"Bible Central"

 

“Bible Central”

 

I didn’t have much to do one day recently so I researched some interesting facts about the Bible:

*In the KJV its 66 books have 1189 chapters, 31,102 verses and 783,137 words. (Other translations vary widely in the number of words.)

*The middle chapter is Psalm 117, which is also the shortest (2 verses).

*The longest chapter is Psalm 119. Its 176 verses are divided into 22 stanzas of 8 verses each, almost all of which refer to God’s Word in some fashion.

*The mid-point is between Psalm 103:1-2 (“Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits….”).

*Over 450 English translations have been done with probably several dozen commonly used today.

We must be careful not to read too much into these numbers because the Bible’s original manuscripts weren’t divided into chapters and verses. Verses first appeared in a translation by William Whittingham in 1557 and chapters were added in the Geneva Bible of 1560. But let’s not forget that Psalms is the mid-point of Scripture. The primary Hebrew word used means to praise or make music. So central to our faith is our recognizing who God is and what He does for us.

But lest we get sidetracked by numbers let’s not miss Scripture’s central message: God’s plan of redemption. After Adam’s and Eve’s sin in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:6) God promised to provide a Redeemer so that this fractured relationship might be restored (see Genesis 3:15 and Romans 5:12-21). This basic truth is summarized by the Apostle Paul in what some Bible teachers believe was an early Christian creed: “…What I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures….” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4, emphasis added). What Old Testament passages teach these facts? Many but none as plainly as God’s prophet does in Isaiah 53: “For he was cut off from the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken. He was assigned a grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death…After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied….” (Verses 8,9,11). So the events of that first “Death and Resurrection” weekend were predicted seven centuries before they happened. And they were all for us. Is the Bible’s central message central in your heart and life today?

 

Grace and Blessings!

Jim McMillan