A Bird View Of The Bible

The Bible is one book

1. From Genesis the Bible bear witness to one God. Wherever He speaks or acts He is consistent with Himself, and with the total revelation concerning Him.
2. The Bible forms one continuous story; the story of humanity in relation to God.
3. The Bible hazards the most unlikely predictions regarding the future, and when the centuries have brought round the appointed time, records their fulfilment.
4. The Bible is a progressive unfolding of truth. Nothing is told all at once, and once for all. Without the possibility of collusion, often with centuries in between, one writer of Scripture takes up an earlier revelation, adds to it, lays down the pen, and in due time another man moved by the Holy Spirit, and another, and another, add new details till the whole is complete.
5. From beginning to end the Bible has one great theme; the Person and work of the Christ.
6. From beginning to end the Bible testifies to one redemption.
7. These writers, some forty four in number, writing through twenty centuries, have produced a perfect harmony of doctrine in progressive unfolding. The unanswerable proof of the divine inspiration of the Bible.

The Bible is a book of books

66 books make up the one Book. For each of the sixty-six books is complete in itself, and has its own theme and analysis. Each of the separate book might be considered as chapter unifying into the one book, the Scripture.
Genesis, for instance is the book of beginnings - the seed plot of the whole Bible. Matthew is the book of the King, etc.

The books of the Bible fall into groups

Five keywords may be easily fixed in the memory to denote five great divisions in the Scripture, Christ being the one profound theme.

The Bible tells the human story

Begin logically with the creation of the earth and of man , the story of race sprung from the first human pair continues through the first eleven chapters of Genesis. In the 12th chapter begins the history of Abraham and of the nation of which Abraham was the ancestor. It is the nation Israel with which the Bible narrative is thereafter chiefly concerned from the 11th chapter of Genesis to the 2nd chapter of the Acts. The Gentiles are mentioned, but only in connection with Israel.

The appointed mission of Israel was:

1. to be a witness to the unity of God in the midst of universal idolatry
2. to illustrate to the nation the grater blessedness of serving the one true God
3. to receive and preserve the divine revelation
4. to produce the Messiah, earth's Saviour and Lord. The prophets foretell a glorious future for Israel under the reign of Christ.

The biblical story of Israel past, present, future falls into seven distinct periods:

1. from the call of Abram to Exodus.
2. from the Exodus to the death of Joshua.
3. from the death of Joshua to the establishment of the Hebrews monarchy under Saul.
4. the period of the kings from Saul to the captivities.
5. the period of captivities.
6. the restored commonwealth from the end of Babylonian captivity of Judah to the destruction of Jerusalem, AD 70.
7. the present dispersion and the returning of the Jews to their home land...

The central theme of the Bible is Christ Jesus

1. It is the manifestation of Jesus Christ, His Person as God manifest in the flesh (1Tim.3:16), His sacrificial death and His resurrection, which constitute the Gospel.
2. Unto this all preceding Scripture leads; from this all following Scripture proceeds.
3. The Gospel is preached in the Acts and explained in the Epistles.
4. Christ, Son of God, Son of man, Son of Abraham, Son of David thus binds the many books into one Book.
5. The seed of the woman (Gen.3:15), He is the ultimate destroyer of Satan and his works; Seed of Abraham, He's the benefactor of the world; Seed of David, He is Israel's King; Exalted to the right hand of God, He is the Head over all to the Church, which is His body; the promise of His return forms the only rational expectation for Israel's solution and the world peace that humanity will yet fulfill itself.
6. The Revelation of Jesus Christ is the last 'chapter' of the Book as the consummation book.