A wildly popular and influential pastor of a church the size of a small town wants his congregation and all the pastors who come to his training sessions to become like him: separate themselves from the O. T. (!) The basis for his burning obsession is this claim: “The early Christians, including the Apostles didn’t have a Bible for 400 years and they turned the world upside down without one. It’s true that they turned the ancient world upside down but it’s fable that they and the Apostles didn’t have a Bible. He goes on to say that when they did have a Bible, it was “hastily cobbled together.”
The pastor doesn’t stop there; he goes on to train the people and the pastors to say that our faith doesn’t depend on the Bible’s being infallible. He says, “If you believe our faith depends on an infallible book, good luck with that.” This is dangerous territory.
BACK IN CHURCH HISTORY: MARCION (BORN 85 AD; EXCOMMUNICATED IN 144 AD.
The rejection of the O. T. began early in church history:
“This is especially true of Marcionism, with its distaste for an angry God, its optimism about human improvement, and its eagerness to set aside the Bible Jesus read. From Red Letter Christianity to recent comments about our need to “unhitch” from the Old Testament, Marcionism is the evergreen heresy.
“So who was Marcion and why does his revisionist project still resonate?
“Marcion was born in Sinope in AD 85 in the northern province of Pontus (in what is now Turkey) on the coast of the Black Sea. Marcion, the son of a bishop, was an intelligent, capable, hard, unbending, vain, rich, ambitious man. He made his way to Rome sometime between AD 135 and 139 and was accepted as Christian into the church there. He even gave a large gift to the congregation—200,000 sesterces (worth more than a hundred year’s wages). His stint in the church at Rome, however, did not last long. He was formally excommunicated in AD 144 and his lavish gift promptly returned.
“Marcion was one of the most successful heretics in the early church. He was opposed by everyone who was anyone. For nearly a century after his death, he was the arch-heretic, opposed by Polycarp (who called him the firstborn of Satan), Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement, Tertullian, Hippolytus, and Origen. He was one of the few heretics that the Greek and Latin Christians united in condemning.”
DID THE APOSTLES AND THE EARLY CHURCH HAVE A BIBLE?
Let’s examine he question, “Did the early church and the Apostles have a Bible?” Answer, of course they did! It wasn’t the complete Bible we have today. Revelation was progressively given.
We start way, way back to Moses, who, during the 40-year wilderness wanderings of Israel, was moved along by the Holy Spirit to write Genesis – Deuteronomy. At the moment Moses finished Deuteronomy, Israel had the Bible. Over time, the Holy Spirit moved David, Solomon, the prophets, Major and minor, among others like Joshua to inscribe God’s Word. Then we have a fascinating example of during the reign of King Josiah finding the Bible in the Temple as recorded in II Kings 22:1-13. Not only did they find it, not only could they read it (literacy) but they also were convicted by its being lost and it resulted in a revival in Israel. When Isaiah finished his majestic work, we have in Is. 53 the most complete and in-depth explanation of the Atonement in the entire Bible. The Apostles used that chapter to explain what happened for those three hours on the cross.
THE APOSTLES DEPENDED ON THE O. T. TO PROVE JESUS WAS THE MESSIAH
In the very first evangelistic sermon in the Church Age, Peter uses the O. T. to prove his point when he quotes Joel 2:14-21. Then in Acts 2:25-28, he quotes David again in 2:30-31. And again in 2:34. In Acts 4:11, Peter, speaking to the religious authorities said, “He is the stone which was rejected by you, the builders, but which became the chief corner stone, quoting Ps. 118 which he told them Jesus fulfilled makes no sense at all without the OT. In I Peter 1:16, draws on the OT to say, “Because it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” In Acts 4:15, Peter points out that what David wrote was by the Holy Spirit: “who by the Holy Spirit, through the mouth of our father David Your servant, said, ‘Why did the Gentiles rage,” quoting Ps. 2.
From that we move to II Tim. 3:16: “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;” so, since that is true, that means the Major and Minor prophets, Isaiah and Obadiah, and Habakkuk are profitable and inspired. What did the resurrected Christ do with those 2 men traveling to Emmaus? Luke 24:27, 44: “Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Script“. . . These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” In Jn. 5:31, Jesus said, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me.” He also said that “Scripture [the OT} cannot be broken.”
GETTING DOWN TO BASICS
Without the OT, we would have no idea what “Messiah” means. Does it mean some “anointed one” or is THE MESSIAH predicted more than that? Then, to stay basic, and you can’t get more basic than the gospel, we read, “For I delivered to you [b]as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
SO WHAT?
We see that we can’t understand the words and works of Jesus without the OT as we see from Luke 4: 16-21. And consider this: we have no idea what John the Baptist or Jesus and the Apostles were talking about when they said, “Behold the Kingdom of God is at hand?” Without the OT, we would have to ask, “What kingdom are you talking about ?
We are to be students of the Word. The Word is much more than 27 books. Now, we are ready to begin our series on “The Prophets.”
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