If we want our preaching to be primitive—like the original preaching of Jesus and the apostles—we must preach about prophecy and how it relates to events in Jesus’ generation. I’m emphasizing this point through Peter’s claim: “All the prophets, from Samuel and those who follow, as many as have spoken, have also foretold these days” (Acts 3:24). This series of posts will test this claim by searching through the prophets to see if they all spoke of Peter’s time.1
As I did last week, let me make two suggestions as we begin the search. First, consider becoming familiar with the inmillennial view of prophecy. You can read a summary version here or tackle the full book-length version here. The title of the book—Inmillennialism: Redefining the Last Days—hints at the reason for my suggestion. This model says the “last days” are identical to Peter’s “these days”; both terms refer to the “last days” of the Mosaic age. This perspective will shed light on the prophets as we work through them.
My second suggestion is that you consider watching the sermons related to this subject. I preached the material in this post and last week’s at Hopewell Primitive Baptist Church in Opelika, AL, on April 30, 2023. You can watch it here.
Peter was not alone in his assertion. The other apostles realized they lived in a special time and believed the prophets had all spoken about it. This awareness gave them the context, content, and consequences of their preaching. We considered the first of these last week (here) and will now consider the other two.
The Apostles’ Content for Preaching
Jesus set the example for the apostles to use the prophets in their preaching. On the third day after His resurrection, He appeared to two despondent disciples as they walked toward Emmaus, a village seven miles from Jerusalem. They did not recognize him and continued discussing recent events. When the Lord asked about their conversations, they expressed their disappointment: the man they had hoped was the Messiah had died on a Roman cross.
Jesus rebuked their unbelief and directed them to the Scriptures:
Then He said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?” And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. (Luke 24:25–27)
Later, Jesus revealed Himself to them as they ate dinner together, then vanished. “And they said to one another, ‘Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?’” (Luke 24:32).
The risen Lord’s teaching centered on “Moses and all the Prophets,” so we can understand why Peter did the same about fifty days later as he spoke to the Jews at the temple gate: “Yes, and all the prophets, from Samuel and those who follow, as many as have spoken, have also foretold these days” (Acts 3:24).
Almost thirty years later, the Apostle Paul defended himself before King Agrippa against charges that he was preaching blasphemy. Here is the heart of his argument:
Therefore, having obtained help from God, to this day I stand, witnessing both to small and great, saying no other things than those which the prophets and Moses said would come—that the Christ would suffer, that He would be the first to rise from the dead, and would proclaim light to the Jewish people and to the Gentiles. (Acts 26:22–23)
Paul equated everything in his preaching to what Moses and the prophets had said would come.
The Apostles’ Consequences of Preaching
Peter had a simple goal in mind as he preached the gospel—fulfilling God’s promise to Abraham. To the Jews gathered around him, he said, “You are sons of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed’” (Acts 3:25).
Peter had stressed this end result a few days earlier at Pentecost. He identified the period in which he was living as the “last days” (Acts 2:17)—not the last days of planet earth, or the church age, or history, but the last days for the Mosaic age, the generation in which God would destroy the temple (Matt 24:1–3, 34). He then explained that the fulfillment of David’s most famous prophecy was now underway:
David did not ascend into the heavens, but he says himself: “The LORD said to my Lord, ‘Sit at My right hand, Till I make Your enemies Your footstool.’” Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ. (Acts 2:34–36)
The resurrection, ascension, and enthronement of Jesus had started the process of God making His enemies His footstool.
Paul explains the consequences of David’s prophecy in his famous chapter on the resurrection: “He (i.e., Christ) must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death” (1 Cor 15:25–26). Jesus will reign in His kingdom as He does now until He conquers all His enemies: secularism, humanism, paganism, atheism, “wokeism,” Islam, Hinduism, and all the others. After He has done that, He will overcome the last enemy, physical death, in the resurrection of “all who are in the graves” (John 5:28).
The consequences of gospel preaching include the obedience of the nations. Paul said, “Through Him we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for His name” (Rom 1:5). He remembered the psalm in which David, speaking as if he were the Messiah, said,
Thou hast delivered me from the strivings of the people; and thou hast made me the head of the heathen: a people whom I have not known shall serve me. As soon as they hear of me, they shall obey me: the strangers shall submit themselves unto me. (Psalm 18:43–44)
And Paul knew that preaching was God’s ordained means for the elect to learn about Christ:
How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, Who bring glad tidings of good things!” (Rom 10:14–15)
Conclusion
Jesus and the apostles knew they lived in a unique period, a time Jesus called “this generation” (Matt 24:34), Peter “these days” (Acts 3:24), Paul “the ends of the ages” (1 Cor 10:11), and the Hebrews writer “these last days” (Heb 1:1–2). This awareness set the context for their ministries.
They drew the content of their message from Moses and the prophets, saying nothing but what they foretold. Of course, they clarified and expanded many Old Testament prophecies but recognized their message must begin with them.
They focused on the consequences of their message—the conversion of the nations to the service of Christ. Their Lord had told them to “make disciples of all the nations” (Matt 28:18). Like Joshua and Caleb of old, they understood they could accomplish this mission with the Lord’s blessings (cp. Num 14:8).
We will do well to imitate their example by preaching how God accomplished Old Testament prophecies in the days in which Peter lived (Acts 3:24). May the Lord bless us all to be such primitive preachers.
Footnotes
- The image in this file is The Denial of Saint Peter by (1610) by Caravaggio (1571–1610). It is in the public domain per {{PD-1996}}.
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