Bible Tuesday - Mo' Samson

 ²There was a certain man of Zorah, of the tribe of the Danites, whose name was Manoah. And his wife was barren and had no children. ³ And the angel of the LORD appeared to the woman and said to her, "Behold, you are barren and have not borne children, but you shall conceive and bear a son.


To be fair, this post has very little to do with Samson and a whole lot to do with Jesus. 

I became a Christian when I was 28 years old.  And even though I was a voracious reader, my exposure to the Bible was limited to say the least.  So as I began my first real reading of the Bible,  I was really only concerned with Jesus.  Being a new Christian is an experience akin to first love.  I was just consumed with Jesus.  I could not get enough.  (If you are lucky, that feeling lasts for the rest of your life.)  I say all this to explain to you that I read the Old Testament for the first time, I saw Jesus or prophecies about Jesus everywhere.  I didn't know, at the time, that these appearances had a fancy pants name.  They're called theophanies or christophanies.

Baker's Evangelical Dictionary defines it this way :  Manifestation of God that is tangible to the human senses. In its most restrictive sense, it is a visible appearance of God in the Old Testament period often, but not always, in human form.

So in Judges 13, 'THE' Angel of the Lord appears to Samson's mama.  Angels show up quite a bit in the Bible.  But sometimes 'AN' angel appears and sometimes 'THE' angel appears.   When a 'THE' angel moment occurs, I always assume it's Jesus.  I'm sure someone with a seminary degree could dispute this but I don't care.

Samson's dad, Manoah is not convinced about the angel situation.

 ⁸Then Manoah prayed to the LORD and said, "O Lord, please let the man of God whom you sent come again to us and teach us what we are to do with the child who will be born."

Guess what happens.

⁹And God listened to the voice of Manoah, and the angel of God came again to the woman as she sat in the field.

That verse makes me so happy. But let's keep going.

But Manoah her husband was not with her. ¹⁰So the woman ran quickly and told her husband, "Behold, the man who came to me the other day has appeared to me."  ¹¹And Manoah arose and went after his wife and came to the man and said to him, "Are you the man who spoke to this woman?"

OK...here's where it gets awesome. 

"And he said, "I am."

The Angel said "I am".  For real.  Remind you of anything?

^"14God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." And he said, "Say this to the people of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'"

Or how about this?

^"58Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am."

I'm not saying these two verse prove that Jesus appeared in human form during Old Testament days but it makes me happy to believe so I'm gonna go with it.

More on theophany tomorrow.  Ain't you excited?