It is my pleasure to invite you to read through this series of blogs over the course of 2014 and beyond.
The intention of this series of blogs is to encourage its readers to read the whole bible from cover to cover in a single year. I realise bible reading can be hard. This series will make it easier for you to read parts of the bible every day. The blog will also facilitate discussion on the passages I have selected amongst its readers by allowing its readers to make comments using the disqus system.
Format
The blogs will have slightly varying formats depending on the stage in the bible being commented on. The table below illustrates.
Old Testament
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Gospels
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Acts
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Epistles
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Blog Title - Heading
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Blog Title - Heading
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Blog Title - Heading
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Blog Title - Heading
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From - Passage
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From - Passage
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From - Passage
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From - Passage
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Introduction
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Introduction
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Introduction
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Introduction
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Question or Statement
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Question or Statement
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Question or Statement
|
Question or Statement
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Overview
|
Overview
|
Overview
|
Overview
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Passage and Comments
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Passage and Comments
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Passage and Comments
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Passage and Comments
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Story of Israel
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About Jesus
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About Mission
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For Believers
|
Story of Jesus
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Introduction
I modified an existing introduction to each book and inserted it at the start of each book to give a brief intro.
Overview
This section gives a brief overview of the whole passage covered. Each part is broken up into;
1) the reference to the passage
2) a category used to distinguish this passage
3) a description of what is in the passage
The main purpose of this section is to give people who do not read the whole set of chapters to get a brief overview of what happens. Its possible they will gain an understanding of the whole bible if they read this section alone. Of course this would be improved if they read all the chapters, but this is a help if they can’t. The whole premise of this is that there are sections of the bible that are difficult to get through. I recognise this, sections like Leviticus and Chronicles are at times a little slow.
At the end of an entire book I will post all the overviews together. Each overview is semi-comma ‘;’ delimited. This means the tech savvy can import it as a csv file into excel if they want.
Passage and Comments
I will select a passage to comment on in each and every blog post. I generally give a brief introduction and quote the passage. Then I will comment on it.
Story of Israel
Story of Jesus
With the Old Testament, I intend to preach the gospel in the same way the apostles do in Acts. Close examination of the apostles sermons in acts reveals that they tell the story of Israel and connect it to the story of Jesus when sharing about Jesus. See Preaching the Gospel with the OT for a better understanding of where I’m coming from. Every Old Testament blog will refer to Jesus in some manner.
About Jesus
This section is only in the Gospels. My opinion is that the Gospels are the gospel. So I don’t need to add anything extra other than quoting the passage itself. The passage is part of the gospel. So I generally summarise what the gospel says about Jesus.
About Mission
In Acts the apostles are engaged in evangelism and mission. It seems appropriate to discuss the things we can learn from their example in this section.
For Believers
The Epistles were written for existing believers in Jesus Christ. These are examples of how the apostles engage in pastoral care with their church audiences (mostly believers, possibly some unbelievers). So in this section I will comment on their practice.
Disclaimer
This is the first time I’ve run through the series. So its more of a draft run. With this in mind I encourage constructive comments. It will get better and better through the years.
I work full time as a technical officer in engineering. I create these blogs in my spare time. So I generally don’t have a lot of time to look at commentaries to compare different takes on the passages I choose or go into a huge amount of detail. I’ve studied a bit in the past and I’ve read the bible a few times. So, normally I write off the top of my head from my own knowledge of the scriptures, previous readings and bible software.
It is my intention to use previous years blogs in the next but also to keep adding to it.
God bless.