Old Testament God vs. Jesus: Same God or Different Beings?
Updated: Oct 3
The short answer: Yes, they are the same God. Yeshua took the name God gave Moses at the burning bush, proved the resurrection from that same passage, and said He came to fulfill the Torah and the Prophets, not abolish them. The claim that the Old Testament God is a lesser or evil being is not new; it is the heresy of Marcion, rejected by the early church in the second century. In Part 1 of this series, Pastor Chris and Josh lay the framework: the Father and the Son cannot be separated.
The lie spreading through the algorithm
Today many people say the God of the Old Testament is a tyrant, jealous and wrathful, and a different being from Yeshua. One of the most famous popular books attacking faith describes Him in exactly those terms, and Josh sees the same idea quoted every week in the comments by young people leaving the faith they were raised in. The battle, he says, is not in the pulpit anymore; it is in the algorithm, one out-of-context verse at a time.
Pastor Chris says this matters for believers too, not only skeptics. Some Christians read only the New Testament and quietly assume the Father of the Old Testament is harsh. But you cannot build a relationship with God if you misunderstand His nature. That is why he repeats the rule for reading Scripture: read the verses before and after, and often the chapter before, because taking the God of the universe out of context does humanity a disservice.
An old heresy with a new microphone
This is not a new lie. Around 144 AD, a wealthy teacher named Marcion of Sinope came to the church in Rome teaching that the God of the Hebrew Scriptures was not the Father of Yeshua but a lower being, and that the Old Testament should be thrown out. The church listened, and then excommunicated him. Polycarp, who had been taught by the apostle John, called Marcion the firstborn of Satan. Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and Tertullian refuted him.
Marcion was buried by the church fathers 1,800 years ago. Today people dig him up, give him a podcast and call it scholarship.
Pastor Chris says the enemy's strategy here is one move: split the Father from the Son. If he can cut a generation off from the Old Testament, he cuts them off from two-thirds of the Word of God and from the whole prophetic foundation of who Yeshua is.
Attack 1: A different God than Jesus
In John 8:58 Yeshua tells the religious leaders, "Before Abraham was, I am." That phrase points straight to Exodus 3:14, where God speaks from the burning bush and gives Moses His name: I am who I am. Yeshua took that covenant name for Himself in public. He was not only claiming to be a prophet or teacher; He was claiming to be the God who spoke to Moses. The leaders understood, which is why in the very next verse they picked up stones.
In Mark 12:26–27, when the Sadducees deny the resurrection, Yeshua answers from the same burning bush: "I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living." He proved the resurrection by quoting the God of the Old Testament. You cannot separate Yeshua from the Old Testament without separating Him from your salvation.
And in Matthew 5:17 He says, "Do not think that I came to abolish the Torah or the Prophets. I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill." Here Pastor Chris and Josh bring the distinction they teach: at one point the Torah and the law of Moses were together as one. Yeshua fulfilled the law of Moses, the sacrifices and the system that pointed to Him, and the Torah, God's instruction, stays. That is why they recommend a translation like the Tree of Life Version, which helps readers see that distinction.
Some claim John's Gospel secretly supports the idea that Yeshua was only a spirit. John 1:14 buries that: the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The God of the Old Testament took on real flesh and walked among His people.
Attack 2: God ordered whole civilizations destroyed
Josh says this question stops many people at the door of salvation, and "God's ways are higher than our ways" is a deflection, not an answer. The answer, Pastor Chris teaches, begins in Genesis 6:1–4: the sons of God took the daughters of men, and the Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward. The root of Nephilim means to fall; he teaches they were the hybrid offspring of fallen angels and human women. That reading was taught openly in the early centuries by writers such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and Tertullian, before the sons of Seth interpretation became the mainstream view in Augustine's time.
Seen this way, the Flood was not a tantrum. It was a rescue of the human bloodline from a corruption God never ordained. Genesis 6:9 says Noah was blameless in his generations, which Pastor Chris reads as pointing to one of the last uncorrupted human lines. He also teaches that the spirits of the Nephilim who died are the unclean spirits that still roam the earth.
After the Flood, the corrupted line appeared again, as Genesis 6:4 warned. In Numbers 13:33 the spies report, "We saw the Nephilim there, the descendants of Anak, who come from the Nephilim, and we seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes." The Anakim, Rephaim, Emim and Zamzummim were giant clans, not ordinary tribes. So when God commanded Israel to destroy specific peoples, He was removing a corrupted seedline, not ordering random genocide.
It all goes back to Genesis 3:15, where God puts enmity between the serpent's seed and the woman's seed. From page three of the Bible there is a war over the human line, because if the enemy could corrupt it, the Messiah could not be born. That is why there is a giant in so many of Israel's battles, including David and Goliath: the seed of the woman's line facing the serpent's line.
Attack 3: God endorsed slavery
Josh hears this one constantly, even at the gym. Pastor Chris starts with the Hebrew word usually translated slave, eved, which means servant or bondservant, a worker under contract. God did not invent slavery; it existed in Egypt, Babylon, Assyria and Canaan long before Moses. What the Torah did was take an existing system and surround it with protections unheard of in the ancient world:
Exodus 21:2: a Hebrew servant served six years, and in the seventh he went free. A release date was written into the law.
Leviticus 25: in the year of Jubilee, every fifty years, debts were cancelled, servants freed and ancestral land returned to its family.
Deuteronomy 23:15–16: an escaped slave who took refuge in Israel was not to be handed back to his master but allowed to live wherever he chose, and not oppressed.
If that last law had been followed, a law forcing escaped slaves to be returned would have been impossible. Slavery as practiced in America did not fulfill the Bible; it violated it. God's pattern, Pastor Chris says, is not to shatter cultures overnight but to bend them toward justice, and then Yeshua bent everything toward redemption. Paul wrote to Philemon to receive his runaway servant Onesimus no longer as a slave but as a beloved brother. Many of the great abolitionists, such as William Wilberforce, Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, were reading this very Bible.
You cannot borrow morality to accuse God
Finally, Pastor Chris turns the argument around. To call God evil, you need an absolute standard of good and evil from outside human opinion. If people are only atoms and accidents of chemistry, evil is just a preference. The moment a critic calls God a bully, he is borrowing a moral standard that can only exist if God exists.
You cannot borrow morality from God and then weaponize it against God.
Part 2 of the series takes on the hardest verses one by one: the Egyptian firstborn, Pharaoh's heart, the bears, Uzzah and Numbers 31. But the framework is already clear. The God who spoke from the bush is the God who walked in the flesh, died and rose, and He prays salvation over even those who oppose Him.
Frequently asked questions
Is the God of the Old Testament the same as Jesus?
Yes. Yeshua claimed the name I AM from Exodus 3:14 (John 8:58), proved the resurrection from the burning bush (Mark 12:26–27) and came to fulfill the Torah and Prophets (Matthew 5:17).
Who was Marcion?
A second-century teacher who claimed the Old Testament God was a lower being. The church in Rome excommunicated him around 144 AD, and early leaders such as Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and Tertullian opposed him.
Why did God command Israel to destroy certain nations?
Pastor Chris teaches it was about the corrupted Nephilim bloodline of Genesis 6, which reappeared in the giant clans of Canaan (Numbers 13:33), threatening the line through which Messiah would come (Genesis 3:15).
Did the Bible approve of slavery?
The Torah regulated an existing system with protections unheard of at the time: release in the seventh year (Exodus 21:2), Jubilee (Leviticus 25) and refuge for escaped slaves (Deuteronomy 23:15–16).
Did Jesus abolish the law?
He fulfilled it. The Torah and the law of Moses were together at one point; Yeshua fulfilled the sacrificial system, temple worship and priesthood, while God's instruction remains.
Take the next step
If this stirred something in you, do not walk it out alone. Join the Faith Sower community on WhatsApp for daily Bible study, prayer and teaching with Pastor Chris and believers around the world.
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