Life's Big Questions: Six Major Themes Traced Through the Bible [Deluxe Edition] [Paperback]

Vaughan Roberts (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 29, 2004

How can the sixty-six books of the Bible have a single message for us today? What unites the vastly different accounts of God's work in the world? How do the various genres of the Bible work together? Vaughan Roberts believes that the Bible tells a single story for all time. He draws out the Bible's message of Jesus Christ and God's redemption through him in six big questions:

• Who rules the world?
• What does it mean to be human?
• How should we view money?
• Is a perfect relationship possible?
• How does the Holy Spirit work in the world and in our lives?
• What is God's plan for the world?

This companion volume to Roberts's previous book, God's Big Picture, will not only help you answer these questions, but also give you tools to transform your own Bible study in light of the whole story of God.

Product Details

• Paperback: 175 pages
• Publisher: IVP Books; IVP/UK Edition edition (December 29, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0830853677
• ISBN-13: 978-0830853670
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #918,126 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Unity of the Bible is counter-cultural necessity today!, May 10, 2005

By 

G. Kaya "Cross-cultural missionary" (North America) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Life's Big Questions: Six Major Themes Traced Through the Bible (Paperback)

This book is greateast weapon against Secular culture in which we are in. This book shows unity of Scripture through seven different topics like money and possesions, Holy Spirit, marriage etc. traced through Genesis to Revelation. Among the diversity, confusing, thousands of books on the Bible, I would certainly suggest you to start with this one and use this as you read your Bible. Your understanding would dramaticly change. The book is not perfect and do not expect therefore depthness because the purpose of the book is not to take you into deeper understanding but create a pattern or model by which you can read and trace certain topics and learning the model so that you may plunge yourself to the richness of Scripture. Every content needs some sort of model so that they can be contained and protected by it. Therefore, you must decide 'how to read and think' about the whole Bible. You may open your Bible randomly and put your finger on a verse and follow it or else you understand Scripture as 'God's Drama of Salvation' than every verse become subservient to the greater purpose.

4.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Hermeneutical Framework provided!, March 26, 2008

By 

Alex Leung (Toronto, ON) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Life's Big Questions: Six Major Themes Traced Through the Bible (Paperback)

Vaughan Roberts - Life's Big QuestionsThe Christian Bible is the worldwide best-selling book that has been published in numerous languages and translations. Spanning over 2000 years of history, it was originally written by about 40 human authors in 2 languages who utilized many different literary genres. It is an enormous volume of 66 divinely inspired and authoritative books that form God's Word to us. With its variety of literary forms and extensive recording of history, any reader would soon wonder how this extraordinary Book could be read in an ordinary way. How can anybody read and understand the Bible as a whole? How can it have a single message that links together all the different accounts of God's work?

In Life's Big Questions, Vaughan Roberts shows us how there is unity in the diversity of the Scriptures. Building off of his previous acclaimed work (God's Big Picture, 2003), Roberts presents the Kingdom of God as a unifying theme for the whole Bible and then seeks to answer six of life's big questions with this theme in mind. For this book review, I hope to critically analyze the author's thesis/purpose, the methods he has used in explaining it, and his success in achieving his purpose.

Life's Big Questions is a compact yet concise volume that aids Christians in understanding and applying the Kingdom of God as it unfolds through the Scriptures. Vaughan Roberts has written a book that is easy to read and still beneficial to seminarians or Pastors, for he puts forward a framework that helps readers use this unifying theme of kingdom to walk through the entire Bible. The inclusion of numerous figures is very useful in elaborating on the different parts of Roberts proposed framework as it relates to each chapter's question. However, it would have been more beneficial if Roberts gave better mention in the text of the book about what the figures relate to (cf. Figure 26 and page 151 where he did do this well). Despite this minor faux pas, Life's Big Questions is an amazingly practical tool for applying biblical theology to all of life's issues - an aid to seeing the Scriptures as a unified whole. It is a Bible help that rightly keeps Jesus Christ front and center as the reigning Lord of the Kingdom of God.

[..]

4.0 out of 5 stars Greatest need to show unity of the Bible, May 10, 2005

By 

G. Kaya "Cross-cultural missionary" (North America) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Life's Big Questions: Six Major Themes Traced Through the Bible (Paperback)

This book is greateast weapon against Secular culture in which we are in. This book shows unity of Scripture through seven different topics like money and possesions, Holy Spirit, marriage etc. traced through Genesis to Revelation. Among the diversity, confusing, thousands of books on the Bible, I would certainly suggest you to start with this one and use this as you read your Bible. Your understanding would dramaticly change. The book is not perfect and do not expect therefore depthness because the purpose of the book is not to take you into deeper understanding but create a pattern or model by which you can read and trace certain topics and learning the model so that you may plunge yourself to the richness of Scripture. Every content needs some sort of model so that they can be contained and protected by it. Therefore, you must decide 'how to read and think' about the whole Bible. You may open your Bible randomly and put your finger on a verse and follow it or else you understand Scripture as 'God's Drama of Salvation' than every verse become subservient to the greater purpose.