Advent 2019

As this table shows, the Hebrew (Jewish) Bible and the Christian Bible are arranged in slightly different order. Jesus bore witness to this arrangement when he said, all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms.

“The last book of the Prophets contains the prophecies of twelve distinct prophets, and is known as Trei Asar (תרי עשר), meaning ‘twelve’ in Aramaic. In English, it is sometimes referred to as the “Twelve Minor Prophets”, a moniker that describes only their relatively short messages, but not their importance.” (The Israel Bible)

The last book of the Prophets? Originally the Hebrew Scriptures were written on scrolls. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel were on individual scrolls while Hosea through Malachi were on a single scroll which was called “The Scroll of the Twelve.”

A common way to refer to the prophets is “The Five Major Prophets” (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel) and “The Twelve Minor Prophets.” While minor simply refers to their size (for example, there are 183 chapters in the Major Prophets, 67 chapters in the Twelve; 4,440 verses in the Major Prophets, 1,050 in the Twelve; Isaiah alone has 66 chapters and 1,291 verses!), the words major and minor bear a connotation of importance, as if Isaiah was more inspired than Hosea, which is not true. Therefore I choose to refer to Hosea through Malachi as The Scroll of the Twelve or just The Twelve.

“In the traditional Jewish canon these works are arranged in what was thought to be their chronological order: (1) the books that came from the period of Assyrian power (Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah), (2) those written about the time of the decline of Assyria (Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah) and (3) those dating from the post-exilic era (Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi)” (Biblica: The International Bible Society). This is their order in our Bibles as well. I encourage you to read these twelve prophets, they are full of encouragement, exhortation, and edification.

This Advent Season I am taking a look at Christ in the Scroll of the Twelve, to see what they say about the Messiah or Christ. There are three types of prophecies found here concerning Christ and the gospel: (1) personal prophecies of Christ; (2) prophecies of Messianic times; (3) prophecies that speak of New Testament or gospel truths.

Why spend my time going through these short prophetic books? And why ask you to spend time reading what I found? As we will see from Micah, the theme of the New Testament is fulfilled. The Gospel did not spring up on its own, out of the clear blue sky. Throughout the Old Testament God promised Israel a Savior, a Deliverer, the Messiah, and the New Testament is the record of the fulfillment of those promises. I write hoping to strengthen the faith of the Christian, for we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty...We have also the more sure word of prophecy: whereunto ye do well that ye take heed - Our faith is founded on the prophecies and promises God gave the Jews in the Old Testament. I also hope to help those who do not believe in Christ to see the reasonableness of our faith, and thus encourage them to believe in Jesus.

There are those who would cut us off from the Old Testament. They tell us it is irrelevant to the Gospel. But as I said above, the New Testament sprang out of the Old, it is founded on the Old, it is the fulfillment of the Old. Augustine said it well, “The new is in the old concealed, the old is in the new revealed.” The Old Testament prophesies of our day of grace, and to truly understand the New Testament and the Gospel, we must know the Old Testament. Therefore, the Lord helping me, my theme for Advent 2019 will be, Christ in the Scroll of the Twelve.

One final note. There are twelve books in the Scroll of the Twelve! So I have three options: either (1) I must be extremely brief to cover all these during Advent; (2) I must post two or three times per week; or (3) spill over into January. May God give me wisdom. Now, let’s do it!

Next: Hosea