How did Jesus Christ become the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies?

Answer 1

Answer:

Jesus hasn't yet fulfilled the Old Testament covenant as described. He is still in the process of doing that. The covenant was a "marriage agreement" between Christ and Israel in which the "wife" (Israel), AGREED TO OBEY HER HUSBAND'S VOICE... and her Husband, who owns the whole universe promised to give her everything she wanted.

Remember the marriage vows of times past when the woman vowed to obey her husband-to-be?

Jesus' vow to Israel is: "...IF YE WILL OBEY MY VOICE indeed, and keep My covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me above all people: FOR ALL THE EARTH IS MINE: and ye shall be unto Me a Kingdom of priests, and an holy nation." (Ex.19:5-6)

Three days later, Jesus' voice BOOMED from Mount Sinai into the ears of Israel the Ten Commandments... the code of conduct He expected His "wife" to honor and obey. His law of love: love Him with all her heart, and love one another.

Many think today that Jesus fulfilled a "New Covenant," little suspecting that it is the same covenant as the "Old" one. The difference with the New Covenant, however, is that although it is perfect, it's still in the works.

"...Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a New Covenant with the HOUSE OF ISRAEL and with the HOUSE OF JUDAH..." (Heb.8:8).

Jesus has not yet saved the twelve tribes of Israel, so that He might complete the New Covenant with them. The Jews still do not accept Christ. But as Paul wrote:

"And so ALL ISRAEL SHALL BE SAVED (future tense): as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob." (Rom.11:26)

But it hasn't happened, yet, and they aren't yet "remarried." The Bridegroom hasn't returned!

A New Covenant is coming, but: "...not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in My covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord." (Heb.8:9)

"For this is the Covenant that I will make with the House of Israel AFTER THOSE DAYS, saith the Lord..." (notice, Israel shall just be "one unified house" and not the two separate houses of Israel and Judah after Christ the Bridegroom returns);

"I will PUT MY LAWS INTO THEIR MIND, and WRITE THEM IN THEIR HEARTS: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to Me a people." (Heb.8:10)

It's the Ten Commandments again, just like the first vow. Only written in soft hearts of flesh... not stone.

"...I will give them one heart, and I will put a New Spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh: that they may walk in My statutes, and keep Mine ordinances, and do them: and they shall be My people, and I will be their God." (Ezek.11:19-20)

When that happens, the description of the Covenant shall have been fulfilled. The Kingdom of God shall be ruling on the earth... His obedient wife will be living under His roof... and they shall be a peculiar nation in the world ruling above all the nations of men. A Kingdom of Priests, teaching the nations God's way of living:

"...hast made us unto our God Kings and Priests: and WE SHALL REIGN ON THE EARTH." (Rev.5:10)

Answer 2

This answer could very easily fill a book: there are many prophecies and ideas that Jesus seems to complete. To answer the question, we can look for prophecies that specifically are filled by Jesus' life, as in Micah 5 where it says that one day out of "Bethlehem" will come a ruler whose origins are from "ancient times." This was fulfilled by Jesus when He was born in that little town and then later began preaching that He had been with God since the beginning of creation (Matt.22:40-44;Luke10:19).

Jesus went to an area around Zebulun and Naphtali to choose his disciples and then start preaching His ideas (Matt 4). If we look back to Isaiah the ancient prophet, we see a section of his writings that says there will be a "great light" that dawns on this exact area, and that this "light" will be a person who brings people out of the darkness and frees them from oppression (Isaiah 9:1-7). In fact, the more we read that passage in Isaiah the more similarities we see between the person in the prophecy and Jesus. I would highly recommend reading that chapter through because the similarities between the prophecy and Jesus' life are uncanny.

Another one is the prophecy in Zechariah 9:9 which says that Israel's king will come "righteous and victorious," but also somehow "lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt," which literally happened to Jesus when he came riding in on a donkey's colt into Jerusalem and many people, who knew of His miracles and His teaching, gathered and started calling out praise to Him as they would a king.

Finally, we can see some indications about Jesus that have held true from His time even today. For example, in Matt. 12:15-21, the author says that Jesus fulfilled a prophecy in Isaiah 42:1-4 when He taught people in the streets, healing their diseases, and asked them not to go shouting about what He was doing. The end of the prophecy predicts that this person Isaiah was prophesying about would be a man in whom "The nations put their hope." In a very literal sense, this has continued on today: whether we believe it is "supernatural" or not, there's no doubt that people from every nation and ethnicity put their hope in Jesus' name and so the prophecy has in a sense proved accurate.

These are just a few of the many details of Jesus' life that appear to be foretold in the Old Testament prophecies.

Answer 3

A:John Dominic Crossan (The Birth of Christianity) believes we should not think of Christianity as breaking away from Judaism. He says it is more accurate to say that, out of that matrix of biblical Judaism and that maelstrom of late Second-Temple Judaism, two great traditions eventually emerged: Christianity and rabbinic Judaism. Each claimed exclusive continuity with the past, but each was as great a leap and as valid a development from that common ancestry as was the other.

With the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE, these two emerging traditions struggled to establish legitimacy. Christianity, as it would become known, sought to demonstrate that it was the true successor to Temple Judaism, just as rabbinic Judaism did. For this reason the evangelists, most especially the author of Matthew's Gospel, found numerous Old Testament passages that they set out to show prefigured or prophesied the life of Jesus. Rabbinic Judaism had the upper hand among Palestinian Jews, but Christianity might have sought to influence Jews of the diaspora and those pagans sympathetic to Judaism.

The Jews rejected Christianity and it became a religion for gentiles, with the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies more a matter of demonstrating the antiquity of the faith's underlying beliefs. Even today, this is an underlying message in portraying the life of Jesus as fulfilling the Old Testament.

Answer 4

When on earth, Jesus was keenly aware of the time in which he was living and what he needed to do. Having clearly in mind what his priorities were, he knew that the long-awaited time for many Messianic prophecies to be fulfilled was at hand. (1 Pet. 1:11; Rev. 19:10) There was work for him to do to make clear his identity as the promised Messiah.

Answer 5

Jews argue specifically that Jesus was NOT the fulfillment of Old Testament Prophecies. To see the question that addresses that, please see: Why do Jews not believe in Jesus?

For Christian views as to how he is the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, please see the other answers to this question.