Pastor John, here's an email, not an uncommon email from a listener who writes and to ask

this, if I've never read the Bible by myself before, where should I start?

Oh, I would love to talk to such a person, so I hope he or she is listening.

So let's start at ground zero, absolute zero, and just say a few big picture of things

that will help my simple straightforward answer make sense.

The Bible is a collection of 66 distinct books.

These were written by different people over a span of about 1500 years, which makes their

amazing harmony and unity and development all the more amazing.

But it's important to realize that there were numerous authors, human authors, not

just one.

So these 66 books in the one book called The Bible are different kinds of writing, in

summer history, summer poetry, summer prophecy, summer letters, and so on, different styles.

And these are divided into two parts, right, called the Old Testament and the New Testament.

The word Testament is an old word for agreement or covenant about the way God was dealing

with His people.

The Old Covenant are the books written before Jesus Christ came into the world and the

New Covenant are the books written after Jesus Christ.

So the Old Testament are books that are preparing for the coming of the Son of God into the

world.

Jesus Christ and the New Testament is about what He did, who He was, how He started the

Christian movement, and how we are to live as Christians in the light of all of that.

So 39 books in the Old and 27 books in the New.

...