Old Testament prophecy on Jesus coming as a man

This segment of our look at Advent focuses on Old Testament prophecy on Jesus coming as a man. Well, OK, as a baby. If you’ve read the earlier articles, you probably noticed that the reference verses are from Philippians. Weird, huh? To me, it’s bordering on annoying. How can a passage from after the birth of Jesus be used to look forward to the birth of that same Jesus? The mathematician in me says this is logically flawed. But, since we’re using Nelson’s Topical Index to set the path for the study, let’s see what we can do with this.

Since the verses listed in Nelson’s Topical Index show characteristics of Jesus as a man, we should be able to use those characteristics and find prophecies about them in Old Testament verses.

To me, that’s a much better approach than taking some new Testament verses and then using them to prove the new Testament is valid. I never could figure out how so many things, like economic models, are built with a set of recent data. Then, that same recent data is run through the model to prove the model is valid. Well of course it is! The only way it won’t work is if the model was built incorrectly.

In the same manner, if we are going to say the Old Testament prophesied about the coming of Jesus as a man, then we cannot use the New Testament to prove it. We must go back to the Old Testament to build the model. Then, and only then, can we examine the New Testament to see if it fits the model built by the Old Testament. Relying on the New Testament to prove that the New Testament is correct makes no sense!

So, let’s see what we can do with the Philippians passage.