Messiah in the Hebrew Scriptures

Dan Phillips is known for his writing on the Pyromaniacs blog and has served as a teacher, pastor, seminar speaker, newspaper columnist and radio talk show host. I have often enjoyed his fresh insights into the Scriptures, the fruit of his firm grasp of the original languages.

Just recently, he taught two sessions at the 2011 Ashford Bible Conference in my homeland of England. His theme was “Messiah in the Hebrew Scriptures.”

I am sure that if you enjoy rich and in depth Bible teaching, you will be very much blessed by watching the two videos below.

Dan writes about his approach to this venture saying:

I’d been very anxious in my preparations… poring over reams of volumes and articles on Messianic prophecy, as well as reviewing the Scriptures themselves. How to approach it? How even to touch such a massive, vital topic, over which my betters have labored for millennia with such varying results and degrees of success?

Through it all, my fundamental driving conviction came from passages such as John 5:39-40, 45-47:

You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life…. Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”

You could say this is a subsection of my overall conviction, based on passages such as Hebrews 1:1-2, that the Bible is not a secret codebook. It is a communication, from God, to His people, commencing (always) with the original authors and hearers.

These and other passages give me the very strong impression that our Lord believed that the OT, in and of itself, bore witness to Him so directly and overwhelmingly that to reject that witness is to damn oneself. Never does He say anything even approaching, “You know, boys, I can’t really blame you for not recognizing Me. Nobody could! The OT is a book of impenetrable mystery. In fact, nobody could fairly be expected to see Me in it. But just you wait: after Pentecost, the Spirit will help My guys read Me into it. Then we’ll have a whole different ballgame.”

Rather, in saying that Moses himself would condemn His rejectors, He is clearly asserting that Moses knowingly wrote of Him. Not wrote-of-something-else-that-later-was-deflected-to-Him, but of Him, Jesus.

So my challenge was multifold:

1.How to read the Scripture as it should be read; which is the same as saying…
2.How to read the Scripture as Jesus read it.
3.How to show that the Scripture in its entirety pointed to Him.
4.How to set this forth intelligibly in two sessions of finite length.
5.How to do all this freshly, persuasively, accessibly, helpfully, and memorably.

Whether or not I succeeded, God is judge, and you can judge for yourself. But trying was a joy and an education.

In the first talk, I introduce the entire subject of Messiah and of Messianic prophecy, and endeavor to show (in one talk!) how the whole OT points to Jesus Christ. My dear wife says I talked too fast, and I’m sure she’s right. My excuse is that I had a truckload to say, and leaned on the fact that folks could (if they wished) listen to the recording or watch the video. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

In keeping with my conviction, I approached the session not by expounding NT passages that talk about Messianic prophecy, but by going straight to the OT text itself, literally beginning at the beginning.