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Today's Little Lift
by Jim Bullington
Fulfilled Scripture - - - Jesus said, “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.” (Matthew 5.17). The fulfilling of the Law (Scripture) was one of the specific objectives of Jesus during His earthly ministry. If He achieved that objective, He is Messiah; if He failed in that objective, He is not Messiah. If I cannot know with certainty that Jesus fulfilled Scripture, then I cannot know with certainty that Jesus is Messiah!
The paragraph above succinctly identifies a “chain of evidence” that is needed in order to prove Jesus to be Messiah. Break any link in this chain, and the proof of the Messiahship comes up lacking. As a believer and an author, I am not the first one to figure this out. Satan has long known the truthfulness of these statements. In fact, he has challenged each and every one of these “links”; he continues to challenge them! In order to resist Satan's assault on Messiah, we must defend the truthfulness of these individual statements and the conclusion which they demand, i.e. Jesus is Messiah!
The names have changed but the tactics haven't. Upon this earth, Satan's very first attack upon God was an attack upon His word. Remember how he challenged Eve by saying, “Did God say...?” His very first attack was on God's word and whether or not it (and God) could be trusted. His point of attack is still the same. The difference is in the names and not in the methods.
If Satan can show that Scripture cannot be trusted, the battle for truth is lost! It really, really is that simple. It is extremely sad that over the past few years so many, many people have surrendered this battle! I don't know all the answers but that does not mean that I don;t know some of them. I know that God can be trusted and I know that His word can be distinguished from the words of men. If I could not know these things with absolute certainty, I would lay down my pen and my Christian armor, never to pick them up again.
When men, even highly educated men whom the world honors as theologians, speak in terms of distrust for God's word, they do so at their own peril. God will not be mocked and to state that God either has not or cannot preserve His word as pristine truth is to mock Him! There is a price to be paid for such an attitude; there is a price now and there is a price in eternity. Furthermore, those who continue to show allegiance to such purveyors of error will also reap the rewards of their irreverence for God and His word!
Jesus did not come to fulfill something that cannot be distinguished; He came to fulfill the Word of God. There is an eternity's difference between the willy-nilly, namby-pamby word of men and the incorruptible Word of Truth. God made that distinction and any man's failure to recognize it is not an indictment of God; it is an indictment of that man. Again, one does not have to have all the answers to know something. I do not have to know all the truth that exists to identify error! In plain language, any teaching that either implicitly or explicitly conflicts with the Scripture is error. I don't need to apologize for that stand; it was Jesus' stand; it was Paul's stand; it was Peter's stand' and it is the stand that all faithful children of God must take.
Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament scriptures and we ought to be ecstatic to know that to be truth. To be afraid to proclaim that fact is to entirely surrender the case for Christ. Without the aid of prophecy and its fulfillment, it is an impossible task to prove that Jesus Christ is Messiah. What ever you do, don't lose the war by surrendering the battle for the inspiration and preservation of the Scriptures!
Questions:
1. What is the strength of the argument for fulfilled prophecy if it is a true claim?
2. What happens to Jesus' claims to be Messiah if the case for fulfilled prophecy cannot be relied upon?
3. How has the proliferation of modern versions and the variety of underlying biblical Hebrew and Greek texts weakened the strength of the argument based on fulfilled scripture?
4. If God's word cannot be trusted, can God be trusted? If your answer is “Yes,” how do you know? THIS IS THE QUESTION THAT THOSE WHO DISPARAGE THE BIBLE MUST ANSWER!!
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