Some years ago, at the time when I was still trying to convince Norman of the truth of the Bible, we went together to a symphony concert. Afterwards I kicked myself for missing an opportunity. On the way home I ought to have started up a conversation like this:
"Tell me, Norman, have you ever wondered what would happen if the conductor should be taken ill in the middle of a symphony?"
"I suppose theyd appoint another conductor from among the instrumentalists. If not, theyd just have to give up playing. They certainly couldnt carry on without a conductor."
"Quite so. Now suppose that you were to go blind, and someone took you to a concert. The orchestra are performing magnificently. Suddenly the man in the next seat tells you that they are playing without a conductor. Would you believe him?"
"Of course not. Even if I couldnt see the conductor I should know that he must be there from the way the orchestra was playing. Harmony doesnt just happen, you know. There must be a conductor to create it."
And then I could have gone on to apply that principle to the Bible itself. Here we have a collection of sixty-six books, by about forty different authors, written over a period of at least a thousand years. (Much longer than a thousand years, if you accept what the Bible says about its own authors.)
Yet the harmony running through all these books is outstanding. They all teach the same great doctrines about life and death, sin and salvation. From Genesis to Revelation there is one steadily unfolding, consistent story: God has a plan for the earth and the human race, and is slowly but surely seeing it through to completion.
Harmony doesnt just happen. If the "orchestra" is playing well, we can infer the existence of a "Conductor". We may be too blind to see the Hand that guided the forty Biblical authors, but their harmony is evidence that He exists.
The unbeliever has a ready excuse. He cannot deny that a certain amount of harmony is there, and so he suggests that the Bible writers themselves deliberately created it. Each writer knew what the general teaching of the previous writers was, so he framed his own book to fall in line, says the unbeliever.
At the same time the unbeliever adopts his favourite method of defence. He sidesteps smartly. "And anyway," he retorts, "theres an awful lot of disharmony in the Bible, too!"
If you press him to specify the "awful lot of disharmony" he generally becomes uncomfortable. Before long he has to admit that he has greatly overstated his case. There is not "an awful lot of disharmony". In the end, if he tries very hard, he may manage to produce one or two examples of what he calls "contradictions".
I shall deal more fully with this accusation that the Bible contradicts itself in Chapter 19. Meanwhile, here is just one very important point.
The so-called contradictions all lie on the surface.
The harmonies are fundamental, deep-rooted.
And this is just what you would expect to find in a collection of books that are true.
Ask any lawyer how he reacts if he hears two witnesses telling exactly the same story. He suspects collaboration between them. Their evidence is too good to be true. He cross-examines them closely. And when he probes deeply he soon discovers whether they are lying or not.
But with truthful witnesses it is quite different. They may easily appear to disagree. If the crime took place at a street corner, one witness may say it happened in X Street, and the other in Y Street. In this case, cross-examination will soon establish that both were telling the truth. The more deeply the lawyer probes, the more he will uncover the harmony lying behind the two witnesses accounts.
Now to return to the unbelievers first line of defence. He argues that the harmony between the various books of the Bible is there because the writers deliberately produced it.
Does this sound reasonable? Is it likely that all those authors-soldiers, kings, prophets, fishermen, a tax collector, a lawyer, a doctor, men from the dawn of civilisation and men from the sophisticated world of Rome-would all agree to tell the same tale? Is human nature like that?
Try this experiment. Make a collection of prominent documents from Christian churches and sects today. Get a Roman Catholic missal, a Church of England Prayer Book, the Book of Mormon) the Christian Scientists textbook Science and Health, and a copy of the Jehovahs Witnesses Watchtower.
Put them all together, and look at them. What do you find? Complete, utter, indescribable chaos!
Left to themselves religious writers always disagree, even when they supposedly share the same faith. If there really is harmony between the writers of the Bible, it is absurd to argue that they themselves deliberately produced it.
At this point you would probably like me to prove that the harmony have been talking about really exists. But this is not altogether within my power. I cannot prove to a young "pop" fan that Beethovens music is enjoyable. I can only urge him to persevere with listening to it, until he is able to enjoy it for himself.
So it is with the Bible. If you want to know whether it is full of harmony or not, there is really only one way. You must read the Bible, right through, and then read it again.
Here are some of the major themes of the Bible that you will find. They all run through the Bible from beginning to end:
These themes are so great that you can only follow them through he Bible for yourself. Nevertheless, the rest of this chapter will be devoted to a few of the lesser themes of the Bible. They illustrate its harmony on a small scale, small enough for you to grasp at a first look.
En the early years of this century there lived in South Wales a working man known far and wide as "Brother Joe". His friends used to say that he knew the Bible better than anyone else in the world. Whether that was true or not, he certainly had a remarkable grasp of the Bible. You could name almost any chapter, and he would instantly tell you what it was about, what lessons could be learnt from it, and how it linked up with other parts of the Bible. All this despite a complete lack of education, and despite being tied to long hours of heavy manual labour in a steelworks.
Because of his intense love of the Bible, and the way he spent every spare minute reading it and thinking about it, he made many interesting discoveries. One of the most fascinating was what he called, "The story of the failure of the firstborns."
To the Jews, the firstborn son of a family was very important. He had special privileges over his brothers. Under the Jewish laws of inheritance, he was entitled to a double portion.
When God wanted to stress the high calling of His chosen nation, He said, "Israel is My son, My firstborn."1
Yet despite all this stress on the importance of being a firstborn, not one of the successful men of the Old Testament is said to be a firstborn. Every firstborn of the Old Testament who might have had a position of honour was in some way a failure. Every single one disappointed God, and was passed over by God in favour of a younger brother.
The first man, Adam, had a firstborn son called Cain. He was a murderer. God rejected him, and the "chosen line" (that is, the line of descent of the Messiah) passed to a younger son, Seth.
Noah had three sons. They are always listed in this order: Shem, Ham and Japheth. To a casual reader it looks as if Shem must have been the eldest.2 But if we compare a series of verses giving the ages of Noah at various times in his life, and then do a little arithmetic, we soon see that this was not so. Noahs first son was born when he was 500 years old,3 whereas Shem was born when Noah was 503.4 Ham is specifically said to be a younger son.5
Hence we know that Japheth must have been Noahs firstborn. But for some reason God passed him over, and the chosen line passed to Shem, a younger brother.
There is a similar story with Abraham and his brothers. They are listed in this order: Abram, Nahor and Haran.6 But Abram (better known as Abraham) was not the firstborn. He is listed first because he is the chosen one of the family.
The Bible does not state directly that Abram was not the firstborn. This fact only emerges when we compare three different verses, and again do a few sums.7
Abrahams firstborn son was Ishmael, "a wild man",8 who was passed over in favour of Isaac. Isaacs firstborn was Esau. He was a "profane person",9 and the chosen line passed to his younger brother, Jacob.
Jacobs firstborn was Reuben, but he sinned grievously.10 So the honour of delivering the family in its hour of need went to one younger brother, Joseph, and the chosen line passed to another younger brother, Judah.
Josephs firstborn was passed over in favour of a younger brother, despite Josephs protests.11 Judahs firstborn was so wicked that he was slain by God,12 and the chosen line was continued through a much younger brother.
When the two brothers Moses and Aaron are mentioned together it is usually in that order. Moses comes first, because he was the more important and the stronger character. (Aaron once slipped into idolatry.) But Aaron was 3 years older than Moses,13 and presumably (since no other brothers are mentioned) the firstborn of the family.
Many years later, God sent the prophet Samuel to a man called Jesse. God said: "I have provided me a king among his sons."14 Samuel was very favourably impressed with the elder sons. But God made him pass them over, and appoint the youngest son, David, as king.
The first six sons of David are listed like this:
" His firstborn was Amnon... second Chileab... third Absalom ... fourth Adonijah... fifth Shephatiah . ..sixth Ithream."15
Amnon the firstborn seduced his own sister and then cast her aside. This so angered his brother Absalom that he murdered him. Chileab, Shephatiah and Ithream are never mentioned again; presumably they died in infancy.
This left Absalom as the heir apparent; he tried to take the throne by force and was killed. Adonijah was next in line. He also tried to take the throne by force, and was killed.
Why did these two princes give their lives trying to grab what appeared to be theirs by right? Because God had already made it plain that He had passed them over in favour of a younger son, Solomon.16
Part of the wonder of the Bible is that what it omits to say is often just as significant as what it does say. Some of Israels good kings may actually have been firstborn sons. Josiah may well have been, since he was born when his father was only sixteen.17 But none of them is said to be a firstborn.
Thus the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament present us with one consistent harmonious theme. Not one acknowledged firstborn is ever a success in Gods sight.
To the believer, the reason for this remarkable harmony is obvious. It points forward to the two great lessons of the New Testament.
The first lesson is that all ordinary human firstborn-the cream of the race, so to speak-are failures in Gods eyes. The world had to wait for Gods own firstborn Son to be born before it could see a successful firstborn.18
The second lesson is that Gods "firstborn nation",19 Israel, would be a failure. They would have to be replaced by a younger nation, "The Israel of God",20 which is the New Testament name for all those, whether Jew or Gentile, who truly follow Christ.
The unbeliever is faced with one more extraordinary fact that demands an explanation. If the writers of the Old Testament were not inspired by God, what made them all combine to produce this instructive piece of harmony?
They certainly did not do it deliberately, because none of them draws attention to it. In two cases (Abraham and Shem) the fact that the firstborn is the unsuccessful son is hidden; to establish it we have to compare several verses and make some calculations.
Indeed, the whole story of "the failure of the firstborns" is carefully concealed, buried deep in the pages of Scripture. We might still be unaware of it if a horny-handed working man who loved his Bible had not unearthed it for us.
What sort of book is this Bible, that contains such wonders for us to find? Does it make sense to believe that unaided human beings produced such harmony by accident?
The word "sweat" is found in only three places in the Bible. Those places are widely separated. One is at the beginning of the Old Testament, one near its end, and one in the New Testament. Yet between them they summarise the whole Christian gospel.
The first mention of sweat is in the Garden of Eden. Adam has just sinned, and God is passing sentence upon him, in these words:
"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground. For out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."21
This sums up the penalty the whole human race pays for its wickedness. First sweat; then dust. First a difficult, tiring life. Then death, the final "wages of sin"22 as Paul describes it.
For the next passage we must turn to the New Testament. There we are introduced to a second "Adam".23 Whereas the first Adam was to eat bread by the sweat of his brow, the second Adam provided bread-the "Bread of Life", to use the words of Johns Gospel.24 Luke describes Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, on His way to the Cross. This is part of what it cost Jesus to provide the Bread of Life:
" And being in an agony He prayed more earnestly. And His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground."25
By likening his Masters sweat to "drops of blood", Luke is evidently hinting that His sacrifice was already beginning. And so it was, for Jesus had just said to his Father, "Not my will, but Thine, be done."26 This is the very essence of sacrifice, to do Gods will, however much it hurts.
Two gardens, Eden and Gethsemane. They are related to each other like the positive and negative of the same photograph. Sin appeared in Eden, and the sweat of suffering and the dust of death were the consequences. The sweat of sacrifice began to appear in Gethsemane. And the forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life were the consequences.
The third mention of sweat is at the end of Ezekiels prophecy. This describes a temple the like of which has never been built on earth. If we follow the guidance of the New Testament,27 this is a symbolic picture (a kind of parable, if you like) of Christs redeemed disciples, enjoying immortality in the eternal Kingdom of God.
"They shall have linen bonnets upon their heads, and shall have linen breeches upon their loins; they shall not gird themselves with anything that causeth sweat."28
The Bible tells us what linen stands for. It is a symbol of righteousness.29 So in Ezekiel's picture the redeemed are at last freed for ever from sin, and from the "sweat" (suffering, leading to death) that Adam brought into the world.
The single theme linking these three passages, the only ones in the whole Bible where sweat is mentioned, is too remarkable to be accidental. It is impossible that Ezekiel and Luke could have produced it deliberately, because Ezekiel's passage only makes sense in the light of Luke-and Ezekiel wrote long before Luke was born.
The three passages fit together as if they had been designed to do so. How can we explain this, unless we accept the Bible's own explanation-that one Designer guided the pens of all three writers?30
Both Matthew and Luke give us a genealogy (that is, a line of descent) of Jesus Christ. There are some interesting problems connected with these genealogies, but they must wait until Part Two.
For the present we are only concerned with one remarkable feature of Matthew's genealogy. He traces the line of ancestors from Abraham down to Jesus. Mostly he follows the Jewish custom of mentioning only the male ancestors. But not altogether. In four instances he mentions the wife also. Matthew gives no explanation for this. He leaves us to do our own Bible study and draw our own conclusions. If we do so the results are quite exciting.
The four women are Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and "her that had been the wife of Uriah".31 Here is a summary of what the Old Testament tells us about them.
Tamar, a Canaanitish girl, was Judah's daughter-in-law. Her husband died young because of his wickedness. Judah then promised to give her his younger son, Shelah, for a husband. But he broke his promise.
As a protest against being let down Tamar disguised herself, pretended to be a prostitute, and seduced her father-in-law. From this illicit union a child was born, from whom all the Jewish kings were descended.
Rahab was another Canaanite with a sordid background. She began life as a prostitute. When Israel invaded Canaan she recognised that they really were the people of the one true God. She went over to Israel's side, became (it would appear) a reformed character, and married an Israelite.
Ruth was a Moabite woman. Although she was reared in a land full of idolatry she was a fine character. She became converted to the Israelitish faith, emigrated to Israels land, and found a husband there.
"Her that had been the wife of Uriah" (Bathsheba) was mentioned in Chapter 9. King David violated her, murdered her husband, and married her. Since Uriah was a Hittite this was presumably her nationality also, until David married her.
By mentioning these four women Matthew draws our attention to another very unexpected piece of Bible harmony. Each womans story is told in a different book: Tamars in Genesis, Rahabs in Joshua, Bathshebas in 2 Samuel, and Ruths in the book that bears her own name. But they all have several things in common:
Thus, running like a golden thread through Jewish history, the stories of these women condemned the rulers of the Jews for their narrow-mindedness. Throughout their history God had been far more merciful than they were.
They regarded the Gentiles as little better than animals. They were meticulous about keeping the Law of Moses, and severely punished wrongdoers. Yet they could not deny that their own Scriptures declared these four Gentile women, to whom they would have shown no mercy, to be in their Messianic line.
One thing we can be quite sure of. This particular piece of harmony was so embarrassing to the Jews that they would not have created it deliberately. They must have wished that they could have deleted it from their history.
How, then, can we explain its existence, unless we attribute it to the hand of God?
The first iron curtain in recorded history is probably the one described in the Old Testament. Like the present wall across Germany, this one also split a nation into two pieces.
After 120 years as one united kingdom, the ten tribes in the north of Israel broke away from the two tribes in the south. The larger northern kingdom was called Israel, and set up its capital at Samaria. The smaller southern kingdom was called Judah, and retained the original capital, Jerusalem.
The northern kingdom of Israel never had one godly king. For nearly three hundred years it lived in idolatry. Then the Assyrians conquered it, and carried its people into captivity. They were never heard of again.
The southern kingdom of Judah had a mixture of good and bad kings. Its people were carried into captivity by the Babylonians about a hundred years after the northern kingdom fell to the Assyrians. But their grandchildren were allowed to return to their homeland. Their descendants were still populating the land of Israel under the name "Jews" in the time of Christ.
The people of the northern kingdom are often referred to as "the lost ten tribes". This is very curious, because there is a thread of harmony running through many books of the Bible which shows that the ten tribes were not lost at all.
This thread is obviously not deliberately contrived. It is so unobtrusive, in fact, that many people still cannot see it-hence that strange popular misconception that the ten tribes were lost. But the thread is there, none the less.
It starts in the First Book of Kings, where we read of a very early king of Israel, Baasha, making his iron curtain. He fortified the border, "that he might not suffer any to go out or come in to Asa, king of Judah".33
Why did he do that? Other books of the Old Testament supply the answer. Like the builders of the Berlin wall he was not concerned about keeping an enemy out, but with keeping his own people in. All the Godfearing people in the idolatrous north wanted to emigrate to the south, where the Temple in Jerusalem kept true worship alive.
Baashas iron curtain was inefficient. He lacked the barbed wire and minefields beloved of modern dictators. The Second Book of Chronicles tells us that when good king Asa purged all the idols out of the Kingdom of Judah, this was the result:
" He gathered all Judah and Benjamin, and them that sojourned with them out of Ephraim and Manasseh and out of Simeon. For they fell to him out of Israel in abundance, when they saw that the Lord his God was with him."34
A later chapter in the same book tells of another good king of Judah, Jehoshaphat, who also received a wave of immigrants from Israel.35 They must have been very numerous, because Jehoshaphat4 is actually called "King of Israel" in one place,36 as if to indicate that men from all twelve tribes owed him allegiance.
The result of all this immigration was a rapid increase in the size of Judahs army. At the time of the split, King Rehoboam had only 180,000 men.37 The next king, Abijah, had 400,000;38 his successor, Asa, 580,000;39 and Jehoshaphat had 1,160,000 men.40
About a hundred years after the Kingdom of Israel had been wiped Out, and the ten tribes were supposedly lost, King Josiah of Judah was receiving tribute from "Manasseh, and Ephraim and of all the remnant of Israel, and of all Judah and Benjamin."41 Just before they were carried captive into Babylon, Ezekiel described the inhabitants of Jerusalem as "all the residue of Israel . . . the house of Israel and Judah".42
Jeremiah hinted that both Judah and Israel would return from captivity in Babylon.43 A modern translation of 1 Chronicles makes it plain that the "Judah" who returned from captivity included men of Israel, and especially of its two leading tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh.44
Finally, so far as the Old Testament is concerned, the book of Ezra describes the return of the Jews from their Babylonian captivity, around 500 B.C. Those Jews are described several times as "Israel", and on two occasions when they offered sacrifices these comprised twelve animals "according to the number of the tribes of Israel".45
Quite clearly, then, the Old Testament tells us that only the dregs of the "lost ten tribes" were ever lost. The cream of the ten tribes were absorbed into the two-tribed Kingdom of Judah, which later became called the Jewish nation.
Our thread of harmony has so far run through six different Old Testament books, and covered some 500 years of history. It now jumps the 500-year gap between Ezra and the New Testament, and reappears in the gospels.
Matthew takes a prophecy that Jeremiah made about the children of Rachel (the ten-tribed kingdom), and says it was fulfilled among the Jews of his day.46 Luke reports Jesus as quoting a prophecy from Hosea about the ten-tribed kingdom, and applying it to the Jews in Jerusalem.47 He also mentions that a woman in Jerusalem, Anna, was of the tribe of Asher (one of the ten).48
Peter addresses the Jews as, "Men of Israel . . . all the house of Israel."49 Paul said that John the Baptist had preached to "all the people of Israel".50 On another occasion Paul called the Jews "our twelve tribes".51 James also addresses "the twelve tribes".52
The thread of history has now passed through 25 different passages of the Bible, in ii different books. It covers a period of a thousand years. And a perfect harmony prevails.
Once more the question has to be faced: what caused this harmony? Did it "just happen"? Or is it evidence that one Master Mind was behind the writing of the Bible?
2 The Hebrew of Gen. 10:21, is ambiguous. It does not say (as the English version implies) that Japheth was Noah's eldest son
4 Compare Gen. 8:13 and Gen. 11:10
7 Compare Gen.11:26 with Gen. 11:32 and Gen. 12:4
17 Compare 2 Kgs 21:19, 26 with 2 Kgs 22:1
20 Gal. 6:i6. See also Gal. 3:29, and Matt. 21:43
45 Ezra 6:14-17; 7:13; 8:29, 35
46 Jer. 31:15, quoted in Matt. 2:18
47 Hos. 10:7-9, quoted in Luke 23:30