I Just Read the Entire Bible in 45 Days. You Should Too.
But at just 15 minutes a day, anyone can read it in a year. Here's why you should.
by Rod D. Martin
November 24, 2024
I just read the entire Bible in 45 days. That’s no longer a new thing: I could write this essay or one similar to it sometimes four to eight times a year. I used to read the Bible through every year just once. That’s a different, also highly enjoyable, experience; but it’s come to feel kinda slow. You wouldn’t read other books that way, so why the Bible?
Some thoughts:
First, it was easy. Yes, easy. Anyone can read the entire Bible in a year in just 15 minutes a day (yes, you read that right). Ergo, anyone can read the entire Bible in 90 days in just an hour a day. Sometimes I get a little carried away and read more.
Be honest: there's something completely stupid you do every day for a lot more than an hour.
Second, reading more quickly reinforced something I've long taught: if you believe the text of Scripture is inspired, you must also believe the order is inspired. And it is. God is the Bible's author, and He ordered it in a particular, purposeful way, just as any author puts any book in a particular order.
You wouldn't read All the King's Men, or The Godfather, or The Hobbit like you read a dictionary: why do you read the Bible like one? And would you have the slightest idea of what was going on in any of those books if you only read parts of them, out of order? No.
The Bible is a literary masterpiece, filled with flashback and fast forward to make points you wouldn’t otherwise see. Nowhere is that clearer than in Jeremiah, which does this constantly. But Jeremiah is just a microcosm of the whole Old Testament in that regard.
God is an artist. Even if you're reading the whole Bible (and few do), reading it out of order wrecks His artwork. You’re supposed to see and feel and let it wash over you as He ordered it. Believe it or not, God knows better how He wants to teach you than you do.
One last point on this before I move on. A few years ago, the studio decided to release a more-chronological version of Robert Redford’s The Natural. It was unwatchable: the mystery, and the artistry, were completely destroyed. Can you imagine The Godfather, Part II in chronological order? It would no longer be one of the greatest movies in history: it would just be two bad movies you never watch.
Statistics tell us you probably never read the Bible either.
Third, geography and timeline matter. This is true in other books too, and you take a few minutes to figure them out when reading those (infinitely lesser) books. Any decent Study Bible -- or even just Wikipedia -- can help with that today. You just have to care. Most people don't, so they over-spiritualize things God intended you to actually understand in context.
That's just foolishness. And if the Bible makes anything clear, it's that God hates a fool.
Some of you are intensely familiar with the geography and timeline of Middle Earth, or of the Federation, or even Narnia. And you know why: the story doesn’t make sense without them.
Why would you think the Bible would be different?
Fourth, reading quickly from Genesis to Revelation reinforces another point. Jesus isn’t abolishing the norm by talking about the exceptions and extremes. Reading only or mostly the New Testament is like only going to grad school without the foundation of high school and college. It’s terribly warped. Every word of the New Testament rests on pages and pages of the Old, pages that the New Testament writers just assume you know inside and out. Because their original hearers did know it cold, and relied on it constantly.
So Jesus will correct some detail His then-current hearers were getting wrong, and we think that’s everything the Bible has to say on an entire broad topic.
It’s crazy. And it leads us into a lot of needless cul-de-sacs.
Fifth, some will object that by reading quickly “Oh, you’re missing all the nuance and detail.” But it’s exactly the opposite: I’m finally seeing it.
The way most people read the Bible is like “watching” a movie, but one frame at a time. And usually out of order. They have no idea what’s actually happening.
Going slowly actually obscures a lot of what's happening, and all the more so if you ignore the geography and timeline. Turn on the projector and watch, not the individual frames but the actual movie. You'll be amazed at what you see.
Bottom line: if the church, America and the world are in a mess, it's because even God's own people don't really read the Bible. The Bible is a book, not a dictionary. And reading the Bible is easy. I just read the whole thing, Genesis to Revelation, in 45 days. Again.
You can too. And you should. Start today.
And for those of you who have some pet Bible reading plan you personally love, feel free to keep doing that too. More Bible is better. But also read it the way God intended it. He inspired the text. He also inspired the order. And He commanded all of us to saturate ourselves in it (Psalm 119).
I read regularly using Dr Horton’s method which has 10-reading lists, so 10-chapters a day…but this article has inspired me to listen straight through during my extensive drive time each day….today listened to Titus-Revelations 10 and will start at Genesis when Revelations wraps up sometime tomorrow. With the amount of time I spend in the car, I’m thinking 6-12 time through the Bible in 2025 (listening at 1.5+ speed). Pretty excited for this to see what God reveals to me😀
Of course. Once you understand that to get the most out of God's Word, reading it from beginning to end, as many times a year as you can is the only way to go.
For the past five years, and likely longer, I have determined to read first thing in the morning every day 30 minutes or 5 chapters in the Bible. Some days a little more time or depending how the chapters fall, 4 or 6 chapters to reach a logical end point.
Beginning at Genesis and going forward I have completed at least one and half trips though the Bible each year; one year I made three full trips. Each time, I find something new that I hadn't seen or understood before. This year, I'm currently in II Samuel on the second time through.
I'm not very good at memorization (not one of my gifts), but now I recognize many texts during church service, and know pretty much where to find them in the text.
As you said, 15 or 30 minutes, or even an hour is really not a lot time to devote to something so important.