Bible Overview

Christian

 

  The Bible consists of two major sections, commonly called “Old Testament” and “New Testament.” These are usually packaged together in one volume, although the New Testament is sometimes available by itself.

 “Testament” is another word for “covenant.” The old covenant between God and man understood that man was incapable of being perfect, and therefore incapable of fellowship with God. To get around this problem, an animal was taken, symbolically loaded with a man’s sins, and killed for these sins in place of the man. This left the man ritualistically pure, and therefore able to relate to God.

  Killing an animal in itself isn’t going to impress God, but these sacrifices indicated a recognition on the part of man that he was impure, and could not get to God on the basis of his own righteousness.  It also gave man an awareness of the life-and-death seriousness of sin, and of his dependence upon the blood atonement for his relationship with God.

  While for man’s part these sacrifices reflected the understanding and sincerity of his heart towards God, they were tied to the yet-future sacrifice of God’s own Son, the ultimate and only effective blood atonement. None of the animal-based blood atonement of the Old Testament would have had any significance before God if it had not been tied prophetically to the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.

  The New Covenant, the new basis for man’s relationship with God, is now based upon the historical fact of God’s ultimate sacrifice. There is now no more need for the prophetic ritual of killing an animal for the sake of one’s sins. In fact, to do so for this purpose would have the opposite effect by denying the effectiveness of the sacrifice that God Himself provided in Jesus.

  Man still relates to God through recognition of his own sins, and of his dependence upon God’s forgiveness. Now however, he recognizes that the sacrifice has already been made, and accepts his own part in it. He enters into a relationship with God by acknowledging his sin to God, and accepting the work of Christ as the basis of purity. The relationship that begins in this manner is what Christians are speaking of when we use the term “born again”. Such a starting point begins the unfolding of life’s ultimate and greatest adventure.

 

Anatomy of The Book

 

  The Old Testament makes up about ¾ of the Bible. It chronicles the path of man’s relationship with God up to about 450 B.C.  The New Testament begins with the birth of Jesus and carries the account to approximately the end of the first generation of Christians. Both of these volumes are laced with prophecies that extend to and beyond our present time.

  The first five books of the Old Testament cover the dawn of creation through the establishment of Israel as a nation after their exodus from Egypt. This set is referred to variously as the Torah, the Pentateuch, the books of law, and the books of Moses. Within this group you will find the foundations of civil code that have served many nations in the thousands of years since that time. The Next group of books ( Joshua through Ester) cover this history to the time when the Jews returned to Israel after their seventy years of captivity in Babylon in about 450 B.C.

  These are followed by literature, songs, and poetry (Job through Song of Solomon).

  Finally, we have the books of Isaiah through Malachi, which are the words of the prophets from the time Israel was ruled by kings until after they returned from Babylonian captivity.

  The first four books of the New Testament are accounts of the life of Christ by four very different people. They frequently overlap, but there are also the types of differences you would get from people viewing the same event from different parts of a crowd. You will also find different levels of detail, different events considered noteworthy by the various writers from different backgrounds. There are also vague chronologies for some things, as two of these books were written many years later, and are partially organized by subject, rather than chronology.

  The book of Acts provides early church history, from the ascension of Jesus into heaven until the death of the apostle Paul.

  From there we get into various letters, or “epistles”, to use a more churchy term. These were written to navigate the early church through cultural conflicts and other hazards, and to encourage and guide in the practical implementation of sound doctrine.

  The book of Revelation relates information given by God to the apostle John. John was an old man at the time, and the Roman government had sentenced him to finish his years in exile on an island called Patmos. The revelation was in the form of a sequence of visions interspersed with instruction and explanations.  Although some of the content related to then-current situations, most of it pertained to future events.