Today, I’m sharing how I created a new schedule for reading the Bible in chronological order. I believe it’s vitally important for people to read through the Bible this way.

After years of teaching and searching for a plan that was historically accurate for me, I decided to make my own.

My schedule will enable you spend more time in the New Testament while still covering the entire Bible in a year. I’ll share the reasons behind my changes, like focusing on historical context and keeping the integrity of the books intact.

Takeaways:

1. Yvon Prehn emphasizes the importance of reading the Bible in chronological order for understanding.
2. A personalized one-year Bible reading schedule is introduced, aimed at enhancing engagement with scripture.
3. The schedule includes daily readings from Psalms and Proverbs to balance difficult passages with uplifting content.
4. Historical context is crucial in understanding the prophets and their messages within the Bible's narrative.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. www.bible805.com

Welcome to the Ministry Miscellany Podcast, A collection of tools, strategy and challenges for Bible teachers from me, Yvon Prehn, someone who's been teaching the Bible ever since as a third grader, I started to teach the kindergarteners at my church about Jesus.

I've never quit doing that, and along the way I've picked up some practices, strategies, and resources that might be useful to you. Our topic for today is: How I came up with a new schedule for reading the Bible in chronological order.

As I shared in the previous Ministry Miscellaney podcast, I think one of the most important things that you can do with and for your people is to help them read through the Bible in chronological order. Now I was convinced of that. I knew that was true. And a number of years ago I wanted to take the group that I was working with through the Bible.

But I wasn't really that crazy about the different schedules that were available. I do have a master's degree in church history. I've been to seminary.

I've studied the Bible so much, and I really couldn't find a complete schedule that I felt did all the things I wanted it to do.

So after lots of struggling and going, oh Lord, I don't want to do a study on this, I finally just decided I've got to buckle down and study and put together a schedule that felt like it really would help people the most. And so that's what I did. Now it's somewhat different than other schedules now. All of them are great.

I would, you know, just use any schedule that you want, just get into the Bible. But let me share with you now why I put together the things that I put in the way that I put them. Okay.

To start out with, first of all, I wanted to keep that reading through the whole Bible at one year. I looked at plans that were one, two, a year and a half, all the different things on timing, and I really felt like one year seemed best.

That's what I've done for over 20 years in my personal life when I have gone through the entire Bible, but I wanted to make some changes from the plans that I'd done because I just, I didn't like how they were organized. Anyway, here are some of the things I wanted to change.

First of all, wanted to spend more time in the New Testament because just of the length of things, oftentimes I felt that the New Testament was really shortchanged. Second, I didn't want people to bail out in the Old Testament by just spending say, a whole lot of time in Leviticus, Numbers, et cetera.

Also too, I had some real historical and topical dating concerns with a number of the plans that I looked at from a historian's viewpoint. I just felt that some of them were simply incorrect.

Also, one of the things that I didn't like at all, not only do I have the degree in church history, but I also have undergraduate degrees in English and education. I was an English teacher for a while. I'm a writer currently. And I did not like how most of the plans broke up historical books, for example,they just focused so much on the timing of different things that they would break up, say Chronicles and Kings. And they would have you read the same events in both of those, in the Gospels, the same sort of thing.

You would read about a certain miracle in all of the different Gospel accounts.

And that just really bothered me because to me it seemed that the Lord had these different books written for different viewpoints and things like that. And to do it that way really broke up the integrity of the book. So I didn't like that. So I prayed, studied, thought, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So what did I finally come up with?

Well, first of all, one of the biggest changes in the reading and something that I personally have come to just love in my Bible reading, I use my own plan every year is I took Psalms and Proverbs out of the chronological reading list and I have you read either a psalm or a proverb every day. You just alternate between the two. Now I did this for a couple of reasons.

One, I wanted to spend more time in the New Testament while again keeping the schedule at one year.

And one way to do that was to take out Psalms and Proverbs, which was a big chunk of the schedule, take them out of the chronological reading and put them alternating a psalm and a proverb again, along with other readings for the day. Now also too, I did this because some parts of the Old Testament are kind of hard to read on their own.

You know, Leviticus and some of those are a little bit challenging. And I found that it's found it really restful for sort of helpful food for the soul to read a psalm or a proverb while going through perhaps some of these more heavy duty passages also too, again doing it this way. I talked about, you know, the integrity of different books.

Well, it doesn't break up the integrity of psalms and proverbs because they are not continuous books written by one author. Now let me talk just a little bit about psalms And Proverbs for a minute.

First of all, with Psalms, why it's okay to break it up into the daily readings. Now, Psalms does not have just one author listed in the Psalms themselves.

We have many authors, including David, Solomon, Moses, the sons of Korah, Asaph and others also too. Psalms was written over a very long time span, almost a thousand years. They were used in worship. They're favorites for people today in devotions.

The whole book is really a lengthy lesson on prayer, on talking to God in different occasions.

And I really like the idea of spreading it out throughout the entire year, of encouraging you, no matter what you're reading in the main passage, to go to the Psalms and spend time with the Lord in them.

So you read a psalm every other day and you end the year though, repeating the last four Psalms of Praise as we read the final chapters of Revelation. These were psalms of approach of going up to the temple. And I just, I sort of think of reading that as this grand procession to the throne of God.

So that, that's why I have that repeated there at the end.

Then with Proverbs also too it's okay,I think, to break up the readings.

Most of them were ascribed to Solomon, although other authors contributed things at various times. But again, probably hundreds of years of time span in the creation of the book.

And Proverbs continuously reminds us of the importance of application from what we learn from God's Word. Eugene Peterson has a great quote where he says, "If the Holy Scripture is something to be other than mere gossip about God, it must be internalized."

And Proverbs helps us do that. And so once again, read it bit by bit, I encourage you. And that's why I put them every other day you'll read one or the other as you go through the Bible.

So just moving right along, here are some other changes that I made in the order of reading the Bible. Now, none of them were arbitrary.

Every change that I made from some of the more standard programs, you might say, was done after intensive study, comparing resources, commentaries, much prayer. But at the base, I really read the books with historical guidelines in mind. What is the subject matter? What do we know about when it was written?

What clues do we have as to the timing and the writer? Now, none of this disputes my belief that the Bible is the inerrant, infallible, trustworthy word of God.

This study was simply to date when things were written and therefore the best order to read them in. Now again, most of my dating conclusions are not original with me, and I confirm them with the opinions of others.

And put what sort of the consensus seemed to be the best in the Bible 805 reading plan. Now, here are some of the things, some of the changes that will have the reading plan be different than the order that the books are in your Bible.

Number one, probably the most important one of all, you read Job early in Genesis. Jewish tradition and many commentators put it right at the beginning with Moses as the author.

The book clearly takes place at the time of the patriarchs. The head of the family was in charge of sacrifices. It was obviously prior to formalized worship.

It is written in the style of a book that requires reading of the complete book prior to application, which was a common way to read at that time. What I mean by that is you need to really the book as a whole to know what it's really about.

And what's so important in the book of Job is Job's friends say all sorts of things about God and why bad things happen and all of this, their opinion and opinion and all that.

Yet, it isn't until you get to the end that God says, I am angry with your friends because they did not tell the truth about me.

You've got to know that. You've got to read the whole book. You've got to know God's conclusion before the rest of it makes sense.

So I have you read all of Job early in Genesis. And also too, it's very important. I have a couple of lessons.

They're on the Bible805 website, very important ones where I talk about how Genesis and Job answer the Big Questions of life. And they really do. You know, why are we here? How did sin enter in? What's suffering? Is there life after death?

All of these incredibly important questions are answered in these books. And if you just relegate Job to some fanciful little story that belongs with the poetry, you lose the power.

And I think the importance of the book and how God gave it to his people very early on. Because if you understand some of the things that God teaches us in Job, you're able to base your life on the solid rock of trusting God.

So read Job early in Genesis. It's all in the schedule.

Then, the rest of the Old Testament prophets are in the historical places when their messages were preached.

Now, few Christians read the prophets. And that's so sad.

And even if they do, they struggle with them because if you read them out of their historical order, it's just kind of like a bunch of angry old guys ranting and raving and what are they talking about and why Are they so mad? But when you put them into their historical setting, you see an entirely different picture.

For example, with Jonah, you see how he was a very successful prophet of good things in Israel that they would conquer their enemies. And they did. He was a preacher in Israel before God called him. And so here he was riding high.

He'd prophesied this great victory, and things were wonderful and all that. And then God says, I want you to go preach to the Ninevites.

And unless we know the historical setting, we don't know how cruel and evil the people of Nineveh were. And if there was anything that Jonah did not want to do, is he did not want this huge enemy of Israel's to get saved. Good grief, no.

That's why he ran the other way. But you see, there's so much more power when you understand his story, when you understand his history.

Now, some additional benefits of reading the prophets in their proper historical settings. Much modern criticism of the Bible believes that the prophets preached and prophesied long after the events they talked about.

This destroys so much of our faith in God, the truth of the Bible, so many, many things. But when you put the prophets in their proper historical setting, what God does, how he deals with people, all of that makes so much more sense.

For example, when you read how when the children of Israel first come out of Egypt, how they meet God at Mount Sinai, we all know they got the Ten Commandments. And what people forget, though, is after giving them his commandments and laws, the people agreed to follow them.

And they knew later on in the chapter in the book, too, we have all the promises given for obedience and the curses. If they disobeyed, they disobeyed, really bad things would happen to them.

And so you've got to have all of these things dated properly for it to make sense.

Then later on in their history, when they misbehaved, when they disobeyed God, exactly what he said happened in judgment, but also what he promised in restoration. And you see, if all of this was kind of written after the fact, you know, why did God get so mad? Was it okay for them to do this?

Why do we even hear these stories? What were the prophets referring to? You know, none of it makes sense if you don't really read it in its proper historical setting.

And then the last thing on the Old Testament, I end with first and Second Chronicles. Now, the reason for this is Chronicles was not written early on.

We know from Jewish tradition and history that Chronicles was actually the last book in the Old Testament.

It was one Book originally written in the Old Testament, it sums up all of human history from creation through nation building, their fall and restoration. And so it is just a wonderful book to end this chapter of the Jewish people.

It's kind of like on a very subjective note, God often uses patterns when he teaches us. For example, Chronicles it, as I said, it was a review and a summary of the previous history prior to their return to the land after the captivity.

Very similar to how in Deuteronomy it was a review and summary of the history of what happened to Israel before they entered the promised land.

And then it's kind of neat when you look ahead, as is the book of Revelation, which is in part a review and summary of the entire history of salvation and the final defeat of Satan before we go into the eternal kingdom. And I love it how God just sort of puts these wonderful little patterns in his Word.

Now then, let's turn to the New Testament.

In the Gospels, I start out with, of course, the story of Jesus, because that's the foundation for it. That's what his life is. What happened first, not first books to be written, but what actually happened to sort of kick things off, if you will.

Now, I start with having you read the three similar synoptic Gospels. Now, you read them as complete books, one by one, not broken up.

The point of the different Gospels wasn't to simply retell events, but to structure commonly understood events to different audiences. And when you read the books as a whole, you see this. Now, there are debates on dating them, but I put Matthew first.

I think it's just essential to do that because it's such a good transitional bridge book between the Old and New Testaments with its inclusion of the many prophecies that Jesus fulfilled this, Jesus fulfilled that this happened in order to fulfill. And then he quotes the Old Testament.

It is just such a wonderful way to show that everything that happened was not just some accident in his life. His crucifixion, some really sad thing that happened because of Rome.

No, Jesus, entire birth, life and death were prophesied many, many, many millennia prior to when they actually happened. And Matthew sets all this up for us really, really well. Now then, the Gospel of John is very different. He lived the longest.

He wrote the last, the latest of all of the Gospels. And I put his Gospel near the end of our readings. And I'll talk about that a little bit more in a minute. Next comes Acts and the letters.

Now, like the Old Testament books, the letters I've tried to place in the reading with the approximate historical setting in which they were written. Now, in our Bibles, we have Paul's letters, and they're totally out of historical order. And then the letters written by others.

Now, this makes no sense as it was commonly understood, as it is commonly understood that James was probably the first of all the letters. So it's the earliest letter you read after the passage in Acts that talks about it. Then after that, you read about Paul's visit to Thessalonica.

And so you read first and second Thessalonians, but not all the letters have such a clear link. So how did I schedule? Well, I tried to look at the history and the development of the church to see where they fit.

Now, please keep in mind, none of this. You know, this is not anything that I would stand on a hill and fight to the death for.

What I'm sharing from here on is simply my interpretation of it, what I thought might be best. But if you disagree and like another plan, hey, go for it. No, no harm, no foul on that.

But when I looked at the history of the development of the church early on, it seemed like, of course, one of the biggest struggles was what do we do with the Jewish religion and Old Testament law. This was a really big struggle early on in the church. And so I put the books, the letters that deal with this early on in your reading.

As an example, the book of Galatians, many agree it was quite early. So I have it early in your reading.

Now, let's look at Hebrews, it is kind of different. But the more I studied it, just as a historian, I thought now, you know, not even looking at it as a Christian, but as a secular historian. That's how I was trained. I was trained at a secular university.

What does just the reading, the book itself, tell me about its authorship, what's going on at the time, themes, etc. Etc. And it seemed like, well, first of all, it was obviously not written by Paul. It's not his voice, it's not his writing style.

There's just nothing about it to tie it to him. So what, you know, how could it be dated then?

It's obviously a very detailed, focused discussion of the preparatory nature of the Old Testament and how Jesus fulfilled all the prophecies.

I mean, in some ways we could practically put it, like with Matthew, but based on a similar topical discussion, I put it after Galatians, again, which is all about how the law is set aside because of grace.

And then after that, it says he vigorously refuted the Jews in public debate, proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ. That's exactly what the book of Hebrews would help you do.

Now, I don't claim any authority on this, but, you know, sometimes when I read it, I thought, I just kind of wonder if this is sort of a record of their little chat together, of the exchange between Apollos and primarily Priscilla, because she seemed to take the lead, which, by the way, both of them have been suggested as authors of Hebrews. And who knows, maybe they wrote it jointly. But anyway, that's why I put that book early on.

It answers many of the questions about how Jesus fulfilled all the prophecies. Then finally we get to the books that the Apostle John wrote, and I put his gospel just before the revelation.

It's agreed that his writings were written quite late, and I share my specific views on the dating and all of that when you get to the lessons on them. So you're going to have to look up those.

But it seemed like also before reading the Revelation that it would be good to review the earthly life of Jesus and that this review would be wonderful before the final revelation of Jesus as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. So that's what I did. Again, there. I have absolutely no claim of perfection or total correctness.

But I do think that this Bible reading schedule will serve as a useful voice in what I call the great conversations about the Bible. God has many of his servants out there teaching and preaching, and none of us, none of us see it all, none of us even see part of it.

But we can add our little bit to the conversation, the great conversation about our God. I do think that the order that I put them in is historically valid and thematically more so than some.

And I trust it will give new insight to readers of the Bible.

Again, I go into much more historical detail, why I scheduled things the way I did and dated them, and all of that in the individual lessons on the Bible805 website, I have lessons that go through the entire reading plan. They're freely available to you, both for your own use and for you to teach them. There's the PowerPoints, handouts, notes, everything that you need.

And so now with my blessing. Please download the schedule to read through the Bible in chronological order.

Share it with your people, do it as a group, but most of all, do it for yourself and see the extraordinary ways that our God moved through all of history to bring about his plans. May the Lord bless you and give you joy as you do that. I trust you found the content in this episode of Ministry Miscellaney useful.

For links to any resources mentioned and lots of free material to help you know, trust, apply and teach the Bible, go to www.bible805.com Let me close now with a reminder for from the book of Daniel 12:3 where it says those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness like the stars, forever and ever.

That's you, someone who leads many to righteousness.

And in doing that, may you be ever growing in your reliance on the power of the Holy Spirit, in the deepening of your friendship with Jesus, and in your trust in the goodness of God the Father, never forgetting in all the hard work you do, that you have a glorious heritage where you will shine like the stars forever and ever. Amen.