Adventist Church Announces New Bible Reading Plan
October 10, 2014 | Silver Spring, Maryland, United States | Andrew McChesney, news editor for Adventist Review
A screenshot of the homepage for Believe His Prophets, a website that will host a new daily Bible reading from July 2015.
Revived By His Word, an online blog that tens of thousands of Adventists are using daily to read though the Bible, will not end when it reaches the book of Revelation next year.
Instead, the blog will relaunch under a new name, Believe His Prophets, and expand to include passages from the writings of church co-founder Ellen G. White, church leaders announced Friday evening.
People who follow the five-year study plan covering the 66 books of the Bible will also read though seven of White’s most popular books: Steps to Christ, Christ’s Object Lessons, and the five-volume Conflict of the Ages series.
“I believe it’s going to be a wonderful blessing,” said Derek Morris, editor of Ministry magazine and an organizer of the daily Bible reading plans.
Morris, speaking to church leaders at the second day of the Annual Council, a major yearly church business meeting, said that even though Revived By His Word was still three Old Testament books from reaching the New Testament, e-mailed requests were piling up for the blog to continue.
“We have people saying, ‘Don’t stop. Maybe we could read it through again and read some Spirit of Prophecy,’” Morris said. “So I believe that God is leading ahead, and we are following His leading.”
Revived By His Word, which was launched in 2012, couples each of the 1,189 chapters of the Bible with a reflective blog entry written by an Adventist church leader or layperson. About 150 bloggers are expected to have contributed by the time the Bible reading wraps up at the General Conference session in San Antonio, Texas, in July 2015.
Believe His Prophets will kick off on the second Friday night of the GC session, on July 10, 2015. Its website, believehisprophets.org, currently shows a timer counting down the weeks, days and hours until the new Bible reading starts.
Some blog entries from Revived by His Word will be republished under the new reading plan in a nod to readers who might have missed them the first time around. But White will become the primary “blogger” on days when her writings contain a nugget on the Bible chapter being read. In addition to the daily Bible chapter and blog entry, people will read one chapter a week from one of White’s books.
“Our ultimate goal is to inspire as many Seventh-day Adventists as possible to have a daily Bible reading process, to read through the Conflict series, Steps to Christ, and Christ’s Object Lessons,” said evangelist and project co-organizer Mark Finley, who joined Morris on stage in the main auditorium of the Adventist world church’s headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland.
The Conflict of the Ages series provides commentary on the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and comprises the books Patriarchs and Prophets, Prophets and Kings, The Desire of Ages, Acts of the Apostles, and The Great Controversy.
Finley said Believe His Prophets got its name from 2 Chronicles 20:20, which reads, “Believe in the Lord your God, and you shall be established; believe His prophets, and you shall prosper” (NKJV).
The current reading plan, Revived By His Word, also seeks to encourage Adventists to read the Bible daily, and it was started with an aim of creating a positive online community, Finley said. Readers can comment after each daily blog entry.
Finley said Revived By His Word had succeeded in being positive.
“You can read some blogs and … some of them are quite negative,” he said. “But when you go on Revived by His Word blog, positive, uplifting Adventists from all around the world are encouraging each other: somebody in Africa encouraging somebody in South America encouraging somebody in Europe. So there is this fraternity of family. We felt that this could not be just let go.”