Customer Reviews

Bible Overview

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Steve Levy is the pastor of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Swansea, Wales. Theologian Paul Blackham and retired Rector Richard Bewes both spent a number of years ministering together at All Souls Langham Place London.

To use the authors words:

"The purpose of this book is not to kick start daily Bible reading or to get you reading commentaries or other Christian books as useful as they might be. I want to be far more daring than that. I want you to delight in the Bible, so that when someone asks you how your daily Bible reading is going, you'll answer, "I wouldn't miss it for the world, it's delicious." I want you to hunger to devour it, not in bite-size chapters, but setting time aside to read each book of the Bible through from beginning to end, as in fact they were originally meant to be read. My hope is that whatever your upbringing, intelligence or church background, you will thirst after reading God's Word, all of it, and delight in every single bit." [P 11]

In summary it was an entertaining - and not too heavy stroll through the great themes of the Bible. Levy is a good story teller - and brought in many personal experiences which really added to the readability of the whole thing.

I thought William J U Philip summed the whole book up pretty well in his testimony printed on the insert;

"The glory of Christ is the goal of all time and eternity. The purpose of the Bible, from beginning to end, is to reveal that glory to us, that we too might worship him. Jesus tells us that plainly, and Steve Levy wants to show us, just as plainly, how this is so. With an evident love for the task, and with a delightfully light touch, he'll give you a lot of help in that direction and plenty of fun along the way!"

This book is kind of like a more modern and more thematic version of Henrietta Mears - "What the Bible is all about" - obviously given the contributors are all from the United Kingdom it has a slightly different flavor than the Mears classic too.

Flow of the book:

Introduction
What the Bible says about itself
Creation to new creation
Father Abraham
Redemption
Promised land
Kings to exile
Latter prophets
The writings
The gospels
Acts and the church
The church in revelation
Appendices - including FAQ

All in all the book was helpful - my one concern as I read through the book is the emphasis placed on the pre incarnation revelation of Jesus to the OT prophets. Some would argue Levy and Blackham veered on the over emphasis side - stressing the explicit knowledge that the OT prophets had about Jesus. This is not a concern isolated to myself and has been raised with Blackham in the past - some would say it is his trademark - I am not saying this to put you off reading the book - I just think you ought to be aware before you start the book - that it is not a uniform theological stance amongst conservative evangelicals.

If you wish to delve further on this particular issue Graeme Goldsworthy and Paul Blackham have had some considerable dialogue over this issue a number of years ago - the debates are on the internet if you wish to delve further. (have a google).


Happy reading.

I am enjoying this book. It's simple and to the point. Jesus is the message of the Bible. The Old Testament points to Jesus and the New Testament fulfills the
promises of the Old Testament as the Word becomes flesh and walks among us. I
would give this book and a ESV Study Bible to a new Christian convert. I love
Bible overview books and have several in my library and would put this one at the top of the list for it's user friendly nature and getting to the point. If you
want a more advanced book, you can pick up Gordon Fee's Bible overview book.