:<font face-"TimesNewRoman" color="red">B: I think I probably take a more extreme view of this, and would say that everything in the New Testament is there because it is in the Old. It's not just a cute story that Jesus was teaching in the temple as a boy, but a fulfillment of the sensus plenior pericope of Ge 14.

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In the same way, Mark writes “The time is fulfilled, the Kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:15, KJV). Also, Luke will record, with frequency “This day is the scripture fulfilled in your ears” (Luke 4:21). In the fourth gospel account, John uses the same phrase that Matthew did, “That it might be fulfilled” numerous times in his Gospel (see John 12:38; 13:18; 15:25; 17:12; 18:9; 18:32; 19:24; 19:28).

Each Gospel illustrates this one major theme, the dominant idea of fulfillment. And what we’re saying is that the Christ of the New Testament is the fulfillment of the Old Testament. He is the subject of its pages in a unique way. Remember that Job in the Old Testament made a great discovery of God on one occasion and he wrote “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee” (Job 42:5, KJV). As one examines Jesus Christ in the Gospels one will be able to say, “We have heard about Jesus, a great deal by the hearing of the ears but now our eyes actually behold him in the pages of these Gospel accounts.”

And that makes the New Testament the most vitally important book or series of books in the world—because they depict the most important person in the world, Jesus Christ. One could put it this way: taking the Old Testament all by itself, it would read very much like an unfinished symphony. Take for example the Pentateuch, the Torah, the Law as one reads through those first five books, studying that section for the very first time, one is struck with the prevalence of animal sacrifices. They appear on almost every page beginning back in the fourth chapter of Genesis and seen more clearly in Exodus, and Leviticus presents the organization of the offerings and rites and the ceremonies and the sacrifices and as one looks at all of these sacrifices of animals he might ask the question, “What are they for?” What is their purpose? Undoubtedly, they somehow point to realities outside of themselves. And yet nowhere in the Pentateuch are those animal sacrifices explained. Reading all the way through the rest of the Old Testament, the reader might become increasingly disappointed because in the Old Testament there are these unexplained ceremonies.