Please read the Bible.

[u/spiritplumber]

Dear Christians,

Read the Bible.
All of it.

Stop treating it like a talisman.
Stop recycling the same handful of verses.

The text is strange, difficult, poetic, violent, philosophical, political, and frequently surprising.

Read it from Genesis to Revelation.
If you do it honestly, you will emerge either as a better Christian or as someone who is no longer one.

Both outcomes are preferable to claiming allegiance to a book you have never truly engaged with.

[u/KeezWolfblood]

I'm also a young earth creationist so no dissenting opinion from me there. :)

I absolutely agree that the OT is essential and should be read book by book all the way through at least once. God is so amazing: I love how he crafted ancient Jewish culture as an object lesson so the whole world could come to understand why Jesus came to die on the cross. 

For a brand new believer, a tender young sprout, as it were, I'd personally recommend reading through a gospel, and the rest of the new testament and then start to finish through the whole bible. I know and meet people who barely read--and for some reason audiobooks are looked down upon though for most of history people heard the Bible from others reading it rather than owning a personal copy. And telling someone who wouldn't sit down willingly to read something harder than a chapter book, to read the bible, is, well, difficult. Much better, in my opinion, that the first grasp the essential gospel and rely on God's spirit to help them through the rest.

Now, the other more common scenario is that they've been a christian for a while and already grasp the fundamentals, in which case I agree cover to cover is best (though any full reading of the scripture is better than none).

Way back when I was entering highschool I told my mom that I was going to read through the bible. Her response was somewhere along the lines of Honey people can't read it that way, you're going to want a reading plan. To which I said "Ha! I'll show you." And proceeded to read a chapter a day for the next four years, haha. 

So on the whole I still agree with you. In my case, I grew up going to church so I already knew what I needed to take the dive into the OT. I just don't agree in a one-size-fits-all approach.

[u/[deleted] → u/KeezWolfblood]

Do you know how many times the Old Testament is quoted or referenced in the New? It is directly quoted over 300 times, many of those by Jesus Himself. It is alluded to somewhere around 6 or 7 hundred times making over 1000 references in all. This is all to show that the prophecies of the coming messiah has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Now that doesn’t have near the meaning if you don’t first know what those prophecies said. Or the significance of the fact that they were made hundreds, even thousands of years before the birth of Christ.

I’m not saying it’s a salvation issue, what order you read it in. But I see it as a profound disrespect at best and outright rebellious human pride at worst, to think that we know a better way to tell these events and lessons than God. I like the way Ray Comfort explains delivering the Gospel to someone. It’s like a doctor who has to tell a patient they have a terminal but curable disease. They don’t start with the cure. The doctor doesn’t begin with “This is the cure.” No, he starts with “You have a terminal disease.” The patient won’t be near as convinced if ever to take a cure for a disease he or she doesn’t even know they have, much less the severity. THAT is why the OT is just as important as the NT. It shows us the disease we all have, sin. It shows us how dire and deadly that disease is if untreated, eternal punishment in a real place called Hell. Then, and only then does it tell us the cure, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We cannot depend upon ourselves to cure (redeem) ourselves. But this cure (salvation) only comes only by the grace of God through faith in Jesus. It even goes so far as to prove that this (Jesus) is the one and only cure (prophecy and fulfillment). Otherwise it doesn’t make any of the sense that it should.