One unique writer

Some years ago, a man wrote a book stating there were only 33 original plots in all of art, literature and theatre, and he traced all 33 of them to the Bible.

Bible scholar C.R. Stam once wrote, “Amazingly, the books of the Bible were written over a period of about 1600 years, by approximately 40 different men. The writers came from all walks of life, and include kings, priests, tax collectors, physicians, farmers and fishermen.

“Each man wrote from his own background of education and experience. Very few of the writers could have known one another. Yet, remarkably, the Book is not a jumble of disconnected and conflicting essays. Rather, from beginning to end, it tells a continuous story with several interwoven themes.

“This will come as no surprise, if we understand that the eternal God Himself directed each of the human writers to compose a portion of His message, which He was compiling as history unfolded.”

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An 1896 obituary on Harriet Beecher Stowe in the New York Times noted, "Of her mental traits none was earlier or more fully developed than her memory. The bulk of the Bible (was) at her tongue's end and instantly upon demand."

In an article appearing last year in Christianity Today, a Chinese evangelist reported that Scripture’s being imported into North Korea orally—“via one’s memory, a few verses at a time.” He said, "We have to remember that any Bible or portion thereof found in the possession of a person returning to North Korea will condemn them to death."

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Jordan says, “Have you ever noticed how all the Bible up to Romans, you can teach stories? Romans isn’t stories; it’s doctrinal information. It’s instructions; it’s thinking processes.”

Each of Paul’s epistles contains an introduction, body and conclusion--just like you’d find in a letter but they have a very special purpose in that they introduce the particular issue the epistle’s going to address.

In Paul’s epistle to the Galatians, for example, he starts out by reminding them, “But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

He’s saying his apostleship, unlike that of the others, did not come by human instrumentality. He was commissioned as an apostle different from every other apostle before him in the Bible.

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In the gospels, Jesus Christ chose 12 apostles and told them their function was to sit upon 12 thrones, judging the 12 tribes of the nation Israel in that future kingdom in the regeneration of the Son of man when Christ sits on the throne in Jerusalem and they’re His earthly apostles.

After Judas dies in response to his betrayal of the Lord, there’s only 11 apostles, but before Pentecost, Matthias is made the 12^th guy by Peter.

It was through Paul’s preaching that God the Holy Spirit communicated the message of grace to the apostles. They came to understand it through Paul’s direct revelation from God.

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In the first two chapters of Galatians are 14 separate things Paul says about why his ministry and message is separate and distinct from the 12.

He writes, “But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen.”

Paul understood there were things about Jesus Christ that God wanted revealed solely through him; that he was to be the one and only through whom that information would be revealed.