One Book, Sixty-Six Books: The Miracle of Unity

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Consider how the Bible was made. It is a library of 66 books written by roughly 40 authors over about 1,500 years. The writers were shepherds, kings, fishermen, a physician, a tax collector, a tentmaker, priests, and prophets. They wrote in three languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek) on three continents (Asia, Africa, and Europe), in deserts, palaces, prisons, and exile. Most never met one another, and many lived centuries apart.

One Story

Yet the collection tells a single story with a single hero. That story has four movements:

The first promise of a Redeemer appears at the very beginning, in God's words to the serpent: "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel" (Genesis 3:15). The last chapters of Revelation show the tree of life restored (Revelation 22:2), the paradise lost in Genesis regained.

The Scarlet Thread

Jesus claimed that the whole Old Testament pointed to Him. On the road to Emmaus, "beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself" (Luke 24:27). Later He told His disciples that "all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me" (Luke 24:44).

The pictures are striking:

• The Passover lamb (Exodus 12) foreshadows the one John the Baptist named: "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). Paul writes, "For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us" (1 Corinthians 5:7).
• Isaac on the altar (Genesis 22), a father offering a beloved son, finds its echo at Calvary. Hebrews says that Abraham reasoned "that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure" (Hebrews 11:19).
• The bronze serpent (Numbers 21:9) lifted for healing anticipates the cross: "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up" (John 3:14).
• Jonah in the great fish prefigures the burial and resurrection: "For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matthew 12:40).

Why Unity Matters

Human anthologies, even those edited by a single committee, contradict themselves. A library spanning fifteen centuries, with no central editor, yet advancing one plan of redemption with consistent doctrine about God, humanity, sin, and salvation, is for believers a sign of a single divine Author working through many human hands [2].

CHAPTER 3