we have carefully preserved copies of those going all the way back to the time of origins. This particular text of Scripture then gives us the opportunity to take a look at the careful way in which the Word of God has been preserved so that what you read in your Bible is a trustworthy and accurate translation of the original. In the case of the New Testament, preserved over 2,000 years, this is the first element in understanding God’s holy revelation.

This is the first element. I don’t live in this world, but thankfully there are people who have, and they have been our benefactors. They live in the world of manuscripts. The first question to ask is, what did God actually write? What did the Holy Spirit actually inspire? Then I come along at some time later, after the manuscript people and the translator people, I take the text that’s been given to me and explain what it means. But all translations of Scripture in languages are based on the same ancient sources discovered and studied for their accuracy by very careful scholars through the centuries.

And I can say to you that the Bible you hold in your hands is a translation from the most accurate of these manuscripts. It is trustworthy. Thousands of people through the centuries and even into the modern times pore over these elements of manuscript so that what we have has vast affirmation. In fact, I would say there is massive evidence that the Holy Spirit not only inspired the Scripture, but preserved it in its purity through all history. Ancient copyists knew they were writing down, copying the very words of God. And since the printing press doesn’t show up until 1440, you’ve got hand copies of Scripture being made again and again for centuries and centuries.

There are some wonderful stories about scribes who would write one letter and take a bath, then write another letter, take a bath, write another letter. Because of the sense that they were handling the holy word of God, fearful of making a mistake because of the uniqueness of Scripture, because of the importance of Scripture, because of the necessity of Scripture. It has been copied and translated far more than any other literature. For example, all manuscripts in Greek and other ancient translations bring the total number of New testament manuscripts to 25,000. There are 25,000 ancient manuscripts of the New Testament.

Such an abundance preserved by the Holy Spirit through faithful men in the Church makes it possible to reconstruct the original books with virtually complete accuracy. Nothing in ancient literature even comes close to this, to the availability of manuscripts and translations. Nothing in ancient literature even gets near this in terms of demonstrating uniform consistency of translation across centuries. There are about 5,600 Greek manuscripts containing some or all of the New Testament. And they begin in the second century. That’s when they begin. That’s very early. You have Papyrus 52 which has parts of John from the year 100 to 150.

You have the Bodmer Papyri, which is John and Luke from 175 to 225. And then you have the Chester Beatty Papyri. Some of you are familiar with that. The Gospels and acts in the 200s. You go way back, right up against when they were written in that first century. That any manuscript survived from that era is remarkable because it was a time of intense persecution of Christians and destruction of Scripture. So we’re grateful that things survived because believers and their scriptures were being destroyed. When you have the Council of Nicaea in 325 and Christianity becomes established as the religion of the Roman Empire, the persecution ends and starting then you have the proliferation of manuscripts.

They all survive because no one is banning them or destroying them. The earliest and most important of the biblical texts that have been discovered would be what’s called Codex Sinaiticus, for where it was discovered on Mount Sinai. This would be about 350, and it is the whole New Testament, about 325. Codex Vaticanus, that is both the New Testament and the Old Testament. That’s very ancient manuscript. And by the way, both of them end Mark at verse eight. Both of them. Let me just kind of expand your knowledge a little more on this. There are 8,000 copies of Jerome’s Vulgate, a Bible translation from 382 to about 405.

Vulgate means common in Latin. It was a common translation. It was the common translation of the Roman Catholic Church for a long time. So you have 8,000 copies going back to the 4th century. There are 350 plus copies of the Syriac Bible. Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic and it would have been very close to the language that Jesus spoke. It was spoken in places, modern places would be identified as Syria and Turkey and Iraq. There are 350 copies that go back to the 2000s very ancient manuscripts. And when you compare all of these manuscripts, they’re all saying exactly the same thing.

The early Church fathers and I find this fascinating. The early church fathers before 325 called the pre Nicene Fathers, the Ante Nicene Fathers. Those Fathers who were doing so much writing have so much Scripture in their writings that there are 32,000 existing references and quotes from the New Testament. Among the Ante Nicene fathers before 325, in fact, there are so many quotes, 32,000 of them, that you can virtually put the entire New Testament together from the quotes of the Fathers. And it matches perfectly all other manuscript sources. The writings of the early Church Fathers also confirm the accuracy of the Gospels.

There are over 19,000 quotations of just the Gospels in their writings. And they read the Gospel text the very same way you read them in your Bible today. All this provides abundant evidence for the original text of Scripture being preserved and protected as it was passed down. And we wouldn’t question that, because why would the Holy Spirit go to the trouble of inspiring it and then not providentially protect it? There is no form of ancient literature which even comes close Second to The New Testament’s 25,000 manuscripts would be Homer’s Iliad. That would be second in the number of manuscripts, and there are 643 of them.

Homer’s Iliad was written in the 8th century BC. The oldest manuscript we have is in the 13th century A.D. two thousand years later, we don’t have anything between the 13th century and the 8th century BC of Homer’s Iliad. But the New Testament goes back to the second century, butts up against the century in which it was written. Caesar’s gallic wars has 10 extant manuscripts. The oldest is a thousand years after the original in 1st century BC Herodotus’s History of the Persian Kings, 5th century BC Only eight manuscripts remain and the earliest is 1300 years after the original.

We don’t know what happened from the original to the manuscript 1300 years later. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, eight manuscripts. And the earliest again is 1300 years later. And as I said, in case of Homer’s Iliad, with the most manuscripts 2000 years after they were written. And look at the Bible. We have so many accurate, consistent manuscripts that we know without hesitation that what we hold in our hands is an English translation of the original with no loss. No less a scholar than AT Robertson said this. The vast array of manuscripts has enabled textual scholars to accurately reconstruct the original text with more than 99.9% accuracy.

I don’t know about you, but I’m glad for that. There are variations in ancient manuscripts because they were all handwritten. There were errors here and there. The good news is we know where they are because. Because of the comparative manuscript study, errors come from errors or inadvertent omissions or once in a while, an attempted clarification. They are minor, they are inconsequential, they are known. And where they appear, you will usually find in a modern translation an alternate reading in the margin, because we know they’re there and we know there’s an alternate reading. And the scholars tell us that the most likely accurate reading is, of course, the one included in the text and the alternate one in the margin.

And I say that because I want you to know that never in the history of modern Bible scholarship has anybody tried to hide the variants. We don’t hide those because it’s better to know what they are, and you can look at them and see that they’re not formidable. And in most all cases, the better variant is the one included in the text. Now, why am I doing all this? Because there, here at the end of Mark, is this long textual variant that we know doesn’t appear in the original autograph written by Mark, it is in brackets.

We know it’s not there. It’s uniformly agreed that it is not. It does not belong there. It is followed by another short variant in italics in my Bible at the bottom of the page. Why is it here? Well, it’s here for the obvious reason that this just seems too abrupt. It seems too abrupt. What drove the addition is the very, very brief, almost shocking, stunning end of Mark’s carefully crafted history of the Lord Jesus Christ. The language is frankly dramatic. Very dramatic. Trembling, astonishment, speechlessness, fear or awe. The women are in some kind of a state of terrified bewilderment, gripped by the wondrous reality of the Resurrection.

They know he’s alive. They were there. The tomb is empty. The angels declared it. They are speechless. And frankly, so is Mark. I think at this point I need to say it’s fitting that the end is so dramatic and so powerful that neither the women could speak nor could Mark write. And by the end of Mark the way, what needed to be said? Anyway, the evidence was in. The evidence was in point proven. Jesus is who Mark said he was when he started. Mark 1:1, the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God.

This proves it. Case closed. Now some have suggested, and this is where reading commentators gets to be kind of novel because people are trying to suggest why something isn’t there. And you’ll find these humorous. Let me give you, this is the range of commentaries. Some have suggested that Mark would have interacted with Luke since both were in Rome together at the same time. And Luke’s Gospel, already penned before Marx, had been very extensive in laying out post resurrection history about the appearances and the Ascension and the Great Commission. And because Luke did all of that, Mark decided not to really.

Do you know what he was thinking? Anybody here know what Mark was thinking? Absolutely not. You have no idea what he was thinking. Others suggest, and they can go on and on with this, that Peter was Mark’s source. And that’s very likely true from the testimony of Papius. So Mark ended because Peter was no longer available because he was executed. And once Peter was executed, Mark had nothing else to say. Here’s another one. Matthew and Luke. And Luke with the book of Acts already wrote all about the post resurrection detail, so Mark didn’t need to. And like John, who omitted all the pre baptism history of Jesus, Mark eliminates all the post resurrection history of Jesus.

Or you could take another approach. Mark started not at the beginning, he skipped the whole birth narrative. So it’s kind of like him to be brief and skip a whole lot at the front and maybe skip a whole lot at the back. And this is maybe what he was thinking. Or Mark likes to use a few words and so this was enough words and he decided to stop. Some say Mark, Mark intended to leave an open ending, a sort of rhetorical ending, so that the reader would write the end of the story. Here’s my favorite. There’s a lost ending.

Look, there are people who would go on for three and four pages on a lost ending. If it’s lost. May I ask a simple question? Why are you writing about it? You’re writing about a lost ending. How do you. If you don’t know there was an ending, then how do you know it’s lost? And if it’s lost, why speculate all of that in one sense, to simply say, look, that’s all speculation. We don’t know anything about his motives, we don’t know anything about his circumstances. We don’t know anything about what. We don’t know anything about like a lost ending.

All we’ve got is Mark and his words. That’s all we have. And what it says is verse eight, they Went out, they fled from the tomb. Why? Because they were trembling, they were astonished, they were silent and they literally fled in this bewildered amazement. Trembling. Tromos the word trauma, astonishment, ecstasis, a kind of out of body experience, that kind of ecstasy and fobunto. The idea of this being put to flight out of sheer rapturous bewilderment. That’s how it ends. And he stops. It’s abrupt, it’s shocking, but you wouldn’t say it’s incomplete and you wouldn’t say it’s inadequate, but apparently people in the early church thought it was somewhere along the line and they started piling up optional endings.

If you go down to the bottom of the page in your Bible, you’ll see a little ending down there, maybe identified with brackets. This has been universally rejected as having no connection to Mark. Then you have the long ending from verses 9 through verse 20. This has been included in some translations, King James translations, and those that didn’t have the benefit of the later discoveries of manuscripts, and they’re still based on the Textus Receptus. This has been considered as legitimate, but not, as I said, based on the oldest manuscripts. And now in all the modern translations, it is put in brackets to indicate it was not a part of the original.

It wasn’t a part of the original. Let me help you understand. Our translation is based on ancient Greek manuscripts. The originals, the autographs, the original autographs themselves do not exist, but very early copies do. When you get to those early copies, this isn’t there. This isn’t there. It doesn’t appear in the oldest manuscripts. Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, other of the oldest, do not have it. Fourth century, Eusebius and Jerome wrote that almost all Greek manuscripts, almost all in the fourth century, ended with verse 8. Second century, Justin, martyr and Tatian, however, show knowledge of other endings and even Irenaeus shows knowledge of other endings starting to float around.

Irenaeus quotes 16:19, which is in this spurious section. So this ending came into existence very early. Although there was anything but uniform acceptance of it, it starts to show up. In fact, several such endings start to show up as people try to help Mark a little bit with his abrupt ending. There are medieval manuscripts that included it, and such were the manuscripts from the medieval period used by English translators before earlier manuscripts were found. And that’s why you find it in some of the translations in English and other languages. Now let’s look at it in its own self.

There’s enough external evidence to exclude it. I’ve given you some of that. But what about internal evidence? What about what it says? There are just a number of things that we could call to your attention. I don’t want to beg the issue here, but I think it is helpful to us. The transition is awkward and strange. Verse 9. Now, after he had risen early in the first day of the week, he first appeared to Mary Magdalene. Now basically necessitates continuity with. With the preceding verse. However, what follows in verse nine doesn’t continue the story of verse eight.

Verse eight, the women went out, fled from the tomb, trembling. Astonishment grips them. They said nothing. They were afraid. Now, after he. Who’s he? You have a pronoun without an antecedent in the prior section. The masculine pronoun in verse nine expects he as its antecedent. But the subject of verse eight is the women. It is a very awkward transition. And why would Mark then say he first appeared to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons? He here is introducing us to Mary Magdalene. And that’s kind of strange because she’s already appeared three times in the story.

Three times. Chapter 15, verse 40 and 47, chapter 16, verse 1. We really don’t need an introduction to her. Furthermore, the angels spoke to Jesus back in spoke to Peter rather of Jesus appearing in verse seven. It says in Galilee. Yet the appearances described in verses 9 to 20 are all in Jerusalem. Verses 9 to 20 have vocabulary not used anywhere else by Mark. There are at least 18 terms used here that never appear in Mark’s Gospel. The structure of this added section is different from Mark’s normal way. The term, the title Lord Jesus appears here, but nowhere else in Mark.

Reference is made to Peter in verse seven going to Galilee and seeing Jesus. Peter is the source of Mark’s history. But there’s nothing about Peter in the whole ending. And the subject of signs with snakes and poison. And all of that is nowhere in any gospel. Not in any gospel. Where this ending came from, we don’t know. We don’t know except for this. Verse 9 is a summary of Luke 8. 1:3. Verse 10 is borrowed from John 20, verse 18, verse 12 comes from Luke 24, verse 13 from Luke 24, verse 14 from Luke 24, verse 15 from Matthew 28:19 and Acts 1:8, verse 16 from John 20, 23.

And verses 17 and 18 is kind of a strange combination of some of the promises of miraculous power our Lord made to the disciples in Matthew 10, Mark 6, Luke 10, and then some of the phenomena that occurred in the book of Acts and in the letter of Paul. We call 1 Corinthians. So this is obviously some kind of a summary package put together to bring an ending that made more sense to the Gospel of Mark. What is the solution to this? Why does Mark end where he ends? Can I help you with that? Let’s go back to chapter one.

Chapter one. Jesus, going along by the sea, verse 16. Saw Simon and Andrew. You know the story. And he gathers them around him. They went into Capernaum, verse 21. Immediately on the Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and began to teach. What does verse 22 say? They were what? Amazed. Amazed at his teaching. Verse 25, Jesus rebukes a demon. Says, be quiet, come out of him. Throwing him into convulsions. The unclean spirit cried out with a loud voice, came out of him. Verse 27 says what? They were all amazed. Chapter 2, you know the story, the healing of the paralytic.

Jesus forgives his sins. Says in verse 11, pick up your pallet, your bed, and go home. He got up immediately, picked up the pallet and went out in the sight of everyone. So that they were all what? Amazed. They were glorifying God, saying, we’ve never seen anything like this before. In chapter four, Jesus is in a storm. Verse 37. There’s a fierce gale. Waves are breaking up over the boat. The boat was filling up with water. Jesus was so weary, he was in the stern asleep. They woke him and said, teacher, do you not care that we’re perishing? He got up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, hush, be still.

The wind died down and it became perfectly calm. And he said to them, why are you afraid? How is it that you have no faith? They became very much afraid, said to one another, who then is this that even the wind and the sea obey him? In chapter 5, verse 14, the story of the demoniac, the people see this amazing healing. And in verse 15, they came to Jesus and observed a man who had been demon possessed sitting down, clothed, you know. He came running out of the tombs naked. Now he’s sitting down, clothed. Delivered from his demon, or demons that filled up a whole herd of pigs in his right mind, the man who had the legion.

And they became frightened, amazement, fear, awe. Chapter 5 and verse 33, you know this wonderful story of the woman who touched his garment. The woman, verse 33, fearing and trembling, aware of what had happened to her, came and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. At the end of the chapter, he takes the hand of the little girl, you remember, and says, talitha, come. Which Means little girl. I say to you, get up. This was the girl who had died, daughter of an important man. Immediately the girl got up, began to walk. She was 12 years old.

And immediately they were completely astounded. Chapter six. Another time on the water. This time he walks on the water. 6:51. He got into the boat with them. The wind stopped, and they were utterly astonished. Chapter 9. At the transfiguration of Jesus, verse 6 says they became terrified. Chapter 9 and verse 15. The large crowd scribes arguing with him. And when the entire crowd saw him, they were amazed and began running to greet him. Are you starting to get a picture here? Chapter 9, verse 32. When Jesus was teaching that the Son of Man is to be delivered into the hands of men, they will kill him.

And when he’s been killed, he will rise. Three days later. They didn’t understand this statement and they were afraid to ask him. Fear and awe and amazement. Chapter 10, verse 24. The disciples were amazed at his words. Chapter 10, verse 32. They were on the road going to Jerusalem. Jesus was walking on ahead of them. And they were amazed. And those who followed were fearful. Chapter 11, verse 18. The chief priests and the scribes heard this and began seeking how to destroy him. They were afraid of him, for the whole crowd was astonished at his teaching.

And it’s mounting. Chapter 12, verse 17. When he said, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s, they were amazed at him. And one of the most amazing things of all was his encounter with Pilate. Chapter 15. Pilate, verse 4. Questioning him. Jesus makes no further answer. Pilate was amazed. And then you come to chapter 16. The women arrive at the tomb. Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, Salome, they come. And in verse four, looking up, they saw the stone had been rolled away. Although it was extremely large.

Entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting at the right, wearing a white robe. And they were amazed. And then you come to 16, 8. And they went out and fled. For trembling and astonishment had gripped them. And they were silent and they were afraid. I can’t think of a better ending, can you? The Amazing Jesus. It ends as it began, with amazement over the Lord Jesus Christ. And when you stop where you should stop in Mark, you step back in awe of the Amazing Jesus. Every lesson, every miracle, every stunning answer that he gave, every insight, every righteous word, every righteous act fill you with stunning amazement.

Amazing. You should be speechless like Mark, like the women at the Amazing Jesus. And I think that’s how it was for us when we ended Mark. And it didn’t take long for the people to say to me, okay, now what? Now what? We’ve been studying Jesus for 43 years, historically in the Gospels, 25 years in the Gospels, four of them theologically in the epistles, and eschatologically in Revelation. There’s no greater subject. What are we going to do? You want to go back? People said to me and said, let’s do John. Let’s do John. John. We did John.

No, let’s do John. Please do John. They can’t get enough of the amazing Jesus. If there’s anything missing in the preaching of this modern church today, it is Jesus Christ. There are too many little quirky, novel, homiletical talks about how to fix your life and elevate your comfort zone. The great massive hole in the church is. Is the vacuum of the dominating presence of Jesus Christ. Paul says, I’m determined to know nothing among you except Christ and him crucified. If you preach the Gospels, you have the history of Christ. If you preach the epistles of the New Testament, you have the theology concerning Christ.

If you preach the revelation, you have the eschatological presentation of Christ. But it’s always Christ. And the people said, we don’t want to leave Christ. We don’t want to take our eyes off Christ. So what are we going to do? So I said, okay, this is what we’re going to do. There’s one place we haven’t looked for Christ, and that’s the Old Testament. So let’s go to the Old Testament and find him prophetically. Now, I said, my grandkids play a game called Where’s Waldo? You know, Where’s Waldo. You try to find Waldo. You can’t find him if you don’t know what he looks like.

But if you know what he looks like, you can find him. And after 43 years, we know what Jesus looks like, so we can find him in the Old Testament. Now that’s the way you have to go. That’s the way you have to go. Because if all you’ve got is the Old Testament without the New, the veil, right? The veil’s over your face. You can read Moses and you can read the Old Testament. The veil doesn’t go away until Christ appears. But now that we know what he looks like, wow, we can find him everywhere he is in the Old Testament, then we’ll know him historically, theologically, eschatologically and prophetically.

And he starts appearing, by the way, very early in the Old Testament in Genesis 1, because he’s the Creator. So when you have lived for 43 years and focused almost exclusively, of course, on the New Testament and you have been swept up in the glory of Christ, you can’t pick another subject than Christ. So we’re going to go through the Old Testament and I did three messages. I’ll do another one this Sunday to kind of build the bridge back to the Old Testament and then for the next chapter of my life, as long as the Lord gives me, we’re just going to find Christ everywhere.

He appears in the Old Testament and we’re excited about it. The Lord Jesus said the Old Testament revealed him on the road to Emmaus, right? Beginning at Moses, the prophets and all the holy writings. He spoke of the things concerning himself. The disciples and apostles believed fully in him, his death and resurrection only when they understood the Old Testament. The apostles and prophets who went out in the first generation to preach the Gospel based all their gospel preaching on the Old Testament read the Book of Acts. It’s all based on the Old Testament. It’s the only Bible they ever had.

And the writers of the New Testament even base their writings on the Old Testament. So we’re ready not to leave the glory of Christ, but swept up in amazement over Jesus, we’re going to keep looking at them as long as the Lord allows us to do that. You have been listening to a focused discussion of various subjects brought to you by biblical teacher and author John Jim Pugh with God Is Government. For free access to all of Jim Pugh’s focused subject podcasts, Please go to www.goddestgovernment.com. distribution of all of the podcasts and all other teachings are available for worldwide distribution.

Thank you for joining us in this broadcast of our focused subject discussion.
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