Luke 24:25

And he said unto them, O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken.

O foolish men ... "This is not the same word as the one used in Matthew 5:22, where we are forbidden to say `Thou fool' to our brother."[12] This was Jesus' dramatic way of emphasizing their failure to accept the plain teachings of the Old Testament prophecies. It seems incredible that after all that was written in the Old Testament concerning the suffering Servant of God, his being despised and rejected, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and even the exact scenes of the crucifixion having been spelled out in Psalms 22, the Jewish people remained almost totally blind to that phase of Messiah's character.

"Artificial and even ridiculous explanations were applied to Old Testament prophecies of Messiah's sufferings and death."[13] And as Geldenhuys further said:

At all costs they reasoned away all the prophecies of the expiatory death of the Messiah and defended their own earthly view of a triumphant Jewish Messiah.[14]

This is precisely the fault of all generations of men who have rejected what they did not like in God's word, accepting only those portions of it which pleased them. Such persons say, "I believe in heaven, but I do not believe in hell and the devil!"

Inherent in the Lord's statement here is the fact that, in order to know God's teaching in any sector, it is mandatory to take account of "all that the prophets have spoken" on any given subject. Thus, in the understanding of the sacred Gospels, it is absolutely necessary to believe "all" that is written in all four of them. The scissors-and-paste method which is so much in vogue among critical scholars is utterly incapable of revealing the true teaching of God.

[12] Charles L. Childers, op. cit., p. 613.

[13] Norval Geldenhuys, op. cit., p. 637.

[14] Ibid.