Today I’m going to take a break from the ongoing scandals of Cover Up Culture at Bethel and other related churches. Mike Winger dropped another couple of videos since my last post. To be honest, I’m digesting this latest round of expose videos from Winger a bit more slowly, because the subject matter is very dark and heavy, and the injustice of the situation is difficult to process.

I knew there was something rotten in Denmark a long time ago. (That’s a Hamlet reference, not a slight against Denmark, for the record). Even though I knew something was wrong in that culture through personal experience and observations, and even though I hope that all the wolves in sheep’s clothing get taken out of the flock in the coming days, the process of going through this has been triggering, disheartening, and very challenging.

Seeing the whole situation all laid out and brought to light like this is shocking. This exposure is a necessary pain, like when a broken bone needs to be reset, or a dislocated limb needs to be put back in the socket. There are more videos and posts and discussions and revelations to come. This is an ongoing process. At some point I’d like to do a deeper dive into what the Bible has to say about false prophets, false teachers, etc. There are also many verses about how to hold leaders accountable to their congregation and the general Body of Christ. I’d like to explore those topics here in due time.

For right now, I think diving into another aspect of the Bible will help me in my effort to navigate the deeper darker corners of this situation. See, I was raised in conservative Christian culture. I was born ten years after the inception of the “religious right” and five years after they rallied behind abortion as their tentpole issue. (More on that in a future post). I have a genuine love for the Bible, and a genuine love for Jesus. I also have a lot of bones to pick with conservative Christian culture, and have been picking those bones either online anonymously or in person since the mid-2000s.

There is a lot wrong with the church. This “wrongness” was prophesied in the Bible many times, so the fact that it exists shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who pays attention. However, for a long time it has been a blind spot for many who are still inside the bubble of that culture (while also being ridiculously obvious to anyone outside that bubble). I am a Christian who exists outside that bubble, and while I feel it is necessary to warn and correct and be aware of and wary about the false teachings and predatory hirelings and genuine darkness that flies the Christian flag, it is exhausting to focus on what is wrong with the church exclusively.

What keeps me going in pursuing a vision for a reformed church long term is reminding myself why I love the Bible and love Jesus in the first place. One of the main things is the way the Bible scratches a very particular “nerd” itch.

Today I want to talk about the ways that the Old Testament and New Testament cross reference each other. Anybody who has spent some time reading the Bible for themselves will come to see that there are references all over the place in scripture to other scriptures. There are repeated themes and patterns. There are prophecies in the Old Testament that get fulfilled through events in the New Testament. I’ve heard in Christian circles that there are 333 prophecies about Jesus in the Old Testament that came true in the New Testament. I’ve never personally gone through and counted them all, but it doesn’t surprise me, because it happens a lot.

Jesus himself knew about these connections, naturally. He loved the scriptures and was deeply rooted in the word of God. The very first temptation of Christ in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-4) was a challenge by Satan for him to turn stones into bread after a 40 day fast. His rebuttal was a quote from scripture: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Deuteronomy 8:3). He used the same tactic for the next temptation, and when the devil tried to trip him up by tempting him to fling himself off of the top of the temple because of a scripture quoted out of context, Jesus gave the proper context through another scripture. I love that story.

Throughout his ministry, Jesus kept his feet firmly planted in the scripture and remained that way regardless of the circumstances. Several of his last words on the cross were direct quotes from scripture, such as “My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1) and “Into your hands I commit my spirit.” (Psalm 31:5)

Time runs in a straight line. If you or anyone is saying that something will happen in the future, everyone will have to wait and see when the present catches up with the future to know whether or not that prediction was true. Sometimes the wait isn’t long. Often times it feels longer than it should be. Many times in scripture God will promise a thing to happen, and then weeks, months, years, decades, or sometimes even centuries will go by with no sign whatsoever of that promise being fulfilled. For example, Abraham was promised to have children by God when he was first sent to Canaan. He then had to sit on that promise for 25 years before experiencing it fulfilled (15 years if you factor in Ishmael through Hagar, which happened because Abraham and Sarah assumed the problem was infertility, and not divine timing, so they decided to “help” God fulfill his word).

A lot of false prophets use this gap between the word being declared and the future catching up to their advantage by making bold claims with no verification or authentication in the present moment and no consequences for either overtly lying or getting snared by “wishful guessing”. If they say something will happen and it doesn’t, well then maybe it’s not yet God’s timing, or maybe something that the listener did or didn’t do made that “word of the Lord” not come true. I’ve seen those cards both get played a lot.

I’ll be diving deeper on the topic of true prophecy and false prophecy in another post, but I’m sharing this now for a reason.

There is no accountability when someone claims to be predicting the future, at least at the moment when the predictions is made. When looking back into the past to verify the accuracy of predictions? Well, that is another story entirely. Time always tells the truth.

Many authors of the New Testament were very familiar with the prophecies and ancient texts of the Old testament, and they would often reference the situations they had witnessed and were recording in their lifetime to the predictions that were made by authors who were dead and gone for centuries. They would say something to the effect of “this was to fulfill the prophets when they said (fill in the blank)”. On top of that, there are various chain reference Bibles and study Bibles to push those sorts of connections even further. 

I can’t speak about every chain reference and study Bible out there, but I know of at least one solid reference in Psalms that unfolded in real time in real life during the ministry of Jesus and none of the gospel authors who shared that story noticed the connection. Three out of the four gospels shared a version of that story. None of them even hinted that the event was a fulfillment from Psalms.

The story is in Matthew 8:23-27, and Luke 8:22-25 but my personal favorite account comes from Mark 4:35-41:

“On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’ And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great gale arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’

He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace, Be Still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’ And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the seas obey him?’”

And here is the Old Testament passage:

Psalm 107:23-30

“Some went down to the sea in ships, doing business on the mighty waters; they saw the deeds of the Lord, his wondrous works in the deep. For he commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea. They mounted up to heaven, they went down to the depths; their courage melted away in their calamity; they reeled and staggered like drunkards, and were at their wits’ end.

Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he brought them out from their distress; he made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed. Then they were glad because they had quiet, and he brought them to their desired haven.”

The Old Testament account gives an answer to the question that the disciples asked, “What sort of man is this?” The answer is: God. The Lord himself, in human form. That’s what sort of man Jesus was, is, and is to come. One of a kind. The first and the last. You get the idea.

What excites me about this “hidden” prophecy is that God knew when Psalm 107 was being written that one day his begotten son would be asleep in a boat with his followers and would wake up and rebuke the storm and it would obey him. The writer of that Psalm was listing a number of different examples of people being in some sort of trouble or affliction, and God saving his people from their calamity and those people saying thanks afterwards. That author was dead for centuries by the time the story of Jesus rebuking the storm happened.

All three authors of the gospels, who had done the research to share other prophecies being fulfilled in other circumstances missed this connection. But it is still there. Waiting to be discovered by the hungry and the curious, generation after generation. Things like that feel to me like strong evidence that God is real. I plan to post an update about the book series soon, and have a few other topics I’m working on. In trying to be more consistent with blogging I’ve found myself with several partially written posts that I find difficult to bring to the finish line. I’ve gone through bouts of writers block before. I believe I’m coming out of one now. More on that soon.