This post begins our spiritual discipline of reading scripture. I thought I'd start by using an excerpt from a book by Henrietta Mears, titled What the Bible is All About. I think it does a good job of putting it all in context.
"The Bible is one book, one history, one story - His story. The Bible is also a library, a collection of diverse kinds of writing. Behind 10,000 events stands God, the builder of history, the maker of the ages. Eternity bounds the one side, eternity bounds the other side, and time is in between. From the origins described in Genesis and the endings in Revelation, God is working things out. Go down into the minutest detail everywhere and see that there is one great purpose moving through the ages: the eternal design of the Almighty God to redeem a wrecked and ruined world.
Many people know the Bible characters and the principal events but are hopelessly lost when they are called upon to connect the stories in order. The Bible is one book, and you cannot read it in bits and pieces and expect to comprehend the magnificence of divine revelation. You must see it in its completeness. God has taken pains to give a progressive revelation and we should take pains to read it from beginning to end. Don't suppose reading little scraps can ever be compensation for doing deep and consectutive work on the Bible itself. One would scorn to read any other book, even the lightest novel, in such a haphazard fashion.
Pick up the "pearls" in the Scriptures and string them into order from Genesis to Revelation so that you can "think through" the Bible story. Give the Book a chance to speak for itself, to make its own impression and to bear its own testimony. You will find a unity of thought which indicates that one mind inspired the writing of the whole series of books, that it bears on its face the stamp of its Author and that it is in every sense the Word of God."
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