I probably talked about this before, but like St. Peter says:
2 Peter 1 12 Wherefore I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though ye know them, and be established in the present truth. 13 Yea, I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance;
And St. Paul:
Philippians 3:1King James Version (KJV)
3 Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you, to me indeed is not grievous, but for you it is safe.
I was having a discussion once with a guy I served with when I was 25 (a long time ago). We were trying to see the best way to get the kids to read the bible. He was suggesting that we should get them to read 10 chapters a day, and I was saying that's way too much, it'll never happen. Although, I still think that forcing people to read 10 chapters a day wouldn't work, or at least I haven't seen it work, but a long time later I realized that part of me wanted to justify the fact that I didn't read the whole bible.
You have to find your niche in order to actually read the whole bible. For the longest time I wasn't really able to do that. I usually used the excuses:
. It's too long.
. I'm too young.
. It's too boring
. It's not relevant.
. I don't have time.
. I don't understand what I read.
And the list goes on.
But I'm here to tell you, all this excuses are irrelevant when it comes to reading the bible. Do you find it too boring? It's okay read it anyway. Do you think you have time? That's good, so put it to good use? Do you think it's irrelevant to your life? Trust me you couldn't be more wrong? You don't understand? You get confused by the hard names? It's okay, you won't understand things from the first time. Read it anyway. It'll change your life. Maybe, it won't make you a man in blue tights with a red cape, but it will change your life significantly, even though it might not be as dramatic as you might think. When God comes in your heart, he doesn't make a big show of it, but He works subtly.
At 26 I was sitting by myself, and I was thinking maybe I should get to do it, but how? I thought about getting the audio bible. And that's when I stumbled on the Audio bible read by Alexander Scurbe. With in 8 months I had listened to the entire bible. And to this day, I have listened/read the entire bible 8 times or so.
I'm not saying this to show off, more like: "Yo, if I can do it, you can do it, cause I ain't any thing special".
Till this day, there is much that goes over my head.
Numbers is about counting the people of Israel Chronicles is a tone of names Song of Songs, to this day I don't quite understand it Don't get me started on the Prophets, some of them they completely go over my head.
So find your niche. Find a way to make it happen. Of course, it's a given that you'll need to realize that this is important enough, that you'll assign effort to get it done.
What's the benefit if I don't understand a lot of what I'm reading or listening to? There is a tone of benefit. Before when someone talked about the exile, or the kings or the prophets, I literally had no idea what they were talking about. Now I kinda do. What's another benefit, I feel that I don't have many questions. As weird as this sounds, before reading the bible I was troubled by many questions, but as I read more and more, I found that my questions were either answered, or simply went away. I started to enjoy reading the bible. At the beginning, I was just doing it cause I have to, but now I enjoy the time I spend reading the bible. I found that I get emotionally involved in the stories that I read. Now you gotta understand, I'm a story guy, I love action, I like things happening, so I found that I really enjoy reading the books of moses and the kings. I get angry at David when he makes a mistake. I see myself in the stories of the kings. I find courage that God listened to the prayers of Hezekaiah, that he accepted the repentance of Manassah; that he was patient with Ahab. That he put Josaiah on a pedestal when he found the law. That he chose Jeremiah to serve at a young age, and so on. Before I read the bible, I didn't know about any of these people.
Types of reading the bible:
There are different ways of reading the bible, you can study the bible, you can concentrate on specific books, but I think the most important one is just reading it from cover to cover. I really believe this is the way it was meant to be read. You understand the whole story of your salvation. You start to understand how the old testament is connected to the new. You start to see yourself in the different books that you read. It gives you courage to pray, it gives you strength to repent, if David did, why can't I? It gives you strength to serve. If Jeremaiah served at a young age and withstood mighty men, why can't I?
So to help you in your quest to finish the bible, I'm going to give you a 5 minute tour of the whole bible.
Once upon a time, God the trinity decided to create Adam and eve in his own likeness, but they rebelled and disobeyed God. For their own good so that they don't live forever in their sin, he decided to put them out of the garden of eden.
They multiplied, and then overtime they became bad, so he decided to start new through the flood, with Noah and his family. But not long after man couldn't get away from the sin that has become ingrained in his nature, and he went back to his old ways.
So God thought how could I make sure that I could save the world through Christ. I need to select one person, and from that person, build a nation. So he selected our father Abraham. He took him from his father and his nation and from his seed he started the people of Israel. Abraham had Isaac and Isaac had Jacob.
Jacob had his 12 kids. Joseph was a man of dreams. He had two dreams, one of the 11 sheaves bowing to his sheave. And another one where the sun and the moon and 11 stars bowed to him. That got his brothers really jealous of him, so they conspired against him and sold him into Egypt.
He stayed for 15 years or so in Egypt, and God used Joseph to save Jacob and the rest from a 7 year famine. The people of Israel moved into Egypt and grew to about 2 million people. About 400 years later, the Pharaoh of the time, feared that the people of Israel would turn against him in a war so he decided to enslave him. Finally God sent Moses and took them out of the land of Egypt, but because of their stiff neck, they remained in the wilderness of Sinai for close to 40 years.
After that Joshua led them to take the promised land. He fought 31 kings and divided the land among the tribes of Israel. When Joshua died, the people of Israel remained faithful to the Lord up until the first generation passed away, and then they started to rebel. So God would leave them for a while, and then they would get oppressed by some nations around them, then God would send them a judge to deliver them. They would be kinda good while the judge lived then they would rebel again after the judge is dead. And the cycle continued. God sent them 14 judges + Samuel, who was the last of the judges.
The people of Israel wanted a king, like the rest of the nations, in effect rejecting God as their king. God allowed them to have Saul, who ruled for 40 years, was good then became bad. God rejected him and set up David as king. David ruled over Judah for 7 years and over all of Israel for 33 years. David became the De-facto king that God used as the standard to measure the rest of the kings.
After David came Solomon, the wisest man to live on the face of the earth, but Solomon had a weakness. Women. He married 700 wifes and had 300 concubines. These women turned his heart from the following the lord, so his heart wasn't perfect as the heart of his father David. God decided to split the kingdom of Israel into two kingdoms, the southern and northern kingdom. The southern kingdom was the kingdom of Judah, and the northern kingdom was the kingdom of Israel. Capital of Judah was Jerusalem. Capital of Israel is Samaria. God divided the kingdom under the rule of Solomon's son Rehoboam.
Kings of Judah were mostly bad, but some were good. Kings of Israel were all pretty bad. Israel went into captivity to the Assyrians, and shortly after Judah was taken into captivity in Babylon. Israel never returned, but Judah returned after 70 years.
Judah came back and rebuilt the wall of Jerusalem and the temple. But there weren't in their previous glory. Since that time Israel never became a strong kingdom.
Through out the period of the kings before the captivity God sent the people many prophets, including Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Daniel. We have 4 major Prophets and 12 minor prophets that wrote books. Major and Minor are related to the length of their books.
After that came the Lord Jesus Christ. The Gospels I consider to be the climax of the Holy Bible. Everything the Bible talks about is for one main purpose, The Lord Jesus Christ. All the prophets prophesied of the Lord Jesus.
The Lord Jesus came, served, died and rose from death and saved us from our sins. He then commanded the 12 disciples to go unto all Judea and the rest of the world to preach.
They kinda didn't listen so well, they mostly stayed and preached to the people of Israel, although God sent Cornelius to St. Peter so that Peter could preach to him. And the gentiles received the Holy Spirit as well. Then God chose Paul to be the apostle of the Gentiles. He made 4 major missionary trips, covering most of the known world.
He wrote 14 letters (epistles). Peter wrote 2, James wrote 1, Jude 1, John 3, and then comes Revelations (which is pretty much the conclusion) outlining in very symbolic ways the end times and the second coming of the Lord Jesus.
And now we're living in the "1000" year reign of Christ through the Church.
Now go and fill in the details yourself.