Seeing Jesus in All the Books of the Bible

(This article is from the April 1921 "The Bible Champion" monthly periodical.)

Seeing Jesus in All the Books of the Bible by T.R. O'Meara

"And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself." (Luke 24:27)

When you go to the Book of Genesis, look for the Lord Jesus Christ there. The promise is given that the seed of woman shall bruise the serpents head (3:15). Then turn to Exodus and you find that He is the One, and the only One, that can lead a soul out of the land of bondage into the liberty of the sons of God. You study that wonderful Book of Leviticus, those forms and ceremonies, those types and shadows, and they are all an enigma until you get the golden key and find that they all point to the coming of Him who shall fulfill them in His one great sacrifice on the Cross of Calvary. You read the Book of Deuteronomy, and you remember that "the law is our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ." You go on and study the Book of the Kings, and find that all the kings were imperfect and more or less failed, because all were types of the coming of the King of kings, the only perfect Ruler of His people. You read the beautiful Book of the Psalms, and more or less directly they all center in the one great Messiah who is to come. Then go on and study the Major and the Minor Prophets, and each in turn points on an on to the fulness of time when He of whom they speak shall come, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Then read the Gospels. What are they? They are simply the story of the birth, the life, the suffering, the death, the resurrection and the ascension of the Lord. Then you turn to the Book of the Acts, the only unfinished Book in the Bible, and you find that it is just an intensely interesting record of the triumphs of the early Church of Jesus Christ. Then you go on and study the Epistles, and you will find that they are merely the letters that formulated and put within easy reach of the mind of man the doctrines and teachings which center in the Lord Jesus Christ. And then you approach that which to my mind is one of the most beautiful Books of the whole Bible, the one with which it closes, the Book of the Revelation, and, as it were, the veil is for a little time drawn aside, and you and I are allowed to look in yonder and see a little bit of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ on the throne of His power.

The whole Bible is about Jesus from beginning to end. And what I plead is that you will go back to your churches, back to your Bible class, back to your Sunday School, and try by God's grace to create a new interest in Bible study, a Bible study that is more and more centralized in a search for the beautiful face and character of Jesus Christ.

And may I add that the Lord Jesus Christ is also to be seen in the daily lives of His disciples here on earth? I know of no more solemn message that one Christian man can bring to another than this to which I am now giving utterance. The very moment we take our stand on the side of the Lord Jesus and are known as Christians, that very moment we become marked men and women, and those who live nearest to us and know us best, begin watching us. They watch us not merely on Sunday, when we have on our best clothes, with our Bibles under our arms, but when we are not thinking about it at all, to see if they can trace the image and likeness of our Saviour.