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Return to the Beginning • Jun 01st 2012

Four Wrong Ways to Study the New Testament | Revolutionary Bible Study

Church History The Epistles

What if the way Christians have studied the New Testament for centuries has overlooked the original story unfolding behind Paul’s letters?

In this powerful teaching, Gene Edwards explores what he calls the “four wrong ways” believers have traditionally approached the New Testament—especially the writings of the apostle Paul. He explains how Paul’s epistles were arranged by length instead of chronology and how that single editorial decision dramatically shaped Christian theology, Bible study methods, and even the modern church.

This message challenges conventional approaches to studying Scripture and introduces a revolutionary way of reading the New Testament: following Paul’s letters in the order they were actually written and placing them within the historical narrative of Acts. By restoring context, chronology, and first-century background, the letters come alive as part of a continuous story rather than isolated theological treatises.

Gene explains how Greek philosophical thinking influenced centuries of Bible interpretation and why many believers struggle to connect emotionally and historically with Paul’s writings. Instead of disconnected verses and abstract theology, this teaching invites Christians to rediscover the living story of the early church, the travels of Paul, and the real people and events behind each epistle.

You’ll also hear insights into:

  • Why Romans appears first in the New Testament
  • How Acts and Paul’s letters connect together
  • The importance of historical context in Bible study
  • The difference between theological analysis and narrative understanding
  • How the first-century church functioned in practice
  • Why chronological Bible study can transform spiritual understanding

This teaching is ideal for Christians interested in deeper Bible study, church history, discipleship, Pauline theology, and recovering the simplicity and life of the early church.

If you have ever felt disconnected from Paul’s letters or wanted a clearer understanding of the New Testament story, this message offers a fresh and compelling perspective that may completely change the way you read Scripture.

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Most of the Bible classes in homes, most of what we’re taught in the Bible in seminaries, leave out a great deal, especially home Bible classes, because there’s so much that is controversial. So, we’re not even in our home Bible classes getting the whole story.

Now you have a book in your hand. We’ll give you all of the books written in the New Testament and pretty much in the order they were written, but especially in those living letters that are so full of, yes, intrigue, so filled with people. You get to know them. They appear and reappear, and you hear a story. And it’s just as clear as the Gospels are, the four Gospels.

Then you begin to look at all this and say, wait a minute, that’s the first century, and it doesn’t fit the 21st century at all. In fact, we’ve got a 21st-century church that’s way off base. Let’s go back and do it the way they did it in the first century. So yes, we’re on the verge of a revolution here.

And yes, I trust you will take this book apart. You’ll read it diligently. It is my hope that there will be two or three more helps that will appear to help you along the way. I’m hoping that we’ll have a whole revival of Bible study, and we can throw away the underlining of these disjointed verses that bless us. We’ll be able to put the New Testament in front of us and read it so clearly that we will be able to look up and see, before us, a promise made long ago fulfilled: that we will need no man to teach us.

This New Testament has always been easy to read, very gripping, very dramatic, very beautiful, edge-of-your-seat, but we’ve never known it until now.

So, dear reader, get your pen, get some paper, and start reading the whole story, and let’s see if it won’t change your life the way it has for others. Perhaps we’ll see a whole army of teachers rise up, and maybe in God’s good time we’ll see the church restored the way she once was.  Remember, for the first time, we’ll have a model to hold up and say, ” Oh, that’s what it was like in the first century. Oh, it’s not at all like what we have in the 21st century.”

Now may the Lord Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit be with you while you read. When you’ve finished, I’d love to hear from you. And if it so happens that you have heard this a little late and I have passed away, believe there’ll be someone else to receive your letter. So, write it to me even though I were dead, that someone will have taken my place here toward a day of full and complete restoration of the church and the centrality of Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

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