NEW TESTAMENT #1— YEARS AFTER THE OLD AND INTO THE NEW

 I HAVE PRETTY WELL COVERED AND

 WORKED THROUGH THE OLD TESTAMENT.

NOW IT'S TIME TO COMMENCE GOING 

THROUGH THE NEW TESTAMENT.

FIRST I WILL COVER THE HUNDREDS OF 

YEARS BETWEEN THE OLD TESTAMENT AND 

THE NEW TESTAMENT.

Chapter One:

The History Between The Testaments

There was approximately 500 years between the last writings of the Old Testament and the birth of John the baptist and Jesus Christ. The following outline is in part taken from a writing by Leon J. Davis in 1960. The great Persian Empire was used by God to restore the chastened Jews to their home land and to help them re-establish their old way of life. The Jews were ruled by high priests, who acted under the syrian governors who had annexed Palestine. These priests were both spiritual and civil heads of state. An assembly of leaders, called the Sanhedrin, advised the priests and checked his power. In religious life, scribes replaced the prophets to guard and recopy the sacred Scriptures. It was while in captivity that the Jews started to assemble in small groups throughout the land on the Sabbath day, in order to keep alive their religious worship towards God. This was the start of the popular Synagogue gathering custom that was firmly established as a part of the religious practice by the time of the birth of John the baptist and Jesus. The Persian Empire under which the Jews were granted fervour to re-establish themselves in the land of promise, reached the height of her power in about 500 B.C., but in time of her fifth emperor, Nehemiah's Artaxerxes 1, she weakened. The seat of power gradually changed from Asia to Europe, and Greece became the world power. In 334 B.C. Alexander the Great defeated the Persians. afterwards, he took possession of northern Africa and went on to conquer Jerusalem. He treated the Jews well and encouraged them to settle in new cities, particularly Alexandria, Egypt. In 301 B.C., after Alexander's death and a time of civil strife, four generals began to divide the empire. Palestine went to a man named Ptolemy from Egypt, as did Libya and Arabia. Another one of the four generals was Seleccus, who obtained syria and the Asian countries not given to Ptolemy. Hence, Seucid kings were kings from Asia, and Ptolemy kings were from Africa. The Palestinian Jews had their own priests as they had under Persian domination, but now they had to pay tribute to the Egyptian government. Ptolemy had brought many thousands of Jews from palestine to Egypt and gave them religious freedom and full citizenship rights. Greek culture prevailed there and Jews found it difficult to maintain their separation. In about 280 B.C. a group of Jewish scholars began to translate the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek, the common language of the day, for the Jews in Alexandria and other places were now speaking Greek. Seventy-two men did the translating; it was to many a holy and supernatural event; each translation produced the same words and phrases, which was seen by many to be a miracle from God's guiding hand. It took 150 years to complete the entire Old Testament and is called the Septuagint Version today (translation of the seventy). During these centuries from the return of the Jews to Jerusalem under Ezra and Nehemiah and the Ptolemy kings there arose two distinct religious parties among the Jews. They were the Sadducees, who mainly came from the higher class intellectuals and sophisticated members of the Jewish people. Some claimed they were descendants of the priests of Moses' time. The Sadducees did for most of the time, right down to the days of christ, govern the physical aspects of the Temple in Jerusalem. The other part of religious leaders were called the Pharisees. They were religious leaders from mainly the common people. They were very orthodox and as time went on they added hundreds of laws to the basic laws of the Old Testament. By the time of Christ they taught that it was unholy and sin to break even all these hundreds of added laws. It was these religious leaders that governed the Sabbath services in the local synagogues throughout the land of Palestine. The famous Jerusalem Sanhedrin (a governing body of men that set the announcement of the new month day, as well as other religious and none-religious matters for the Jews), by the time of Christ consisted of men from both the Sadducean and Pharisean parts, as well as elders (men who had gained local respect as older wise men of the community) from the Jewish population. In 204 B.C. the last strong Ptolemy ruler died and their rival, the Selucid kings began to control Palestine. It was Antiochus the Great that took Palestine from a weak king of Egypt. His son, Antichus 1, wanted to make a great empire for himself. His goal was to destroy the Jewish religion and its teaching that they had the One true God and His true religion. In Palestine he replaced spiritual priests with unspiritual ones; he outlawed Judaism, desecrated the temple, abolished worship of the Jewish God, and set up pagan worship with its sacrilege and immorality. Further, in 168 B.C. he forced the Jews to sacrifice on heathen altars to heathen gods. The Jews eventually rose up and prepared to oppose the decrees of this king. Mattahias, an aged priest objected and killed a Syrian officer. His son, Judas Maccabeus, became the Jewish military leader and organized people to oppose and fight what they considered an evil and satanic government. Thousands of Jews were killed in the ensuing conflict, including Judas himself. His two brothers, Jonathan and Simon led the fight to bring political and religious independence and freedom back to the Jews. The Jews began to make alliance with Rome at this time, to help guarantee its independence. By december 25, 164 B.C., the Jews had cleansed and re-dedicated the Temple. Civil war broke out in Palestine led by two opposing brothers. One brother, Aristobolus, who was in power in Jerusalem, was planning to lead a revolt against Rome. Pompey, a great Roman military leader. quickly besieged Jerusalem in 63 B.C. and took it over; 12,000 Jews were killed. Pompey made the other brother, Hyracanus, the governor of Palestine and required him to pay annual tribute or taxes, a certain amount of money to him each year. A man named Herod reigned from 37 B.C. to 4 B.C. over Jerusalem and Palestine. It was this man that was responsible for the orders to kill the Bethlehem children, as he wanted Jesus the baby to die. All this and the reason why we shall see later as we go through the birth of Jesus Christ. In 20 B.C. this man Herod began to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem, partly to please the Jews and partly for his own glory. Announcement to Zacharias about the birth of John the baptist In the days of Herod, the king of Judea, one of the priests serving in the Temple at Jerusalem was a man called Zacharias and his wife was called Elizabeth. They were both very dedicated to the work of God and were righteous in the eyes of the Lord. They lived and walked in all the commandments of God blameless. This does not mean they never sinned or made mistakes in their life, for all human beings make mistakes at times. But their attitude of wanting to walk humbly with God and to keep His commandments meant that God forgave them their mistakes, remembered not their mistakes and so were in His eyes blameless. This priest and his wife had no children, and now as they were getting very old, it certainly looked like they would never have any children. They had given up hope of ever expecting to have any children (Luke 1:5-7). But one day while he was doing his priestly work in the Temple, and the people were praying outside, an angel from the Lord appeared to him. He was very fearful and became troubled as to what this was all about. The angel said to him, "Fear not Zacharias for your prayer has been heard by God, and your wife Elizabeth shall have a child, a male child, and you shall call him John. You both shall have joy and gladness, and many others will rejoice at his birth. For he shall be great in the eyes of the Lord. He shall be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from the time he is within his mother's stomach, before he is born. He shall help bring many of the children of Israel to walk in the ways of God, and shall speak as the prophet Elijah, with the same attitude of mind and power of life. At his preaching many people will be brought together to acknowledge what are the true values of life and family. Those many shall turn to the wisdom of the righteous and so a people will be prepared for the Lord to work with" (Luke 1:13-17). The promise that this man John would come in the spirit and power of Elijah had been a promise and prophecy from the Lord hundreds of years before. The prophet Malachi (the last book of the Old Testament in most Bibles bears the name of this prophet Malachi) wrote about a man that would come in the likeness of the famous Elijah. Jesus Himself also reaffirmed that John fulfilled this Elijah prophecy in Matthew 17, which we shall come to later. Zacharias wanted to believe what the angel had said. Oh, how his wife and he had wanted a son, so he really did want to believe the angel, yet Zacharias was a human man and he knew that both he and his wife were very old, and he knew his wife was passed the years of being able to have a child. So he asked the angel how he might know that this miracle would take place. "I am Gabriel, that stands in the very presence of God," said the angel, "and I have been sent to speak to you this truth and give you this good news. But if you need to have a sign, then this is what it shall be." The angel Gabriel continued to say, "You shall loose your voice and shall not be able to speak until the child is born, because you have doubted that which the Lord has promised to you and your wife" (Luke 1:18-20). The appearance of the angel to Zacharias took some time, and so his stay inside the Temple was longer than usual, and the people outside knew that he was taking longer to fulfil his priestly duties. They marvelled at how long he was within the Temple. When he did come out they soon realized he could not speak to them, and by the look on his face and by his hand gestures they knew he had seen a miraculous vision of some sort in the Temple. Zacharias continued to serve his allotted time in the Temple for that season of the year (the many priests took turns of a certain number of days to work in the Temple, what the Bible calls "order of his course" - Luke 1:8), and then returned home to his wife. It was not long after he returned home that his wife Elizabeth got pregnant, and so was going to have a baby just as the angel from the Lord had announced to Zacharias. Elizabeth was overjoyed, yet she stayed around home for five months, not telling anyone that she was going to have a child (Luke 1:23-25). ..........................