All Books of the Bible Point to Jesus

Michael Williams, a professor of Old Testament at Calvin Theological Seminary, started studying the Bible while serving on a US Navy submarine, beginning with the small Gideon’s Bible given to him by a shipmate.

By  reading the book, he said Tuesday evening in the seminary chapel, he was able to see that the answers to life’s purpose that he had been looking for — as a young man who had had a difficult upbringing and no real religious background — were right there before him in inspired words.

“The book talked to me. Hundreds of feet below the North Atlantic, God’s grace penetrated and changed my heart,” said Williams, author of the new book How to Read the Bible Through the Jesus Lens: A Guide to Christ-Focused Reading of Scripture. The book is published by Zondervan.

In fact, one of the reasons he wrote the book, which devotes four, succinct pages to each book of the Bible, has a strong personal dimension.

“I wrote this new book in part because I would have loved to have had a book like this early in my Christian life to help me make sense out of all that I was reading,” he said.

Appearing before a crowd in the chapel, Williams also spoke to people from all over the world through live Internet streaming.

People from across North America and in countries such as Brazil watched and listened to him talk of how every  book of the Bible, and especially books of  the Old Testament, points to the redemptive work of Jesus Christ.

The event was sponsored by the seminary and presented on the web by Zondervan.

In his new book, Williams leads readers on an accessible tour through each book of the Bible, showing how stories, prophesies, events and personalities in all of the books point to the coming of Christ and the salvation he brought.

“It is easy to become discouraged by all of the details from these far-off cultures. I wanted to create a tool to use in reading scripture,” he said. “I want to provide that Jesus lens for the average reader.”

He wrote the book believing that people could use that lens to focus on a text that requires time — the kind of time that not everyone has — to grasp.

“Over the years as I’ve preached and taught (and read and studied) I’ve come to realize that many believers tend to get only bits and pieces of the Bible and that how, after  awhile, the Bible can seem to be a jumble of unconnected details of no relevance to life.”

He particularly wanted to “reassure believers that all of these pieces fit together perfectly to show us Jesus...and how God is redeeming us  in all sorts of ways from the mess that we’ve made.”

Williams wrote it also as a resource to help Bible teachers, ministry leaders, Bible study groups, students and church members to understand and convey the full power of the redemptive message of Christ to others.

Each chapter contains a verse to memorize and two questions that are geared to get readers to talk about how Jesus and all that he brought with him to earth can apply to their lives today.

The book especially tries to help the reader see how the entire Bible speaks of the full, new humanity people find in following Christ.

“I want  people to see that God is truly our only comfort in a world of seemingly unchecked evil..and that the Bible is not just a collection of life lessons extracted from different texts by scholars over the years.”