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Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways (Romans 11:33, ESV)!
Studying the reliability of Scripture, we quickly discover topics such as inspiration, archaeological evidence, and the copious amount of early New Testament manuscripts compared with other ancient documents.
But there is one research topic that supports Scripture that we must dig deeper to find, and it’s…
Reason #7 for the Reliability of the New Testament: Undesigned Circumstances
Let’s start with this image. You are given a piece of the puzzle by someone, and another person is given a piece of a puzzle by the same someone, too. Finding yourself in a meeting with the other person, you both begin a conversation about the puzzle-bearing stranger, and then, pulling out the puzzle pieces, realize they match perfectly.
Astounding. Who was the stranger? Why did he select you to hold a piece of the puzzle, and was it just happenstance that both of you found yourselves at the same meeting talking to one another?
Undesigned circumstances in the New Testament are difficult to explain without calling upon the supernatural. These undesigned circumstances of Scripture occur when one author of the New Testament writes a detail that seems inconsequential, and another author of the New Testament in another book writes a seemingly inconsequential detail, that hundreds of years later, scholars sitting in their ivory towers realize how these pieces fit together like two pieces of the same puzzle.
One of these ivory tower scholars describes the process…
An undesigned coincidence is a notable connection between two or more accounts or texts that doesn’t seem to have been planned by the person or people giving the accounts. Despite their apparent independence, the items fit together like pieces of a puzzle.
Example One:
Matthew 14:1-2 says that the words and deeds of Jesus reached Herod through a discussion with his servants. Luke 8:3 talks about Joanna who followed Jesus and the wife of Herod’s household manager. It’s subtle, but put on your scholarly hat. Do you see the two seemingly small details that illuminate one another?
Let me write it out for you — Matthew mentions a conversation between Herod and his servants; how would Matthew know what Herod said to his servants? Luke explains that Joanna was the wife of Herod’s principal servant. The two unplanned statements are an undesigned circumstance.
Example Two:
In John 6:4-8, before Jesus fed the five thousand, He asked Philip where to buy bread. A few chapters earlier, we learn that Philip was from Bethsaida (John 1:44). In Luke 9:10-17, we learn that the feeding of the five thousand occurred near Bethsaida. So it makes perfect sense that Jesus would ask Philip where to buy bread.
Again, is this John and Luke conspiring through subtle details to fool those of us reading the Bible today? Or is the Holy Spirit having fun with these details for those of us with eyes to see and ears to hear?
Another scholar sitting in his ivory tower has another quote for us to consider…
The result that Luke and Matthew, or John and Luke, illuminate each other with complimentary details, seems highly unlikely to have been contrived in advance.
When I read the fact of “undesigned circumstances,” and the intricacies of inspiration, I want to find those scholars in their ivory towers and give them “high fives.”