Loraine Boettner was following in his tradition when, in the early 1900s, he created his own diatessaron for classroom use at Pikeville College, Kentucky, where he was a professor. This book used the 1901 American Standard Version (ASV), which Boettner preferred over the King James, and was published by Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing as A Harmony of the Gospels.

The Gospel of Jesus: The Four Gospels in a Single Complete Narrative by Loraine Boettner.
Editor’s Note
In the mid-100s, Tatian the Syrian arranged the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John into a single narrative and called it the Diatessaron, a Greek term meaning “Out of Four.” His innovation proved inspiring to others through the centuries. Reformed theologian and author Loraine Boettner was following in his tradition when, in the early 1900s, he created his own diatessaron for classroom use at Pikeville College, Kentucky, where he was a professor. This book used the 1901 American Standard Version (ASV), which Boettner preferred over the King James, and was published by Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing as A Harmony of the Gospels.
This new edition of Boettner’s diatessaron differs in several ways from the original, yet the bones are the same. Although the ASV has much to commend it, we have used the Christian Standard Bible for its clear, familiar vocabulary and ease of reading. We have updated, revised, and added to Boettner’s headings and adjusted dates he provided to better reflect contemporary scholarly consensus.1
In formatting the new edition, we have walked a careful line between providing as much information as possible and promoting a user-friendly reading experience. Full Scripture references for all the New Testament texts are given in the margins, where the eye can easily find or look past them as desired. In cases where more than one gospel writer recorded the same event or teaching, we have printed the account that gives it most fully and have inserted additional distinct material from parallel gospel accounts in [brackets] at the appropriate places; some punctuation and paragraph breaks have also been inserted as clarity required. Bolded text indicates a quotation from, or reference to, an Old Testament passage, and an index on page 213 provides further details. Italicized text indicates a non-English word or, when applied to English text, an editorial insertion or substitution. Scripture references are marked with asterisks (*) when they are for passages that do not appear in all the earliest manuscripts of Scripture. (Not all these passages are included in this book.) The abbreviations found in the margins signify the following New Testament books:
Mt        MatthewMk       MarkLk        LukeJn        John1 Cor   1 Corinthians
This book is no substitute for a Bible. It is no substitute for reading the gospels individually: each gospel is inspired and offers a distinct perspective on Christ. And yet we hope you will find The Gospel of Jesus to be a helpful resource for Bible study. This harmony is not intended to flatten out the distinctive voices of the gospel writers but to direct you back to their individual gospels with fresh understanding and appreciation.
Amanda MartinEditorial DirectorP&R Publishing2023

For the timeline that guided our adjustments, see CSB Study Bible (Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 2017), 1494–95, 1662–63.

Here is an example of the Temptation narrative:
WILDERNESS OF JUDEA
The Temptation
Lk 4:1-2          Then Jesus left the Jordan, full of the Holy Spirit, and was led by the Spirit in
     the wilderness for forty days to be tempted by the devil.
Mk 1:13           He was with the wild animals.
Mt 4:2-11        After he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. Then the
    tempter approached him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these
    stones to become bread.”
    He answered, “It is written: “Man must not live on bread alone but on every
    word that comes from the mouth of God.”
Lk 4:9              Then the devil took him to the holy city [Jerusalem], had him stand on the
      pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw
      yourself down. For it is written:
Lk 4:10            “He will give his angels orders concerning you, [to protect you,]
    and they will support you with their hand so that you will not strike your foot
    against a stone.”
    Jesus told him, “It is also written: ”Do not test the Lord your God.”
Lk 4:5              Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the
     kingdoms of the world [in a moment of time] and their splendor.
    And he said to him, “I will give you all these
Lk 4:6-7          things if you will fall down and worship me [because it has been given
    over to me, and I can give it to anyone I want. If you, then, will worship me, all
    will be yours].”
    Then Jesus told him, “Go away, Satan! For it is written: Worship the Lord your
    God, and serve only him.”
Lk 4:13            Then the devil left him [for a time], and angels came and began to serve him.

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It’s possible your greatest need in prayer is not to know more about it, but rather to know how to use the most foundational and comprehensive tool given to us in Scripture. As with any tool, its purpose is found not by focusing on the tool, but rather on setting our eyes on our praiseworthy Father, King, Provider, Pardoner, and Protector—and to shape our lives by his sovereign rule and care.

The reason there are so many books on prayer is that even after reading them, we still struggle to pray. Some reasons are intellectual—we don’t know how or why to pray in a particular situation. Some are volitional—our hearts are distracted or apathetic. Still other reasons are due to lacking proper practical tools.
As I’ve pondered how to grow in prayer, one simple solution has stood out as a versatile tool for overcoming our struggles: the Lord’s Prayer. This should come as no surprise, since this is the way Jesus taught his disciples to pray (Matt. 6:9–13).
Here’s how the Lord’s Prayer helps us overcome six common prayer struggles.
1. We forget why prayer matters.
Perhaps the most foundational reason we struggle to pray is that we forget prayer’s purpose. The Lord’s Prayer reminds us. We pray in order to glorify our heavenly Father. We pray in order to unify our hearts with his kingdom vision for the world and to align ourselves with his will. We pray for provision, pardon, and protection from the evil that comes from both inside and outside us.
2. We aren’t sure God hears us.
This suspicion leads many to neglect prayer, which is the only guaranteed way for God not to hear our prayers. The Lord’s Prayer reminds us that we pray to God our Father. A good father hears the cries and requests of his children. God, our perfect Father, always hears us and always answers us in his way and his timing (not always in the way we want, however).
3. We don’t know what to pray.
Sometimes believers don’t know what to pray, or they pray the same thing over and over and stop praying due to the monotony. The Lord’s Prayer gives us a Spirit-inspired path for knowing what to say in prayer. You might take a general approach to saying the Lord’s Prayer, using its petitions as a template and filling them in with specific praises and requests.
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As we in the PCA and the EPC seek to minister as ambassadors of God’s grace, we must be committed both to the task of loving the lost, and to our duty not to see any sin as beyond the saving grace of our Savior Jesus Christ. So, we pray that we all would remain committed to bringing the gospel to those in sexual sin, without compromising God’s Word and its faithful presentation in the Westminster Standards. Yet I also will pray for wisdom in your future decisions on these matters, because our evangelistic desire should not lead to any attenuation of the need for repentance.

Dear brothers and sisters in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC),
Greetings, and Grace and Peace to those who love and serve our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.
Reviewing the events at your recent 44th General Assembly of the EPC, I know that you, like many other American Reformed Churches, are facing difficult issues of ministry in matters relating to sexuality, temptation, and same-sex attraction. As a Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), I was also interested and sympathetic to your recent challenges concerning a congregation (Memorial Presbyterian in St. Louis, MO) and her ministers who were formerly in our own denomination petitioning to join the EPC.
Now, hearing that you have formed a committee to study and report back on these issues in two years, I felt compelled to write an open letter of encouragement and appeal to those in the EPC. As I have talked to many fellow PCA elders in the past few weeks, all were thankful for particular local EPC congregations known to work and labor in the proclamation of the gospel of our Triune God. We appreciate those of you who have been encouraging and working with us in these labors across denominational lines for years.
I write to express that I—along with many others in the PCA—are committed to pray for your denomination, your churches, and the decisions that you will be making through the newly formed committee and in future General Assemblies. While conflict and controversy are never pleasant, we are reminded that when God works through wisdom and discipline, we can have comfort from Hebrews 12:11: “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”
I also write to commend to you the published work of the PCA and several of its presbyteries and ministers on many matters directly related to your own deliberations. Many of us are grieved that rather than work within the polity of the PCA in seeking clarification and repentance where necessary, Memorial Presbyterian Church (again, together with her ministers) departed from us and did not continue to seek that peace in our courts. Below are some examples of the work we produced on issues that had surfaced up to the point of their departure:

Our General Assembly worked through many issues regarding sexuality, desire, and same-sex sexual attraction, producing a thorough report. Click here or copy the following link to access the Report of the Ad Interim Committee on Human Sexuality (2021): https://pcaga.org/aicreport/.

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