What Moses Taught Concerning The Christ

The first idea, then, that Moses gives us of the Christ is that--

1. He was to be born of Adam's race;
2. He was to be the seed of the Woman and Son of God;
3. He was to be killed;
4. He was to rise from the dead; and
5. He was to destroy the power that killed him.

All this is expressed or implied in Gen. 3:15. It teaches us by implication that he was not to be begotten of the impulse of the flesh, nor of the will of man; so that in being born of the human nature, he would be directly Son of Woman, and only indirectly Son of Man. But, if he were not directly Son of Man, he must have been directly Son of Power as Adam was, who had no human father. Adam's father was the Eternal Spirit, self-named Yahweh, who formed him from the dust. Eve seems to have understood that the Seed of the Woman was to be somehow related to the Spirit, afterwards named Yahweh; for when, in her inexperience, Cain, her first-born son, came into the world, she said: "I have gotten (a play upon his name Cain) a man eth-Yahweh" (Gen. 4:1). In the English version, the text reads: "I have gotten a man from the Lord." But "from" is not in the Hebrew. There it reads ish-eth Yahweh, a man the Yahweh. But was Eve acquainted with "Yahweh" as the name of the Spirit? Abraham was not. If she were not, the words would seem to imply that she regarded Cain as the promised acquisition; or she may have considered that she acquired him of the Spirit, whom Moses, in the record, styles eth-Yahweh, in which case ish would be in construction, and signify man of. If she said a man of the Spirit, then she regarded Cain as begotten of the Spirit; but if she said a man the Spirit, in both cases Moses substituting Yahweh for Spirit, she regarded him as the seed of the woman promised; and still from the Spirit, rather than from Adam. Be this as it may, the event proved that he was neither "of the spirit," or a Spirit-man, but of the flesh, in the rebelliousness thereof, and therefore earthly, sensual, and demoniac.

Abraham seems to have been taught representatively, that the son of the woman was to be in his origin a son of power, that is, of God, and not of the will of man; he was taught this representatively by the case of Isaac. Isaac was as much a Son of Power as Adam and Jesus, in relation to the flesh. Had there been no preternatural interposition of Spirit power, there would have been no Adam, Isaac, nor Jesus. Now Isaac was a type of Christ; for Moses writes that Ail-Shaddai said to Abraham, "in Isaac shall be chosen for thee a seed." Isaac in his generation, or circumstance of his begettal; and in his figurative sacrifice and resurrection, was the representative of the Christ to his father Abraham; by which he was taught

1. That Christ the Son of Woman, was to be of preternatural paternity; and therefore, Son of Power or God; and to descend from Isaac;
2. That he was to be killed as a sacrifice; and
3. That he was to be raised from the dead.

These things were expressed, and implied in the representation; so that, had the question been put to Abraham, "What thinketh thou of the Christ? Whose Son is he?" He would have replied: "He shall be Son of God."

But this, perhaps, may be objected to as only inferred, and not positively declared -- that Moses does not say in so many words, that the Seed of the Woman was to be Son of God. But it may be replied, that the doctrine of Sonship to God is a peculiarity of the Christianity taught by Moses. What is the idea of ish eth-Yahweh but that of a Son of God, whether we read it, "a man the Yahweh," "a man of Yahweh," "a man of the Spirit," or a "man the Spirit"? It is a man of preternatural paternity in the estimation of the speaker. The Jews regarded Adam as the Son of God, and the idea came to them from Moses, who gives him the paternity. See Luke 3:38.

It is truly absurd for Jews to talk of "shrinking back and standing sternly aloof, the moment they are told that God has a Son"! Were Moses in their midst he would certainly be ashamed of them. If they will not hear Jesus, do they not hear Moses deliver God's message to Pharaoh, and say: "Thus saith Yahweh, Israel is my Son, my first-born. And I say unto thee, Let my Son go that he may serve Me; and if thou refuse to let him go, behold I will slay thy son, thy first-born" (Exod. 4:22-23). Upon what principle was the Hebrew nation Yahweh's Son? Upon precisely the same principle that the Son of Mary claimed to be Son of God -- upon that of Spirit-paternity. Isaac was the father of the nation, and his begettal was miraculous. The nation descended from him was a "miraculous conception"; and Jews consider those who believe that God has a Son, and in the miraculous conception, of that Son, "should be set down as demented, and only entitled to pity, and to a cell in an asylum." All that the Jews say against the narrative of Matthew and Luke concerning the birth of Jesus, might be turned with equal force against Moses' account of the birth of Isaac. Matthew says, that "Mary was found with child of the Holy Spirit"; and Moses clearly shows that if the Holy Spirit had not affected Sarah, there would have been no Isaac, and consequently no Hebrew nation. The peculiarity of Isaac's paternity is the ground of Yahweh's claim upon Israel as His son. "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and called My son out of Egypt" (Hos. 11:1). These are the words of Yahweh by Hosea; and though spoken of a multitude, in that multitude is included the Messiah, who federally speaking, was in the loins of Nahshon at the Exodus; and personally, came out of Egypt at Herod's death.