4. JESUS BEFORE JESUS – HOSEA

If you’re an ardent reader, this announcement is probably mundane by now, but here it goes: All discussions in this series will be based on scripture. We established that the Bible is historically and archaeologically proven to be true through the materials provided in the Intro here. You can check out the rest of the series here. Enjoy! 😉

Isaiah was not the only prophet with corroborative evidence on the Messiah. There were several other prophets who spoke of the coming, suffering and kingdom of this Messiah to come, but for ease and so as not to take all the fun out of your personal study, I’ll focus on just three “minor” prophets and basic, simple facts they prophesied that make for beautiful corroborative evidence.

HOSEA THE PROPHET:  781 – 711 BC

The very first mention of Hosea even in his own book is an introduction of this prophet called during Jeroboam’s reign in Israel. Verse 2 goes straight for the jugular: “When the Lord began to speak by Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea: “Go, take yourself a wife of harlotry”🤒. So he chose Gomer. That must have taken a crazy amount of faith in his calling and in whatever voice he heard to have obeyed that instruction.😕You could say the Lord used Hosea’s life as an illustration of Israel’s ways and His plans for them, and that was the point of Hosea’s book generally. It is a book of repentance, calling backsliders back to the Lord.

After ten (10) chapters of his personal struggles with Gomer and the wrath of God that was coming Israel’s way, Hosea opens Chapter 11 with a beautiful message of God’s love for Israel. The beautiful thing about the first verse of that chapter is that Hosea speaks about Israel’s escape from Egypt, but in that same scripture is God exposing what was to happen 700+ years later pertaining to Jesus. Hosea writes:

“When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son.”

You must understand that when these prophets prophesied about Israel, the meaning of the prophesies fluctuated from the literal nation of Israel to a representation of the Messiah. So Hosea indeed was talking about the nation Israel, but the verse was also referring to the Messiah Jesus. Hundreds of years on, here’s what the Apostle Matthew recorded [2:13-15]:

After the wise men were gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up! Flee to Egypt with the child and his mother,” the angel said. “Stay there until I tell you to return, because Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

That night Joseph left for Egypt with the child and Mary, his mother, and they stayed there until Herod’s death.

And for the many people who would argue that there was no proof that Hosea was talking about the Messiah in that verse, Matthew did not end his narration there. Matthew was Jewish, and so he knew that the Jews had been anticipating the arrival of their Messiah since the Prophets of old. Matthew knew that the promised Messiah would at one point have something to do with this country found on the continent of Africa that was the first ever Kingdom in the times of the Gentiles to oppress Israel [One day we’ll talk about the falsity that the white man introduced Christianity to the black man during slavery😊]. Matthew knew that this minute detail revealed through the Prophet Hosea was crucial, particularly because he was writing to a Jewish audience whose litmus tests were up high in the air. So he rounded up that story with this:

“This fulfilled what the Lord had spoken through the prophet: “I called my Son out of Egypt.”

What Matthew had just done was to provide the present fact [at the time], go back 700+ years in time to the writings of the Prophet to pull out this rather simple confirmation of the “Christship” of Jesus. Short, crisp detail, but the beauty of such a minute detail is that it cannot be feigned by any imposter. 

So while I considered omitting this episode from this series because of how tiny this corroborative evidence is, I decided otherwise because it shouldn’t always take technicalities and complexities to establish truth. So there you have it, as crisp and simple as Hosea served it🤗.

Until Next Week…

Remain Rooted, friend!

Rad!⭐