You Can Know You Have Eternal Life
#39 – God’s Standard for Mankind (23)
Brevity points to Inspiration (2)
by Jim Mettenbrink

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     The readily noted evidences of the Bible’s divine inspiration are within the Bible itself.  They can be tested by observation or scientifically (except fulfilled prophecy confirmed by testimony) e.g. the laws of quarantine.  Interestingly, when one repetitively reads the Bible, questions arise, “Why didn’t the writer give the details of this event?,” or “Why didn’t he tell us more of that person’s life?”  So much is left unsaid, that a publisher would reject printing such a book because it was incomplete.  We must wonder which human author would write with such brevity in the Bible?  Or perhaps the author of the Bible is not human at all!
     When authors write about important events and people, they seek to “paint the entire picture.”  Who would write a biography and not even mention 90% of that person’s life?  Who would give only gratuitous mention to significant events in that person’s life, rather than expound on every aspect and detail of the event.  Yet we see this supposed flaw in the Bible.  Consider the four accounts of Jesus of Nazareth – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  The sum total of the four accounts is 147 pages in my Bible (Mark being the shortest book, 26pp and Luke the longest 44 pp).  Much in these books are parallel accounts, some of them are the same, i.e., word for word, yet others provide more detail than the others.  Each account records events that are in it alone.  Jesus, undisputably the most influential person who ever lived, who to this day radically changes people’s lives, whose greatest influence has been after He departed from this earth, has so little devoted space to Him in the Bible, let alone in ancient histories.  Yet there is more about Jesus in the Bible than any other ancient book.
     Jesus’ teaching activity was about three years.  Brevity underscores the recording of most events during that period.  There are a few exceptions, such as Jesus’ speech to his disciples and subsequent prayer on the evening before He went to the cross in John 13-17 (5.5 pages).  However, mostly everything else is briefly stated.  Why didn’t Matthew and John, who were with Jesus during His three year ministry give us volumes about Jesus?  They gave us 77 pages.  When we subtract the pages of Jesus birth and the last week before He was crucified from the four gospel accounts, we are left with 91 pages (a lot of which is duplication of events) covering only parts of 21 days of His three year ministry – about 2% of His ministry.  Why is it that we have so little about this person who claimed to be God, whose teachings were radical and equally profound, whose miracles for three years kept Palestine in excitement and caused turmoil amongst the Jewish religious leadership, who introduced true love to the world, proved it by His own death to save mankind, arose from dead, then showing Himself to multitudes and then disappeared from the earth.  Yet the record of Jesus has had the most profound effect on mankind.  We conclude that such brevity is not an oversight but by design... inspiration by God.

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      © Jim Mettenbrink; used by permission. rev.04xx-04xx
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