Sincerely,
Jonathan

Weird question for you. Do you know if there has ever been a time that a church or other group has read the entire Bible aloud, continuously, from cover to cover?

We’re considering having a “Read the Bible in 2010″ initiative at church, and I thought that this could be neat publicity, the kind of thing that raises awareness and interest in God’s Word.

But 76 hours…wow, I was hoping for closer to 40 hours.

But if there is some fascinating phrase or idea that keeps me wondering, then reading the bible cover to cover takes about a tenth of a second — because I use a search engine on my computer.
Before I can finish off a fresh cup of coffee, I can search for a dozen, or even a hundred words or phrases, then look up the context. People have spent their entire lifetimes in ages past doing what I do while my first cup of coffee cools. I can let my imagination run wild and follow up on hunches. I even found a bunch of prophecies that say that this would happen someday!! Some things are fascinating, others are profoundly shocking and disturbing. For instance, being a ‘fisher of men’ is not necessarily a good thing to be. The biggest shock was when I tried to compare what Jesus said, with what Paul of Tarsus said. You’d think they’d agree, at least in most cases. I was taken aback by what I found, though — Paul directly contradicts everything Jesus says, dozens of times — not by just a little, but totally. Paul couldn’t be the antichrist, because the antichrist was wounded in the head and miraculously recovered, as in Revelation 13. Then, I realized that Paul was blinded, and that might be considered a head wound. But, Acts 9 says that Jesus gave Paul his commission to preach. Then I noticed something odd: Judas is considered the real betrayer of Jesus Christ; but in John 13, Jesus says to Judas, ‘go do what you have to do’, and Judas left in the dark when he couldn’t see where he was going, and he went to the religious authorities; and in Acts 9, Jesus told Paul to ‘go, and you will be told what to do’, and Paul couldn’t see where he was going, and he was led to the religious authorities in Damascus. I was even more surprised when I found that Paul was taken to the house of Judas in Damascus! Paul entered by the gate of Damascus, and left in a basket lowered over the wall of Damascus — so I looked to see if there were any blessings and curses for the gate of Damascus and its wall; and I also looked to see if there were any prophecies about something wonderfully good or horribly evil in a basket — looking for things like that with a search engine on a computer is very easy, and reveals a lot of hidden secrets. But, reading the bible cover to cover is also important, because there are wonderful things best read in their entirety (later I check on hunches and insights I get while reading it straight through).

I sat down one day and figured out that if I read a page and one half a day and two and a half on Sunday, I would read through the Bible in a year. It takes less than 10 min to read that much, but I still can’t seem to get into the habit of picking it up everyday.

I believe reading the Bible is one of the ways God communicates with us, so weather we’re casually reading or spending 4 hours on one passage, I think it’s time spent with God and he will bless us for it. Having said that, we need to ask the Holy Spirit to guide our thinking while we read.

Anyway, more to the point of how long it takes to read the Bible, 76 hours is how long it took someone to read it aloud. How much faster does the average person read to himself?

76 hours is as long as it took a person reading the bible on mp3. In the old days before printed materials, these stories were memorized and told orally so if one started and didn’t stop until the end, it would take 76 hours – dramatic pauses and all. Are you trying to tell everyone in the past or present who hasn’t had access to a Bible, that they’re “doing it wrong”? Seriously?

Your advice while I’m sure is well-intentioned, smacks of legalism and could be hurtful to other believers. Why legalism? Your opening line shows you missed not just the context of not just my post, but my follow-up comment as well. The rest then comes off as nothing more than a “clanging gong or crashing cymbal”.

@ everyone else – If you’ve never read all the way through the Bible and struggle with the notion you can make it through (which is who this blog if for, not the “Holier-than-thous”), read it for the “30,000 foot view” first. If I am painting a mural on a wall, sure, I have to paint very close to the wall to get the details right, but there are times when I must step back and see it from a distance.

If something confuses you, look into it more. At some point, do a more detailed study. Most of all, ignore anyone who says the “only way to do X or Y” unless it they can show it to you in God’s word in context of the book (as opposed to pulling 5 verses from all over the bible, out of context and creating their own theology).

Sorry if seems I came down on Michael extra-hard but I’ve struggled with legalism my whole life, subconsciously believing it would bring order and breath meaning into life. It doesn’t – it just makes people jerks and pushes others away from Christ.