A Response to Martyr Made's (Darryl Cooper) Easter Podcast
Finding Jesus in the ashes with us, healing our sores.
Dear Darryl
Thank you for posting your Easter message in
podcast. We genuinely appreciate your podcasts. Your empathy and honesty with all the complex subjects and topics you address come through, and we greatly respect your work.
You mentioned upfront that your beliefs are unorthodox, which I respect. As Christ said during an interaction with a scribe, “You are not far from the gospel”.
Suffering is what brings us to Christ. When we suffer, we enter into Christ’s suffering. Suffering is what makes us human, empathetic, and honest. I know you have experienced suffering too, which is why your podcasts are as compassionate as they are. Scripture tells us, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.” 2 Corinthians 1:3-5
The scriptures are the Word of God; they all point to Christ and His work on the cross. Job is probably the oldest written book in scripture and already points to Christ. I am unsure which scholars date Job to the sixth century BC, but that is not what Christian scholars teach. The language is more archaic than any other Old Testament book; some date Job to be a contemporary or even before Abraham, so before Moses and Torah, yes, but armed with the promises of scripture up to that point, from Genesis 1 to approximately Genesis 22.
As with so much in scripture, Job is a type and shadow of Christ: the Innocent Man Who is punished, and a sacrifice acceptable to God. The scriptures only make sense when one understands this. Job held to the promise of the Messiah given in Genesis 3:15, which is why, after all his suffering, he was able to say, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has thus been destroyed my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me.” This is the promise you are searching for in Job.
Your concern with Abraham sacrificing Isaac is another example. This was a shadow of God sacrificing His son. When Abraham and Isaac leave the men to travel three days to the mountain of the Lord, he specifically states that he and his son will return. Abraham knew that the promised Messiah would come from his bloodline, specifically from Isaac, so he knew that Isaac would return to life. The ram caught in the thicket, which Abraham eventually sacrifices, is another shadow of the promised Christ. Remember: Abraham believed God, and that was reckoned to him as righteousness.
Other records outside scripture appear to be parallels, but those came later and borrow from Job, not the other way around. The many flood accounts you referenced worldwide make sense because each person has a vague history of the truth, but all truth and context are found in the Bible. When you compare those accounts with the scripture, the latter has more substance. The Flood, a historical event referenced by Jesus in Luke 17, is also a type and shadow of Christians being baptized into Christ’s death and raised again to new life (see 1 Peter 3:18-22).
You raised concerns about using the word “day” in Genesis. Even more fascinating than this is that you will also notice that Light is created on the first day, but that our light sources only come days later. This theme is continued throughout the scriptures, added onto by authors over the space of thousands of years, and culminating in St. John’s declaration in Revelation 21:23, that in the new heaven and new earth, “the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.” Once again, the whole of scripture hangs on Christ and only has its meaning in Christ.
You say Christians take the scriptures literally and express concern about this. But that is because Jesus took them literally and regarded the events you mentioned as history. We believe Christ is God, so we believe He was there with Adam, with Abraham, with Job, with Jonah etc. For example, Psalm 110:4 says of Christ, The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” Jesus references this Psalm when confronting the Pharisees in Matt 22:44, and the writer of Hebrews adds context in Hebrews 5:7-9.
Job and Melchizedek came after Noah, so they would have been under the Noahide covenant, not the covenant of Eden. That covenant is mentioned in Genesis 8. The early men of God looked forward to the promised messiah with the revelation that God had given them up to that point, just as we look back to the promised messiah with all that scripture has given us and with the hope of eternal life in Christ.
God does not change, the Old Testament only seems strange when taken out context from the New Testament. God’s absolute wrath is meted out onto Christ, that is why Christ had to die – to take God’s wrath upon Himself. Every punishment detailed in the Old Testament shows how seriously God takes sin. The Israelites were given the oracles of God, and if they had trusted in them, they would have seen God’s mercy. By not believing His promises, they instead experienced His anger. The giving of the quail is a shadow of Christ giving us His body and blood to eat and drink. We cannot take this sacred meal unworthily without encountering His wrath (see 1 Corinthians 11:27-30).
Your examples of God appearing in the Old Testament reference the preincarnate Christ. The sacrifices were all shadows of Christ's final and absolute sacrifice, which is why Jesus tells the Pharisees, “Go and see what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice’” (Matthew 9:13, quoting Hosea 6:6).
All these examples are dealt with in the book of Hebrews. It gives the clearest explanation of how the Old Testament foreshadows the New. Job’s suffering, too, finds its fulfillment and meaning in Christ’s. As the author of Hebrews writes,
“In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.” (Hebrews 5:7-10)
My prayer for you,
, is that a good pastor come alongside you to help you with your questions, and to lead you into the right knowledge of the work of Jesus the Christ: that one thing needful. I would be very happy to suggest someone who would be a good fit and reasonably close to you in Idaho.God bless your discovery of the Christ who created the world and made satisfaction for all its accumulated and future sins to propitiate the wrath of God.
Well done with His love and truth. He is Risen!
Well-done, indeed. You are correct to see the Book of Job as so important in understanding the Bible and positiing it as possibly the first-written book of scripture.