Jesus, a prophet like unto Moses.

Moses in Deuteronomy 18:15 tells us that a prophet like him will come one day, and He we must listen to. In Acts 3:22 Peter tells us that this one Moses spoke of was Jesus. Stephen makes the same remark in Acts 7:37. So we have on two occasions an authoratative statement that Jesus is the prophet Moses spoke of.

Why is that important?

Well, earlier when I started this thread, I told you I was going to dive into wether or not there is a dichotomy between Old and New Testament prophetic calling and function. It is my opinion, and I believe it to be biblically informed, that there is no such thing as a New Testament prophet versus an Old Testament prophet, as if they are two totally different callings. The gifts and callings of God are without repentance, i.e. they don’t change from one thing and into something totally and altogether different. The prophetic calling as laid out in the Law and Prophets has not been changed nor repented of in the mind of God.

Jesus was and is the quintessential N.T. prophet. Now yes, we are all N.T. believers. I’m not opposed to using the title of N.T. prophet at all since we are in that new covenant, but I don’t use that term to mean that the two are polar opposites as the modern prophetic movement teaches…well, by and large it’s what they teach, for the most part. The basic consensus is that the N.T. prophets job is simply to “stir up, build up and cheer up! Tee-hee!”. Gag!!! These folks on more than one occasion have tried to tell me that the old way of just preaching repentance and confronting sin isn’t really the backdrop of a true prophetic call anymore. Well, since Jesus was the prophet like Moses and was the Author of the New Covenant, then that means that being like Moses isn’t at all a contradiction with N.T. reality. Moses was a repentance preacher, a reformer, law giver and backslider rebuker; one who was constantly putting Israel’s face into its own sin and then into the word of God and then into a place of having to make the choice to follow or suffer under God’s judgment. This is by no means an exhaustive explanation of Moses, but it will suffice for our topic.
So then, Moses says that a man will come out from Israel who will be just like him!! Wait, if a N.T. prophet isn’t like the Old, then how can Jesus be the N.T. prophet and still be exactly like Moses, the Old Testament prophet? How? Because there is no dichotomy between the two!! They are in perfect harmony one with another!!

Now, if you’re going to try and say that the N.T. didn’t really start until after Jesus, your wrong. He Himself said that (Luke 16:16) “The Law and the Prophets {were proclaimed} until John; since that time the gospel of the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it.” So you see here that the N.T. was actually begun in John’s ministry of repentance. Not after John, until John. Let me explain…
Let’s say I hear my kids in the room arguing. I am down the hall listening and finally decide to intervene. My kids will argue until I enter the room, bringing to bear a new order in that room. First they are arguing, but they stop once I come in. Then I, by my presence, inagurate a new order. In the same way, the Law and Prophets were proclaimed until John came. They ended, he began. In fact God cleared the deck for 400 years before bringing John out. He was a N.T. prophet who’s number one message was repentance. He scathed those who leaned on oral tradition rather than the Word of God. Oddly enough that is taking place all over charismatica today. Modern psuedo-prophets are adhered to more than and above the word of God. The bible is taking second place to new revelations that have no foundation just as the Pharisees were nullifying the commands of God by serving the traditions of the elders over and above the word of God. So John was a N.T. man, yet he was shaped and formed the same way and in the same conditions as true prophets of the ancient kind. He was a proclaimer of a new covenant coming very soon, indeed within months, yet he was everything that anyone would expect a prophet to be according to the old order which is still the same template for what a prophet is today. John was a N.T. prophet preaching an O.T. style message. Jesus was the N.T. prophet who was exactly like and superceded Moses. I looked at the word “like” that was used in Deuteronomy. It is translated in the KJV to mean ‘brethren’ 332 times, ‘brother’ 269 times. The word means “brother of same parents; of the same kin”. This is to show that this One will be of the blood line of the Hebrews. But the word “like” is also translated 23 times to mean another, which means “the same as”. This shows us that this coming prophet is not just of the bloodline, but will be just like Moses. He’ll be a blood descendant from the Hebrews and will be just like Moses. The word is loaded with meaning. It is also used in a figurative sense to mean “of resemblance”. Did Jesus resemble Moses? Let’s see; signs, wonders, miracles involving water changing into something else other than water, miracles involving bodies of water, miracles of lepers being healed and then similarities between Moses’ face glowing and Jesus’ transfiguration…you tell me, was Jesus like unto Moses?

I believe that the scripture that most of these “new school prophetic” types use to re-define the prophetic office is found in Hebrews 8:13 and says, “When He said, “A new {covenant,}” He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.”

Hmm, almost sounds like they got me there…ah ha, but what is the context? Well, Paul had just quoted Jeremiah 31:31-34 which was Jeremiah’s prophetic statement that God was one day going to change the way people approached and even came to know Yahweh. It would no longer be a matter of doing written and outward things but would be a covenant written upon the heart and all would know Him by virtue of this inner covenant. It was about God’s love and forgiveness wiping out sin, but it was absolutely NOT about the change of the prophetic calling into a nice guy routine trying to make everyone smile in church! What was it that God changed, according to Jeremiah, or rather what was it that was becoming old and obsolete and thus disappearing? The nature of the prophetic call? No, that doesn’t even come close to fitting the context. It is saying emphatically that the 600 and some odd Levitical laws were no longer going to be the way to serve or know the LORD God. Obsolete is the literal priesthood, now is the spiritual and royal priesthood (1 Peter 2:9). To say that this verse in Hebrews is talking about the changing of the character and nature of prophetic calling is eisegesis, i.e. reading into the bible what you want to believe rather than exegeting out of it what it actually says.

What was it that formulated the N.T. believer’s idea of what a prophet was? Well the only scripture they had was the Law and Prophets so this would have been their only foundation for indentifying a prophetic man in their midst. How did the believers in Antioch in Acts 13 know who the prophets were among them and what was the criteria for spotting them? Subjective revelation that had no foundation in any written scripture? No. It was the Law and Prophets. That was the very word of God to the early church and it is what they preached out of and is the very thing that Paul told Timothy was God inspired and useful for instructing in doctrine. Pauls letters were early on recognized as scripture, but they in no way changed the nature of prophetic calling. In fact there isn’t one single verse to back up that assertion. The only thing that makes a prophet a N.T. prophet today is the fact that Jesus died and rose again to institute the N.T. era that we now live in, but the basic essence of the prophetic call is to bring people back to remembrance of what the call of God is on the people of God when they backslide from it. Repentance is what John the Baptist preached and repentance is what Jesus preached. Matthew 4:17 records the first preached words of Jesus: “Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” Not, “I love you and I’m going to the cross so just accept me and I’ll make you mine.” Neither Jesus, nor the rest of the bible, ever talks of the idea of accepting Him. How stupid and unbiblical, but I digress.

If a N.T. prophet is so different and not even the same as an O.T. prophet, then Moses shouldn’t have said that one was coming who would be just like him and Jesus shouldn’t have been just like Moses in that calling when He knew dang good and well that we would develop theology that says He can’t be an O.T. type prophet in the N.T. How rude…

Now, more than ever, we need prophets of the original kind.
My Lord God over Heaven and earth, send us such ones as these. We need reality and the showmen mascarading down here are so fake…my holy God, shine forth truth and wisdom through men of this calibre….men after the heart of Moses, the heart of Elijah and the rest of the major/minor prophets who were genuine men of God. Change us; put your church back into the order that it used to be in before we messed it up. Do whatever you have to…open our eyes my God, let us see You as You in fact are and not as we thought You to be.

mark jr.

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