Christianity in the Old Testament
In these days when so many are asserting that there was no Christianity in the Old Testament, it is helpful to read the following paragraph taken from the Lutheran Witness:— Professor Fiebig is altogether wrong when he says that the substance and essence of Judaism “as officially taught in the Old Testament” is legalism. The essence of Judaism as taught by the Talmud is legalism; but the doctrine of the Old Testament and the doctrine of the Talmud differ as the true from the false. He who reads the Old Testament so blindly as not to see that in promise, in ritual, in type, and in prophecy, the Messiah who should save his people from their sin is held up to the eye of faith of those who groaned and were heavy laden under a law that they could not keep—whoever does not find in the Old Testament the gospel message of the forgiveness of sin through the blood of the Lamb of God, needs illumination from the Spirit of God before he can pose as an interpreter of the Old Testament. Augustine was right when he said: “The New Testament lies concealed in the Old, and the Old Testament is revealed in the New.” “It is the unexpected that happens” even in the ordinary affairs of the world; and while in ordinary affairs this statement may not be strictly true, it is always true in the dealings of God with those who do not have faith in his Word. Those who set their own reason above faith are doomed to a grievous surprise. The antediluvian world did not believe the preaching of Noah that the earth would be overwhelmed by a flood. Such talk was nonsense to them. Their reason was against it; science, as they expounded it, was against it; history was against it. The wise men of that time demonstrated the impossibility of such a thing. The people rested secure in the belief that Noah was but a misguided fanatic. But there came a day when all their confidence suddenly vanished. “The flood came, and took them all away.” Lot went through the city of Sodom one night and warned his relatives there that the city was about to be destroyed by fire from heaven. To them his statements were but the hallucinations of a crazy man. “He seemed as one that mocked unto his sons-in-law.” The possibility of such an improbable event was not worth their consideration. But the destruction came, nevertheless. The seemingly impossible event was just the thing that happened. The words of God are foolishness to the person who does not exercise faith. The prophecies and warnings which are sent of God are to the unbeliever but a mere outburst of fanaticism. And when these prophecies are fulfilled, the unbeliever is always taken completely by surprise. It is only by faith that we can gain a knowledge of things to come. To residents of San Francisco, what could have seemed more improbable, on the seventeenth of April last, than the statement that on the following day many fine mansions of the wealthy people there would be deliberately and intentionally destroyed by the government troops? No one would have believed it for a moment. Yet it happened. And other things equally strange and unexpected are to happen. Upon the unbelieving, destruction is to come “suddenly.” No researches of science, no deductions of reason, can prepare an individual for the scenes that will attend the closing up of God’s controversy with sin in the world. Only by faith can such a preparation be obtained. “Now the just shall live by faith.”