This book is a great overview of essential doctrines of the Christian faith. I think it was a great idea to distill the truths into 16 words for the layperson. That makes this short book easy to read and to retain the truths taught in it. I highly recommend this book.

First sentence from chapter one: We begin at the end, because the end actually starts in the beginning. Confused? Just hang with me for a little while, and hopefully you’ll see where we are heading. If you knew in advance that Frodo survives the journey to Mordor in The Lord of the Rings, but only barely; that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s dad in Star Wars; and that Bruce Willis is dead the whole time in the Sixth Sense, would it ruin these stories? You might think that it would, but according to a 2011 study published in Psychological Science, people actually enjoy stories more when they know the ending.

Premise/plot: This one is a companion book to Chris Bruno's The Whole Message of the Bible in 16 Verses. Bruno stated the purpose for his new book quite clearly in his introduction, "In this book, I want to change our analogy. Instead of talking about the forest and the trees, I want us to see the whole story of the Bible as a rope that is woven tightly together. The goal of this book is to pull out sixteen key strands that compose this rope, look at how they contribute to the overall message, and then put them back in place." Or, "In this book, we are going to trace sixteen words that help us better understand and apply the whole message of the Bible."

The sixteen words: "The End," "God," "Creation," "Covenant," "Kingdom," "Temple," "Messiah," "Israel," "Land," "Idols," "Judgment," "Exodus," "Wisdom," "Law," "Spirit," "Mission."

Each chapter includes two connecting verses. One verse from the Old Testament and one verse from the New Testament. Each chapter ends with a GREAT summary statement.

My thoughts: Like Deron Spoo's The Good Book, Bruno seeks to address the BIG ideas of the Bible, seeks to help readers--no matter their background--understand and appreciate the big picture of the Bible.

But. Bruno does it better. He stays on-task, on-focus. The book is better focused on God and God's Glory. And this one is very meaty, very substantive, and extremely rich in insight. He is also straightforward, "If you want to know the message of the Bible, then you need to read the Bible."

I felt that Spoo's book was like a bag of potato chips--technically food--but not ultimately satisfying like a good MEAL with meat and vegetables.

Some of my favorite quotes:
"This reality [Revelation 21:3-5] should change the way we see everything in the world—and the way we read everything in our Bibles. We need to see that the end of the Bible is closely connected to the beginning of the story. But we also need to see that the end of the story changes the way we live right now, because the end has already been brought into the present."

"Even if you haven’t read Genesis recently, you probably know the main idea of the creation story. God made the world and everything in it. He created humans in his own image and put them in the garden of Eden. But Adam and Eve doubted God’s kindness to them and wanted to be like him, so they ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (the only fruit they weren’t allowed to eat). Because of their disobedience, the world and everything in it was broken. And that is basically what we see when we look out the window or turn on the news today. We live in a world where we can still see God’s hand in both the beauty of creation and the creativity of people, but it is also a world filled with broken people looking for some way to fix everything that has gone wrong. If we really want to understand the story of the world and the story of the Bible, we need to see that God told us about the solution almost as soon as we broke the world. And he started to provide for that solution as soon as he told us about it. In Genesis 3:15, he told Adam and Eve that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the Serpent. In other words, he would undo the fall and restore his good creation. From the very beginning, God was committed to stepping into history to change it, renew it, and make it better than we could ever imagine—for our good and his glory. And that, in a nutshell, is what we mean by eschatology. While we need to see that eschatology is heading toward the end, we also need to see that the end shapes the whole story. In fact, that is how I would define eschatology—the study of God’s work in history to bring the story to his intended end. So when we talk eschatology, we have to start in Genesis."

In Romans 1, we can see that the tendency of our hearts is to exchange the truth about God for a lie, worshiping and serving the creature rather than the Creator (vs. 25). This is idolatry. But in these verses, idolatry doesn't take the form of bowing down to a carved image or a golden calf. It takes the form of asserting our own authority to determine who is in charge. It is really worshiping ourselves and our own desires, just as Adam and Israel did. In the verses that follow this worship is called dishonorable passions. When we believe lies about God, it leads to misdirected passions-even to the point of worshiping our passions.

The gospel is about worship. What we worship, why we worship and how we worship. These 16 words are powerful. The words come in 3 parts.

Part 1 -The Foundation
The End
God

Part 2 - The Frame
Creation
Covenant
Kingdom

Part 3 -The Superstructure
Temple
Messiah
Israel
Land
Idols
Judgment
Exodus
Wisdom
Law
Spirit
Mission

Each of these 16 words paint a picture of the Good News. Why it is the Good News and why we have hope. Each of these words were given depth of the Gospel. At the end of chapter, a summary. Under the word Covenant To know the whole message of the Bible, we must know that God always relates to his people through covenants, all of which are fulfilled in Jesus the Messiah. Before each summary two connecting verses from the Old and New Testaments. This was probably my favorite part. As a Christian, I love seeing the whole picture of the gospel and how the old reveals the new. It is important for us to understand the whole picture. It makes understanding scripture more of a discovery of the best kind.

Another insight for me was God's Judgment. Not a popular word even in Christian circles. But in understanding God's judgment, it gives us hope that all things will be made new. We do not have to be in fear of God's judgment when we are in Christ. When we place our faith in the work of Christ. It is through judgment, God saves his people. Judgment is justice served.

This is a great text for any Christian. To help keep our focus on what matters and why. I highly recommend.

A Special Thank You to Crossway for always giving Gospel centered books such as this and Netgalley for being a tool that I may receive an ARC and the pleasure of an honest review.

The Holy Bible has a total of 66 books: 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament. How can we possibly summarize the entire Bible in 16 words? Unless of course, these words tell a story, explain a theological concept, or act as bridges to link all these books together. This is exactly what Chris Bruno has done. In choosing 16 key words, he manages to squeeze in the entire Bible narrative and paraphrases it into a small paperback. No easy task indeed. Following his earlier book "The Whole Story of the Bible in 16 Verses," he manages to push himself to re-tell the story of the Bible in 16 words. The main purpose is to teach the Bible in a new way so as to spur learners to think and to consider the meaning behind the narrative. Bruno wants us to go beyond mere forests and trees, and to zoom in on the ropes that tie the whole picture together. These 16 words are the ropes, categorized under three themes. The first section is the Foundation where the author uses the word "The End" and "God" to bracket the beginning and the end. The second section is the Frame where we look at the "creation," "covenant," and "kingdom." The third section is the largest which is the SuperStructure that ties in eleven other key words, "Temple," "Messiah," "Israel," "Land," "Idols," "Judgment," "Exodus," "Wisdom," "Law," "Spirit," and "Mission." This is essentially biblical theology made simple.


Rather than to follow the chronological order from Genesis to Revelation, these 16 "ropes" tie in the chunks of biblical genres together as one story. The Foundational words of "The End" and "God" tell us about the end times and the unfolding revelation of God Himself. He tells of God being Creator, Sustainer, Omnipotent, and the Overarching Person who is glorious and mighty. In the Frame section, he bridges the Old Testament and the New Testament with the words "Creation," "Covenant" and "Kingdom." In creation, there is the original creation and the new creation. The covenants demonstrate the relationship and commitment God has made with people through the ages. The kingdom is familiar to New Testament believers, and talks about God's power to rule and to reign yesterday, today, and forever. The Superstructure covers a wide variety of biblical concepts.

Temple: How the Old Testament people worship God originally, and how the New Testament internalizes it into believers being the temple of the Holy Spirit
Messiah: How the Bible introduces the Messiah in the OT and reveals Him in Christ.
Israel: The role of Israel then, now, and the future
Land: What land means in the old and the new creation
Idols: How idolatry that destroyed the faith of Israel is also capable of destroying the Church
Judgment: There is judgment meted out in the past and in the coming future
Exodus: The history of how God delivered Israel is a glimpse of the glorious deliverance that is to come
Wisdom: Jesus is the Way, the Wisdom, the Truth, the Life, and the Sustainer of all
Law: How Israel failed to keep the law, while Jesus kept the full law most satisfactorily
Spirit: How God has been working from creation till the end of time
Mission: How God's mission to save the world continues to this day.


Well done, Bruno! This is indeed a creative take on the biblical story. In doing so, the author tries to train us to be biblical theologians, who are able to see the Bible as one big story rather than scattered passages. This is perhaps the biggest reason to buy this book. The words are nothing new as theologians throughout history have used these terms repeatedly in teaching the Bible. Although the book appears rather small in terms of the number of pages, each word could easily be expanded into a full length book. However, that is not the purpose of this book. The author is simply trying to teach the Bible as concise and as pedagogically appropriate as possible. Many teachers have adopted a Read Through the Bible approach; a book-by-book approach; a genre by genre sequence; a walk-through-the-bible method; and other conventional ways of teaching. Bruno contributes to the teaching resources by providing us a helpful 16 words to tie in the whole biblical story. Great stuff.

Author Chris Bruno serves at Trinity Christian School in Kailua, Hawaii. He previously taught Bible and theology at Cedarville University and Northland International University and served as a pastor at Harbor Church in Honolulu, Hawaii. Chris and his wife, Katie, have four sons.

Rating: 4.5 stars of 5.

conrade
This book has been provided courtesy of Crossway Publishers and NetGalley without requiring a positive review. All opinions offered above are mine unless otherwise stated or implied.

This title confused me too as I stared at: The Whole Message of the Bible in 16 Words. I can tell you my first thought: "Liar, liar, pants on fire!"

Let's be honest, the Bible is giant, and even those who sit in mass or worship service year after year do not know The Whole Thing. Yes, after so many years, attendees have technically heard, read, or sang the entire contents of the Bible. However, distilling it into sixteen words? *Insert skeptical chin scratch* What I'm trying to say is: I don't believe you, Bruno!

***

...the hope and reality of every Christian is that God himself---not the president, Parliament, Apple, or the United Nations---is making all things new. This reality should change the way we see everything in the world---and the way we read everything in our Bibles" (Foreward).

First things first, Bruno teaches one very important lesson here: Titles matter. This title had me from the beginning. I have gone to parochial school all my life, and I've been attending Catholic mass and Christian events in the decade+ since that time. But even I thought "OOOOHHHH!!!! 16 words?! Prove it!"

Titles. They get ya' every time.

The premise of Bruno's book is simple: the Bible can be summed up by sixteen important words, which serve to show "the whole story of the Bible as a rope that is woven tightly together. The goal... is to pull our sixteen key strands that compose this rope, look at how they contribute to the overall message" (Foreward).

As such, the sixteen words are: [The] End, God, Creation, Covenant, Kingdom, Temple, Messiah, Israel, Land, Idols, Judgment, Exodus, Wisdom, Law, Spirit, and Mission.

In this short book, each word is described, given context, and proven to be a valid word to sum up the Bible's entirety. Each section has references to one's own life (to develop relate-ability), references to the Bible itself with quotes (usually from NIV), and an ending summary which suggests readings and 2-3 sentences reviewing the section.

I would recommend this book to anyone trying to get back into their faith who needs a refresher course on the main aspects of the Bible. I would also recommend it to prayer groups or Lenten study groups, as it offers sections of the Bible for readings and can easily be broken into parts. It is a great conversation starter, that's for sure.

Clearly the book doesn't sum up the Bible in only sixteen words, but it does offer sixteen starting points for learning, discussion, and further study of what most readers will consider to be their faith. Bruno didn't lie in his title, but he definitely offers more than sixteen words to explain each of his sixteen words. :)

Well played, Bruno. Well played.