The Bible is “God’s” Word

If you are a Christian, this is important to grasp

So, I’m sharing today because I desire to testify to the Word of God

I desire to communicate what Jesus and His followers tell us about how to correctly interpret the Bible, their Bible, the Old Testament that is.

First, here is a quote from the Samaritan woman: “I know that when Messiah comes, He will explain all things.”

Here’s a quote from the gospel of Luke: “Then he [Jesus] opened their minds to understand the Scriptures,…” and “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”

Here’s a quote from the gospel of John: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth,”

Lastly, here’s my point:

In 1st Corinthians, the Apostle Paul says something that I believe most Christians don’t “fully” understand.

He says that “we know in part and we prophecy in part, but when the perfect comes [meaning when the fulfillment of the prophecies arrive, or when the complete picture arrives] then the incomplete picture is removed because its fulfillment has arrived.”

Most of us read this thinking Paul is saying something like “from now on, or from this day forward whenever you prophecy, it may not be fully clear or understood,” right?

However, this is not what he’s saying. What he’s doing is using a teaching method that is based on a historical truth. This truth is that ALL the Old Testament was a “shadow” of a greater “reality.”

All the Prophets of the Old Testament could only prophecy “in part.” And the “in part” was not the complete picture or fully understood until Christ arrived. And when Christ arrived, He “opened their understanding” to interpret the Old Testament fully.

The Light had arrived.

So Paul was using this example to show that us who are looking towards the second coming of Christ also prophecy “in part” but when Christ comes the second time, then we’ll all see “clearly.”

My point is that I cannot go back to the prophecies of the Old Testament and use the “literal, historical, grammatical, contextual hermeneutic theory of interpretation in order to interpret the future BECAUSE the Old Testament was a “shadow” of the reality. Therefore, I must ask the New Testament HOW I should interpret the Old Testament.

I must now read and interpret the prophecies in the Old Testament IN THE LIGHT of the New Testament.

Therefore, if I discover that the term “salvation” in the Old Testament no longer means being delivered out of a physical foreign land and into the physical land of Israel, but instead means being delivered from the kingdom of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of Light, the Kingdom of God, to the heavenly Jerusalem, THEN I must discover what else in the Old Testament was simply a physical picture pointing to a spiritual reality.

Thanks for considering this.