The Bible is an extraordinary book. It includes sixty-six books and is authored by thirty-nine to forty people. The content is extremely rich. To read this book, we must have a plan. Without a plan, we cannot reap great benefit from our reading. From different sources, we have gathered twenty-eight different plans for studying the Scriptures. If we have time, we can try all of these plans one by one. More elderly brothers may choose only a few.
There are many characters in the Old Testament, such as Adam, Abel, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, David, and Solomon. We have to study the history of these men carefully. We should learn their history not only from the Old Testament but from the New Testament as well.
The common impression is that Adam’s history is found only in chapters two and three of Genesis. But upon careful reading, we find that the books of Romans and 1 Corinthians also speak about Adam, and what they say is quite crucial. More about Adam can also be found in Ephesians 5. In studying Adam’s history, we have to know about his place in God’s plan, his creation, his initial innocence and sinlessness, his relationship with Eve, his judgment from God and the promise he received from God after the fall, his expulsion from the garden of Eden, his life outside Eden, and finally, his relation to the last Adam. If we spend three or four months to study him in detail, we will understand many fundamental issues in the Bible.
After we are finished with Adam’s history, we can go on to Abel’s history. We should read his history not only in Genesis but also in Hebrews 11. We have to go through all the passages in the Bible that speak of Abel in order to find the basic message that God has for us through him. What is the reason behind God’s acceptance of Abel and rejection of Cain? Many people think that Abel’s sacrifice was accepted because it had blood. But this is too heavily biased toward the New Testament; it does not bring out the root cause of God’s acceptance of Abel’s sacrifice. Man’s responsibility in the garden of Eden was to dress and keep it. After man sinned, he could till the ground for his sustenance, but in his sinful state it was wrong to offer a sacrifice to God of his sustenance. Cain offered the produce of the land to God, as if he had forgotten the fall of sin. This was the reason his offering was not accepted. If a child commits a great offense and yet approaches his parents as if nothing has happened, he cannot possibly be approved. God cannot be pleased with sinners who nonchalantly act as if nothing has happened. The problem with Cain was that he acted as if nothing had happened, even though he had sinned. Abel, however, acknowledged the fact of sin. At that time men did not raise sheep for food. Only after the flood did men begin to take meat (Gen. 9:3). The purpose of keeping sheep was strictly for offering them as sacrifices to God. The sheep were killed and their skin was used for covering (3:21). God requires man to acknowledge that he is a sinner. Abel came to God according to this requirement, and God accepted him.
We can go on with the history of Noah and the history of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc. in the same way.
Women occupy a specific line in the Bible. We can study all the women as one category. We can study Eve and find out about her creation, her words, her independent acts, her fall and punishment, and her promise from God to be the mother of all living. We can go on to Sarah, Rebekah, Tamar, Ruth, Rahab, Hannah, Abigail, the Shulamite, etc. We can continue with the woman with man-child in Revelation 12, the great harlot in chapter seventeen, and the Lamb’s wife in chapter nineteen. We can see a clear line here. All the women in the Bible, positively or negatively, typify the many aspects of one woman-the church.
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