ANNOUNCER: Since the historical accounts of the four Gospels happened in Old Testament times, i.e. before the crucifixion and before the beginning of the church age, shouldn’t they be considered as Old Testament literature? Hello, friend. Thank you for joining us today here on Grace in Focus. This is the ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Our website is faithalone.org. There you can learn about and acquire a free subscription to our magazine, also called Grace in Focus. It is a full-color, full-content magazine and is published six times per year. And yes, it is free. Only if you live outside of the 48 contiguous United States will you have to pay the postage. Otherwise, no cost and we want you to have it. Sign up for it today at faithalone.org. 

And now with today’s discussion here are Bob Wilkin and David Renfro. 

BOB: Well, David, welcome back. 

DAVID: It’s good to be back. 

BOB: Well, what is that on your head? 

DAVID: Well, it’s a celebration for the 250th 4th of July. I was- 

BOB: There’s been more than 250 4th of July’s. 

DAVID: Oh, that’s true. 

BOB: It’s just since the founding of our country. 

DAVID: Since the founding, right. It’s something I saw at the store to celebrate. I was buying some stuff for- 

BOB: And it’s a headband that’s got a blue band all the way around. And above it, it’s got alternating red and white, fu-fu, fluffy stuff that goes up about four inches. It kind of looks like fake hair. And somehow I’m wearing the same thing. How did you get me to wear one? 

DAVID: Well, I’m very persuasive. You are and you said, let’s take a picture. So we have a picture that- 

DAVID: We have pictures of this.

BOB: Shall I hold it up for the people in the audience? I don’t think they can see it. Now, starting next year, we’re going to be doing one hour long video podcasts. And you will be able to see us. And you’ll be able to see our patriotic headbands and everything. 

DAVID: We are going to keep this for the next July 4th. 

BOB: Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. All right, David. Now, today we have a question about the four gospels. It reminds me when I was at Dallas Seminary, one of my Bible profs had said something about Isaiah 7:14, a virgin will be with child and will give birth. And I thought what the Bible prof was saying was inaccurate. And I remember talking to Alan Ross, I told him about that and that the Bible prof was somebody with a doctorate in New Testament. And he said, he thought that the people that should be teaching Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were the Old Testament professors. 

DAVID: Interesting. 

BOB: Yeah, and you know why he said that? 

DAVID: Well, it was technically before the Church was, you know, Acts chapter two.

BOB: Right. So it’s all writing about Old Testament experiences. In the words, if you think about it, the only difference between, let’s say, Malachi and Matthew is that Malachi is written in Hebrew and Matthew is written in Greek. 

DAVID: And then we’re talking of 400 year gap between the two. 

BOB: And there’s a big gap. But John the Baptist was the second to last Old Testament prophet. And Jesus was the last Old Testament prophet. 

DAVID: I think there’s something to be said for that. 

BOB: So I mean, in a sense, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, although they are writing to church age people, that’s another difference. I guess that’s pretty big difference. They’re written to church age people whereas Malachi and the rest of, well, much of the Old Testament was written to Israel. Some, we don’t know who Job was writing to exactly, right? I mean, it depends when Job was written, but if Job was around the time of Abraham, then it was writing to people before the nation of Israel. 

But in any regard, okay, there’s a different audience. I get that. And of course, the New Testament books, lots of them have different audiences, right? Some are written to individual churches. Some are more written to, they’re called the general epistles. They’re more general nature, Matthew, Mark, Luke. Well, Matthew, Mark, and Luke were written to specific audiences that the authors had in mind. But John was, we know was written to unbelievers, and some have suggested it was written to people that John knew, Jewish people that John knew who were not living in Palestine, hence the explanations in John’s Gospel of a number of expressions, Hebrew expressions, that wouldn’t be necessary if readers were typical Jews. Hellenistic Jews, that is Jews who spoke Greek and very little Hebrew if any, they needed some help there. 

Anyway, the audience may be different. But the question here is, should we consider Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to be in some sense Old Testament literature? 

DAVID: I’ll probably be very radical here. What I think is the Gospels, I think, could be considered, could be—this is, you know, I’m not being dogmatic on this by any stretch—but could they be considered sort of a transitional literature between Old and New Testament? 

BOB: Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, I like that. They could almost be considered intertestamental. If the New Testament started in Acts, then Matthew, Mark, Luke, John would be between the two Testaments. 

DAVID: Which is what, a 400 year period or thereabout? 

BOB: Well, yeah, when was Malachi around 430 or thereabout? I don’t know if there were any books written after about 430, but maybe 400. They call it the 400 silent years, but it’s a little more than 400 because, depending on when you you think Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were written. John Niemela was suggesting that John was probably written, I think, late 30s or around 40. And it was the first gospel written. Now, most people think that Mark was the first gospel written. Other people think Matthew was the first gospel written. But regardless, the four Gospels, most people would say were written in the 50s or the 60s. And they might say that John was written significantly later. 

DAVID: A lot of scholars think that it was written late in John’s life, like 80s or 90s AD.

BOB: Well, they would say like 1, 2 and 3 John was written in around 90, let’s say, and Revelation around that, some people argue that. I think the entire New Testament was written before 70 AD and the destruction of the temple. Because if that did occur, it would be recorded. And on top of that, it seems to me the Lord would have ensured that the entire New Testament was completed within one generation. Like liberals say, some of the New Testament was written in the second century. And it wasn’t written by the people that say they wrote it, you know, they’re pseudopigraphic, that is, 2 Peter, wasn’t written by Peter, it was written by somebody else using Peter’s name, that kind of thing. 

ANNOUNCER: We will return to today’s topic, but to inform you about GES’s online seminary, it is now Grace Evangelical Theological Seminary at faithalone.org/seminary. Apply through August 2; registration closes August 16th for the fall semester and the semester begins September 16th. You can earn an MDiv degree and full scholarships are available with good academic standing through our generous donors. Come study with us—Grace Evangelical Theological Seminary at faithalone.org/seminary.

BOB: I like your point, these are tweener books, they’re not exactly in the Old Testament, they are in the New Testament, in the sense that, like the other books in the New Testament, they’re written by the apostles, but they’re before the birth of the church, so that separates them from the rest of the New Testament. 

DAVID: Well, it’s obvious from the narratives in the Gospels that they’re still conforming themselves to the Old Testament law, keeping the Sabbath and the other laws, and Jesus made it very clear that there’s going to be a New Covenant, and so therefore, the people in the Gospels lived under the law. But a New Covenant was coming, and it turned out not to be that far away. 

BOB: Okay, now you’re getting into other things we’ve talked about before, and there’s the whole question of, is the New Covenant in effect today? And I would say, no, but Jesus did by His blood, make the New Covenant possible so that, like in 2 Corinthians 3-4 Paul says we are ministers of the New Covenant, and I think that means ministers in light of the coming New Covenant, because in Jeremiah 31:31-34, the New Covenant is made with Israel. It’s not made with the Church. So therefore, a lot of people would say the New Covenant has already been made possible by the shed blood of Christ, but it will be inaugurated in the Millennium. 

But in any regard, I would say one thing that separates the Gospels as well is they’re holy biographies, and we don’t have any biographies in the rest of the New Testament.

By the way, another thing, you know how the Old Testament by rabbis and Jewish people call it the Tanakh, because of the three divisions, Torah for the T, N for the Nevi’im or the prophets, and K for the Ketuvim for the writings. It’s also called oftentimes the Hebrew Scriptures. 

I think we could call the New Testament the Hebrew Scriptures too, because the only New Testament author who might have been a Gentile, and even he quite probably was a Jew would be Luke. But everybody else, Matthew, Mark, John, Paul, Peter, James, Jude, they’re all Jewish people, and the fact thy’re writing in Greek instead of Hebrew doesn’t lessen the fact that they’re Jews. Also the fact that they’re writing after the cross of Christ doesn’t in any way change that these are Hebrew Scriptures. A good case can be made that Luke himself, the beloved physician, was probably Jewish, but I don’t know that for sure. 

DAVID: We don’t know. The history just doesn’t give us any details about Luke’s background, does it. 

BOB: One of the key points here is that we shouldn’t think of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as exactly the same as the rest of the New Testament. It’s different. And of course everybody says it’s a different genre. You know, genre is a type of literature, like there’s apocalyptic literature, biographical literature, there’s historical literature, there’s epistolary, and the gospels are a unique kind of literature, but I think, let’s think of them as a kind, what did you use the word?

DAVID: transitional? 

BOB: Transitional books. 

DAVID: Yeah, maybe the New Covenant is not in effect, and I tend to agree. But what did happen in Acts was the Church was created. 

BOB: The Church was created in Acts chapter two. And the Church will end, we know from Scripture, when the Rapture occurs,1 Thessalonians 4.Then we’ll go into the Tribulation when the Church won’t be here, and then the Millennium we’ll come back and we’ll be back on earth during the Millennium. 

DAVID: It’s almost like the Gospels are set up to instruct people. Oh, we have this new thing called the Church, we don’t have to follow the law anymore, but how did it get set up? Well, the four Gospels explain all that. 

BOB: That’s a good point. And the four Gospels not only look back to the Old Testament, but they look ahead, for example, the Olivet Discourse tells us about the coming Tribulation and the judgment of the sheep and the goats, and the Judgment Seat of Christ is in there as well. So we have lots of things that are taught in the Gospels that look both backwards and forward. 

Well, thanks, David, and thank you all. And remember, let’s keep grace in focus. 

ANNOUNCER: Be sure to check out our daily blogs at faithalone.org. They are short and full of great teaching, just like what you’ve heard today. Find them at faithalone.org/resources/blog. We would like to thank all of our financial partners who help us keep this show going. All gifts are tax deductible and very much appreciated. If you’d like to find out how you can be a financial partner, visit us at faithalone.org.

Please join us again on our next episode and until then, let’s keep grace in focus.