We'll Skip Through The First Couple Millenia, K?

Ok. So, I'm actually starting this blog about three months into my year of reading the Bible. I just finished Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Old Testament. I was a little late in getting the thought to do this blog. Sorry. So, I'll be doing a large synopsis of each of the first five books of the Bible to get up to where I am now. I think that most of the stories of Genesis, Exodus, Levitcus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are somewhat familiar to most Christians, so I don't feel that bad for skimming through it.

"The Old Testament is God's biography, the story of his passionate encounters with people. It is also a prequel to the story of Jesus, who came to answer the questions that troubled the ancient writers and still trouble us today. For expressing our deepest longings and voicing our whole range of our lives and emotions, the Old Testament has no equal."

– Philip Yancey in The Bible Jesus Read.

Also, we must remember when reading the Old Testament that there are different administrations, or periods of time specified by God, throughout the Bible. The three administrations in the OT are:

1. Original Paradise- this is the time of Creation until the point when Adam and Eve sinned and had to leave the garden of Eden

2. Patriarchal- this administration includes all the time between Adam and Eve leaving the garden of Eden until when Moses started writing God's law on the stone tablets (10 Commandments). Since Moses wrote Genesis through Deuteronomy, there was no written Word of God during the Patriarchal administration. Ancient believers learned the Word of God through passing down of word of mouth and also by looking at God's Word written in the stars.

3. Law- The Law Administration includes all the time between Moses' first writing of the law until the birth of Jesus Christ. The believers during this administration had to adhere strictly to all the laws, and trust me, there are a lot of them.

There are 7 administrations in all (7 is the biblical number for spiritual perfection), but these 3 are the ones from the OT.

The reason I wanted to explain this is that we, the present day believers, are not living in the Law Administration. When Jesus Christ came, he fulfilled the law and ushered in the administration in which we live today. Consequently, we are no longer "under the law", as it is called in the Bible. So we don't have to strictly adhere to the law that is written in the OT. For example- we don't have to sacrifice animals when we sin like the believers during the Law Administration had to. To us, the OT is written for our learning. Get it?