God's Story in 66 Verses by Stan Guthrie

Whether in my preaching or my writing, one of the things I try to get across to every believer in Jesus Christ is the need to know what is in the Bible.  It drives me batty that we will belittle congressmen for voting on a 3,000 page bill they haven't read, but we Christians turn around and devote our lives to a God whose book we seldom read.  From my experience, people who aren't in their Bible are either people don't understand how to start reading the Bible, people who aren't as committed to Christ as they say they are, or people who feel overwhelmed by the whole thing.  I'm always looking for books that give a nice broad overview of what is in scripture to give people an understanding of what they are about to read when they open the Bible.  This book, God's Story in 66 Verses:  Understanding the Entire Bible by Focusing on Just One Verse in Each Book by Stan Guthrie, is going on my list of one of those books.

Guthrie's take on this is to pick one verse out of each book of the Bible and use it to represent what the book is about.  Sometimes the verse represents the main theme of the book and other times it represents a major event of the book.  Then following the verse, Guthrie spends a few pages fleshing out why that verse represents what is going on in that book of the Bible.

I'm sure many long time students of the Bible would be skeptical of this approach, but Guthrie has done an excellent job laying down just the right amount of information to help launch someone into reading the Bible on their own.  This obviously is not the end all, be all study book, but it helps those who are overwhelmed by everything in the Bible begin to break it down into smaller parts and see what each part is trying to say.

I recommend this book to people who are interested in starting to read the Bible on their own.  While it would still be of use to long time students of the Bible, it's strength would definitely be with the beginner, either to read before they start studying the Bible or d