OT: Christ Jesus

Christ Jesus said in Matthew 5:17, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill." Christ is the fulfiller of Law and Prophets. Christ is the Prophet of Prophets. There is a need, therefore, for us to keep Matthew 5:17 in our minds whenever we take up and read the older Testament, for it was "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son" (Hebrews 1:1, 2a).

Joseph Addison Alexander noted, in the Introduction to his translation and commentary of Isaiah, that the role and function of a prophet was tied to the general design of the old economy; the office/institution was "no after-thought" but was provided for by the Law. Deuteronomy promises that in time a prophet like Moses will come--Deuteronomy 18  "comprehends the promise of a constant succession of inspired men, so far as this should be required by the circumstances of the people, which succession was to terminate in Christ" (Isaiah: Translated and Explained, 3). Christ is the Prophet of the constant succession of Prophets tied to the general design of the old economy, whose message was, as John Frame has said, "God is Lord"--that message dovetailing into the newer Testament's message "Jesus is Lord!"

Christ Jesus is Lord. Lordship is the final reference point in all predication (Van Til), therefore, Christ is Center. If Christ is not at the Center, if Christ is not the hub of the wheel whose stories/spokes connect back to the Center, then we have made a grave mistake, and this mistake can occur even when the storytellers tell the individual stories about the world, which include the stories about the prophets (e.g.,  Joshua, the prophets of the Book of Judges, the prophetic ministry of the "eminent prophet" Samuel, the establishment and disestablishment of the Monarchy, and the exile in to and return from Babylon) chronologically! We may know all of words to the song, we may understand the Syntax just fine, but if Christ is not Center then our Semantics are off, our meaning is off, and this means the tune is off, too.

The Old Testament is never just a story about God revealing himself to Israel in such and such a fashion at such and such a time. The message and oracles of the older Testament was revealed to Israel by prophets who were servants of and whose office terminated in the Prophet of Prophets. Many teachers of the Bible today do not have Christ at the Center, and this is why they think Scripture is inharmonious, fraught with errors, not inerrant/not infallible, self-contradictory, etc. Utter nonsense, that. If you understand that the linear and merciful story of the law and prophets terminate in Christ Jesus, if you understand that the old economy was designed with the institution of a a succession of prophets that both developed and applied the law/grace of the old economy, and if you understand that in the old economy everything pointed towards the prophet greater than Moses, the Person in whom the prophets terminated and were fulfilled, it is only then that you can rightly read and interpret History, the stories about the linear and merciful Story of King Jesus and His beautiful, perfect Bride, the Church.