Thru the Bible with Dr. J Vernon McGee

I finished listening to Dr. J. Vernon McGee's five year thru the bible radio program last week.

The format of the program is simply McGee talking about, explaining, and giving his thoughts about the entire bible. This program is an expansion of his two year thru the bible radio program.

I started the program with Genesis 1 and went the entire way to Revelation 22. This is not how they air on the radio. At first, I found Mcgee's comments interesting and often times insightful. However, by the end o the program I found him to be rather annoying.

He seemed to tell the same stories/illustrations over and over again. I also found his pronunciation of several words annoying as well. For example, the word humble. Most people pronounce it with the 'h' as in hum-bull, but it is also acceptable to leave the 'h' silent and pronounce it um-bull. But not Dr. McGee, he liked to emphasize the silent 'h' so it sounded more like uuuummm-bull. After a while it became annoying.

Another aspect I found annoying was his constant mention that he uses his translation for many portions of Scripture, but he doesn't recommend it for others to use. It was as if his ego was creeping out each time he mentioned his translation.

When explaining certain verses he would often times say something like "many fine scholars believe it means this ..., but here is what it really means ... so you can go along with the other folk, but if you want to be right then you'll agree with me." I am sure he meant this to be humorous, but it just didn't work for him. In fact, he attempted to use humor throughout the five year program, but in my opinion in never really worked for him.

Overall, I would recommend skipping this program, simply because it wasn't very insightful. There are many other better programs to listen to. If however, you are just studying a book or passage, then you may want to listen to what McGee has to say.

McGee probably has about two years worth of material in this five year program. The rest is just banter and him blathering on about nothing in particular. This is just my opinion though.

Book Review

The New Testament - Recovery Version by Living Stream Ministry

I finished reading the New Testament Recovery version this past weekend. This version is a translation by Witness Lee and others that "attempts to provide the best utterance for the revelation in the divine Word, that it may be expressed in the English language with the greatest accuracy."

This bible contains the entire New Testament along with cross references and footnotes for many verses. Here is John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that everyone who believes into Him would not perish, but would have eternal life."

Overall, this is an acceptable translation. However, I didn't always agree with the explanation of the Scripture in the footnotes. In fact, sometimes, I didn't think a footnote was even needed and actually made the Scripture more confusing. Also, the print of this bible was very small and challenging to read. That being said, I would probably not recommend this version to others.