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Five KEY Reasons why it’s important to read through the Bible in historical, chronological order

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Reading through the Bible in historical, chronological order, where you read the events as they took place and where you read the material associated with a historical period close to the same times as reading the historical narrative is much more than an interesting alternative way to read the Bible.

It can be a totally life-changing experience. It will help you grow in your trust in and appreciation for the Bible and will enable you to grow as a disciple of Jesus in a way few other things will. Following are Five Key Reasons why it is important to read through the Bible in historical, chronological order:

1. God works in linear, historical order

One of the distinguishing marks of the Christian faith is that it views human history as a linear process with a starting point and ending point. In contrast, many Eastern religious systems view human history as an endlessly repeating cycle.

It follows therefore that God’s work, His revelation of  Himself, and His actions are revealed in historical order. Salvation history builds upon the promise of the Savior immediately after humanity’s fall. It moves through the preparation for the Messiah in the Old Testament to His life, death, resurrection, and founding of the church in the New Testament to the promised culmination in the new heavens and new earth.

Revelation is progressive and many of the great themes of the Bible are seen dimly in the Old Testament, further clarified in the Prophets, brought to fruition in the Gospels, and applied to life explicitly by later writers such as the Apostle Paul.

Much of this is missed when Bible reading consists of jumping from passage to passage. Reading that way, you see bits and pieces of God, but not the full display of his grandeur. Continue Reading

An intro: Why read through the Bible in Chronological Order

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As we start reading through the Bible in Chronological order, it’s worth asking why we should do it. To answer, ask yourself, why read any story in the order that the events happened?

The answers are obvious. With the exception of the use of flashbacks or other literary devices, we need to read and experience events and character development in their natural time-dictated sequence for the story to make sense, for us to know the characters, and to care about what happens to them. In a non-fiction book we have to know the premise, the background, the arguments for the practical recommendations that follow for them to make sense.

To illustrate the truth of this:

Jump into the middle of a Harry Potter story with Muggles, Quidditch, Dumbledore, and Hogwarts

Open at random a book from Hunger Game Trilogy and read about  Mockingjays, Panem, and the Twelve Districts

Open a book on the popular Paleo diet find these terms: paleo/primal, autoimmune protocols, leaky guts, and ketogenic

All of the above are nothing more than a confusing list of names and terms if you don’t read the entire book but they would all make perfectly good sense if you read the entire book from start to finish and meet each term in context.

It’s no different with the Bible

For someone who did not grow up listening to Bible stories or perhaps grew up in church and wasn’t paying much attention, how much sense does it make when you hear about Shem, Jeroboam, and Barnabas or about atonement, sanctification, and justification?

We wouldn’t claim to know the least bit about the Hunger Games or the Paleo diet if we only dipped into a few pages of each book here and there, even if we had favorite pages we went back to again and again, so why do we think we know the Bible when for many Christian they have:

  • Never read it all the way through
  • Or ever read it in Chronological Order

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