Introduction

The Question That Started This Journey

For me, this journey began in 2017 with a surprisingly simple question:

I had been a Christian for decades, yet I realized that I had never carefully traced that question through Scripture. As I began doing so, I also began to see more clearly how the Bible’s promises, sacrifices, priesthood, Temple, Kingdom, and prophecies all converge in Jesus Christ.

I had heard the words of Jesus many times:

“This cup is the new covenant in My blood.”

But I began to realize how much was contained in those words. If Jesus had established a New Covenant, then I needed to understand what the Old Covenant actually was, what had changed, and what life under the New Covenant was meant to look like.

That question soon led to many others. What changed through the death and resurrection of Jesus? What happened to the Old Covenant priesthood, sacrifices, and Temple? How does the New Testament identify God’s chosen people under the New Covenant? Who inherits the promises given to Abraham and Israel? What is God’s Law for Christians?

The questions eventually reached into prophecy as well. Is Jesus already reigning as the promised King? Is Daniel 9 primarily pointing us toward a future Antichrist, as many Christians are taught today, or toward Jesus Christ and His covenant work, in keeping with the overwhelmingly Messianic interpretation that characterized Christian understanding until the rise of dispensational Futurism in the 1830s? And did biblical prophecy foretell events that would unfold throughout Church history?

Those questions eventually grew into the seven semesters of Bible studies collected on this website. They also led to a conviction that has continued to shape this entire project: sometimes the most important questions are the ones we were never taught to ask.

An Open-Book Test

Christian theology should never require us to be afraid of examining what we have been taught. In a sense, this is an open-book test, because God has already given us the Scriptures.

The Bereans were commended because they received what they heard with readiness and then “searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so” (Acts 17:11). That same attitude should guide these studies.

Do not believe something merely because it is taught here, because a favorite preacher taught it, or because your denomination has taught it for generations. At the same time, do not reject something merely because it is unfamiliar. Read passages in context, follow the cross-references, compare Scripture with Scripture, and pay close attention to the way Jesus and the apostles interpret what came before them.

We can also benefit from listening to Christians from other generations and traditions, while always remembering that their conclusions must themselves be tested by Scripture. The purpose is not merely to provide answers, but also to raise questions you may never have thought to ask and send you back into Scripture looking for the answers.

Could Our Traditions Have Blind Spots?

It is easy for Christians to assume that the theological world in which we were raised simply represents what Christians have always believed. Yet no denomination, movement, theological tradition, pastor, scholar, or generation of Christians has reached perfect understanding, and neither have we.

A Christian can spend decades hearing Scripture primarily explained from within one theological tradition without realizing that faithful believers in other traditions have understood some passages very differently. That does not mean every interpretation is equally correct or that truth is determined by the existence of competing opinions. It simply means that humility requires us to ask whether our own tradition may have emphasized certain passages while overlooking others.

Christians from different traditions can sometimes draw our attention to biblical truths that our own theological environment has neglected or understood differently. Listening to them does not require us to accept everything they believe; it means being willing to ask whether they have noticed something in Scripture that we have not.

This is also one reason the history of Christianity matters. We do not have to restrict ourselves to the theological conversations of our own generation. Christians before us wrestled deeply with covenant, Israel, Law, the Church, prophecy, Antichrist, the Kingdom of God, and the meaning of Revelation. Their conclusions must still be tested by Scripture, but their voices can help us recognize how much larger the Christian conversation has been than the one taking place around us today.

Seeking Biblical Balance

These studies seek biblical balance, but biblical balance does not mean automatically choosing the midpoint between two opposing theological systems. Truth is not determined by compromise, and two contradictory positions cannot both be correct simply because sincere Christians hold them. Neither, however, should we assume that truth must always lie exactly halfway between them.

The goal is to allow the whole counsel of Scripture to speak. Every theological system can be tempted to emphasize certain passages while interpreting others through conclusions already established by the system. Once a framework becomes familiar enough, it can begin determining what a passage is allowed to mean before we have carefully listened to the passage itself.

Our goal should therefore be to preserve everything Scripture affirms, even when doing so challenges assumptions inherited from our own theological tradition. Throughout these studies, we will seek to use Scripture to interpret Scripture, paying particular attention to the way Jesus and the New Testament writers themselves interpret the Old Testament.

The goal is not the mathematical midpoint between theological systems. The goal is the biblical center, with Jesus Christ at the center of it.

What Does “Christ-Centered” Mean Here?

Calling an interpretation “Christ-centered” should mean more than simply mentioning Jesus frequently, and it does not mean artificially inserting Him into every individual verse. It means recognizing the way Scripture itself presents Jesus as the fulfillment toward which the biblical story was moving.

The Old Testament promises pointed forward to Him. The sacrifices anticipated His sacrifice, the priesthood anticipated His priesthood, and the Temple pointed toward God dwelling with His people. The promised Seed, the inheritance, the Kingdom, and the prophetic hope all ultimately converge in Him.

Jesus is not an interruption in Israel’s story. He is its fulfillment. He is the promised Son of David, the greater Prophet, the great High Priest, the true Temple, the promised Seed of Abraham, and the reigning King.

At the Transfiguration, when Moses and Elijah appeared with Him, the Father declared, “This is My beloved Son… Hear Him!” That command matters for the way we interpret Scripture. When Jesus and His apostles explain Israel, covenant, inheritance, Law, Temple, priesthood, Kingdom, and prophecy, their interpretation must govern ours.

For that reason, these studies repeatedly ask not merely what an Old Testament passage meant before Christ, but how the New Testament tells us that its promises, patterns, and expectations find their fulfillment in Him. That question affects how we understand Israel, the promises, the Law, the Temple, the priesthood, the Kingdom, and even prophecy.

Sometimes it also means reopening passages we thought we already understood. Daniel 9 provides a particularly important example. If a prophecy commonly attributed today to a future Antichrist was understood by many earlier Protestant interpreters as describing the Messiah and His covenant work, that is not a minor interpretive difference.

Why Fulfillment Matters

Prophecy is often approached primarily by asking, “What is going to happen next?” That can certainly be a legitimate question, because Scripture contains promises that remain future. Jesus will return bodily, the dead will rise, judgment will come, death will finally be destroyed, and God will make all things new.

But what about the nearly two thousand years of Church history between the apostles and our own generation? Are those centuries largely absent from biblical prophecy, or did Scripture also prepare Christians to recognize Christ’s faithfulness, His preservation of His Church, and the unfolding of His purposes throughout history?

That question becomes especially important when we discover that earlier interpreters were not merely looking backward and attaching prophetic symbols to events that had already happened. Across successive generations, many interpreters published expectations about developments that were still future to them, and later generations lived to see those expectations fulfilled.

This is one of the most remarkable and distinctive features of the Traditional Protestant Interpretation. It gives us something unusually rare in the study of prophecy: a long historical record of interpretations and expectations written before later events occurred. Instead of merely asking whether someone today can look backward and make history fit a prophetic scheme, we can ask what Christians actually believed the prophecies were pointing toward before those developments took place.

That allows the interpretation to be tested against history in an unusually direct way, one that is difficult to replicate with other prophetic systems. We can examine what earlier interpreters wrote, what events were still future to them, what they expected to happen, and then compare those published expectations with what actually unfolded afterward. In many cases, interpreters living centuries apart continued identifying the same prophetic sequence and anticipating developments that were still future to their own generation. Later history then unfolded in striking correspondence with a large number of those published expectations, allowing us to compare what they said beforehand with what actually happened afterward.

That does not mean everyone within the Traditional Interpretation got every detail right. They did not. In fact, that makes the historical evidence more meaningful rather than less, because the claims can be examined rather than merely asserted.

If interpreters repeatedly identified major developments while those developments were still future to their own generation, and history later unfolded in striking correspondence with those expectations, then this deserves far more serious consideration than merely treating their interpretation as one opinion among many.

Biblical prophecy is therefore not valuable only because it tells us about events that have not happened yet. There is also tremendous encouragement in discovering what God has already fulfilled. When we look backward and see Christ fulfilling promises made centuries earlier, our faith is strengthened. When we see God preserving His people through persecution, upheaval, kingdoms, and centuries of Church history, our faith is strengthened. And when we discover that events which appeared chaotic to those living through them were already known to God and fit within the unfolding of His purposes, our faith is strengthened.

Paul treated prophecy as one of the greater gifts within the Church because it brings “edification and exhortation and comfort” to God’s people (1 Corinthians 14:3). Peter likewise described the prophetic word as “a light that shines in a dark place” (2 Peter 1:19). Prophecy should not make Christians anxious about the future. Properly understood, it should strengthen the Church, illuminate our path through history, and help us trust the One who rules it.

Seeing what Christ has already fulfilled gives us greater confidence in everything He has promised still to do.

This is one of the recurring themes throughout these studies. History has never escaped the authority of Jesus Christ. Earthly kingdoms rise and fall, but Christ continues to reign.

That historical perspective also helps explain why an older interpretation may sound unfamiliar today. An interpretation can disappear from common Christian teaching without having been disproved. Recovering what earlier generations saw requires us simply to reopen Scripture, reopen history, and examine the evidence for ourselves.

How to Use These Studies

These studies were originally developed for Bible study and discussion, and they are meant to be worked through thoughtfully rather than rushed. Because the later studies build upon questions examined earlier, it is recommended that the studies be worked through in sequence rather than beginning with Daniel or Revelation. The journey begins with the theological framework, then moves through Israel, the promises, God’s Law, the Temple and priesthood, Daniel, and finally Revelation and Church history.

Keep your Bible open, look up the passages, read the surrounding context, and follow the cross-references. When historical claims are presented, examine the historical evidence. When earlier Christian interpreters are quoted, remember that their words help us understand how Christians have read Scripture across the centuries, but they are never an authority equal to Scripture.

Some conclusions may immediately seem familiar, while others may challenge things you have believed for many years. There is no need to fear either outcome. Truth does not become false because it is unfamiliar, and familiar teaching does not become true merely because we have heard it repeatedly. When a study raises a question that unsettles something you had always assumed, resist the temptation to decide the answer too quickly. Sometimes a question is worth carrying for a while as you read, compare, pray, and return to the text.

The purpose of this journey is not simply to replace one collection of theological answers with another. It is to cultivate the habit of returning to Scripture and asking: What has God actually said? How do Jesus and the apostles interpret it? What has Jesus already fulfilled? And where should that lead us now?