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Wherefore seeing we also are compassed
about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the
sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is
set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for
the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is
set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Hebrews 12.1
Genesis: The Origin of All
There is a vast array of reasons why God designed the Wheel as He did.
I begin with Spoke 1, consisting of Genesis,
Isaiah, and Romans.
Little need be said to explain why the Bible begins
in Genesis. Its very name signifies an origin, beginning, or birth. All the
fundamental doctrines of Scripture find their root in this book; the sovereignty
of God, the creation of man, the origin of sin and the consequent curse of
death, God’s promise of the virgin-born Redeemer, and the great doctrine of
God’s gift of righteousness through faith. No author, human or divine, could
have begun in a more logical, intelligent, or skillful fashion.
If the doctrines of the Bible find their root in Genesis, so they flower in Romans. Few
books, if any, have received accolades quite like this "cathedral of the
Christian faith" as it was called by Godet. His comments from the introduction
to his Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans1
list but a few of the prominent Christian leaders who have
recognized the unique significance of Romans (emphasis mine):
Coleridge calls the
Epistle to the Romans 'the profoundest book in existence.' Chysostom had it read
to him twice a week. Luther, in his famous preface, says 'This Epistle is the
chief book of the New Testament, the purest Gospel. It deserves not only to be
known word for word by every Christian, but to be the subject of his meditation
day by day, the daily bread of his soul.' ... Melanchthon, in order to make it
more perfectly his own, copied it twice with his own hand. It is the book which
he expounded most frequently in his lectures. The Reformation was undoubtedly
the work of the Epistle to the Romans, as well as the epistle to the Galatians;
and the probability is that every great spiritual revival in the church
will be associated as effect and cause with a deeper understanding of this book.
Gleason Archer2
concurs, saying, "There is no more
complete compendium of the Christian doctrine in the sixty-six books of the
Bible than the Epistle to the Romans." John Phillips referred to it as
"the Gospel according to Paul." John Wesley, who later would be
called the "Apostle of England," had his heart "strangely
warmed" when he heard Luther's preface read and went on to become "the
true genius" of the eighteenth century revival in England.
The only other book of the Bible to approach the
significance of Romans is Isaiah, called "the Mount Rushmore of biblical
prophecy" by J. W. D. Watts, who went on to say:
Sculpted on its massive slopes are the major themes of Scripture: who God is,
what he has done for his people, and how he expects us to serve him. ... No
other part of the Bible gives us so panoramic a view of God's handiwork in
Israel's history nor such clear prophecies of his lordship over the nations. If
Beethoven's nine symphonies loom as landmarks on the horizon of classical music,
Isaiah's sixty-six chapters mark the apex of prophetic vision.
The unity of the thematic river flowing through Isaiah
and Romans, the two
undisputed doctrinal masterpieces of the Bible, was succinctly expressed in the
comments of Herbert Wolf (my emphasis):
The Book of Isaiah, one of the most important and best-loved books in the Bible,
is sometimes called the Gospel of Isaiah because of the good news that
characterizes its message. Indeed, no other Old Testament book contains as many
references to the Messiah as does the Book of Isaiah. Its sixty-six chapters
contain crucial passages that allude to Christ's incarnation, earthly ministry
and atoning death and glorious world-wide rule. ... Isaiah also has been called the Romans of the Old Testament
because like the Book of Romans, it sets forth God's case against sinners, unveils the
wretchedness of the human heart, and reveals the way of salvation for Israel and
the world. Under the hammer blows of Isaiah's message, God calls sinners to
repentance and graciously promises forgiveness. It is no accident that in Romans
Paul quoted Isaiah seventeen times - more than any other New Testament author.
And, like Romans, Isaiah is a profoundly theological book that deals with a
number of vital doctrines.
To behold Isaiah as the Romans of the Old
Testament appears, in light of God's Wheel, to be nothing less than the purest
prophecy. Likewise, to see them both identified as Gospels elevates these
great doctrinal books to the highest level of biblical significance, the Gospel
being the ultimate point of all Scripture.
The links amongst the three books constituting Spoke 1 are truly astounding. As
a brief review quickly reveals, Romans is essentially the product of an
intricate weaving of Genesis and Isaiah, supported primarily by a number of
references from the Psalms. In the first nine chapters, Paul refers extensively
to Genesis and in the ninth chapter he bridges to Isaiah, from which he then
derives the dominant themes through to the end of the book, quoting Isaiah by
name five times. In fact, of all Paul's writings - which constitute about a
third of the New Testament - Romans is the only book in which he mentions
Isaiah's name at all, and of the fifty-seven direct citations from the Old
Testament found in this book, twenty-six, or slightly less than half, come
either from Genesis or Isaiah. The links between these three books are profound
and inextricable.
Genesis, Isaiah, Romans - there are simply no other books in all the Bible that
can compete with their illustrious preeminence and graceful integration of all
the primary doctrines of the Gospel, and so it is that the wisdom of God is
greatly glorified beyond measure in the structure of His Wheel.
Perfect symmetry
of the Christian Canon on the Wheel.
Broken symmetry of
the Jewish Canon. OT colors indicate Torah, Former Prophets,
Minor Prophets, Writings.
It must be kept in mind that this pattern is by no means necessitated by the
"Law and Prophets" structure of the Old Testament. Although Genesis and Isaiah are
distinguished from all other books in the Old Testament by virtue of being the
first books of the Law and the Prophets, this fact in itself does not determine
their position upon the Wheel. If, for example, the historic Christian church
had chosen to follow the order of the Jewish Canon, the little book of Zephaniah
would then hold the twenty-third position, displacing the magnificent
all-encompassing Isaiah as the first book on Cycle Two. The chaos resulting from
following such an order is displayed in the two figures on the right, wherein we witness the
complete destruction of both the radial and the bilateral symmetry of the Canon
Wheel.
Alternately, the church could have placed the Gospels as the first books
of the Bible since these teach about the life, death, and resurrection of
Christ, who is "the firstborn of every creature." This would have
displaced Genesis, and probably Isaiah and Romans as well, from the first Spoke.
Or the church could have noted the significant relations amongst Genesis,
Isaiah, and Romans and placed these three first, as a kind of sacred triplet. In
principle, history could have produced any order of these books whatsoever if
history were in the hands of mere mortals. It is this that points so clearly to
the work of God.
The total number of ways to arrange n things is called n factorial, denoted by
"n!". It is calculated by forming the product of all numbers less than
or equal to n.
n! = n x (n-1) x (n-2) x ... x 3 x 2 x 1
For example, the total number of ways to arrange the letters ABC
is 3! = 3 x 2 x 1 = 6. This is easy to check by simply listing them:
ABC, ACB, BAC, BCA, CAB, CBA
The logic that gives rise to this formula is equally
elementary. One simply notes that there are three choices for the first
position, after which there remains two choices for the second position, and
finally one for the last. Multiplying the number of choices yields the total
number of ways one could arrange the three letters.
Precisely the same logic applies to the sixty-six books of the Bible.
Although some configurations
certainly seem more likely than others, blind chance could have left any one of
the sixty-six books as the first book of Spoke 1, any one of the remaining
sixty-five as the second book on Spoke 1, and any one of the remaining
sixty-four as the third book on Spoke 1. There are, therefore 66 x 65 x 64, or
274,560 possible ways to construct the first Spoke. This is simply an
indisputable mathematical fact; there is one chance in 274,560 that blind
history would give us the first Spoke as we have it today. Viewing these remote
odds in light of the testimony of the numerous witnesses cited above, who were
obviously innocent of any bias towards the Wheel by reason of complete ignorance
of it, establishes the divine origin of the Wheel, and therefore of the entire
Bible, beyond all reasonable doubt. These arguments are greatly augmented in
Probabilities: What are the Chances?
Yet this is but the beginning. The libraries are filled with highly qualified
unbiased witnesses who uniformly attest to the intelligent design of many aspects
of God's Wheel. For example, in the year of our Lord 1909, the biblical
commentator H. A. Ironside published the following words in the introduction to
his book The Minor Prophets:
There are six books of the Old Testament that may be read together most
profitably. I refer to Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, of the historical part of the
Bible, coupled with the prophetic messages of Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.
Turning to the Wheel, we see the books he spoke of are the very books comprising
Cycle 1 and Cycle 2 of the 15th, 16th, and 17th Spokes. And Ironside was not
alone in this insight. J. S. Baxter, in his massive six volume survey of the
entire Bible called Exploring the Book, closely examined the symmetric structure
inherent in the traditional order of the Christian Canon. Of all the authors I
have read, he came closer than any other to discovering the pattern of the
Wheel. He began by grouping the first two divisions of the Canon - the five
books of the Torah and the twelve historical books - under the general heading
of historical and noted that "the first stretch of our Old Testament
consists of seventeen historical books, falling in a natural sub-division of
five and twelve." He then grouped the Major and the Minor Prophets under
the general category of prophetical and stated, in complete agreement with
Ironside, that:
It should always be born in mind that the last three of the seventeen
prophetical books (Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi) should be read with the last
three of the seventeen historical books (Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther), for in both
cases the three books are post-exilic.
This geometric correlation amongst these books can be mathematically measured by
examining the distribution of words throughout
Scripture. As a case in point, the name Zerubbabel - the prophet who
led the rebuilding of the Temple after the Exile - is distributed on Spokes 15 and 16
such that the |
