INTRODUCING THE COURSE

I enjoy jigsaw puzzles. The box is emptied onto the table with pieces of every shape and colour. On the lid I can see the picture I will make, but where to start?

The Bible is a little like that. The picture on the box could be called ‘From Tree to Tree’. But when we open the Bible, we see lots of printing, different verses and chapters, with hundreds of words, and some not so easy to understand.

When I start a new puzzle, I find the four corners. These secure the frame. Then I find the edge pieces to complete the frame, turning over all the pieces as I go. Soon I notice a ‘red boat’! That looks easy so that is where I will start piecing together the middle bits.

But getting back to the Bible. All the pieces tell us something about Jesus and how He is tackling the wrongs and the evil we see around us. The four corner pieces show us Jesus. Jesus as our Creator God, our Saviour God, our High Priest and our King. The edge pieces form the frame. These are the prophecies of the Bible. Everything in the Bible is connected to a prophecy involving Jesus.

In our study we must be careful to look at the whole picture. It is so easy to pick up one interesting piece and make that the focus of everything. This is why there are so many Christian churches, each emphasising one aspect of Scripture, when God has given us only one Truth, His whole Word from Genesis to Revelation, where nothing contradicts anything else!

The centre of the puzzle is made up of many different types of teaching and instruction. There are parables, and stories, and rules, and nations, and words of encouragement, the lives of godly men and women, and sermons, prayers and poetry, with letters, and pieces of advice, different tests, and lots of history.

So, about our puzzle picture of the Two Trees? It is the picture of God’s Restoration Plan. In the first pages of the Bible, God commanded Adam the first man concerning one tree that stood in the middle of the garden. He was not to its fruit or death would be the wages of his disobedience. Sadly, he did, and everything distressing in our world grew out of it, pain, blame, murder, and so much more.

But then, in the last pages of the Bible we find another tree, the Tree of Life. Here we see a group of ordinary people who will have chosen to obey God, being invited to come to the Tree of Life in the city of God and eat. They were being rewarded with eternal life.

The big theme of the Bible is an outline of this Restoration Plan, and this is the theme of these interactive studies.

You will see all the pieces set in the frame of the goodness of God and His great love for us. It is a most encouraging picture filled with hope and joy. We hope you enjoy getting to know your Bible and see how it all fits together depicting a system of Truth and certainty, in a world of fake and perplexity.