The Historicity of the Old Testament Messiah: By Whose Authority?

By The Rev. Dr. Lawrence Olin Watt

About the Book
The inspiration of Church Fathers, Church Councils, and the Roman Church was to impose a Church order. The Church Order resolved to bring separation between “oppressive Judaism” and the Grace of the Risen Lord. Examination of the history of the established Church and of the scriptural intent of the I AM on current established theology does not support this pretense. The promises of Yehovah were for those who descended from Abraham, and those who chose to become his heirs according to the covenants made with them. Is the current teaching of the Church in accord with the six covenants, or were those covenants alleviated? Is the I AM the same yesterday, today, and forever? Did He change His mind? Or is there a plan laid out in Scripture that we have ignored, altered, or misunderstood.
About the Author
The Rev. Dr. Lawrence Olin Watt studied at Ottawa University (1969-1973, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (1973 and 2017-2020), Central Baptist Theological Seminary (1974-1979), Central Michigan University (1992-1994), and the University of Phoenix (2005-2013). He has been a pastor in Churches in Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Maryland. He was a Special Education Administrator in Prince George’s County, Maryland. He worked with emotionally challenged teenage boys in the Juvenile Justice Systems in Porter County, Indiana and Newaygo County Michigan. Dr. Watt was on the Board of Directors for a support group assisting survivors of Suicide. Dr. Watt and his wife Keli have six adult children and a plethora of foster children. Dr. Watt is currently retired from the school and Juvenile Justice systems. He Continues to serve as Pastor of Central Seventh Day Baptist Church in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. In his spare time, Dr. Watt works (plays) with his four Mopar Hemis. He enjoys driving them across the United States and Canada.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Jan 16, 2024
• ISBN: 9798889255543

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The contents of this work, including, but not limited to, the accuracy of events, people, and places depicted; opinions expressed; permission to use previously published materials included; and any advice given or actions advocated are solely the responsibility of the author, who assumes all liability for said work and indemnifies the publisher against any claims stemming from publication of the work.

The Jacob Barosin Head of Christ used by permission of Evangelical and Reformed Historical Society (ERHS), Lancaster, PA.

All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2023 by The Rev. Dr. Lawrence Olin Watt

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Abstract

The implication of the history of Church Fathers, Church Councils, and the Holy Roman Universal Church was to impose a Church order that would bring separation between oppressive Judaism and the Grace of the Risen Lord. An investigation of the influence of the established Church, civilization, culture, and perceived theology of the Scriptural Intent of (םלָוֹעִ לאֵ) El Olam (forever, eternal, to the vanishing point) on current established theology does not support this pretense. The promises of ((הוָֹֹהיְ) I AM, I EXIST) Yehovah were for those who descended from Abraham, and those who chose to become his heirs according to the Covenants made with them. Is the current teaching of the Church in accord with the six covenants, or were those covenants alleviated? Is the I AM the same yesterday, today, and forever? Did He change His mind? Or is there a plan laid out in Scripture that we have ignored, altered, or misunderstood?

Dedication

This book / dissertation is dedicated first to the Self Existent One, the One who introduced Himself to Moses and the Hebrew People as the I AM. There is none greater. He has been my Rock, my Anchor, my Inspiration since youth. Thank you for never giving up on me, even in my most egregious sin.

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Acknowledgments

First, I need to acknowledge the ONE who started me on the path to write this text thirteen years ago, almost on the heels of my first dissertation. If it had not been for His constant prodding, I would hot have begun this daunting, and probably unpopular, task. Thank you to the one who created, sustained, and is constantly forgiving; El Elyon, El Shaddai, Yehovah Adonia, Yehoshua.

Second, if it were not for the mentors of my youth, those who guided me, corrected me, made me realize what was my sin, and what was my purpose, I would not have learned the truth of His Holiness. My uncle, (my father’s brother-in-law) the Rev. Stanley Tolle, The Rev. Robert Tolliver, Chase Street Baptist Church, Gary, Indiana; the Rev. Raymond King, and Leslie Fleenor, First Baptist Church, Valparaiso, Indiana; the Rev. Clifford Bond, Kansas City Seventh Day Baptist Church; the Rev. Paul Osborn, Nortonville Kansas Seventh Day Baptist Church, and the Rev. Herbert Saunders, Dean of the Seventh Day Baptist Center on Ministry, who put up with me in my most egregious sin and rebellion in the middle of my Seminary Training. Not at all least, to the Rev. Gordon Paul Lawton who never forced his beliefs on me, but who introduced me to Seventh Day Baptists, true Seventh Day Baptists, not those of family lore.

Third, I am deeply indebted to the White Cloud Michigan Seventh Day Baptist Church. They took a chance on me. They brought me out of the depths of disheartened rejection. They taught me what family was, and is. They helped me raise my teenage delinquents, despite the reputation they impugned on the church. You will always be my home, my family, and my love.

And, definitely not least, to my loving wife, Keli, who graciously proofread the entire document, without complaint. Thank you for putting up with me, and my dedicated work.

Preface

Although I did not discover the truth until well into my trek, I now understand that this voyage began long before I understood much of anything. This preface is long. To some, it might fall under the heading of TMI! To truly understand WHY I have crossed the line into what some might call heresy, and what definitely falls under the Church Fathers’ heading of Judaizer, I would suggest reading the long, perhaps boring, preface. Otherwise… Jump in here. Either way, bring your Bible.

First, I believe that it is important to understand that I believe in one, and only one, supreme being. I have difficulty using the word god to define His presence. He told Moses that His chosen identification is I AM. I EXIST. As will become evident in the reading, I believe that His presence was physically with us for approximately thirty-three years. I believed that His physical presences died on a cross as our Passover Lamb to take on our sin, that we might be forgiven that sin. His death and resurrection was a necessity. It was not an option. It is not an essence. He physically was tortured, died, and rose again on the third day. It is because of the death and resurrection that we may, by grace, be with him when we leave this earth, through death’s door, or when he returns to claim His own.

Second, although I am not worthy, and I have walked away from Him on multiple occasions, He has a purpose for me, here. I should not be here. He has brought me back from tragedies that most children do not survive.

On July 27, 1952, I was sitting in the window of our third-floor apartment (approximately 50 feet from the ground) at 6731 West Ellis in Chicago. And then I was not. To the amazement of the police and emergency personnel, I hit the ground without a scratch. It was enough to rate a picture and an article in the Chicago Tribune. Within a week of that death defying act, I contracted polio from contact at the hospital. The prognosis was that the fall didn’t get me, but the polio would. The Grace of His will brought me through that with little more than atrophy.

My dad, a chemist, left Allied Chemical in Chicago for United States Steel in Gary, Indiana. Gary was known for its progressive education system. The make-up of my classes at Horace Mann and Emerson was such that I did not know that I was not supposed to like, or play with children whose pigment was darker than mine. On September 4, 1957, I was watching the Huntley – Brinkley Report with my dad when I was confronted with the picture of behavior I did not understand. My dad told me that there were people in the world who thought that they were better because their skin tone was lighter. I was afraid that they were going to come and take my friends. My parents assured me that would not happen.

On September 15, 1957, I was sitting in my seat at Chase Street Baptist Church. I knew that if I twitched wrong I would be in trouble when my parents came out of the Choir. At the end of the service, I found myself walking to the front of the Church. No one else was. But I felt as if my Jesus had my arm and was telling me to go up there and tell Pastor Tolliver that I wanted Jesus to be my Salvation and my protection. I was baptized the following Sunday morning.

It was 1959. I was in Iowa for the summer with my grandparents. United States Steel was on strike. My parents called and said they had bought a home in a quiet, rural lake community. We had to go home early because we were moving to Valparaiso, Indiana so my dad could work during the strike.

We went into town for school supplies. I was sitting in the car waiting for my parents to come back with school supplies when I heard yelling over by Woolworths. I looked and there was a man pushing a group of darker people out of the store and trying to close the door. I remembered what I had seen on the Huntley – Brinkley Report and was afraid that what happened in Little Rock would happen at my new school. This time my Dad did not have an answer. He was shaking his head and kept saying that he did not know it was like that here. We went home and did not go back downtown for a very long time.

In October 1961, my older sister and I were selling tickets to a spaghetti dinner at our school. We had permission to go as far as Campbell Road. We had a lot of tickets. We still had a lot of tickets when we got to Campbell Road. I thought it would be fun to go out on Campbell to the place they were building our new church. I convinced my sister it would be safe. I woke up a week later in Porter Memorial Hospital. It seems that I came out of a driveway causing a car to cross the centerline and hit me head on; bent my bicycle in two. Dr. Tom had already told my parents that I would not be the same if I ever came out of the coma. This was brush with death number three, and barely a double-digit midget.

I got a paper route when I was fourteen. I was out before sunrise delivering the Chicago Tribune, and to a few unfortunate people, I had to leave a Chicago Sun-Times. One morning I was standing on the corner of Union and Morgan when a very clear voice told me that I was going to teach history and work with troubled teenagers. I was pretty sure someone was messing with me … but there was no one else around at that time of the morning…especially at Morgan and Union. Movin’ on.

My experiences with watching people who had darker pigment being abused was often on my mind. There was a group at Valparaiso University who called themselves Hearts for Jesus. Pastor King told me that the churches in LaPorte, Gary and Michigan City might be interested in working together if our youth group was so inclined. In 1966 I struck a friendship with Clyde Young from First Baptist Gary. We came up with this wild idea that he and I would go to Morehouse College in Atlanta together. The American Baptist Convention met in Pittsburgh in Spring 1967. I was summoned to a meeting with three Morehouse College Alumni. I was told that in the current climate it would be unwise for a ‘crippled white kid from the North’ to attend an all-black college in Atlanta.  And, the problem would not come from my fellow students. We continued to work with Hearts for Jesus in Valparaiso to forge a little more tolerance.  

One Saturday morning in 1967, Valparaiso’s Baptist Youth Fellowship student leaders were heading out of town for a meeting with Gary FBC when I heard the ‘Morgan and Union’ voice tell me that the Old Testament was more important than the New Testament. At seventeen I had no idea what that meant. I also had no common sense, nor the wisdom to keep that to myself.

The summer of 1968 was on the horizon. There are some who are reading this who remember what the spring of 1968 was like. The school year had barely ended when I received an invitation for summer employment at the American Baptist Assembly Grounds in Green Lake, Wisconsin. Since I had to take a bus to get to Wisconsin, I had a six-hour layover in Chicago in the midst of the Grant Park Riots; Wild in the Streets was playing at the State Street Theater.

I was still licking my wounds from being told that I should not attend Morehouse when I learned of Elmer Gantry and Ottawa University, a school established between the (then) Northern Baptist Convention and the Ottawa Tribal Council.  I decided to leave for Kansas. I applied in April, was accepted in May, and began classes in July. More on that later.

May 1969, I was coming out of the gymnasium at Purdue University where I was attending the Indiana State Baptist Youth Fellowship Convention. I heard another ‘Union and Morgan’ voice. This time I was told that I was going to go into the ministry. How does that jive with teaching history?

In October 1970, the Ottawa University Chaplain called me into his office and asked if I would be willing to act as Student Pastor at a rural Methodist Church in the now non-existent town of Rosemont, Kansas. The superintendent was attempting to convince the Rosemont congregation to merge with a larger church in Williamsburg, Kansas. I practiced my first sermon for two weeks. A thirty-minute sermon was over in five minutes. But, despite the superintendent’s wishes, they kept me on until December 1972.

Closing out my senior year at Ottawa, I felt a call to register at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in North Kansas City, Missouri. There I learned that the Israelites crossed the Sea of Reeds, and the Egyptians got mired in the Mirey Clay, and several other cute tidbits I never learned in Sunday School. I left in May for Brother John Job’s wedding and did not return for thirty-five years.

I moved to Chicago and became the Youth Pastor at Albany Park Baptist Church. I also obtained a position as an Office Administrator and Printer at Chicago Business Services, across the intersection from where the Sears Tower was being built on Wacker Drive. I remained there for a year and three months. I heard my Morgan and Union voice telling me to return to finish my degree at Central Baptist Seminary in Kansas City, Kansas in September 1974.

I arrived on Campus at Central on Labor Day Weekend. I was pretty sure that I was the only student there that weekend. Coming home from Broadway Baptist Church on Sunday, I met a gentleman walking out of the dorm. He introduced himself as Gordon Lawton and asked if I wanted to go to a Church Picnic in Nortonville, Kansas that afternoon. I accepted. We went. We had a great time. Tuesday came and we registered for classes.

After several weeks, I learned that Gordon was some denomination called Seventh Day Baptist; whoever they were. The name did sound vaguely familiar. This guy disappeared on Saturday morning, and often did not come back until Sunday. The more I heard him talk in class, the more I thought I needed to prove the fallacy of what he called the Sabbath. I started going to church with him. I began wondering why Jesus rose as it was dawning toward the first day of the week. I began questioning where, in Scripture, God changed the Sabbath to Sunday. I started working on my term paper for Church History. By November I found that Scripture did not support a Sunday day of worship. Remember the trip to Gary First Baptist when I was seventeen…the one where God told me the Old Testament was more important than the New Testament? Um-hmm.

At Christmas Break I went home and told my parents that I was going to become a Sabbatarian. I went in to see Pastor Peter Neiukoop to tell him that I was going to move my membership to the Kansas City Seventh Day Baptist Church.  He told me that Pastor Douglas had told him that I was becoming overly influenced by the liberals at Ottawa University in Kansas. Douglas had also told him of a meeting he had with me and my parents in 1971 at which time he told me that I needed to transfer from Ottawa to the College of the Ozarks in Clarksville, Arkansas so that I would not lose my Salvation.

I AM gave me churches to pastor among the Methodists, Disciples of Christ, and American Baptists. He sent me to Churches in New York State, West Virginia, Kansas City, Missouri, Kokomo, Indiana, and White Cloud, Michigan before planting me, for thirty years, in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. The path has not always been smooth. Most of the rough patches were hewn by my own sin, impatience, obstinance, arrogance, and just plain lack of intelligence.

In November 1994, the El Shaddai told me to go back to school at Central Michigan University to obtain a teaching certificate. I was happy in White Cloud. I had no intention of leaving White Cloud. He knew my next step. In 2005 He told me to get a Master of Arts in Education Administration and Supervision. In March 2013 I completed a Doctor of Education in Education in School Systems Administration. I figured I was done. But in April 2013 he told me to begin research on this book.

In January 2016 He told me I wasn’t taking this book seriously. He told me to apply for the Ph.D. and Th. M. program at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in North Kansas City…again. I was pretty sure that with my history of sin, disobedience, and non-Southern Baptist Theology it was a pretty good bet that I would never even be considered for this program. I was tentatively accepted with the condition that I complete Master’s level Theology II, Homiletics, and Hebrew I and II. I did.

I began working on my Ph. D. in September 2018. I contracted a respiratory ailment in January 2020. I attended my on-campus seminar in February 2020. I retired from teaching in March (officially in July). At the February Doctoral Seminar obvious that Midwestern and I were not going to agree on the direction of my dissertation. The theology professors deemed it Apologetics. They began making waves, first logging my grade for February as a B-. My points made my grade a B+. When I challenged the grade, the professor told me that he would correct it. When the final grade was posted, it was posted as a B.

With Covid in full swing, and travel without a vaccine impossible, I asked to be excused from the Ph.D. program. This, however, is my dissertation. It would probably be more polished if I had been able to continue, and if the Dissertation Committee would have allowed me to continue.

This is not a new path that I found, or that transfixed a shift to religious fanaticism. This is a work that our Holy God began in me at a very young age. He held me back from the jaws of death on three different occasions. With the Union and Morgan voice, He continually prodded me forward in a path that I once saw through a glass dimly. I can see clearly now; the fog is gone. He spoke me into His path even when I was resistant.

This is a labor of love; a labor that Self Existent One began with me in my youth. I just did not know it at that time. He first told me in 1967. He kept me at the end of the spear until I finished this task. I am His. This is His. Please do not attempt to overrule it with theology. If it is to be overruled, do it with science, Scripture, and history.

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Chapter One

In the Beginning

In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God; and the Word was God. This One was in the beginning with God. All things came into being by him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the light of Men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend the light (John 1:1-5 NASB).¹

In the beginning …. No mortal was around in the beginning. Yet, it is one of the most controversial elements of social thought. Scientists want to believe that landing the Rosetta Probe on a comet will reveal all the meaning of the universe.² These scientists want to believe that NASA’s probe that passed Pluto in July 2015 (New Horizons) would provide some clue to the origins of the universe.³ Evangelical Christians want to believe that the first two chapters of Genesis in the Bible give all the secrets of the beginning of universe.⁴ Pope Francis states that there may be some validity in evolution.⁵ Left wing Christians usually side with the current social thought, presently closest to supposed Darwinian evolution.⁶ What is the purpose, the reality of In the beginning?

What is important, and obvious from the Hebrew point of view, is that there was an existence of a Supreme Being, with multiple facets, from before human time began. The Hebrew name for this Supreme Being was Elohim ( Watt_Hebrew_01.pdf ).⁷ Elohim is the noun used to describe God in Genesis. The noun is masculine plural. The noun implies a singular presence with multiple facets. Therefore, we read in Torah, Hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord alone is one. (Deuteronomy 6:4, Zechariah 14:9)⁸ In the New American Standard Bible (NASB), Hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord our God is One. The multiple facets of the one God allows for the presence in this one for the Christian interpretation of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The One also allows for the use of multiplicity in the creation account; it allows for the saving grace of the ultimate and final sacrifice in the person of Jesus, and the abiding presence of the Spirit for the purpose of guidance.⁹

Wright holds that the resurrection of the slain lamb, the messianic focal point and climax of the story of the creator, is the focal point of the Covenant of God with Israel and the world. The resurrection means that Israel’s Creator God affirmed that Jesus really was, from the beginning, a facet of the God-head. The acceptance and validation of the messianic achievement is the