READ WIDELY
Both Jews and Christians have their biases when reading the Bible. Jews, of course, stick to the Torah and the Prophets while Christians tend to focus on the New Testament. The way we see it, both err gravely by choosing to limit the scope of their reading. Each sect has its own reason for its bias, of course, but they stubbornly continue to exercise their biases at their spiritual peril.

In their religious adherence to the traditions of their respective sects, they have effectively handicapped God from revealing important truths to them. To such religiosity, we say, “Get over it! Do what God says, not what your religious leaders say.”

What God says is that all scripture is God breathed useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Either you believe that or you don’t. And if you don’t believe it, you show that you are hopelessly stuck in your religious tradition and unwilling to receive correction.

In our case, we were among those who tended to read more in the New Testament. When we did read in the Old/First Covenant scriptures, we especially liked the Prophets, but did not spend much time in other Old Testament books. That all changed, however, when we were challenged to begin reading the first five books of the Old Testament.

We don’t mind admitting that it was very hard at first, but gradually it began to make sense. The parts that made the most sense were those where we could directly relate Old Testament scriptures to New Testament scriptures. We found that there really is nothing new under the sun.

To make the point about reading widely with as much emphasis as possible, we will  go so far as to say that you cannot possibly understand either the Old or the New unless you read both parts. We will also go so far as to say that it is impossible to understand either part unless you study both parts. This is consistent with what God says about the usefulness of all scripture.

If you are a Jew who does not understand Old/First Covenant and New Covenant, you have missed the most important prophecy in the Bible as reported in Jeremiah and Ezekiel. If you call yourself a Christian but you do not understand the New Covenant or the books of the prophets, you are a follower of Jesus in name only. In other words, Jews and Gentiles who do not understand how Old/First Covenant scriptures relate to New Covenant scriptures are religious frauds. They have a form of religion but deny the power of it.

The only way anyone can begin to remedy this condition is by reading the Bible widely.