Daniel Stevens found from studying Hebrew that the Old Testament is far more than a prelude building up to the New Testament.
It is not just that the Old Testament historically led to the New Testament as a kind of prelude, but rather that the one God who speaks in both Testaments intended them to belong forever to the church as a single body of Scripture. That is, while it is important—necessary even—to read the Old Testament as that which went before the coming of Christ and his gospel in all its historical rootedness as God interacted with Israel, it is just as necessary to read it alongside the New Testament as God’s present word to the church. God spoke in the Old Testament, yes, and in that historical speech, God still speaks.
That is fundamentally what the New Testament authors knew; and that is the key to seeing, as they did, the many-splendored revelation of God in Christ that reverberates through every page of Scripture, Old and New.
The whole Bible is the word of God for us. It all speaks of Christ. It all speaks to us because in it God has spoken to us.
