In Bible Versions War I explain about King James Only (KJO) people. They are people who believe modern versions of the Bible are corrupted. They claim modern versions like the NIV, NLT, NASB, ESV, and HCSB remove the deity of Christ, removed entire verses, remove the blood of Christ (His atoning sacrifice), and are not the Word of God. KJO people believe the King James Bible is the only inerrant and perfect word of God. This is just not true. If the KJV was inerrant (without

Sitting in my great room with the ladies from Bible study, I told them about the customer who came into the Christian bookstore and wanted to purchase a children’s Bible. I took him back to the children’s section, showed him the most popular children’s Bible sold, and he asked what version of the Bible was it based on. He proceeded to rant how he would only purchase a children's Bible based on the King James Version. This customer was a King James Only (KJO) person. I told hi

The Bible is actually very easy to understand. Some people have this perception that there are all kinds of ways to interpret Scripture verses. There isn't. It really is pretty straightforward. There are still going to be some words we don't know or some passages we don't quite get and we will have to look things up if we want to learn. Or perhaps we just want to dig deeper into a particular concept. How do we go about looking up information on the Bible? When I am reading th

The theme of the book of Daniel is God is sovereign. We have been exploring this in several posts on the first 6 chapters of the book. This post on chapter 6 is the last of this series. Here are the previous ones if you want to go back and read them: Get This One = Changed Forever! Daniel Chapter 1 and 2 Daniel Chapter 3 and 4 A Whole Post on Just Daniel 5:1! Daniel Chapter 5 Daniel Chapter 6 is one of the most familiar chapters in the Bible. Daniel is thrown in the lions' de

I asked my women's group while they were on break to read the first half of Daniel, specifically looking for indications in the text of God's sovereignty. The theme of the book of Daniel is God is sovereign. He is sovereign over the nations/ kingdoms and over individual lives. I wrote some posts on the history leading up to the book of Daniel, and indications of God's sovereignty in chapters 1-4. If you are just joining us and want to follow along, see links to those posts at

My women's group is discussing the concept of God's sovereignty. We are on a break from our study and I asked them to read the book of Daniel because the theme of that book is God is sovereign. He is sovereign over nations and kingdoms and over every life. I asked them to read the text to look for examples of God's sovereignty. I emailed them background information of world history at this time period. And then information on some of the verses in the text. I decided to share

The theme of Daniel is God is sovereign. God controls history, the nations, the lives of believers and non-believers. God uses people's circumstances for His plans to come about. God's plans are always good. My women's group is doing a study (As Silver Refined - Answer's to Life's Disappointments by Kay Arthur*) and there are three chapters which talk about God's sovereignty: Chapter 7 - Facing the Pain - The Safety of His Sovereignty Chapter 8 - Peace Amid the Pain - Profile

My women's group is doing a Kay Arthur study right now called, As Silver Refined (affiliate link.) If you have ever done a Kay Arthur study you know they aren't fluffy. They are intensely deep and have some very thought-provoking concepts. They aren't easy studies - long and a lot of reading. But these women are week-in and week-out doing their "homework" and I couldn't be more proud of them about being purposeful in their spiritual journeys. This week we discussed the chapte

A good way to learn about the Bible is with trivia. What is the longest psalm in the Bible? How many books are in the New Testament? David's occupation before he became a king was ______________? What does the Bible say has never been tamed by man? What was the name of the queen who was devoured by dogs? How many hours was Jesus on the cross? What is the last word in the Bible? Awhile ago a phone app came out called Quiz Up. It's free. Go to "Literature" and then you can choo

I don't really think that years ago I bought into the concept of spiritual warfare. I do now. Pat Benatar says, "Love is a battlefield." I don't know about that, but I do know our mind is a battlefield. Recently I wrote a post about how Satan attacks us there. He puts doubts in our mind. Am I really saved? Could I really be forgiven for that big sin? Does He really answer my prayers? Is He really with me through this mess? Click on this link to read it. Do You Have Doubts? We

Many Christians camp out in the New Testament. I did the same thing at first. However, the whole Bible – both the Old Testament and New Testament - is God’s word to us. And the first 5 books of the Bible are critical to read because they lay the theological groundwork for the rest of the Scriptures! These books explain the origin of the world, of the nations, and of God’s people. If you are new to reading the Bible you probably should spend some time in the New Testament – es

The New Testament has 27 books. The first 5 books are the historical books and record the life and ministry of our Savior, Jesus Christ, the beginning of the universal church and the spread of the gospel message. The next 21 books of the New Testament are letters (also called epistles.) Revelation is unique and stands alone in that while it is a letter to churches; it is a prophetical book. All of the letters are instructional in nature. They encourage and instruct Christian

I first heard about choosing a life verse at my son’s high school. He graduated from a Christian high school and as part of the yearbook, sport’s senior night and for graduation, they were supposed to choose a “life verse.” I think for most of the students the life verse was just their favorite verse. I remember him asking me if I had one. Nope. Interesting my son chose Colossians 3:17 and I think this is a very good life verse. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, d

I was reviewing my 6 week class I developed called Connecting the Dots of the Bible. I’m about to teach it in a couple weeks. In reading over the notes of one of the first slides of the first week, I was again reminded how this all got started. It was the slide on the purpose of the class - the one with the statistics about how people today aren’t reading the Bible. Actually Bible reading is in a rapid nosedive. Each year the statistics come out and each year they drop, and e

I first heard about this from customers back when I worked at the Christian bookstore. They would say something like, “I would never read from the NIV because it is missing verses!” The first time I heard it I was like, “What?!” And the young guy showed me where some verses were not in the NIV Bible. I was caught off guard. Take a look in your NIV Bible and turn to Mark 15:28. Oh no! It is missing! Now look at Luke 23:17. Again, where is it?! These verses are in the King Jame

The books of the Old Testament are organized in the canon of Scripture by historical, poetical, and prophetical. Old Testament Historical- books that describe key figures, events, locations in biblical history Poetical- books of poetry, songs Prophetical- proclaiming the Word of God, both for that present generation and the future generations The word "canon" means rule of faith and is what we call the books making up our sacred Scripture. The Hebrew (Jewish) Canon is identic

Photograph by Sherry Vechery I heard somewhere that if you read the Bible daily for 20 minutes that you will have read through the whole thing in a year. My question is why 20 minutes and why a year? On one hand 20 minutes doesn’t seem unreasonable to me, but it is to a lot of people. We all know you get sick, you go on vacation, your child has that big school project due tomorrow, you sometimes feel like you can’t pack in one more thing in a day and adding a required 20 minu

(This post has affiliate links.) In Choosing a Bible – Part 1 and 2 I discussed what a version is; deciding on if you want a literal, balanced, or paraphrase version; and the differences in those versions. Now I am going to go over features of various Bibles. The features of Bibles are going to vary per Bible making it very difficult to choose one online. The ideal situation is to go to a store like LifeWay that has a large selection of Bibles, go to the section with the ver

In Choosing a Bible – Part 1 we talked about the versions are divided into literal, balanced, or a paraphrase. In literal versions the translators chose words that closely matched the original Hebrew and Greek words even if some of the meaning to present day readers is lost. Balanced versions translate words into modern day language and are in general easier to read. Paraphrases are usually only written by one person and add a lot of extra words to convey the ideas. King Jame

You want to purchase a new Bible. Good for you! Reading the Bible is the number one way God will speak to you. Oh, He can speak to you in other ways. He is after all, God. He can do anything He wants in any way He wants. But the primary way He will speak into your life is through the Bible. It sounds easy enough to go to a Christian store or go on-line and choose a Bible until you look at what is available and then you are going to be overwhelmed. There are so many choices! B