My 7th complete reading of the Bible

I've begun my 7th complete reading of the Bible.

I am in danger of mechanical mode with these complete readings now.

Though with the first several there was a real, noticeable increase of understanding of what was being read. The history books can be a jumble, the prophetic books as well. The strange genres of the Bible alone are difficult to 'see', but with each repeated complete reading they all came into sharper focus by degree, and that was noticeable at the time it happened.

But I also notice that my 5th and 6th complete readings may have been too much in the mechanical category. Certainly the last.

So for the 7th I'm using the analogy of classical music. I used to listen to classical music to a great extent. Actually I was a 'completist.' I had to hear everything. Every composer, every era, every work, and every great or unique recording of every work.

There is a difference between hearing classical music in a background sense and really getting a complete work into your memory where you can draw it up from memory and hear it in your mind. Really getting to know a particular work. Seeing it in a 'whole cosmos' sense as well. Parts in relation to the whole understanding.

So for the 7th complete reading of the Bible I am treating each of the 66 Books as individual works like works of classical music. When I think of Zephaniah I will draw its basic content to mind like I can draw the musical phrases and themes and movements of a Mozart symphony or a Beethoven string quartet to mind.

The Bible is living language and just getting the language into you is powerful and effective in ways you can't know at the time you are doing it. So just reading it is the rule of the day. Yet if you have done that, and done it a lot, then one needs to go to a deeper level, and can afford to.

Getting each book down in memory first. Then each chapter of each book. *From the Bible itself.* Not from outlines or commentaries. (I've always found the use of outlines to be a sterile approach. I think the Holy Spirit rewards effort, and when you use other people's outlines you are not making an effort. Zeal is rewarded too methinks.)

This really is still just *parts* as opposed to the whole. I think one can really only get the whole from works of doctrine (with the strong caveat that complete Bible readings are also *necessary* to be able to see not only what is taught in the great works of doctrine, but to be on-the-mark with it). I believe that. I have to say it because honestly I don't think I could get Federal Theology including the Covenant of Redemption from the Bible alone on my own. Yet I see it in Scripture once I have the whole from works of doctrine. Perhaps I am under-estimating what can be achieved with real effort and with the illumination of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps I could get it alone from the Bible if I were alone on an island with no works of doctrine. But then you are in the realm of re-inventing the wheel, and if you are the first you don't have the advantage of speed and accuracy that comes from tapping in to the teachings that exists in time.

Anyway, I see the 'whole' and getting the parts in memory to a greater degree can only strengthen and increase understanding of the whole.

I'm not reading each of the 66 Books consecutively this time. Don't need to this time. I actually didn't with my very first complete reading either. 2,3,4,5, and 6 were consecutive, Genesis through Revelation, readings though.

POSTSCRIPT: I should have mentioned the phenomenon where once you've 'downloaded' the complete Word of God into you, thoroughly, it comes back to you in moments when you need it. I.e. when you think it's not in memory it actually is. Not to mention it gives you what you need to discern what is on-the-mark vs. off-the-mark. This is not exclusively an intellectual manifestation, but emotional, intuitive, etc.