We are now going to look at another line of evidence – I’m calling it Agreement.
The Bible is a library. It’s a collection of 66 books that were written by about 40 different authors over a period of about 1600 years on three different continents in three different languages. It contains history, poetry, prophecy, legal documents and personal correspondence. Quite a variety. The first 39 books are the Old Testament – everything there takes place before Christ’s birth. The last 27 books are the New Testament – everything there takes place from the birth of Christ onwards. As you flick through the pages it might seem like a bit of a hodgepodge, but there is nothing random here. The fact that the Bible came through so many authors over such a long time gives us one of the greatest proofs that it is God’s Word.
Imagine one day someone hands you a scrap of paper with a paragraph of text on it, and he also gives you a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. Then weeks later someone else gives you another scrap of paper and another jigsaw puzzle piece. Over the next few years at various times and places you get people giving you a piece of paper with a paragraph of text, and a jigsaw puzzle piece. When you pull all these scraps of paper out and put them together you find that they tell one story. You get all the jigsaw puzzle pieces and you find that they all fit together to form a picture. What would you conclude? It certainly wouldn’t be, “What a coincidence!” This is undeniable evidence that there was a plan in all of this. Before the first paragraph of text and piece of the puzzle were given, the story had been written and the picture had been formed. This wasn’t chance, it was design.
That’s the way it is with the Bible. We have all these different documents of various genres from diverse times, places, cultures and people, and yet, when you put them together, they all tell one story and they fit together to present one picture. It’s a story of redemption and a picture of grace – God redeeming fallen humanity through Christ. Every part of the Bible contributes to this theme and moves the story on, so that when you come to the final chapter, everything that had been lost and ruined at the beginning has been redeemed and restored.
But not only do all the stories come together to tell one story and make one picture, but all the stories individually tell that one story and make that one picture. What I mean is this, when you look at the narratives of the Old Testament you find that they are telling the story of the gospel and presenting a portrait of Christ. I will give you some examples of that in our next post.
