About the Bible: Its Unity

One of the most important pieces of evidence for the truth of the Bible is its amazing unity.  This is inexplicable unless all its different writers were being directed by a single divine intelligence.

It is all too easy to think that the Old Testament is outdated and irrelevant to modern needs, and that all we need to do is to read the New Testament.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Jesus makes a revealing statement in Jn 5:46-47 "For if ye believed Moses, ye would believe me; for he wrote of me.  But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?"

We could hardly be given a more explicit proof that the Old Testament writings are essential to the understanding of Christ's teachings.

The major themes of man's sin, God's love and His salvation, run through the Scriptures like threads through a beautiful piece of expensive fabric.  Ideas introduced early in the book resurface time and again, sometimes in identical form, sometimes camouflaged.  Patterns emerge, comparisons and contrasts are made, and a special sort of similarity continually comes up - the 'type'.

A 'type' is a person, described somewhere in the Bible, who in some ways resembles Jesus.  There are many examples of this.  Adam, Abel, Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, Moses, David, Elijah, Elisha, Ezekiel, Daniel, and many other characters are 'types' of Jesus.  None are perfect matches: clearly that is impossible.  But all point forward, in some way, in their lives and their actions, to the Saviour.