Did you know there is a way you could show that each of the New Testament books must have been written last? The evidence of the numerical design of the Greek text actually points to this absurd conclusion, unless…there is one mind inspiring all of the New Testament books!
What are some of the evidences that might show us that there is one mind behind the scriptures? In Chapter Nine of The Bible Can Be Proven, I describe another phenomenon Russian scholar Ivan Panin found.* This involves the number of unique vocabulary words used by a given New Testament writer. There are words in the Gospel of Matthew, for example, that occur nowhere else in the New Testament. It just so happens that they occur 42 times (7X6) and have 126 letters (7×18). Now, if Matthew deliberately designed in this feature, the only way he could have known these specific words would not be used by the other New Testament writers would either have been: 1) a prior agreement with the other writers, so they would not use certain words he wanted to use and to make sure the number of his unique words totalled a multiple of seven (which seems totally ridiculous since there would be no reason for them to do this, and also many of them wrote at different times and places, and so such collaboration would have been impossible), or 2) his book was written last,and he had all the other New Testament books before him.
Of course there is much evidence against Matthew’s Gospel being the last New Testament book written, and no reason evident that he would attempt to produce this phenomenon even if he could. But there is an even bigger problem. The Gospel of Mark also exhibits these same phenomena. So this suggests that the Gospel of Mark had to have been written last. But the same thing also happens in the writings of John, James, Peter, and Paul. Each New Testament writer has a set of unique words the number of which is divisible by seven exactly. So the absurd conclusion we would have to come to is that each of these books would have to have been written last! And these are legitimate variants of the Greek texts, not just something Panin arbitrarily came up with to make this pattern fit. And what motive would Panin have to fabricate it anyway? He received no rewards for the work, and spent many long, tedious hours over it.
The only conclusion remaining is that one mind oversaw this phenomenon in the New Testament writings, and it was to be revealed to our skeptical generation in modern times as proof of divine inspiration.
* See Chuck Missler, Cosmic Codes, Coeur D’Alene, ID, 1999, pp. 95-95, as referenced in The Bible Can Be Proven, pp. 179-180.
I was really confused, and this answered all my qusteions.