No Word until John
Luke built on Matthew's understanding of the symbol of the water being the word of God. When Elijah began his work, he called for a drought and said there would be no rain until he spoke. Israel had gone through a period of 400 years when God did not speak to them. There was no word of God until John spoke.
Zacharias, his father was not cursed as some think. He received the same sign: he had no word until John.
The desolate, desert wilderness was filled with the Word of God when John started preaching.
The Word incarnate
Luke tells the account of how John was conceived first, and the apostle John builds on this by understanding (from Ge 1:1) that Jesus is the incarnate Word, and that there was no Incarnate Word until John 'spoke' with his testimony of Jesus even while he was in the womb.
More tools
For Luke and John to understand more of the details of prophecy, they had more tools available to them and more time to study. One must obtain a proficiency in puns, riddles, and even the meaning of individual Hebrew letters to see where John obtained his understanding.
- John 1:1-4 expounds the meaning of the first three words of Ge 1:1.
- 1John 6:7,8 expounds the meaning of individual letter as expressed in 'heaven' and 'earth' in Ge 1:1
Once we know what we are looking for, we can see that the NT authors attempted to teach us to read the OT as they do.
- Matthew says Yeshua fulfills the prophecy of Emmanuel. It takes a pun to see it.
- Matthew says there are 42 generations in Jesus's genealogy, but only lists 41. He could count; it is a riddle.
- Matthew uses a pun to show that Jesus would be called a Nazarene.
Luke hides a picture of Christ in Acts 12. Why? Is he just showing off, or trying to teach us to see the picture of the birth of Christ in Ge 38?
John writes a riddle in Rev 17 that is solved using two genealogies in Genesis. Jude references a riddle concerning David's plot when he talks about Satan wrestling over the body of Moses.
The mystery of Christ was hidden in the Old Testament in double entendre, pun, riddle, metaphor and word play. In order to solve the riddles, one needs to know Christ from the New Testament and use the tools of interpretation demonstrated by the NT authors.
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