1.The four Gospels: There are four books of the Gospel. They are the first four books of the New Testament.
2.The Acts of the Apostles: There is only one book of Acts.
3.The Epistles: There are twenty-one books, from Romans to Jude.
4.The book of Prophecy: There is only one book, Revelation.
The four Gospels, Acts, the twenty-one Epistles, plus the last book of prophecy, add up to twenty-seven books. An easy way to memorize the number of books of the Bible is to remember that 3 times 9 equals 27, that is, 39 books in the Old Testament and 27 books in the New.
This is the best way to subdivide the Bible and is the way we recommend. There are three categories in the Old Testament and three categories in the New. The nature of the three categories in both Testaments is the same.
1.History: From Genesis to Esther there are seventeen books on history. It begins from God’s creation of the universe and continues until the Israelites were returned from captivity to rebuild the temple and the holy city. This is the history and journey of God’s people before Him; it is everything that they have passed through before God.
2.Experience: There are the five books of poetry: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs. There may be some history records in these books, but they are not on history. There are also some prophecies in them, but their main emphasis is not prophecy. These five books emphasize the spiritual experiences of God’s saints before Him. If there were only the history in the preceding category without the experience that followed, we could only see the historical facts without understanding the inward condition under those circumstances. These five books of poetry in the Bible precisely describe the inward condition of the chosen people before God under various circumstances and experiences. When we read these five books of poetry, we can find out the spiritual experiences of these people before God.
3.Prophecy: From Isaiah to Malachi there are seventeen books. There are seventeen books of history at the beginning, and seventeen books of prophecy at the end, with five books of experience in the middle, making up a total of thirty-nine books.
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