Lord's Day: January 18, 2025 Preacher: Carlos Montijo Series: It Is Written: Scripture Alone Topic: Church History Scripture: Malachi 3:13–4:6; Acts 3:24; John 10:22–23; Luke 1:11–17; Matthew 11:7–15; John 10:27–29

4“Remember the law of Moses My servant, even the statutes and judgments which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel. 5“Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and awesome day of Yahweh. 6“And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land, devoting it to destruction.” Malachi 4:4–6

• These words mark the end of the Old Testament, the last of the Old Testament prophets, and the beginning of the 400 years of silence.

I. These are “The 400 Years of Prophetic Silence,” the Intertestamental Period

• Although there was a glaring prophetic silence in Israel, there was also great political and spiritual change, and turbulence. No new Scripture was given at this time, though the entire Old Testament was eventually translated into what became the next universal language of the time—Greek.

II. No prophet had come to Israel during that time, no God-breathed Scriptures had been written.

• “So there was great distress in Israel, such as had not been since the time that prophets ceased to appear among them.” (1 Maccabees 9:27)
• John the Baptist

III. Now we have an historical, prophetic, biblical context to the apocryphal writings.

• The issues surrounding the apocrypha do focus on what they say and teach, but especially on how they are regarded and used by religious traditions and churches.

IV. What are the apocryphal books? Do they evidence God’s breath?

• None of the apocrypha claim to be inspired by God; on the contrary, some explicitly claim to be mere human writings, in part because they acknowledge that prophecy had ceased during that time.
• All of the apocryphal books were written during the 400 years of prophetic silence.

V. The apocrypha contain various errors and contradictions

Type

Count

Examples

Chronological

6

Tobit 14:15, Judith 1:1, Baruch 1:2, 1&2 Macc death of Antiochus

Geographical

2

Tobit 1:4–5 (Upper Galilee), Judith 1:1 (Nineveh)

Historical Figures

5

Nebuchadnezzar in Nineveh, Holofernes, Ahasuerus

Authorship issues

2

Wisdom, Sirach (post-Solomon)

Embellishments

4

Judith, Susanna, Bel, Tobit (as parable)

We meet on Sundays for worship at 10:00am:

• ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church
  4712 Montana Ave
  El Paso, Texas 79903

Contact us at:

• web: ThornCrownCovenant.Church
  call/text: (915) 843-8088
  email: ThornCrownCovenantBChurch@gmail.com

Scripture quotations marked LSB are from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com

Lord's Day: January 11, 2025 Preacher: Carlos Montijo Series: It Is Written: Scripture Alone Topic: Scripture Scripture: Luke 11:45–52; Matthew 23:29–36; Zechariah 1:1; 2 Chronicles 24:20–22; Luke 7:28; Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 25:46; Ephesians 2:1–19

49“For this reason also the wisdom of God said, ‘I will send to them prophets and apostles, and some of them they will kill and some they will persecute, 50so that the blood of all the prophets, shed since the foundation of the world, may be charged against this generation, 51from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the house of God; yes, I tell you, it shall be charged against this generation.’" Luke 11:49–51

• Sometimes Jesus was confrontational

I. Which Zechariah?

• Zechariah 1:1, 2 Chronicles 24:20–22, Protoevangelium of James

II. Jesus does not include any martyrdoms from the Intertestamental Period

• Nor John the Baptist
• “So there was great distress in Israel, such as had not been since the time that prophets ceased to appear among them.” (1 Macc. 9:27, after Malachi)
• Jewish Talmud (Sotah 9:48b): “As the Sages taught in a baraita (Tosefta 13:3): From the time when Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi died, the Divine Spirit departed from the Jewish people, as these three were considered to be the last prophets.”

III. Differing levels of authority within the canonical books of Scripture

• Law of Moses is the foundation for everything that follows
• All Scripture is authoritative, but the New Testament is the final written Word of God, making it more authoritative, the final, God-breathed, written Word that divinely expands on, fulfills, continues and abrogates, and interprets the Old Testament.
• Augustine: “The new is in the old concealed (hidden); the old is in the new revealed.”
• Beware: Inverted hermeneutic of Annihilationism, Conditional Immortality (Kirk Cameron)

• Louis Gaussen: “The whole tenor of Scripture places the writers of the New Testament in the same rank with the prophets of the Old; and even when it establishes any difference between them, it is always in putting the last in date above the first, in so far as one of God's sayings is superior to the saying that preceded it (not…in divinity, not in dignity, but in authority).”[1]

We meet on Sundays for worship at 10:00am:

• ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church
  4712 Montana Ave
  El Paso, Texas 79903

Contact us at:

• web: ThornCrownCovenant.Church
  call/text: (915) 843-8088
  email: ThornCrownCovenantBChurch@gmail.com

Scripture quotations marked LSB are from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com

[1] François Samuel Robert Louis Gaussen, God-Breathed: The Divine Inspiration of the Bible, ed. by John W. Robbins, trans. by David Scott, Trinity Paper, 57 (The Trinity Foundation, 2001), pp. 78, 84 .

Lord's Day: January 4, 2025 Preacher: Carlos Montijo Series: It Is Written: Scripture Alone Topic: Scripture Scripture: Acts 3:17–26; Psalm 119:41–48; Luke 24:25–27; 2 Samuel 7:12–17; Hebrews 11:35–38; Romans 3:1–2; Jude 3; Romans 16:25–27

“But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled." Acts 3:18

• The issues of the canon of Scripture and biblical authority are foundational differences between Protestantism and everything else.
• Basil Manly, Jr., The Bible Doctrine of Inspiration, ed. Timothy George and Denise George (Broadman and Holman, 1995).
• François Samuel Robert Louis Gaussen, God-Breathed: The Divine Inspiration of the Bible, ed. John W. Robbins, trans. David Scott, Trinity Paper 57 (The Trinity Foundation, 2001), https://www.trinitylectures.org/god-breathed-the-divine-inspiration-of-the-bible-p-88.html.
• John D. Meade and Peter J. Gurry, Scribes and Scripture: The Amazing Story of How We Got the Bible (Crossway, 2022).

I. What is a biblical prophet? The office of a prophet?

• “All the prophets,” including the New Testament prophets, are divine representatives, who speak for, and, beginning with Moses—write for—God, with supernatural aid, direction, and authority.

II. “The prophets” and “all the prophets” of Scripture alone

• Every genuine prophet spoke, and eventually wrote, directly or indirectly, of the coming Messiah and His kingdom, with divine authority.

III. Does the New Testament also quote apocryphal books?

• There is a difference between quoting something directly and alluding to something, and loosely resembling something as opposed to consciously alluding to it.
• Romans 3:2

IV. We normally understand Scripture and canon to refer to the same books.

• Some early church writers like Jerome, Athansius, Cyril, did not list apocrypha as part of the Old/New Testament canons, although they sometimes quoted them as (lower-tier) "Scripture."
• We have the same Old Testament that was entrusted to the Jews, which Jesus and His Apostles affirmed.
• The entire Old Testament speaks to, foretells, anticipates, looks forward to the coming Messiah who takes away all our sin.

We meet on Sundays for worship at 10:00am:

• ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church
  4712 Montana Ave
  El Paso, Texas 79903

Contact us at:

• web: ThornCrownCovenant.Church
  call/text: (915) 843-8088
  email: ThornCrownCovenantBChurch@gmail.com

Scripture quotations marked LSB are from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com