Charting Through the Scriptures by John Grant

When I was a lad, someone kindly gave me a copy of Robert Lee’s old hardback, The Outlined Bible. Although the material lacked memorable headings and the production values were very basic, it still served a useful purpose in offering a single-page bird’s eye view of each book. Bible diagrams or overview charts help us to see the broad movement of God’s word. Indeed, a great deal of concise background and interpretive information can be packed into a diagram which might otherwise require many pages of narrative. 

One of the essentials of profitable Bible study is to size up the big picture, otherwise we lose sight of the wood for the individual trees. It is impossible to properly understand a single verse of Scripture unless we are alert to its context. Just as God’s created world, whether viewed through microscope or telescope, is exquisitely designed, so too is His word, each Bible book having its own unique, appropriate architecture.

John Grant’s two sturdy hardback volumes assemble an impressive collection of colourful analytical charts placed alongside highly readable and informative narrative explanations, all of which were first published over several years in the Believer’s Magazine. The subtitle is important: A visual overview of biblical history. This indicates that these books assemble a wide variety of visualized presentations of significant biblical topics. In addition to structural outlines for the Pentateuch, the historical books from Joshua to 2 Samuel, as well as the major and minor prophets, the Old Testament volume of 290 pages includes dispensational charts, biographical summaries of key figures, analyses of several psalms, and much more. The material throughout is doctrinally rigorous, devotionally heart-warming, and practically challenging. There is nothing academically dry about John Grant’s way of teaching.

The same is true of the companion volume, which, in its 150 pages, covers every New Testament book. This is supplemented with detailed diagrammatic investigations of meaty topics such as the Sermon on the Mount, the Kingdom Parables of Matthew chapter 13, the Olivet Discourse, Paul’s Farewell Address to the Ephesian Elders in Acts chapter 20, the Seven Churches of Revelation, a Chronology of Paul’s Life, and the Lord’s Parables and Trials.

There are spiritual riches aplenty here, “good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over” (Lk 6.38), much indeed to stimulate further meditation and study. I strongly recommend these books, perhaps most especially to young people with an appetite for God’s word and a desire to invest quality time in getting to know it well. The publishers have done a superb job: both volumes are attractively produced using an easy-read typeface, pleasing colourful layout, and occasional pictures; and because they are hardbacks they will last. These are not the kind of books one reads through and then discards (or gives away) but rather they are rich resources to be stored and industriously mined in the days ahead.