Welcome, dear listeners, to our second talk in our series on New Testament Survey. Today, we’ll look at the key features of the New Testament. As we move forward in this survey, please, from time to time, refer or re-listen to the first talk to give you continuity and see progressively what makes up the New Testament of the Bible. Do reveal the key concepts of scripture, revelation, canon, history and theology. Know, especially, the crucial position of Jesus Christ as the foundation and centre of the Bible. These fundamentals would enable you to understand the Old Testament, the New testament and the Bible as a whole.

The Bible is organised so that the New Testament comes after the Old Testament. This is a historical order in that the revelation of the Old Testament were received before the revelation of the New Testament. The revelation from God were received and recorded as books. Hence, the books of the Old Testament come before the books of the New Testament in sequence. If you get a copy of the Bible today, the table of content is organised in the sequence that are used to present this series to you.

We shall now identify the books and structure of the New Testament. The books of the New Testament are grouped into categories that give it its structure. The categories are gospel, history, epistles, and apocalyptic. We shall present each category in sequence, beginning with the Gospel. Each of the first four books of the New Testament is called a gospel. These are in sequence, the Gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The meaning of the word “gospel” is “good news”. Each declares to us a message of who Jesus is, what He proclaimed, and what He came to do. Each gospel writer collects together the words and works of Jesus Christ and present these thematically from a particular perspective as the Holy Spirit inspires each of them. Together, they reveal to us a fourfold of four-dimensional presentation of the person, the message and the mission of Jesus Christ. They affirm that He is the Son of God, who became a human being to reveal God to us and to save us. He is the Messiah of Israel and the Lord and Saviour of the World. He is the centre of the Bible. He fulfills all that the Old Testament prophesied and is the focus of the New Testament Message.

The next category in the New Testament is history. It consists of only one book - the book of Acts. It is the book on the history of the New Testament church. It points to the acts of the Holy Spirit as He worked through the apostles of Jesus Christ, especially Jesus and Paul, and through the body of believers, the church of Christ, at its historical inception. It gives us much historical background to the other books of the New Testament. It is also typically studied in relation to intertestamental history. This is the history in the period between the end of the Old Testament and when John the Baptist proclaim the arrival of Jesus Christ and the appearance of Jesus himself as recorded in the Gospels.

The next category of writings in the New Testament, after Acts, are the epistles. This is a technical name for “letters”.

These are letters written by the Apostle Paul, and other apostles or leaders in the New Testament time to churches and persons in that time to explain the Christian faith and to deal with the challenges and situations they faced. What is written in them has become foundational teachings that interprets and expands on what is presented in the Gospels on who Jesus is, what He taught and what He came to do. The epistles are organised into two groups. The first group are those written by Paul and are named by who or where they were addressed to. These are namely Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus and Philemon - so 13 in all.

The second group are written by other New Testament apostles or writers and are named by the author or writer, except for Hebrews because its author is not known to us, but it is well known to its original recipients. These in sequence are Hebrews, James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2 and 3 John, and Jude - 8 in all. The last book of the New Testament is the book of Revelation and it is a category by itself called the apocalyptic. It consists of a record of visions that the writer, John the Apostle, received from God with the use of symbols and numbers to declare its message. It is therefore a difficult book to properly understand but it serves as a guide for the church from when it was written until when Christ will return and bring history to an end and in all great eternity. In our subsequent talks, we will explain each category, in turn, beginning with the Gospels for which we dedicate our next 3 sessions because of the crucial importance of Jesus Christ.

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