The Bible - Where to Start???

Now that you have a Bible and hopefully a journal (an inexpensive notebook will do just fine) and pen, you're ready to start reading your Bible.  But....where?  The Bible is huge! Not only that, it has a lot of other smaller books inside it!  Before, we get started reading, let's understand the mechanics of the Bible first.  As we've already noticed, the Bible is divided up into many smaller books, 66 books in total make up the entire Bible.  These books are divided into two main sections, the Old Testament (39 books) and the New Testament (27 books).  The Old Testament contains writings before Jesus Christ entered into history, and the New Testament contains writings done after Jesus' earthly life.  The first five books of the Old Testament are called the Books of the Law or Pentateuch, in which we have a history of the creation of the world and all that lives in it, God's laws and God's earliest dealings with human beings as well as various sacrifices and festivals that God commanded His people to observe.  There are books that contain history of the early Israelite nation.  The biggest book is a collection of songs, called the Psalms, which were written by several men.  Proverbs is a collection of writings of wisdom that King Solomon wrote, and after that comes the most beautiful love story (Song of Songs).  This is followed by the prophetic books written by several of God's prophets.  The New Testament begins with the four books which make up the Gospel (good news), which contains a history of Jesus' birth, ministry, death, burial and resurrection from the dead.  The Book of Acts gives the history of the beginning of the church and follows the ministries of various apostles (those who had been around Jesus and witnessed His death and resurrection).  From there, there are various writings from different apostles who are writing either to churches in different regions or certain individuals in order to teach what Jesus had taught them.  The last book is the Book of Revelation which tells of things that are yet to happen and ends with all who took Jesus as their Savior, living in Heaven and the new earth for all eternity with God.  In Genesis, we see where sin made its entrance into the lives of the human race, and in Revelation, we see how sin was dealt with and will no longer affect another human being for all eternity. 

Now, getting back to where to start.  The Book of John in the New Testatment (you should be able to find it in the Table of Contents in the front of or in the middle of the Bible) is a great book to start in as it tells about the life of Jesus and what He taught.  Just go to the first page of the book of John, or whichever book you choose, and begin reading.  (Please go to the "Relationship with God" Blog).