AT THE UNITY OF THE BIBLE TELLS US
By Jon Quinn
I'd like to begin by challenging your thinking for a moment. Ponder this: You gather together ten baseball fans all from the midwest. They all have similar jobs, are close to the same age and from similar social and economic backgrounds. They are each married and have two children, and each one lives in a three bedroom ranch type house in an average sized community.
Now you put them into ten different rooms and ask them each to write a paragraph on each of the following baseball questions:
Who is the greatest player of all time?
Who will win the series this year?
Who is the most overrated player of all time?
Who is the best manager of today's teams?
Now to make the point out of all this: What are the chances that their answers to the above four questions would all agree? We all know that the chances for that are negligible! No way! It could not happen! At least not without some sort of Divine guidance and I doubt they would get any!
EVIDENCE FOR DIVINE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE
"...for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God" (II PETER 1:21).
The Bible is a book that was written in intervals of over 1400 years. Parts of it were written in Europe, Asia Minor, the Sinai Peninsula, Africa, Persia and of course, Palestine. It was written by over forty different individuals from widely varied circumstances. They wrote concerning the most controversial topics known to man, including the origin of the universe, the nature of man, life after death, the purpose of life and how one is saved from sin. Now, if our ten baseball fans mentioned above had no chance of unity in their answers to four simple questions, even though they share so many things in common, what are the chances that these forty writers of the Bible will agree on the greater amount of material that they discuss? There is NO chance at all UNLESS the above verse is true: that men were "moved by the Holy Spirit of God"!
THE DIFFERENT WALKS OF LIFE OF THE WRITERS
"I am not a prophet, nor am I a son of a prophet; for I am a herdsman and a grower of sycamore figs" (AMOS 7:14).
I suppose that Amos was as surprised as anybody when God called him into the office of prophet. He had never been one before. His father had not been a prophet. In fact, the writers of the Bible were from many different occupational backgrounds. Moses had seen both royal living as well as herding sheep before God called him. Joshua was a military leader. Luke was a doctor. Matthew was a tax collector and Peter was a fisherman. Solomon was a king. Nehemiah had been the king's cupbearer. Yes, it will be difficult for these forty to agree.
THE DIFFERENT LOCALES
"Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, descendant of David, according to my gospel, for which now I suffer hardship even to imprisonment as a criminal; but the word of God is not imprisoned." (II TIMOTHY 2:8,9).
Here Paul writes from behind prison walls. Though some of the Bible was written in such circumstances, other parts of it were written in vastly different surroundings. The first five books of the Bible were all written in a vast wilderness. Jeremiah wrote from a dungeon while Daniel wrote in a palace. Luke wrote while traveling the Roman Empire and the book of Revelation was written by John who was at the time exiled to an island. Parts were written on a mountaintop, other parts by a riverside. How in the world will these forty ever agree?
OTHER DIFFERENCES
"Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say rejoice!" (PHILIPPIANS 4:4).
Despite the fact that he is in prison, we catch the writer of these words in a pretty good mood. Another time, this time in freedom, he had this to say, "I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart." (ROMANS 9:2). In fact the moods reflected in the Bible by the different writers at different times run all the way from one extreme to the other.
Also, there are at least three different languages spoken by the writers of the Bible: Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic. In addition to those would be the languages of the captivities: Egyptian, Assyrian and Babylonian.
The writings cover a complete scope of human events. There is love and hate, rich and poor, war and peace. Some of the writing takes place in times of faith, others during times of indifference and even apostasy. Out of all these varied backgrounds come forty writers. How can we even hope that they will all agree?
THEY AGREE!
"...that by revelation was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief. And by referring to this, when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ..." (EPHESIANS 3:3,4).
What we have in the Bible is not a library of 66 unrelated books. We have one book with one theme that runs consistently through the fourteen centuries of writing it entails. In truth, there is not forty authors; there is but One. It is no accident that the words "Thus sayeth the Lord" or some similar statement occurs over one thousand times in its pages. The unity of the Bible tells us that it is not simply the work of man. As Jesus said, "The scripture cannot be broken" (JOHN 10:35). This means that the Bible is consistent. Truth always is.
No, those ten baseball fans mentioned at the beginning do not have much of a chance to find unity in their answers. It would be remarkable if they did. It is also remarkable that given the unity of the Bible which would be impossible apart from God, that people can still shrug their shoulders and say they are not convinced of its reliability. What more do they want?
