It is an extraordinary thing - beautiful, intricate, layer within layer - Perfect.
I am a programmer (among many other hats). Because of that, I tend toward logic streams and I see patterns and nested patterns readily... I also quickly find kludges and sloppy code - Anti-logic is as apparent as logic, because what anti-logic proclaims always defeats the logic of the program.
The Bible is one of two most magnificent pieces of software I have ever seen (The other being DNA, which any programmer would recognize as 4bit machine code, even if they could never understand it at all). There is *nothing* else that compares in the least way. The most mighty works of man don't even matter by comparison... Don't even merit notice... Not even worthy of existence.
I wish it were so that Christians would study after it - See the patterns - Not just prophecy, the whole thing is that way. ESPECIALLY the beginning of the Book. One cannot understand what software is trying to do by starting 3/4 of the way through the code... All the parameters and variables are defined at the beginning.
Thx for your kind reply.
I am retired software designer from an engineering background. I see the same thing. I believe if everyone could see the complexity: how everything fits together wonderfully like a giant puzzle (your DNA analogy;) all would come to Christ.
>>>I wish it were so that Christians would study after it - See the patterns - Not just prophecy, the whole thing is that way. ESPECIALLY the beginning of the Book. One cannot understand what software is trying to do by starting 3/4 of the way through the code... All the parameters and variables are defined at the beginning.<<<
My initial learning pattern was different from yours. I started with the New Testament, for no particular reason. I carried the little Gideon New Testament in my pocket; so the intricacies of the New Testament, like calculus and physics, was "muddy in my mind" before I began to read much of the Old Testament, except for maybe Psalms. Then, as I read the Old Testament, I routinely saw fulfilled prophesies that I might have missed otherwise.
I don't believe my understanding would have been as complete if I had began with the Old Testament, as you suggest. In fact, I think I understand why the house of Israel did not recognize Christ, especially after they killed the prophets and had no one left to explain the prophecies to them. Recall Christ's was not at all happy that they killed the prophets.
But the warnings of Moses were complete, and would have carried Israel all the way up to the latter days: the days of Christ; had they heeded his warnings. So maybe they were just a stiffnecked bunch, as the Lord described; and maybe their destiny was sealed from the days of Horeb, when the Lord was ready to destroy them all and give the covenant to Moses and his seed, as follows:
"And the Lord said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people: Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them [Israel,] and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee [Moses] a great nation. And Moses besought the Lord his God, and said, Lord, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand?" (Exo 32:9-11 KJV)
Philip