Chronological Guide to the Bible

This is a must have for any person that desires to study the Bible beyond personal devotions and doesn’t want to purchase the NKJV Chonological Study Bible.  While this doesn’t have all the commentary the Study Bible has it definitely puts the Chronology of the Bible in order while explaining why they chose that order and connects the dots to the history of the Bible. This reference book contains everything from book introductions, chronological reading guides, articles about specific subjects and the list could go one for a while, but these are the three things I wanted to point out in this review.

The book introductions are great.  It explains the overall theme of the book and outlines each book to know why they arrived at those specific themes.  They are very informative and very reliable.  The chronological reading guides are meant to give an overall view of the chronological order of each Epoch so that the reader can attach what bits and pieces they know to what is going on.  These also could be used for daily readings for one’s personal devotions to read the Bible in chronological order.  Finally, the articles about specific subjects are very informative about the subject in which one is reading.  When I say subject I don’t mean subjects as in “What the Bible says about…”  Instead, the subjects would be on “The Divided Monarchy in Israel” to which it would explain just that.  Definitely informative and would give this book 5 stars.

You can purchase this book from Lifeway in store or from their website.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com <http://BookSneeze.com> book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 <http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html> : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Lifeway Quote Story

This is not the usual post done by myself.  I would like to think that most of my posts are thought provoking and intellectual.  This one however is going to be one that is not so thought provoking and it I hope will be hilarious to the readers.  For those that are subscribed to my twitter account will know that I every once in a while I post “Lifeway Quotes” which are are funny things that people say and ask for while are the store I work for.  This could not fit in a quote, therefore I am blogging this story so that the whole world will be able to laugh with me.  So here goes.

I work at Lifeway and we always get large amounts of products in and we make floor displays.   The specific one I was making can be seen to the left.  While I was working on this specific display a lady and her two sons walked in.  One son was around 8 and the other around 11.  The older one had autism, so he doesn’t relate to people really well.  I noticed this when they walked in and thought nothing of it.  Well, I was in the middle of building this display and this older son comes and stands next to me.  When I say next to me I don’t mean he gave me a little space.  I mean this kid was right on me and my bubble had been popped.  I thought nothing of it though because of what I had previously observed. 

As I continued working on this display I looked down and noticed a hand crawling across the front of my stomach.  Then he folded two fingers in leaving two fingers out and began tickling my stomach.  What was I supposed to do?  I just stood there.  He “tickled” my stomach for about two or three seconds then walked off.  I was speechless, but I left it alone considering the aforementioned.  I continued working on my display when lo and behold here he comes again and follows the same routine.  This time when he started tickling me I moved his hand out of the way and started around the display to get away from him, but he continued to follow after me. 

In the middle of all this I received a phone call, so I dismissed myself to the back.  Apparently, he did not hear me because he was paying attention to his mom.  I step around the card section in our store, he turns around, I am not where he saw me last and he freaks out!  He runs around the cards, sees me and begins rubbing my stomach.  All the while I am walking and pushing his hand away.  His mom comes around the corner, calls his name out and begins to count to three.  At two he stops and goes toward his mom.  I take my call, tell another associate (we’ll call him Tim) about what was going on and I don’t think he believed me.  I stepped out onto the sales floor hoping he and his family left, but took a detour to the music section to mention a project to another associate (we’ll call him Will) and to tell him about this boy. 

In the middle of me explain all the the boy comes around the corner sees me and makes a beeline straight for me.  I noticed this and ducked around a set of shelves and headed to opposite way to get away from him.  Instead of chasing after me though, he goes toward the associate I was talking to and begins to tickle his stomach.  He tells the kid “No” and the kid actually stopped and walked off.  Well, Will and I began talking about it towards the back of the store when Tim walks up wondering what’s going on.  He still doesn’t believe what’s going on and walks up to the front of the store.  He’s up there for a few minutes and walks back to where we are and proceeds to tell us that this boy had done the same thing that we told him he would do.  Needless to say he did this to everyone in the store including the customers.  Yes, my job is awesome!

Evangelism

While I was setting up a display today at Lifeway a gentleman walked up to me and handed me two tracts.  I am sure if I had looked like I wanted to talk he would have talked to me either that or he just didn’t want to have a discussion with me.  I heard from another associate that he had encouraged him to pray more, read the KJV Bible and one other thing that slips my mind right now.  The KJV because all of the newer translations have added in more to the Bible and taken away from other parts of the Bible.  As much as I would like to say my peace about this I have another agenda I am going to pursue in this post.  

I’m not sure why he felt the need to come into our store to give out these tracts.  Maybe it was because we wouldn’t kick him out for handing out tracts and he knew that.  I’m not sure, but the least likely place I would go to to hand out tracts is a Christian Bookstore.  I see that there are pros and cons to this.  Pros being that “Christians” are the least likely people to question their faith and, as Timothy Keller puts it, take a “Leap of Doubt.”  In order to strengthen our faith we need to doubt our faith.  I know that sounds paradoxical, but when thinking about it it’s true.  We have to continually make sure that what we are believing is true and figuring out, if it is true, how to help people understand that which we believe.  So if he was handing out tracts to make us make sure what we are believing about the Bible is true then kudos to him for that.

The cons that I am seeing is that instead of going outside the fold to retrieve sheep he is going in to the fold that the sheep are already in to get them in the fold.  This is like playing capture the flag and going to the jail to get people to put in jail.  It, unfortunately, doesn’t work that way.  We must go into the world to tell the unsaved about Christ.  We also must not be willing to not make friends with the unsaved and tell our unsaved friends about Christ.  There are some with the gift of evangelism that do a much better job at street evangelism than I.  Too often though we leave the evangelism to those that have the gift.  Many of us forsake telling our unsaved friends about Christ because we’re afraid of what they will think about us.  So I give the guy that came into Lifeway kudos for actually handing out tracts and doing something I need to do more often.