Through The Bible: An Introduction

from the writings of Eugene Halliday

Our Bible is not merely a single book but a number of writings carefully gathered together by many intelligent thinkers in order to give us a view of the progress of spirit in the world, a movement which ultimately will bring mankind to full realisation of the presence of God in creation and His absolute and final power over all things.

Our title "Through The Bible" may have two meanings. Firstly it may mean that the Bible can be read through in the order in which it is printed, book by book, from beginning to end. We have used this second meaning, not going in order from beginning to end of the whole Bible, but taking from it a given important idea which had some relevance to a given problem presented to us, and following this idea's implications wherever it may have led us. See CONTENTS.

Our purpose in reading through and studying the books of the Bible will clarify for ourselves our own significance and ultimate destiny within the universal plan which these scriptures outline for us. We say outline for us, because life itself is infinitely beyond expression by any words we may formulate in our earthly languages.

But although the ultimate meaning of life cannot be conveyed by mere words, yet words are all we have in our scriptures. Fortunately for us we have not only the external printed words of the Bible, but also a special faculty within us, God-given, by which, under the right conditions of meditation and prayer, we are enabled to arrive at a true interpretation of them. The rules for arriving at this true interpretation are themselves contained in the Bible; but we have to read and let ourselves be led by them.

The sixty six books which, when bound together, are our Bible, given evidence of an order of intelligence quite other than that which we use to conduct the private affairs of our daily lives, at home and in business, or in the wider field of national and international affairs. In spite of the different periods in which the various books of the Bible were written, there is A CONTINUITY OF THEME running through all, a continuity we would be surprised to find in any collection of books covering such a long period of time. What is this theme?

The theme that runs through all the books of the Bible is the continuous restatement that God, the Creator of the Universe and of man, is a PERSONAL God, a God with a plan for mankind, a God who acts in HISTORY to further this plan, a God who supports His friends and opposes His enemies in order to bring His plan to its supreme consummation in the creation of a new heaven and a new earth.