The Gospels 

Let us begin reading Matthew, which starts like this,

“The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham” (Matt 1.1).

I know who Jesus Christ is, but who are David and Abraham? How can I know who they were, and why it is significant that Jesus is the son of both men, without a thorough knowledge of the Old Testament?

We run into trouble with the first sentence of the New Testament, and it does not end there!

“Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, and Jacob begot Judah and his brothers. Judah begot Perez and Zerah by Tamar, Perez begot Hezron, and Hezron begot Ram” (Matt 1.2, 3).

Matthew continues to do that through verse 16, and in verse 17 he talks about the number of generations between Abraham and David, David and the Babylonian captivity, the Babylonian captivity and Christ.

If Christians do not need the Old Testament, why is it in the Bible?

You can continue to read Matthew and it is constant quotations from the Old Testament, stories from the Old Testament, and references to the Old Testament.

Therefore, the no-Old-Testament people have to cut out Matthew from the New Testament, and if he were alive today, they certainly should not invite him to preach at their congregation!

Let’s try Mark, and perhaps we can get away from the Old Testament there,

“The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1.1).

That sounds like the direction we need to go, so, let us keep reading,

As it is written in the Prophets:

“Behold, I send My messenger before Your face,
Who will prepare Your way before You.”
“The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the LORD;
Make His paths straight.’”
(Mark 1.2, 3).

What happened? To talk about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Mark had to quote Malachi 3.1 and Isaiah 40.3!

We are going to run into the same problem with Luke and John. Someone says, but Don, Jesus lived under the Old Testament, we are going to have stuff like that. Oh, that is right, while Jesus was delivering His religion, He lived under the Law of Moses and the religion of Jesus Christ would not be effective until sometime after He died on the cross.

Therefore, we have to remove the four gospels from our teaching and Bibles, that is, if we think that Christians should not have anything to do with the Old Testament.

Related Articles

• Messianic Prophecy Number 9: Gen 14.18 – Melchizedek, a Type of Christ (theoldtestamentandthenewtestament.com)
• Messianic Prophecies and Their Fulfillment (theoldtestamentandthenewtestament.com)