Bible 101: An Instruction Video for the Great Instruction Manual

hello today we're going to talk about the bible we're not going to talk about faith or religions we're not going to talk about chapter and verse we're not going to talk about your beliefs or my beliefs today we're just gonna talk about the bible hi my name is dwayne dunko thanks for stopping by my channel and today we're going to do what i want to call bible 101 before we get started doing bible 101 i do want to come up with two simple disclaimers number one i have no theological seminary formal

training i'm just a a husband to an amazing wife father to four incredible daughters and my experience simply comes from reading the bible multiple times multiple translations hundreds of bible studies both personal and in groups and of course being a church member for years and years that's my disclaimer number one uh and i give you that disclaimer because the word tells us to test and approve every message so don't take my word for anything that i say today i would implore you to dive in and check

it out for yourself uh disclaimer number two uh i've been wanting to do this video for probably about a year now and like most people i procrastinate my my vision was uh a white board behind me or or maybe even i had the editing experience to be able to screen show you something on the camera while i'm talking uh unfortunately i didn't have any of that but i kept putting off doing this and putting off doing this i wanted it to be just perfect i wanted to have the right setting and and not necessarily

be here in our shop um with our image behind us that we do for cornhole boards i wanted it to be set up with the proper uh production well i woke up this morning and and uh god just put on my heart that it was time to stop making excuses and even though i don't have a lapel microphone and working off of the microphone for the camera so the audio is not the best god just said listen i'm not interested in production quality i'm interested in the content that you're gonna put out there and i'm interested

in the heart quality and so that's my second disclaimer um yes you're gonna see some other youtube channels where the audio and the video will probably be a lot better than this one but hopefully you'll get something out of this bible 101 class today that's my hope that's my desire pray with me if you will but thank you today thank you for uh for your word thank you for this this instruction manual lord i'll just pray that you're with us today as we go over this that that that those who are watching

we'll get something out of it father i pray that that uh that this would reach a lot of people father that that those that are watching it would would feel the benefit and want to share with others lord not for my glory not for this channel lord but for yours and for your kingdom father we love you we honor you uh we praise you and we give you all the honor and glory amen well i guess i said today we're going to call this bible 101 and uh and we're not again we're not going to talk about the context

inside of here in chapter and verse uh we're just going to talk about the bible this is basically a video an instruction manual for the greatest instruction manual so we want to want to help you understand what this bible is all about i've had a great pleasure the last few years of being around a lot of a lot of people a lot of men who i know wanted to read the bible and and just never did just never could never quite get there to read it and i found out i think the reason why and it's because it

can be a very scary book it can be very daunting uh it's a very thick book it it if you look at this like a novel especially if you're not a reader this just seems beyond scope beyond something that you can do and so me realizing that i wanted to be able to break this down so that it wasn't as intimidating to people and they would have more of a reason or a better understanding to pick it up and to read it and so that was the reason why i wanted to do this video i've done this class uh numerous

times and and i get good feedback from it and so god impressed upon me to do this video and put it out there in youtube format so uh the very first thing i want to share with you about the bible uh is that you should certainly find one and pick one out a translation that you could read that you'll understand jesus used parables when he spoke and he did that because he wanted to use things of this world that we would understand and use them to try and explain uh the the kingdom of god things that

we that our our human brain can't quite understand and so i want to do some similar and that is an analogy that if you go back to when you were in school you were in high school or college if if you got two or three hours worth of homework every night the chances of you getting that done were were slim but if that teacher that professor only gave you 10 or 15 minutes well then it was no problem you you'd break out and get that homework done and that's kind of like the bible if if it's something

that you don't understand when you read you don't understand thee and thou and ye you're probably not going to pick that bible up i've heard a lot of people say that the king james version is the true version it's the only version that you should read and unfortunately it's just misinformation the king james bible was uh commissioned to be written in i think uh the early 1600s 1607 or 1608 uh it was done by king james of england and uh he wanted a new bible that moore represented the church in england

and so that's what he did it was just a translation at that time into a language that they spoke at that time well here we are 500 years later we don't speak that language i hear folks say that other translations aren't correct or they're not accurate and again that's just misinformation there are plenty of great translations out there and they're written in different ways but all of them are are done in a format where they take the normal scrolls and scripts and they translate them into a language

of the day and so they're easier to understand or they can be easier to understand so first and foremost i would encourage each and every one of you to find a version a translation that you understand that makes sense and so people say well dwayne well how do i do that well there are really two ways that that i recommend and one is certainly you can always do it digitally you can download an app called youversion and i recommend that you do that anyway we'll talk about more about that in a minute

but the other way that i recommend is to just go to your local christian bookstore number one you'll be supporting a local business but number two they're gonna have multiple translations that you're going to be able to pull out and you're going to be able to put up an niv a new international version next to a uh uh the message bible next to the amplified bible next to the new king james bible and you can go through and and hand select some individual passages and just read each one each passage

in each version and and certainly before you go in and you walk in that door whether you're a prayer or not or you're kicking the tires you're not sure about this whole church thing or christianity or the bible just just a simple prayer before you walk in just ask god to help you pick the right version that's for you and so that's what i would recommend just go to your local christian bookstore pull them out look at them side by side and and just be led to to find the right one for you one that

one you know that you can read and you can understand and that's step number one so please don't listen to other folks out there when they tell you that the new king james of the king james version of course is the only only real translation it's just misinformation second thing this book is not sacred you can ear a page if you want you can highlight in it you can write in it make notes this is your instruction manual this is personal for you and for your reading um it's uh it's it's not sacred

what is sacred what is holy what is meaningful are the words it's what's written here um god put this together there are 66 books in this bible 39 in the old testament 27 in the new and the information that you get out of it is sacred and holy these pages are not these were printed in a factory someplace so don't feel that you can't do that i've seen people taking notes on notebooks and and writing to their heart's content but you're never going to have the volume of notebooks with you if you've

got your bible and you're in a bible study someplace and and so like what i do and this happens to be about my bible that i have here at the at the shop and it doesn't have all of my notes in it but my bible at home that i use for my study does and the pages are torn and tattered and there's highlights and there's marks and there's underlines and and there's notes in the margin and there's things that i might wake up at three o'clock in the morning and god's impressed upon me something and i i go

to my bible and i'll i'll read it and write it down and so don't don't be ashamed and don't be afraid to do just that um all right so this bible is broken out into uh two main parts and has already covered there's 39 books this is not a novel uh you don't have to start from page one and read it through to find out who did it at the last page of the book that's not how this is put together there are certainly some scholars out there far smarter than me uh who decided to put it in the arrangement

that it is and i'm sure that there were reasons for that i've never really researched it to find out interestingly enough the old testament this is our christian bible but the old testament is the exact bible that uh our jewish friends use it is the same word for word the only difference is the jewish version uh the order in which the books are placed is different but uh it's a book full of short stories when you look at it as a one book novel yeah that's intimidating with all of the words that

are in here in the thin pages but the reality is is that this is 66 books 66 short stories that are just flat out awesome the information in this book that was written was was good for them 2 000 years ago and it's just as relevant for us today uh in fact i think we needed more today than they probably did 2 000 years ago so let's further break it down there's an old testament which you heard me just mention and there's a new testament for the old covenant and the new covenant the old covenant is

prior to christ the new covenant the new testament is after christ or while christ was here and after if you look the difference in the size of that and i'll show you physically as the example goes hopefully you can see this on camera this is the new testament this is the old testament uh i promised i wouldn't talk about our faiths or our religions but but i will i'm gonna go back one step on that and say that that christ came to fulfill the old testament and so we really live out of the new testament

today so if you if you had to choose and you only had a choice of one or the other of which uh testament to take with you on that deserted island the old testament new testament i would recommend that you take the new testament because this is what christ came to do for us however both are important we couldn't have the new testament if it wasn't for the old testament the new testament doesn't contradict in any way shape or form the old testament it's just just the opposite it confirms everything

that happened in here and in fact most of the writers in the new testament will reference scriptures and past from the old testament so they're both very very important don't take it the wrong way so it's broken down into old testament and new testament let's first talk about the new testament the new testament the first four books of the new testament are called the gospels the written by matthew mark luke and john they are an accounting four different authors four small books of an accounting

of their walk with jesus christ while he was here on this earth so when you read these gospels they're unlike any of the other books that are written in the bible but when you read these gospels they are you're going to read some of the same stories in matthew that you might read in john and the same stories that you read in mark that you might read in luke and the reason for that is again it's four men walking with someone and recording their time with him and so you're going to hear some of the

same stories you're going to hear some different variations of that story because again it's from a perspective of different people or different in individuals but those are the first four books of the new testament then after you get through the first four books of the new testament uh the gospel messages uh again uh matthew mark luke and john and then you're gonna get uh to um uh most of the new tests are being written by the apostle paul the apostle paul came after christ he wasn't around for

that period of time they're called up pauline letters and they're really we call them books but they're really letters and there were letters that were written to specific churches so as an example uh romans in the new testament was a church was a letter written to the church at rome uh philippians uh again a book a book or a letter written to the church at philippi and so on and so on all the way down to the last book of the new testament which is the book of revelation i'm going to go through

the table of contents here for you in just a second and we're going to go over uh each book of the bible quickly and tell you where it's at and and its position and and what and how how you might go about understanding it but again this is the new testament we're talking about matthew mark luke and john we're talking about the book of acts which was written by luke who was one of the gospel writers the book of acts is the start of the new church that's christ's death burial and resurrection begins

there uh then we're gonna go into the paulinian letters we've got romans and first and second corinthians books written to the church at corinth galatians the letter written to the church in galatia ephesians the letter written to the church at ephesus and so on you've got philippians and colossians in first and second thessalonians you have first and second timothy which are not letters written to the church there are letters written from paul to his understudy which was timothy they were not related

but timothy was was his protege and he was leaning into timothy and he was doing a work in timothy so that timothy could continue spreading the gospel message when paul was gone and then you have the book of philemon which is complete uh shooting titus and then philemon which is completely different than all the others again very small very short books you have the book of hebrews no one really knows who no one's really settled on who wrote the book of hebrews um it starts out not necessarily like

a book that paul would write but it ends like a book that paul would write and so some people credit paul with writing the book of romans and some don't that's neither here nor there it's considered the book of faith talks a lot about faith in the book of hebrews you have james james was the half brother of jesus christ same mom different dad james had joseph as his father and of course christ had god as his father you know first and second peter uh peter you'll you'll know as one of the apostles

one of the greatest apostles you have first second and third john uh those were also written by the apostle john uh who wrote the gospel john and then you have jude another half-brother of jesus christ and then it ends with the book of revelation also written by the same author who wrote the gospel john and then first second and third john so that breaks up the the new testament remember that these are all short books so you know dwayne where do i start reading um i always recommend uh and this

is only my personal preference this may not hold true for anybody else but i like to tell people if you picked up the bible for the first time to start in the book of james it's a short book it's only five chapters literally from start to finish it wouldn't take even if you're a slow reader more than maybe 20 or 30 minutes to read but it gives a lot of information about our walk our faith it gives a lot of information about the right way to live regardless of of where you're at in in your belief

system it's just a great place to start is it in the beginning of the bible no is it the beginning of the old testament no is it the beginning of the new testament no it's halfway through the new testament which just proves the point is that they're all individual books and so to me i tell everybody i recommend starting in the book of james but i will try and uh to keep this this video as short as possible try and quickly go through what i would consider a good reading plan for you before we end

this video alright so that's the new testament the old testament is broken down very differently so the first five books of the old testament um the is the pentateuch or the torah um it's the genesis exodus leviticus numbers in deuteronomy it's the books of the bible where even if you had only a little bit of church experience you heard some of the stories adam and eve cain and abel noah and the ark david and goliath joseph uh joshua all of these old stories this is where you're gonna find them

in that first five books of the bible um now when you're reading genesis exodus leviticus uh numbers in deuteronomy genesis awesome listen they're all good books uh i just want to prepare you for what you're going to find when you start to read when you read genesis in exodus genesis is great that's the beginning that's where you're going to hear about abraham and sarah and and again adam and eve and ken and abel good stories you're going to start to hear about moses exodus is the exit it's the

exodus of the jews the the chosen people from egypt in captivity and god taking them to the promised land which is israel that's the book of exodus it's about their journey it's about their time out there then you're going to get into leviticus and numbers and those are really books leviticus is levitical law it's nothing that we really uh work with today because of the new testament because christ came to die at a cross for those things so although i i'm not saying don't read it i'm just telling

you that it's a little tougher reading and the information in there isn't necessarily what you're gonna live by today uh the same thing with numbers it's it's genealogy it's it's uh how things uh transgressed as time went on and then you're gonna read deuteronomy and that's gonna be the end that's when moses finally gets to the promised land and there's a reason why he doesn't get to cross over i won't spoil the story for you that's when joshua takes over and leads the chosen people of israel from

captivity in egypt into israel to the promised land and then you have the book of joshua which is unlike the previous four and joshua and now we're in the in canada in the new land and the book of judges in the old testament uh they didn't have kings or the israelites didn't have kings they had uh but they wanted kings but they had judges instead and so they wanted kings and and we're going to touch on that in a second and there's the book of ruth which is really like a best way to describe the

book of ruth the book ruth is kind of like a love story it's it's uh it's about love and family and honor and loyalty and and again it's a short book and it's about ruth and naomi uh her mother-in-law and it's just it's just a fantastic book little book to read then there's first and second samuel and this is where you're gonna hear the story of david and goliath this is uh this is the the greatest king uh that we know from the bible um and david was a was a a shepherd he was a small small boy and

again when you read that that story of david and goliath it really shows that that story i read that bible for the bible over and over and every time i read this no matter what year it is no matter what season of life you're in you always get something new out of it because you're in a different place or in a different position and so you it's not a one-and-done thing you don't read it from the beginning of the end and go well i've done it i'm complete it's over it's something that you continue

to go back to and we'll talk a little bit more about that in detail in a second you have first and second kings which is again a chronicle of the kings and and the order in which they came and some of the kings were great and some of the kings were not so good and it talks about that and the stories and the struggles they go through and first and second chronicles is kind of like first and second kings it chronicles that time period of of kings and and uh the israelites even fighting within themselves

uh then there's the book of ezra again ezra is almost kind of like the the book of ruth in some respects it's a little bit different then you have uh nehemiah i'm sorry ezra and nehemiah which are about i'm sorry about uh the israelites coming back from exile back to jerusalem and back to rebuilding their their church their wall and their church then you have the book of esther which is which is really a god's way of stepping in and saving the jews from what would have certainly been annihilation

then you have the book of job if you've ever had any struggles or challenges in your life uh the book of job is a great book to read um it starts off job god telling us that job was was uh was a righteous man he was a good man and and he ended up he was one of the wealthiest men around and he had great kids and great wife and he lost everything it was all taken away from him um and that's what this story is about but there's a great ending and it's that he gets back double of everything that he

lost and he does that he remains faithful to god he refuses to curse god it's just a good good book to read i will tell you the first three or four chapters are right on to get you on the edge of your seat uh the middle group of chapters up until about the fourth or fifth chapter to the end kind of a little bit of a snooze it's job talking to his friends and his friends not really being great and nice with them but at the end he has a conversation with god which is which is uh really awesome then

there's the book of psalms most of the psalms were written by king david psalms are hymns and songs that are written in prayers really motivational really uplifting if you read four or five think i think the number is five you read five psalms a day the psalms are very short um chapters read five psalms a day at the end of 30 days you've read the book of psalms um i know a lot of folks can use psalms as a devotional a daily devotional they'll read certain books and psalms on a daily basis which

is a good idea i use that for problems i'll touch on that in a second um the book of psalms to me is the is the personal development the motivational book inside the bible then you're going to have the book of proverbs the proverbs was written by solomon who was uh considered the wisest man who ever lived he was the son of king david through bathsheba another great story um how david dishonored god by having an extra marital affair and then killing somebody for it and and then end up marrying the

woman and then he has solomon and solomon becomes the wisest man to ever live solomon is credited with building the temple um god didn't want david to do it because david was more of a soldier and had blood on his hands where solomon didn't um but proverbs is 31 chapters it's a great daily devotional i do this to this day i read if today's the fifth i read chapter five in proverbs and i've probably read the book of proverbs i don't even know how many times thousand times and every time i read it

i still get a little something out of it and again it's based off of where you're at in your life and the situations that are going on in your world at that time i'm uh i'm lucky to have four daughters and watch them grow and they're in different seasons and every time i read a chapter out of there it talks to me about one of my kids something that they're going through and so i just i just highly recommend looking at that for yourself as well too then after proverbs you have ecclesiastes ecclesiastes

was written by again by solomon um ecclesiastes really uh can be if you're if you're not in the word and you're you're uh you're not strong in your faith you're you're just starting out you're brand new you're gonna be kind of confused by ecclesiastes it sort of starts out sort of negative uh solomon's basically saying what's all this worth and i don't want to get into the whole book of ecclesiastes but but but solomon wrote it and it really although on the surface it may seem negative it's really

not he's really telling us that really live your life be happy work hard enjoy your family enjoy what you do but remember that this is all temporary and that god in heaven is we're really where our eyes should be focused uh then we have a song of songs um a book of songs uh it's kind of erotic uh i don't know any other way to put it um i'll leave it there and you can check it out uh then we have the prophets we have the rest of the bible is now made up of the major prophets and the minor prophets

what determines a major prophet in the minor prophet basically the length of their book you have uh isaiah and jeremiah lamentations ezekiel daniel love the book of daniel daniel is the book where um uh he gets tossed into the fire and and goes in with three and they see four in there and it's just it's a great book and you have hosea and joel and amos these are the minor prophets these are very short uh books of the bible joel and amos and obadiah and these are prophets in the old testament uh

god spoke to the people through the prophets uh we did in the old testament they didn't have a direct relationship with god they they have their relationship through the prophets god spoke to the people to the prophets god wanted people to know something he would use a prophet in order to tell them that uh and of course when christ came he changed all that he died on the cross so that we could have a direct relationship with him that we could go to the father directly that we didn't need a prophet

to go through but the end of the bible ends with jonah micah nahum zephaniah hagai zachariah and malachi and so that's the old testament so the bible again is 66 books it's uh short stories where to begin i know that you know again to me the biggest thing is not that's not where to begin it's to get the right book it's to get the book that you can read and you can understand because then you're going to pick it up and you're going to read it uh touching on that translation issue some people you

know have said and this is i've heard craziness that those books were were were published by the enemy they were published by satan well i have a hard time buying any translation is being published by say if there's anything out there that you're going to read that's going to draw you closer to god i don't see how that could be a bad thing so pick a translation you can read jump in the word and read the bible so i promise that we try and cover a real quick reading plan and so my reading plan for

you would be as i said i would start out with the book of james love the book of james i'd read james first after you read james i would simply pick uh start in the new testament in matthew the gospel number one and depending on how much of a reader you are some people you know 10 minutes in and they're done they're just not readers don't worry about it this is not a sprint it's a marathon you're never going to be done greatest evangelist ever lived probably billy graham uh when he died or just

before he died said that that he still didn't understand the whole thing and he was to continuing to read his bible and this is this is a man have been in the word his entire life so it's not a sprint it's a marathon don't worry about how quick you read don't worry about a fashion read don't worry about whether or not you comprehend what you just read sometimes you you have to go a couple verses or maybe a chapter in in order to understand that make a mark for yourself i didn't really know that

um find a more mature person in the word and maybe ask them certainly leave comments or or questions in the in the uh in the link below here in the uh the comment section and i'll get back to anybody that i can to so uh so anyway so you're back your reading plan so a chapter or two in the new testament and a chapter or two in the old testament starting in genesis and and i think when you do that and listen there are other great there there's tons of resources online that will give you specific reading

plans read this chapter up to this point those are all good you can't go wrong again the number one thing is just to get a bible and just to pick it up and read it on a daily basis don't set yourself up for failure don't tell yourself that you know what i'm i'm 40 i'm 50 i'm 20 whatever your age is and it's about time i read the bible and i'm going to read it in the next two months just don't don't do that to yourself it's it's not a sprint don't set yourself up

Transcript generated from the recording and lightly edited for readability.