Doug Velting
Some of today’s Christians interpret many parts of the Old Testament as fairy tales that God put in the Bible to teach a spiritual lesson. Jesus, however, trusted the Scriptures completely as history set in real time and space. He always considered them as trustworthy facts, not myths.
Jesus acknowledged that Adam and Eve were the first married couple:
Some Pharisees came to him (Jesus) to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’, and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh?’ Matthew 19:3-5
Jesus presented Noah and the Flood as a historical fact:
As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Matthew 24:37-39
Advertisement Below:
Jesus told about Sodom and Gomorrah as real places:
Truly I tell you, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town. Matthew 10:15
He told of Jonah as really surviving in a sea creature’s belly:
For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgement with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here. Matthew 12:40-41
In John 10:34-35 Jesus said, “Scripture cannot be broken.” Jesus was teaching that not only is the Bible’s historical record accurate, but also its prophecy, morality, theology, etc. He stated plainly that the Old Testament is above all man-made traditions, teachings and ideas. No standard is higher than Scripture for what we are to believe and obey.
Jesus told the people of His day that the Old Testament is clear and can be understood.
- Eleven times Jesus stated in the gospels, “Have you not read…?”
- Thirty times He defended His teaching by saying, “It is written…”
He rebuked His listeners for not understanding and believing what the text plainly says. Many of today’s Christians fall into the same trap. They refuse to read the passages of Scripture as true historical events, even when the text clearly indicates that they should be understood in that manner.
Jesus believed that the events written in the Old Testament were true and accurate. If Jesus believed it, so can we.
I love your articles. When I talk about this subject, I like to mention John 5:46. There is a priest in my town that doesn’t believe this, in fact, he doesn’t believe that scripture is God’s word, “except the part about Jesus,” he says. This drives me crazy.