It's a Matter of Faith

Mark 1:1-2 KJV

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God;

As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.

I have been recently watching the course on World History taught at Columbia University. The professor in lecture five, states that all of the extant writings of Mesopotamia and Egypt from the Biblical era far outnumber those of the Jews contained in the Bible. He then makes two contrasts and suggests one of them as the reason we are so familiar with the Bible and not the other writings:

• First, the Bible is collated and collected as a unit while the others are merely fragments.
• Second, the Bible is intensely religious in nature while the others are not so much.

The professor claims that the unified nature of the Bible is what made it so appealing while the non religious nature of the others makes them sort of refreshing.

The secular world would like to simply view the Bible as an historical document and then classify it as unreliable because it is so religious in nature. What they so often miss is that the Bible is not intended as an historical document (thought archeology has always proven that the history recorded in the Bible is accurate) but as a road map that leads to peace with God.

After the finalizing of the Old Testament and at the beginning of the Gospel, Mark immediately confronts us with the fact that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the Old Testament purpose.

• He is the hope of mankind, both Jews and Gentile
• He is answer to the prophet's message

To view the Bible as an historical curiosity may answer the curiosity of the secular mind but it is to completely miss the point of the book. To discount that generations of both Jews and Gentiles over the course of thousands of years have seen the Bible as God's message of good news is to ignore the very purpose for studying history at all; to learn from our forefathers and to build thereupon. To see the Bible through any eyes other than eyes of faith is to prove the old adage, "The only thing we learn from history is that we never learn from history."