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Who Doesn’t Believe the Old Testament? By Bob Myhan It is often said that those who are members of churches of Christ do not believe and teach the Old Testament. This, of course, is certainly not true. In the first place, most of the people who make such statements do not understand the Old Testament. In the second place, most of those who consider themselves Christians do not realize that people are now living under the New Testament. The thirty-nine books of the Old Testament can be classified as seventeen books of History (Genesis through Esther), five books of Poetry (Job through Song of Solomon) and seventeen books of Prophecy (Isaiah through Malachi). The first five books of history are also designated "Law." The law is variously called "the law of God," because God gave it, and "the law of Moses," because it was given through Moses (Nehemiah 8:1-18; Ezra 7:6; 2 Chronicles 34:14). Throughout these thirty-nine books God was dealing almost exclusively with those who had descended physically from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Most people do not realize that the Old Testament predicted a time when it would no longer be authoritative. Before the Israelites entered the Promised Land, Moses told them, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear.” “And it shall be that whoever will not hear My words, which He speaks in My name, I will require it of him” (Deuteronomy 18:15, 19). The apostle Peter tells us that Moses was speaking of Jesus (Acts 3:19-23). In the book of Jeremiah, we have the following prophecy: "Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah—not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord" (Jer. 31:31, 32). The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews quotes the above passage concluding, "In that He says, ‘A new covenant,’ He has made the first obsolete" (8:13). He later says Jesus “takes away the first that He may establish the second” (Heb. 10:5-9). Paul wrote that Christ “has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to His cross” (Col. 2:14). Paul also called it "a tutor" which the Jews "are no longer under” (Gal. 3:24-25). When Jesus told of a conversation between Abraham and a certain rich man who had died, He pointed out that the rich man’s brothers needed to hear “Moses and the prophets” (Luke 16:29-31), because their writings alone were authoritative in the Jewish economy. On the Mount of Transfiguration, however, when Moses and Elijah appeared with Jesus (Luke 9:27-35), God told Peter “This is My beloved Son. Hear Him!” So, when one studies the Old Testament, it sends him to the New Testament. Thus, members of churches of Christ are the only ones who do believe the Old Testament. But they do not look to the Old Testament for their authority. They do nothing by the authority of the Old Testament. Rather, they practice ONLY what they find authorized in the New Testament. & Establishing the Time of the Crucifixion By Maurice J. Barnett Establishing the early dates for important events is necessary to placing later events in their proper places. When did Jesus begin and end his work? Was Jesus crucified in A.D. 30 or 33? Establishing that will give us the exact time of the beginning of the New Testament order. I believe the facts establish the beginning of the work of Jesus sometime in 26 A.D., after the arrival of Pilate that year and some months after the beginning of the work of John the Baptist. The traditional view has been that Jesus began his work in the year 30, and was crucified in 33. Let's see if that works. Jesus was 30 when he began his 3˝ year ministry (Luke 3:23), making him 33 when He died. In the sixth century A.D., Dionysius Exiguus, a scholarly monk, introduced what is called the Dionysian Period. It formulated a starting point for modern chronology: the birth of Jesus in the year 1. Granting his figures, that would make Jesus 30 years old in the year 30, and crucified in 33. However, by the reckoning of his chronology, he placed the birth of Jesus four years after the death of Herod. That throws all later chronology off the mark. The work of John the Baptist began in the "fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea," Luke 3:1. If we count that fifteenth year from the time of the death of Augustus, then 28 or 29 would be correct. But, that doesn't connect with other facts. If we count the fifteenth year from the time Tiberius became co-regent with Augustus, effectively taking control of the government from the aging Augustus, we arrive at the year 26. This corresponds with Luke 3:23 that Jesus was 30 years old at the time he began his work. The first Passover of his ministry (John 2:13) was the occasion for Jesus' statement about his resurrection that brought the response that "Forty and six years was this temple in building...." John 2:19-20. Since the temple was begun in 19 B.C., forty six years would bring the time to 27 A.D. Jesus observed three other Passovers after this, John 5:1; 6:4; 12:1. That would bring events to the Passover of the year 30. For his last Passover, Jesus came to Bethany six days before the Passover, John. 12:1. The events of the text show that the journey had to occur on Friday — they couldn't have traveled there on the Sabbath, and the first day of the week would have been too late for the events of the following week. Passover always came on the 14th of Abib, or Nisan, Exodus 12:6, Lev. 23:5. That date could fall on any day of the week, depending on the year. Six days before that Passover would place it on Thursday. That would make the crucifixion on Friday, and his resurrection the third day afterward, the first day of the week. The March 29, 1974 issue of Christianity Today, carried a dating table, a computer analysis, for the years 26-36 A.D. In those years, the 14th of Nisan only came on a Thursday in the year 30, April 6 of our calendar. So, the crucifixion was on Friday April 7 and the resurrection on Sunday April 9, 30 A.D. Pentecost was fifty days later, Sunday May 28, 30 A.D. To fine-tune the time element of capture and crucifixion, note Luke 24. Verse 1 says it is the first day of the week. Verse 13 says Jesus met two disciples on the road to Emmaus, "that very day." In the conversation of verses 18-21, they tell Him that the chief priests and rulers "delivered him up to be crucified" and "it is now the third day since these things came to pass." Jesus then says in verse 46 that it was written that He was to "rise from the dead the third day." Luke 24 establishes that Jesus rose on the third day since his crucifixion, the first day of the week, which meant He had to have been, Biblically, crucified on Friday. & Objections to Deism By C. C. Crawford Deism [is] the view that there is a God, that He created the world and set it going, and then withdrew from all further intercourse with it, much as a man winds a clock and then expects it to run forever of its own accord. (a) Deism came into existence in the age in which Newton’s concept of the rigidity of “the laws of nature” dominated all science. As someone has put it, having brought God into the picture to account for these “laws of nature,” it then bowed Him out with thanks for His provisional services. (b) To accept deism is to reject special providence, prayer, miracle, redemption, inspiration, revelation, resurrection, immortality, etc., in short, the entire Plan of Redemption that is revealed in the Bible. (c) The concept of an infinite God who would create and then take no further interest in His Creation simply makes no appeal to man’s spiritual consciousness. Such a concept of God has nothing to offer in the way of meeting human aspiration and human need. Such a God is not, cannot be, a God of Love. & (C.C. Crawford, Genesis, The Book of the Beginnings, Vol. One, page 381. Joplin, MO: College Press, 1966)
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