“What unites all the books that make up the Scripture—what binds the Old and New Testaments together—is a singular, coherent story. It is the story of how a world of breathtaking beauty fell into ruin because of human selfishness. But God, because of his unshakable love, prepared the world for his arrival in disguise, the arrival of a Rescuer.
This is the secret the stranger on the road to Emmaus reveals to our two companions: the Rescuer has arrived. His name is Jesus of Nazareth, the same figure referred to in the Hebrew Bible as "the hope of all the ends of the earth." … As we shall see, the Christian story is indeed a conspiracy story—a divine conspiracy—and there is no one who is not implicated in its plot.”