The Bible, from Genesis to Revelation is perfect, without error, and inspired. By this I mean much more than that the Bible can be inspiring to you as you read; I mean that God the Holy Spirit moved the original authors to write down precisely what God the Father intended to the glory of Jesus Christ, God the Son. The Bible is living and active and, through the Holy Spirit, able to perform spiritual surgery on your soul. Like the Lord Jesus Christ, who is both fully God and fully human (but without sin), the Bible is God’s Word but also the product of human authors. It is grounded in history and in the lives of the authors, and therefore can relate to you whenever and wherever you are.
When I was a sophomore in high school I was invited to an autumn camp in the nearby San Bernardino Mountains. The Saturday morning leader asked us to take our Bibles out to some lonely stump or rock and read the first chapter of the book of James before returning for the teaching meeting. I sheepishly said to one of the camp counselors that I had never read the Bible and did not have one. She kindly gave me a plastic-wrapped red Bible, showed me where the book of James was, and sent me off to read. As I read the first chapter of James, it spoke to my heart like nothing else I had ever read. Its words were, to me, clean, pure, and almost luminous. For the first time in my life I became crushingly aware of how dirty my own soul was. I could not stop reading. I read the remaining four chapters of James, all of First Peter and Second Peter, all three Epistles of John, the book of Jude, and was well in the “The Apocalypse of Saint John the Divine” when a counselor found me. I had missed the meeting. She saw that I was reading Revelation and told me I could not understand that. Certainly there were Old Testament references that escaped me, but I was doing fine with the reading, thank you. I told her how the words made me feel dirty inside. She explained what sin was and offered the solution in Jesus Christ. I received Him as my Lord and Savior that day. Nothing has ever the same since.
In my own Bible reading I use the New American Standard Bible because some of my seminary professors (Northwest Baptist Seminary, M.Div. 1976) were among its translators. I appreciate its precision and accuracy. Short quotations from the Bible on this website are from the NASB, updated 1995. For studying the Bible, I would recommend the New American Standard Bible, the English Standard Version, the King James Version or the New King James, the Lexham English Bible, the (old) American Standard Version, the New English Translation (the NET Bible), the Revised Standard Version, the New Revised Standard Version, the Christian Standard Bible, the Common English Bible, the Darby Bible, and the (old) Revised Version.
If you are still working on your reading skills, try the New Century Bible, the Good News Bible (formerly Today’s English Version), or the Simple English Bible.
The following would not be best for close study but might be useful for extended reading: the Phillips New Testament, The Message, The New American Bible Revised Edition, the New English Bible, but not the Amplified Bible, the Wuest Expanded Translation, or Young’s Literal Translation, all three of which might be used as study helps but which are distracting for general reading. If you have either of the following and want to do your reading in them, go ahead, but I personally would not use either: The various styles of the New International Version or the various editions of The Living Bible. Do not use the New World Translation.
I worship with a great group of Christians who meet weekly to break bread, share, hear teaching from the Bible, and pray.
My faith is in Jesus Christ.