In this week's reading of The Whole Message of the Bible in 16 Words by Chris Bruno, we were assigned to read the first two sections, the foundation and the frame. In the first section of his book, Bruno talks about the foundation of the Bible in two key words: The End and God. In the second section, he talks about the frame: creation, covenant, and kingdom.
The first section of the book, Bruno focuses on the foundation on which the entire Bible is built: The End and God. In talking about "The End," Bruno discusses how it is important to recognize that the message of salvation is apparent from the very beginning of the Bible and that it is important to know that from the beginning of the Bible, at the fall of Creation, God starts making a
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First off, he states that creation was not a one-time occurrence. While we tend to think of creation as a Genesis 1 account, the idea of creation appears repeatedly throughout the entire Bible and even now today. Bruno describes creation as God bringing order out of chaos. He declares, "God is the One who creates life where the only reasonable expectation is death and brings joy when all we can see is chaos." (36) This occurs during the flood with Noah, in Egypt with Moses, and throughout the OT with the Israelites. God also brings order out of chaos in our lives. The second theme that Bruno talks about in this section of the book is covenant. He explains that God's covenant relationships in the Bible have both conditional and unconditional aspects to them. And while humans continually failed to meet with God's conditions, He never failed to hold up His end of the bargain. Ultimately, He sent Jesus to become the new covenant and to fulfill all of the conditions that every other person in the world could not keep. Lastly, Bruno discusses the kingdom of God. He tells that, "[the kingdom] is talking first about God's power and authority to rule." (54) Additionally, he explains the kingdom of God as an "already and not yet," which means that there are aspects of the kingdom that have happened in the past, are happening today, and will happen in the future. In