Easy to Read Bible Summary for Teens and Adults

Copyright © 2019 Michael Kotch.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-9736-4767-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-4766-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-4768-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018914412

WestBow Press rev. date: 12/10/2018

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1   Introduction and Overview

Chapter 2   The Bible

Chapter 3   God Starts the Jewish/Christian Religion with Abraham

Chapter 4   God Uses Joseph’s Difficult Trials for Good

Chapter 5   Moses and the Israelites

Chapter 6   The Book of Judges

Chapter 7   The Book of 1 Samuel: Israel’s First Kings

Chapter 8   Israel’s Next Group of Kings and Prophets

Chapter 9   The Book of Esther

Chapter 10   The Book of Job

Chapter 11   The Book of Proverbs

Chapter 12   The Book of Daniel

Chapter 13   The Book of Jonah

Chapter 14   Prophesies about Jesus in the Old Testament

Chapter 15   The New Testament

Chapter 16   Jesus Begins His Ministry

Chapter 17   The Teachings of Jesus

Chapter 18   The Events That Led to Jesus Being Crucified

Chapter 19   The Death and Resurrection of Jesus

Chapter 20   The Apostles and the Rise of the Christian Church

Chapter 21   Letters of the Apostles to the New Christians

Chapter 22   The Book of Revelation

About the Author

Preface

This Bible summary covers all of the major stories and themes of the Bible from the first words in the Book of Genesis, to the last words in the Book of revelation. It is written in clear and simple language that is easy to understand. It is intended for a person who always wanted to get a general understanding of the entire Bible, but for whatever reason, never read all of it. This book is also ideal for teens to learn all about the Bible on their own, or for parents to use to teach the Bible to their children.

Interwoven through the book is an explanation of how all of the Bible connects together and points to Jesus Christ. The Old Testament is the fall of man as well as man’s attempts to follow God by following his laws. Mankind tried to do it but was too weak and kept on sinning. I explain through the connected stories in the Old Testament why we needed a Savior. This Savior, Jesus, arrived in the New Testament with a salvation plan for all of us that would work.

Please understand that this book is not a replacement for reading the Bible. The Bible is actually the word of God. Everyone should read it, and read it regularly. This book is a summary of the Bible. It is an excellent way to get an overview of the Bible, to use as a Biblical reference, and to introduce the Bible to Teens and children who may not yet be able to yet read the entire Bible on their own.

Chapter 1

Introduction and Overview

Brief Summary of the Bible, God’s Plans for Us, and Why Jesus Is Important

God is our Father. One of the ways he chooses to talk with us, his children, is to send personal messages about him to us. This is the Bible. In the Bible, God explains who he is, who we are as his children, what things he wants us to do, and which things he will do for us. In this first chapter, I will give you an overview of what the Bible is about and why we need to read it.

God created human beings because he wanted a family to love and be with. He created man and woman as sinless. God would appear to the first man and woman (Adam and Eve) and be with them in person. The Bible talks about God walking with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening in the garden of Eden. They were without sin, and they had a close relationship with God.

God wants all human beings to go to heaven and be with him when they die. However, heaven is a sinless place. Heaven is where God lives, and sin is not allowed there. If a person committed a sin, he or she is not allowed in. God gave man and woman free will. (They could choose whether or not they wanted to listen to God.) God did not want them to be like robots or slaves who could not choose what they wanted to do.

When God was with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, he told them that they were not allowed to eat fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The devil talked Adam and Eve into going against what God told them, and they ate from the tree. This was a sin, and because of this, when they died, they would not be allowed into heaven because heaven does not allow sin to enter into it.

Sin was like a virus that infected their souls and was passed on to the souls of all of their children. For example, Adam and Eve’s first children were Cain and Abel. Cain got mad at Abel over a small matter, and he killed him. Sin was already horribly affecting humankind right from the start with Adam and Eve and their children, Cain and Abel. There was no hope for humankind to get to heaven without God’s help.

God loves people, and he wants all of us to love and follow him while we are on the earth before being with him in heaven as his children when we die. Therefore, God gave us his first plan to save us from sin so we could get to heaven. He gave us the law. The Old Testament in the Bible is filled with laws, or rules. If we follow these perfectly, we will not commit any sins, and we will get to heaven. One of the examples of these laws is the Ten Commandments.

There were many laws and rules in the Old Testament of the Bible. (The Old Testament is about the time before Jesus came; the New Testament starts when Jesus came to the earth, and it is all about him.) Humankind tried to follow these rules, but people were weak and kept messing up and breaking the rules. (They kept sinning.)

The Old Testament focuses on the nation of Israel. God said that he made all of the nations of the world, yet he wanted a nation that would be his own special one. He chose Israel to be this nation just because he wanted to—not because they were better than anyone else was. He also chose Israel as his own personal nation because of a promise he made to Abraham, who was willing to make a very big sacrifice to God because God asked him to. We will read about this soon.

The Old Testament is the story of the people of Israel trying to follow God’s laws and rules. They would be in a lot of trouble as a result of the sins they committed. They would cry out to God for help, and he would save them. They would be good for a while but start to mess up and sin again. Their sins would get worse and worse until really bad things would eventually happen to them. They would cry out to God, and he would save them again. And then they would start to sin, their sins would get really bad, and so on.

This pattern happened over and over again throughout the Old Testament. God’s first plan was perfect: if the people followed his laws and rules, they would not sin. The problem was the people were too weak and sinful to follow it.

God came up with a second plan to save us from our sins so we could be friends with him while we are on the earth and go to heaven to be with him when we die. God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit decided that Jesus would come to the earth and become a human like all of us, while still remaining fully God. All of the sins that people committed in their lifetimes (including us) would be taken off us and placed on Jesus. He would be punished in our place by being crucified and put to death as punishment for the sins that everyone in the world committed. Whoever accepts Jesus as his or her God and accepts his sacrifice of being punished in our place for the sins we committed now has no sins in the eyes of God.

Jesus was punished in our place with our sins placed on him, so now God now declares us innocent of sin. By accepting Jesus and what he did for us, we can go to heaven when we die. If we do not accept Jesus and what he did for us, then our sins return to us. We would be rejecting the plan God made for us to make us sinless. God would then declare us guilty of our sins when we die. We now could not get into heaven because sin is not allowed there. Instead we would go to a place where people who reject Jesus and what he did for us go—hell.

The Old Testament shows why we need a Savior. (We are too weak to follow God’s laws that were designed to prevent us from sinning.) The New Testament is about the Savior (Jesus). He came and took all of our sins on himself, and he was put to death with our sins on him. Now God can declare us innocent of sin so we can be friends with him while we are on the earth and go to heaven when we die.

Chapter 2

The Bible

The Bible is divided into two sections. The first section is the Old Testament. This is before Jesus was born. In the Old Testament, God gave people rules that he wanted them to follow so they could be good and go to heaven when they died. People tried to follow these rules, but they kept messing up (sinning) because people were weak. When the people sinned, God would punish them. God gave us a much easier plan to follow in the New Testament.

The New Testament is when Jesus was born. In the New Testament, God (Jesus) became a man and came to the earth. He took all of our sins on himself and was punished in our place so we don’t have to be punished for our sins. All we have to do is accept what he did for us and listen to him. If we do this, God will be happy with us. We will now start at the beginning of the Bible. This is the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible in the Old Testament.

The Book of Genesis

Before the Flood

The Bible starts with the Old Testament, which is before Jesus came to earth to save us. The first book of the Bible is Genesis. In the beginning, there was God and the angels that lived with him in heaven. However, he did not make the universe in which we live in yet. At one point, he decided he wanted to make our universe and make us to live in it on the earth. He made the universe in six God days. We do not know how long a God day is.

On the first day, the universe did not exist yet, and everything outside of heaven was dark. Then God said, Let there be light. God’s light then filled everything.

On the second day, God made a separation between heaven and the universe. Then God made the earth, and he separated the oceans from the dry land. On the third day, God made all the plants, trees, flowers, fruits, and vegetables on the earth. On the fourth day, God made the sun to light the day as well as the moon and stars to light the night. Before the sun and the moon, it was the light from God that lit up everything.

On the fifth day, God made all of the birds in the sky and all of the fish and sea creatures. On the sixth day, God made all of the rest of the animals on the earth.

Also on the sixth day, God decided to make man in his own image. The first man that God made was named Adam. The first woman that God made was named Eve. God told them that they would be in charge of everything alive on the earth. The place on the earth where Adam and Eve lived was called the garden of Eden.

After God made man and woman, his work of creating everything in the universe and on earth was finished, so God rested on the seventh day.

Adam and Eve’s Sin Against God (The Fall)

God placed Adam and Eve as rulers over all of the animals on earth. God allowed Adam to name all of the animals that existed. God would walk and talk with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. There were all kinds of plants, fruit, and vegetables in the garden of Eden for Adam and Eve to eat. In the middle of the garden of Eden was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

God said to Adam and Eve, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat it, you shall surely die (Genesis 2:16–17).

One day, the devil, an enemy of God, came to Eve disguised as a serpent. He decided to lie to Adam and Eve to mess up their relationship with God because he is evil. He said to Eve, Did God tell you not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil or said you would die? You will not die! God is lying to you. He does not want you to eat from it because, if you do, you will become powerful like him.

Eve went against what God told her, and she ate from the tree. She then gave fruit from this tree to Adam, and he ate