If you're confused about the Bible, we offer you this big picture overview of God's Word. God made the truth simple. He made His Word easy to understand. Don't take our word for it. Study these things out for yourself and be fully persuaded in your own mind!

 

First, we would suggest that the breakdown of the entire Bible is simple based upon Ephesians 2: Time Past (Eph. 2:11), But Now (Eph. 2:13), and Ages to Come (Eph. 2:7).

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Time Past

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Consider the promises in the Old Testament. After the fall in the garden, God promised a Redeemer (Gen. 3:15). Later, when God created the nation of Israel through Abraham, He promised a land (Gen. 12:1-2; Heb. 11:8-16). And God promised to David a future kingdom here on earth (Psa. 2:7-8; Jer. 23:5; Isa. 42:4).

 

Christ, the Messiah of Israel, would come into the world through the line of David and establish His kingdom here on Earth (Isa. 7:14; 9:6; Matt. 1:23). He’ll reign out of Jerusalem (Isa. 2:3; 24:23; Jer. 3:17). His reign will extend over the entire Earth. “Yea,” David wrote, “all kings shall fall down before Him: all nations shall serve Him” (Psa. 72:11). “Yea,” Zechariah wrote, “many people and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem, and to pray before the Lord” (Zech. 8:22). Israel would be the Lord's priests in His thousand-year kingdom (Rev. 20:4-7) in which they’ve inherited the uttermost parts of the earth (Psa. 2:8), in which the Lord would sit upon David’s throne (Jer. 23:5-8), and Israel would bless the entire world about Christ (Zech. 8:23).

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There were many other prophecies, too, about this glorious kingdom. All of Israel’s sufferings and sorrows would be gone (Isa. 35:10; 40:2; 61:3). The governments will be purified (won’t that be something to see? Only the Lord Jesus Christ can truly drain the swamp!) All war and bloodshed will be abolished (Isa. 2:4; 9:6). Health and long life will be restored to the human race (Isa. 35:5,6; 65:20). The animal creation will be tamed (Isa. 11:6-9), and the sin curse will be removed from creation (Isa. 35:1,2,6,7).

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Israel, as God’s kingdom of priests (Exo. 19:6), will go out and bless the entire world about their Messiah. Zechariah would proclaim, “Thus saith the LORD of hosts; In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you” (Zech. 8:23; cf., Isaiah 61:6; 1 Peter 2:5,9; Rev. 5:10, 20:6).

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On and on the prophesies piled up in the OT about Christ’s Kingdom here on Earth.

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So when the Lord came and everyone proclaimed that the “kingdom is at hand” (Matt. 3:2; 4:17; 10:7), what did they mean? They were saying that the Messiah had come, that the prophesied earthly kingdom with Jehovah sitting upon David’s throne was near to come, and the time was now for Israel to get saved by believing in Christ as the Son of God, to transform their lives by following Him, and then they could fulfill God’s purpose of using them to bless the whole world about Christ. Imagine the shockwaves in Israel when news spread that the kingdom was at hand!

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The Son of God arrived in the flesh to fulfill all the promises made to the fathers of Israel (Rom. 15:8) about their kingdom here on Earth. All of Israel needed to receive their Messiah by faith, be baptized of water, Spirit, and fire (Matt. 3:11-12), to become that nation of priests God had always intended so that they may bless the whole world about Christ in His kingdom.

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Through the priests of Israel, the world would find salvation in Christ. Israel would be the instrument of His blessing to Gentiles.

 

What this means is that the Lord’s words during His earthly ministry were not meant for the Gentiles, which is why the Lord said in John 4:22, “Salvation is of the Jews.” In Luke 1, John the Baptist’s father, Zacharias said that the Messiah had come “To give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins, Through the tender mercy of our God.” Christ would tell His disciples in Matt. 10:5-6, “Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” When a Gentile woman came to the Lord with her request for a miracle for her daughter, He first refused to help her and later told her “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 15:24).

 

He would eventually help her because of her faith, but the big point was - the Lord’s message and ministry was to Israel and for Israel because God had promised His people a kingdom on Earth. They would be the instruments of His blessing to the world.

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But, of course, when the Son of God, the Prince of Peace came, the nation of Israel, His own people, rejected Him and crucified Him. In Luke 13:6-9, we read about the parable of the fig tree in which we learn that God the Father, who was the husbandman, convinced Christ to give the olive tree another year to produce fruit.

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Thus, we have in the beginning of the book of Acts, God offers forgiveness and another chance to Israel. So what we find at Pentecost, in Acts 2-3, Peter tells the people of Israel that if they would repent for their sin of murdering their Messiah, God would not only forgive them, but send Jesus back to them, and give them everything He had promised concerning their earthly kingdom. "Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you…" (Acts 3:11-26).

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We don’t have to look far in the book of Acts to see that all Israel would not repent. They would not accept God’s offer of forgiveness. They would not accept the return of Jesus Christ and the establishment of His prophesied Kingdom here on Earth. In Acts 4, the Apostles are arrested. Later on, they’re arrested again, they’re threatened, they’re beaten up, and finally in Acts 7, the Spirit-filled Stephen spoke some hard truths to his kinsmen in the flesh and how did they react? They stoned him to death. The Jews had rejected their King. Now they rejected His second chance and His offer of forgiveness and the opportunity to see the return of their Messiah.

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As they stoned Stephen to death, he looked up and saw Christ standing at the right hand of God in judgment (Acts 7:55-56).

 

What did God do?

 

As J.C. O’Hair would say, “The nation of Israel was ‘cast away’ for a season and for a reason.”

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Paul wrote in Romans 11:15, “For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?”

 

Notice in this verse that the casting away of Israel is only temporary. If the casting away of Israel brought about the offer of reconciliation to the world through Christ’s sacrifice, then just imagine what the receiving of them later shall be. This will be nothing less than life from the dead, which is the long-awaited resurrection of the saints at the Second Coming of Christ!

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Consider also Romans 11:25-27, “For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins.”

 

Notice, too, that the blindness of Israel is only temporary “until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in…”

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This means that the Kingdom they waited for, the kingdom about which Christ preached while He was here on Earth, has been put on hold “until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in…”

 

But, as Paul wrote in vs. 29, God’s promises to Israel shall be fulfilled. Why? Because “the gifts and calling of God are without repentance”. There are no take-backs when it comes to God’s promises. He's not going to take promises He gave to Israel and give them to someone else.

 

Paul says in vs. 26, “And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins.”

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The time will come when all of Israel shall be delivered from her enemies just God had prophesied in the OT. However, today, we are living in a temporary interruption of the prophetic program, a time of grace before wrath, and all those great promises made by the Lord to His people about His kingdom were put on hold.

 

But Now

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After Pentecost in Acts 9, the Lord did something that had never been prophesied. Instead of unleashing His wrath upon the world, He reached down in utter grace and saved the man who was leading the rebellion of the nation of Israel. He saved His greatest enemy, a man named Saul, also known as Paul, who would later become the Apostle Paul. The enemy, who was “a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious” (1 Tim. 1:13) and who called himself the “chief” of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15), was saved by the exceeding abundant grace of God and sent to the Gentiles with a message that had never been revealed before.

 

Paul writes: “For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles, If ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to you-ward: How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery…” (Eph. 3:1-3). The Lord Jesus Christ had a mystery, a secret, and He revealed this new message about this new “dispensation of the grace of God” to this new Apostle Paul, who reveals in his letters to us a whole new victory program by God’s grace through Christ’s all-sufficient work on the cross for both Jew and Gentile alike.

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This program for us today would be entirely different than the kingdom program taught and proclaimed before Paul. In Romans 3:21-22, Paul writes, “But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference”. In Romans 7:6, he writes, “But now we are delivered from the law…” In Ephesians 2:13, he writes, “But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.”

 

Consider that what Peter taught at Pentecost in Acts 3:21 were the things, “which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began”, but what Paul taught was “the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began”.

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I know what all the critics out there would say.

 

“No-no, brother Joel. All of the Bible is written to us. It’s all about us, and there is only one gospel throughout all of Scripture.”

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Really? Paul highlights two gospels in Gal. 2:7. He writes, “the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me, as the gospel of the circumcision was unto Peter.”

 

How do you reconcile those two gospels?

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Some might say, “it’s the same gospel but a different audience.”

 

How do you explain Matt. 10:5-7 in which Christ said, “Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give”?

 

Is this what we do today? Do we avoid preaching to the Gentiles? Do we seriously preach in our churches to Jews only that the kingdom is “at hand”? And are we to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead? When was the last time you raised someone from the dead?

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Paul said in 1 Cor. 15:1-4, “I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; By which also ye are saved… how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day.”

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Christ told that Gentile woman in Matthew 15:24 “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Paul told us in Romans 10:12 that there is no difference between Jew and Greek.

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In the so-called “Great Commission,” Peter and the 12 were told, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost…” Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1:17 that “Christ sent me not to baptize.” Do you think Peter and the 12 could say that? They were specifically told to baptize.

 

Let me ask another question: how many different baptisms are there in Scripture? Eleven? Twelve? Matthew 3:11 showcases three baptisms: baptism by water, Spirit, and fire.

 

What did Paul mean when he wrote in Ephesians 4:5 that there is only “One Lord, one faith, one baptism?” Does not one mean one? One cannot mean three or twelve or however many baptisms you may think exists in the Bible. Paul doesn’t say “one primary baptism.” He doesn’t give us an umbrella theory. Paul said by inspiration of the Spirit that there is only “one baptism.” How can this one baptism not be the baptism of the Spirit that takes place the moment we believe (1 Cor. 12:13)?

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In the Israeli program, their blessings were conditional under the “If/Then Principle” found in Deut. 28. Under Paul, all our blessings are unconditional after we believe. God the Father automatically accepts us in the beloved (Eph. 1:6) as full-grown sons of God (Gal. 4:6-7), seated in the heavens (Eph. 2:6), intimately identified with His Son and His perfect work on the cross, spiritually dead, buried, and risen with Christ (Rom. 6:3-4), given His eternal newness of life (Rom. 6:4), new creatures (2 Cor. 5:17), freed from sin’s dominion (Rom. 6:11), complete in Him (Col. 2:10), forgiven all trespasses (Col. 2:13), and “blessed… with all spiritual blessings” (Eph. 1:3).

 

In the Gospels, forgiving others was a requirement to receive forgiveness from God the Father. The Lord said in Matthew 6:14-15, “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Paul says we’ve already been forgiven! Colossians 2:13 tells us, “And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you ALL trespasses.”

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Understanding forgiveness of sins is crucial, is it not?

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Israel was promised an earthly inheritance. They were told again and again that they shall inherit the Earth. As David wrote, “I shall give Thee… the uttermost parts of the Earth for Thy possession”. Eph. 2:6 tells us that God has “raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

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The Lord obeyed the laws of Moses and told all His followers to obey the law. You remember He said in Matthew 23:2-3, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat: All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.” Paul tells us that we are “not under the law but under grace” (Rom. 6:14-15).

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In the Ten Commandments, the Jews were told to “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Exo. 20:8; Deut. 5:12). Paul tells us in Colossians 2:16, “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days”. Do you think the scribes and Pharisees sitting in Moses’ seat would have all their people observe the Sabbath? Do you think they’d judge someone who didn’t observe the Sabbath? You know they would! And yet Paul tells us, let no man judge you about observing Sabbath days.

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In the Israeli program, many meats were forbidden such as we might find in Lev. 11:7-8. “The swine is unclean to you… of their flesh ye shall not eat and… not touch.” Paul tells us that every creature of God is good and nothing to be refused if it be received with thanksgiving (1 Tim. 4:4).

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I praise the Lord every time I can have some fried swine with my eggs for breakfast.

 

The Lord told the rich man to give away all his possessions and follow Him. At Pentecost, they had all things common. However, Paul tells us in 1 Tim. 5:8, “If any provide not for his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.”

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Tithing was part of the old Mosaic law given to Israel (Lev. 27:30-33). Paul tells us in Col. 2:14 that God took that old Mosaic law “that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross”. What Paul teaches about tithing can be found in 2 Corinthians 9:7, “Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.”

 

That’s true grace!

 

I ask you – how do you reconcile all these seeming contradictions in the Bible?

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There’s only one answer.

 

Paul is our apostle for today.

 

If you’ve never heard this before, I beg you. Prayerfully consider that what the Lord revealed to us through Paul was different than what had been taught before him, which is why Paul three times talks about “my gospel” (Rom. 2:16; 16:25; 2 Tim. 2:8), because his good news was different than the good news of the kingdom being “at hand.” This is why Paul three times under inspiration of the Holy Spirit tells us to “be ye followers of me” (1 Cor. 4:16; 1 Cor. 11:1; Php. 3:17), because he is our apostle for today and because Paul’s conversion by simple grace through faith was to be a “pattern” to all of us who “should hereafter believe on Him to life everlasting” (1 Tim. 1:16). He is a pattern because we are in a new “dispensation of the grace of God” (Eph. 3:2), an interruption of the prophetic program in which God is now dispensing His grace to all, both Jew and Gentile, who come to Him by faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of His Son as a payment for all our sins. We are, therefore, careful to "rightly divide the Word of Truth" (2 Tim. 2:15). We must make a straight cut in the Bible between what is spoken to us and what isn’t, between God’s law program for Israel and His grace program for us, the church today, the Body of Christ. While all the Bible is written for us, not all is written to us.

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Now that we’ve established the uniqueness of Paul’s apostleship, that what he taught was entirely different than everything that came before him, that we’re living in an interruption of the prophetic program, that this period of grace for us as members of the Body of Chrit is distinct from the kingdom program for Israel, now that we’ve established all of that, what comes next?

 

The rapture of the Church, which is a distinct Pauline doctrine.

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Paul writes, "Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality" (1 Cor. 15:51-53).

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First, we have Paul telling us, "Behold, I shew you a mystery"! Behold, he says! Take note, believers, I’m revealing a secret! I’m telling you something that’s never been revealed before in the entire Bible! Behold, believers, at any moment, and IN a moment, we shall all be changed! We shall all be transformed out of our sin-corrupted bodies into our perfect, glorious, incorruptible, eternal, heavenly bodies! And this is going to happen in an instant just before we rise up to meet the Lord in the air.

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We also have in these passages the doctrine of imminence. Behold, this may happen at any moment.

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Behold, this will happen in a moment – in the twinkling of an eye. Do you know how fast the twinkling of an eye is? The twinkling of an eye is a reflected particle of light seen in the eye, which is literally travelling at the speed of light, which is 983,571,056 feet per second. So, the twinkling of an eye literally occurs in almost a billionth of a second.

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In other words, behold, brethren, suddenly and in a billionth of a second, we shall all be transformed into our glorious incorruptible, eternal, heavenly bodies! This is the endgame to the entire age of grace! This is what God the Father predestinated for the Body of Christ before the creation of the universe (Eph. 1:5), that is, the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our bodies (Rom. 8:23)! This is the moment that ends for the Body of Christ our earthly lives and begins for us our heavenly lives literally in the presence of God Himself. This is the moment in which the corruptible puts on incorruption and we mortals finally put on immortality.

 

This is the endgame of the cross for the Body of Christ. Because of the cross, we’ve been delivered from the consequence of sin. Because of the cross, we’ve been delivered from the power of sin.

 

At the Rapture of the Church, the redemption of our bodies, we will finally be delivered from the presence of sin. The Rapture is the victorious finale to what the Lord had set out to accomplish for us on that cross. The Rapture is when the entire Body of Christ comes together as one, all of us in our glorified, eternal, heavenly bodies, and we’re joined to the Head to literally be with the Lord for all eternity. The Rapture of the church is the ultimate victory of the cross for all of us in the Body of Christ. At the Rapture of the church, all the horrors of sin, disease, and death will be swallowed up in His victory for us at Calvary. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!

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​Ages to Come

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After the Rapture, God returns to His prophetic program. He then carries out the wrath that was almost poured out after Pentecost and send the world into Daniel's 70th week, seven years of tribulation, and He fulfills of all His prophesies to Israel.

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Over at Supply of Grace, we have a comprehensive deep dive into the End of the World. But let’s consider the highlights. On DAY ONE of the Tribulation, you have the epic scene in the throne room of God (Rev. 4). You have the four angels on the four corners of the Earth while a fifth angel marks the 144,000 (Rev. 7:1-8).

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You have the revealing of the man of sin, the son of perdition, also called the antichrist, who will confirm the covenant with Israel for seven years (Dan. 9:27).

 

You also have the immediate appearance of the two witnesses (Rev. 11:1-14) who will bring about all kinds of epic prophesies and destruction for 3 ½ years.

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You have the opening of the seals (Rev. 5), which is the beginning of sorrows (Matt. 24:8), which includes the horsemen of the apocalypse (Rev. 5:1-8).

 

That’s just DAY ONE.

 

After that, the rest of the seal judgments (Rev. 6:9-17, 8:1-5).

Then the seven trumpet judgments. We’re talking about multiple, global earthquakes (Rev. 6:12, 8:5, 11:13, 11:19, balls of fire out of Heaven (Rev. 8:5), hail that’s literally on fire mingled with blood (Rev. 8:7), not to mention all the other hail headed our way (Rev. 11:19), the heaven departing as a scroll (Rev. 6:14), which would surely destroy all satellites, the sun turns black, the moon turns blood red, the stars fall from heaven (Rev. 6:12, 8:12), all grass burns up (Rev. 8:7), a lot of trees are gone (Rev. 8:7), the water turns to blood (Rev. 8:8, 11:6), let’s not forget the freaky locusts with stingers getting into everything (Rev. 9:1-12), AND, last but not least, there will be 200 million fiery horses from Heaven shooting fire and brimstone out of their mouths (Rev. 9:12-21).

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Then we arrive at the mid-week, 3 ½ years into the tribulation, with the blowing of the 7th trumpet, which lasts throughout the final half of the Tribulation (Rev. 11:15-19).

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We also have at the mid-way point the death of the two witnesses (Rev. 11:1-14), the war in Heaven, Satan and his minions cast down to the Earth (Rev. 12:7-17). Plus, you have the Abomination of Desolation, the woman and the dragon (Rev. 12:1-6), followed by the global messages given by the 3 angels (Rev. 14:6-13), and that’s followed by the antichrist’s one world system, and the ever-so-infamous mark of the beast.

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What follows is great tribulation (Matt. 24:21).

 

You have the great winepress of the wrath of God, and the final seven bowl judgments (Rev. 16), horrors the likes of which this world has never seen nor will see. Plus, we’ll see the destruction of Babylon (Rev. 18), and at the end of it all – the great battle of Armageddon with the arrival of the Lord Jesus Christ at His Second Coming (Rev. 19:11-21), who will destroy them merely from the glory of His power (2 Thess. 2:8). Satan and his minions will be tied up in the pit for 1,000 years (Rev. 20:1-3).

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The Lord will resurrect all the saints of time past (Ezek. 37:12), give them rewards and positions in the kingdom (Ezek. 20, Psa. 50). Then the Lord will judge the nations, the sheep and the goats (Matt. 25:31-46).

 

Then, finally, the establishment of His long-promised 1,000-year kingdom. While Israel will inherit the uttermost parts of the Earth (Psa. 2:8) while we are seated in heavenly places in Christ (Eph. 2:6) judging the earth and angels (1 Cor. 6:2-3).

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At the end of those 1,000 years, Satan will be loosed, deceiving the nations of sin-cursed mortals, and there will be one final showdown with Gog and Magog.

 

What follows is the Great White Throne Judgment (Rev. 20:11-15).

 

Then the Eternal State. We’ll get a New Heaven and the New Earth (Rev. 21:1).

 

And then…

 

New Jerusalem will come down to this Earth (Rev. 21).

 

"For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all" (1 Cor. 15:25-28).

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