Introduction

Course: Bible Survey: A Big Screen Perspective

Welcome to your journey through the whole Bible. Sounds pretty intimidating, doesn’t it? But it really isn’t. In fact, not to sound cliché’, but it will be a real life changer for you. How do I know? Well, it changed my life. 

Back in 1975 I was a Bible college student and thought I knew a lot about the old and New Testaments. Then I got a postcard in the mail, and it said to me, “Come to this seminar, this Walk Thru the Bible Seminar, and you will perhaps learn more about the Old Testament - it was an Old Testament seminar – than you ever knew before.” And I thought, “yeah, sure, I know, I’m going to go and prove them wrong.” And instead, what happened is, they changed my life. They changed my life because what they did was, they took all of the details that I knew, and they gave me a way of handling the details, talking about the whole, big screen look of the Old Testament. And I could have told you a lot about Jonah or a lot about Isaiah or a lot about The Psalms, or pick a book. My teachers were excellent, and I got it. But what I couldn’t have done was told you how it all fit together. And what I discovered is, when you know how it all fits together, the story becomes incredibly powerful. 

So, that’s what we’re going to do here. We’re going to spend five hours. We’re going to avoid a lot of details, although there will be some. And instead, we’re going to learn together how the big picture fits together, how you can manage what you know about scripture, how you can teach it, how you can talk about it, how you can understand it. How, when you hear new things, you can put them into a filing cabinet that you can carry with you all of the time. You will become a walking and talking Bible encyclopedia if you do this, like I think you will.

It’s a powerful thing. You’re going to gain confidence in terms of your ability to handle scripture, because you are going to look at it through a leadership perspective. You’re going to begin to sense how important it is for those who hope that God would use them in ways of influence, to have this kind of handle on scripture, to know how it fits together, to have confidence in it. We will always be asking to question, “Why is this important to a leader?” And I can guarantee you, you will have answers for that.

This is going to be a great, great journey. Yes, it’s going to be fast. Yes, it’s going to be energetic. Sometimes you’re going to want to get up and say, “slow down”, but really, part of the genius of it is that we are going to be so focused on these ten sessions, that we’re going to get how it all fits together. And once you have got it, it will change everything. We’ll have some more courses along the way, courses that will look more deeply into the various pieces of the big picture that you are going to learn. So, be patient. Let’s get this foundational aspect down. Let’s together, really learn how to handle the big sweep of scripture. And in doing that, we will give ourselves the tools that will make a difference for us for a lifetime.

Well, I’m ready to go. Are you ready to go? If so, let’s get to that first session, and let’s go to work. Put on your track shoes, we’re going to move fast, but it’s going to be great. Welcome to the journey.