Later, it was the same Angel of the Lord who appeared to the wife of Manoah (Judges 13:2-25), mother of Samson, whom she reported to her husband was indeed a “man of God” that had appeared to her. Throughout the dialogue at that burning bush, it was also declared that he was no one less than “ Yahweh,” who spoke at that time, causing Moses to hide his face from him (Ex 3:6). Again, it was the Angel of Yahweh who appeared to Moses in the flame of fire in Exodus 3:2. Other instances of Jesus’ appearances in the Old Testament can be seen representatively in Genesis 22:11, 15, where it was the Angel of Yahweh who spoke from heaven to Abraham when Abraham was about to sacrifice Isaac, and stopped him from proceeding. It is certain, however, that this special angel of the Lord is divine, for Hagar “…gave this name to the LORD, who spoke with her : ‘You are the God who sees me,’ as she observed, ‘I have now seen the One who sees me’” (Gen 16:13). The Hebrew word for “angel” ( mal’ak) had the basic idea of one who was “sent,” a “messenger.” Of the 214 usages of the Hebrew term used for “angel,” about one-third of them refer to what is labeled by theologians as a “Christophany,” a temporary appearance of Christ in the Old Testament. This “Angel of the LORD” was a title that stood for his office, but it did not describe his nature.
He came temporally in the form of a human, much before his final incarnation as a babe in Bethlehem, yet this same “Angel of the LORD” is called and is addressed often as “the LORD/ Yahweh” himself (Gen 12:7 17:1 19:1 etc.). These real occurrences, initiated by God, were characterized by the fact that they were convincing revelations of his person and work, as much as they were also transitory, fleeting, but audible and clearly visible appearances. Thereafter, he continued to appear intermittently throughout the earlier books of the Old Testament. Jesus is first seen in the Old Testament as the person who appeared as “the Angel of the Lord” in his sudden confrontation with Sarah’s maidservant, Hagar (Gen 16:7). Then we will sample some of the numerous predictions of his comings. To remedy this, let us turn first to those places where he appeared in a Christophany in the Old Testament times. But sad to say, all too many miss both his real presence in the Old Testament narrative and the numerous predictions of both his first and second advents/comings.
Such an unusual state of affairs is possible because he was, he is and he is the One to come. It is only right that we should find that Jesus was both actually present in the Old Testament and accurately predicted, and that he would come first as our Savior, and then in a later second coming, would appear as the King supreme over all the earth. Therefore, it is not unexpected that we, too, should find Jesus present in the events and the predictions found in the Old Testament. as he, too, saw what was ahead, namely, that Jesus would not be “abandon … to the grave, nor let his Holy One see decay” (Ps 16:8-11 Acts 2:30-31). These are the Scriptures that testify about me.” That should settle the question.īut even more famously, Jesus rebuked Cleopas, and that other unnamed disciple, as they walked along the road to Emmaus on that first Easter Sunday, “How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself” (Luke 24:25-27).Įven King David predicted the resurrection of Jesus back in 1000 B.C. He it was who said in John 5:39, “You diligently study the Scriptures …. There is no finer teacher on whether Jesus is to be found in the pages of the Old Testament than the teaching of our Lord Jesus himself.
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