The Bible is the best-selling book of all time, yet unfortunately, it is more often bought than read. In part, that is because people feel overwhelmed when they first pick it up. For one thing, it is a big book, written by forty different authors over 1500 years, in three different languages. For another thing, it describes people and places and events that are foreign to our modern world and so many people feel they are not qualified to understand it for themselves.
However, God’s intention in giving us the Bible was not to conceal truth but to reveal it. It was not written by scholars for scholars but by ordinary people like fisherman and shepherds for ordinary people like us. And while some parts are hard to understand, with God’s help and a little guidance, everyone can understand the essential message of the Bible.
So, in this twelve-part video series, we want to help you get the big picture of what the Bible is all about.
In the first session, we want to anticipate some of the questions or objections that people sometimes raise about the Bible, questions such as:
- “Who wrote the Bible?”
- “How was the Bible compiled?”
- “Hasn’t the Bible been corrupted through the years?”
- “Are there any independent historical confirmations of the Bible?”
- “Why are there so many versions of the Bible and which one is the right one?”
In the second session, we want to look at the question “How can we understand the Bible?” Some people seem to think everything is open to interpretation and that everyone’s opinion about the meaning of a passage is equally valid. But we want to offer some common-sense guidance so that you can understand and apply the Bible for yourself.
Now, these first two sessions are a bit more technical and you may want to leave them and come back to them later. The third session is where we will lay out the big picture of the Bible by looking at the basic storyline, breaking it down into its major historical periods and seeing how the story fits together and moves toward a goal. This is important because knowing where a particular passage in the Bible fits into the overall story of the Bible can have a huge impact on understanding it correctly.
Then in the remainder of the sessions, we will look in more detail at each of these historical periods and fill in a bit more detail.
So, you’re welcome to join us for this journey as together we aim at Getting the Big Picture of the Bible.
If you would like to have PDFs of the PowerPoints used in these videos, they are listed at the bottom of this page.