In a Bible class,  in Ft.Worth, Texas, an old lady in Wade Butler’s Sunday school class asked him, “Pastor, what is the Bible all about? We only ever hear this part or that part, bur never what the whole thing is about.”  This faithful saint had attended church for most of her life.  Wade thought that was a pretty good question, and himself had never really  heard anyone address the Bible in it’s entirety.  Instead of giving her a “blow off’ answer, he told her that he would look into it and  try to find an answer.

At the time he was attending Southwestern Theological Seminary and had access to one of the best theological libraries on the planet.  He didn’t find anything there that quite answered the question in the spirit it was asked.

Having an undergraduate degree in English, he decided he would read the Bible cover to cover and treat it like a novel, then write a book report outlining the main plot and the key players and incidents that drove this plot.  After he did this he went back and looked at each book of the Bible and it’s place in the narrative, and created some rudimentary charts that would help visualize the flow of the story and how the pieces fit together.

A few weeks later he went back and presented his findings to his class. They were stunned.  They had never heard anything like this.  Some told him they had never understood the Bible until then.  This was the beginning of Bible in an Hour.

Wade showed me his presentation, and frankly, I had never heard anything like it.  After listening to it  a couple times, all the pieces parts that I had heard in church, Sunday school, and Bible College suddenly gelled into a coherent picture, and the Bible finally made sense.

Since that time he has improved the presentation and finalized the charts that go with it.

The feed back we get from those who hear the presentation is amazing. One family friend uses it on church retreats and told me he gets something new from it every time he goes through it.

I think that next to the ‘Gospel for Those Broken by the Church’ this is  one of our most important resources.  Knowledge of the Scriptures is waning in our culture and the church.  To say that many Christians are ignorant of even basic texts of Scripture is an unfortunately sad truth.

The Bible can be a daunting book, and I personally know the feeling of  trying to read it from cover to cover, or even trying to read an entire book or section of it and being alternately overwhelmed, confused, and to be honest, bored.

Bible in an Hour can give you a leg up on it, and by giving you an understanding of the flow of the story, can help you connect the part you are reading to the entirety of the Scriptures.

It is available as both a CD and an Mp3 download.  The charts are on the CD and in the Mp3 and can be downloaded and printed as many times as you like.

In the Freebies section of our site you can get the companion e-books that go with the presentation, and Pastor Butler has put together a reading plan that allows you to read the Bible in chronological order. You can find that stuff here.

By Pat K

Posted in General