Before his death, Moses told Israel that the prophetic office would not end with him: 'The Lord thy God will raise up to thee a PROPHET of thy nation and of thy brethren LIKE UNTO ME: him thou shalt hear... I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I shall command him' (Deuteronomy 18:15–18). By the first century 'the Prophet' had become a fixed messianic title — the crowds ask John the Baptist, 'Art thou the prophet?' (John 1:21).
The Gospels present Christ deliberately in Moses' pattern: rescued as an infant from a king slaughtering Hebrew boys, called out of Egypt, fasting forty days, giving the law of the New Covenant from a mountain (the Sermon on the Mount, delivered by tradition on this hill above the Sea of Galilee), feeding the multitude with bread in the wilderness. At the Transfiguration Moses himself appears beside Him, and the Father's voice speaks the very words of the prophecy: 'Hear ye him' (Mark 9:6; Deuteronomy 18:15).
St. Peter, preaching in the Temple, makes the identification formal: 'For Moses said: A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me... every soul which will not hear that prophet shall be destroyed from among the people' (Acts 3:22–23), and St. Stephen repeats it before the Sanhedrin (Acts 7:37).