The 400 years between the testaments pdf

In all, the Romans built 50,000 miles (80,000 km) of hard-surfaced highway. The Roman road system was an outstanding transportation network of the ancient Mediterranean world, extending from Britain to the Tigris-Euphrates river system and from the Danube River to Spain and northern Africa. The Romans did not extend their influence to the Middle east until 63 BC. Paul and presumably Peter and other disciples made use of sea travel to take the gospel to many places. 4 Sea travelД«y the first century, commercial sea travel had been well established as evidence of JonahвЂ™s experiences at about 745 BC. Archer and Chirichigno list 340 places where the New Testament cites the Septuagint but there are only 33 places where it cites the Hebrew Masoretic Text. The New Testament writers cited the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew Old Testament. When preaching to the Jews in whatever country, Paul always started with their scriptures and went on to show them that the promised Messiah had come in the form of Jesus of Nazareth. This was accomplished in about 250 BC in Egypt and thereby making the scriptures available to newer generations of Jews. The universality of the Greek language combined with the declining use of Hebrew, made it necessary for the Jews to have their own scriptures translated into Greek. The New Testament was written in koine Greek. The Greek language, a form called koine Greek or common Greek, became the main language with which everybody communicated, particularly around the eastern Mediterranean. The legacy he left was Greek culture and language. 2 A universal languageДЄlexander the Great had conquered the known world by 323 BC. So, for the Jews to be able to understand the MessiahвЂ™s coming, The Old testament had to have been significant in their society. They stayed true to the God of their forefathers and the New Testament had to follow the Old. They did not follow the pagan gods of their Roman overseers as they had taken the gods of their neighbours in the past. An outside enemy unites a people and makes them more cohesive. The Jews had gone from a people who were relatively free, living in the Medo-Persian empire to one living under repressive Roman occupation. So, what were the conditions that existed when Jesus took on human form that enabled the proclamation of the Good News? 1 A united people Paul tells us in Galatians (4:4) When the time had fully come, God sent his SonвЂ¦ So, only when the conditions in Judea enabled the dissemination of this Good News, did Jesus leave the glories of heaven to be born a mere man. And His final recorded words were and you will be witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. And Jesus told His disciples this Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations. But this message had to be promulgated after the work of grace was completed. The purpose of God coming to earth which started the New Testament.Д¬learly, God, in the Person of Jesus the Christ was to pay the penalty for the sins of the world so that whoever believes in Him will have eternal life (John 3:16). We may not be able to understand GodвЂ™s timing, but it is always perfect. God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah within a few days of revealing His intention to Abraham, whereas it took about 5 00 years after Isaiah announced BabylonвЂ™s destruction, before it fell into disuse and extinction. This was 4,000 years before the Messiah was born. However, after Adam and Eve rejected GodвЂ™s command to not eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and brought sin into the world which inflicted all future generations, God promised to send the seed of a woman to reverse what Satan had accomplished.

So for our society, it is hard for us to understand why God waited 400 years from the end of the Old testament to the commencement of the New Testament.

We can contact people in most parts of the world straight away through our mobile phone. We can obtain fast food, ready to eat, within a few minutes. Information in its enormous variety, is available through our smart phone, tablet, laptop or desk top within a fraction of a second.

We live in an instant world we expect things to happen straight away.

The 400 years between the testaments pdf