A Lightning-Fast Field Guide to the Bible with Matt Whitman

In this engaging episode, Rob and Jason host Whitman Matt, author of 'The Lightning Fast Guide to the Bible' and creator of the '10 Minute Bible Hour' channel. They explore practical ways to understand and teach the Bible, the importance of accessible resources, and how to deepen your biblical knowledge effectively.

A Lightning-Fast Field Guide to the Bible by Matt Whitman

The Ten Minute Bible Hour YouTube Channel

The Ten Minute Bible Hour website

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Personal Updates
02:39 Introducing Matt Whitman and His Background
05:39 Exploring Church Planting and Pastoral Experiences
08:44 Matt's Journey and Family Legacy in Faith
11:20 The 10 Minute Bible Hour: Concept and Execution
14:15 The Importance of Accessibility in Biblical Teaching
17:00 Understanding the Bible's Appeal to Diverse Audiences
20:00 Encouraging Questions and Engagement with Scripture
22:39 Advice for Newcomers to the Bible
23:51 Building Connections in Ministry
24:49 Getting Up to Speed on the Bible
29:38 Introducing the Lightning Fast Field Guide
34:22 Understanding the Structure of the Bible
42:30 Choosing the Right Bible Translation

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Transcript

Jason Allison (00:01.144)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Church Talk podcast with Rob and Jason. We are so glad that you took a few minutes today to listen and hopefully learn something. That's the way we like to do things around here. Rob, let's just name the elephant in the room. You have been sick and I feel bad and you still sound a little bit, you know, stuffy and I just feel bad for you because I know I've had that before. It's miserable. Are you going to make it? That's really what I want to.

Rob Paterson (00:31.767)
You know, if you'd asked me like three days ago, the answer would have been probably not. But as of today, you know, I'm a little more hopeful. It was the craziest thing. mean, I think I've even alluded to this, you know, on our show. You know, since Christmas, it's just been like a sprint in my life. There's just things that have popped up like on top of normal stuff. And I've just had a busy season and I knew it was gonna extend through Easter. Well, when...

When my wife and I left for exponential, we actually left a day earlier than the rest of our team that was coming down and there were storms in Orlando. And so we got diverted to Atlanta. I already had kind of a sleepless weekend because I was getting ready to, for someone on my team to preach the weekend after, which actually in hindsight, you know, made a whole lot of sense, but we were diverted to Atlanta and I spent 23 hours in the Atlanta airport.

So in three days, got five hours sleep, two of those were like this, you know, in an airport. And yeah, yeah, it was super sexy. Like it was like really my best look. And so we get to Orlando and I'm good for a day after renting a $1,700 one-way rental car and driving the last six hours again on kind of sleeplessness. Good for a day. And then came down with this cold where my head was either just a brick or

Jason Allison (01:32.8)
I have a picture of that.

Jason Allison (01:38.851)
Yeah.

Rob Paterson (01:57.249)
you know, a tap and yeah, I mean in five days after like two boxes of cold medicine, seven boxes of Kleenex, I went to see my doctor when we got home and she gave me some antibiotics and some prescriptions and over the last few days of just hanging out in bed. This is like actually the first thing I've done. I've canceled every single thing this week and this is my first, I guess, live, I'm still in my house, you know, quarantined, but this is kind of my first public thing.

Jason Allison (01:57.975)
A faucet.

Jason Allison (02:26.018)
Well, I knew it was bad when you texted me Saturday morning and said, I'm supposed to be playing in a golf outing. Would you take my place? I was like, Rob must be on death's door because now you would gladly have me come take someone else's place, but not yours.

Rob Paterson (02:43.277)
Sure, yeah, I'm always trying to get you to take, I'm not gonna name names, but you

Jason Allison (02:47.51)
No, don't name names. That would be bad. Well, I'm glad you're upright. We I love having you around in whatever way I can because, yeah, it's always good. We have a guest today and I am I'm just really excited. We've already talked a little bit and this is going to be an amazing conversation. I love to build this up because that way, you know, all we can do now is disappoint people. But.

It's going to be an amazing conversation because we have on the show today Matt Whitman Matt is the author of an upcoming book It's not out yet But it's the the lightning fast guide to the bible which is amazing and we will put of course links In the in the show notes and stuff for people to order it or pre-order it as I have done And he also has his own youtube channel called the 10 minute bible hour, which the name in and of itself

just makes me, it's kind of like the TARDIS, right? Where it's bigger on the inside, you know, a 10 minute hour. I love that. Rob, you and I cyber-stalked him for a while and both of us came away highly impressed and enjoying it. Matt, man, welcome to the Church Talk podcast.

Matt Whitman (04:00.931)
Thanks. This is going to be fun. It's nice to be here.

Jason Allison (04:03.35)
Yeah, well, we are. Let's just get started. Like, I mean, tell us a little bit about you. You're like in what, South Dakota, I believe, or somewhere out where I don't know the geography.

Matt Whitman (04:15.287)
All right, fair enough. Yeah, let's compare notes on this because I think I have a sense of where you guys are, but it's going to be a good reset for me and it's going a good reset for your audience and people who are new here. So I'm from the West. I've my family's from Wyoming, Colorado, South Dakota, basically this triangle of mountains that is Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills out to Yellowstone and then down to, you know, like Estes Park, the front range of Colorado. So all my family is from this area. That's most of where I've lived in my life.

Jason Allison (04:19.478)
Okay. Okay.

Matt Whitman (04:45.319)
And right now we live in the mountains of South Dakota, which a lot of people don't know is a thing. But the Black Hills are the first mountain range that you get when you go west. And I think the next time anything is higher elevation than the Black Hills is like the Pyrenees or something. If you go east, you got to go a long ways to get mountains like you get in the American West. So if you get the impression that I like it out here and I'm proud to be from the American West, you're right. I am.

Jason Allison (04:50.978)
Yeah.

Rob Paterson (04:51.276)
Hmm.

Jason Allison (05:03.64)
Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Whitman (05:15.555)
I sense that you guys, I'm drawing on context clues here, are upper Midwest? Yes. Michigan? Minnesota? Wisconsin? Where you at?

Jason Allison (05:22.208)
Yes. Yes. mean Midwest. No, no.

We are in Ohio.

Matt Whitman (05:33.232)
so no and angry no when I said Michigan. Yeah.

Jason Allison (05:36.34)
Yes, exactly. Exactly. I mean, yes. Except Rob.

Rob Paterson (05:38.103)
Ooh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's like fighting words almost.

Matt Whitman (05:42.19)
Yeah, not most of the country. Most of the country is indifferent to this distinction, but also everyone in the country has a distinction they are very different to. So if you just take the thing you're different to and plug it into the Michigan, Ohio thing, you're telling me I'll understand it. Okay, all right.

Jason Allison (05:45.582)
Yes, they are.

Jason Allison (05:57.662)
Exactly. but I mean, Rob, you actually planted a church in Michigan a while ago.

Rob Paterson (06:02.997)
I was a missionary to Michigan for four years. Actually, I was born in Canada, came to the States for college. My wife and I met at Indiana Wesleyan University. And then we planted a couple churches and ended up here and been here for 15 years.

Matt Whitman (06:08.239)
Alright.

Matt Whitman (06:16.062)
cool.

Matt Whitman (06:22.775)
Wonderful. And you passed her now. Cool. What kind of church are you at, Rob?

Jason Allison (06:22.851)
Yeah.

Rob Paterson (06:24.578)
Yes.

Jason Allison (06:26.157)
Yes.

Rob Paterson (06:27.755)
A converged church.

Matt Whitman (06:29.359)
Oh, I know a little bit about them. I got a buddy planting with Converge right now. That's cool. Yeah, good group. It used to be Baptist General Conference. Do I have that? Okay, that taxonomy, right? Cool. Cool. Alright, Jason, so you're forever Ohio. Is that the deal or are you a transplant as well?

Rob Paterson (06:33.345)
Yeah, we're awesome.

Jason Allison (06:33.454)
Yeah.

Jason Allison (06:39.416)
Yep. Yep.

Yeah. Yeah.

No, I'm a transplant as well. grew up in Kentucky. Yeah.

Matt Whitman (06:52.041)
but you picked up the Ohio passion I see.

Jason Allison (06:55.438)
Well, I mean, when in Rome, right? Like, I mean, I live like right outside of Columbus and, you know, when Ohio State is doing well, everyone is happier. And so I want them to do well just so everyone's happier, not because I care that much whether they win or lose. It's very selfish, basically, is the way I look at it. Yeah, but I'm a Kentucky. Yeah. Hey.

Matt Whitman (06:57.903)
Let's see.

Rob Paterson (07:07.267)
Mmm.

Matt Whitman (07:10.446)
Yeah.

Matt Whitman (07:15.383)
It's a thing, man. And right there is good pastoral advice too. I lived in Nebraska and in Nebraska they have Nebraska and that's it. dude, do a brother. And I tell you what, it's just better for everyone. If Nebraska is doing well and they're likable enough bunch. So yeah, I see what you're, I see what you're doing. It matters. That's shrewd. That's good. Yep.

Rob Paterson (07:26.401)
Yeah. Yeah. If you're not a corn husker, you're in trouble.

Jason Allison (07:36.888)
Exactly.

Jason Allison (07:42.306)
Yeah, it does. Yeah.

Matt Whitman (07:45.145)
Yep. And what kind of church are you at, Jason?

Jason Allison (07:46.958)
Well, so I planted a church in 06. We merged with a new church plan in 2019 that launched in 2020, which was a brilliant time. And I actually handed the leadership off to a new young guy, stayed on to help him, and then ended up, we merged again with this mega church to become a campus. Yeah, it was a Wesleyan church to become a campus.

Rob Paterson (08:08.599)
Wesleyan Church.

Jason Allison (08:12.768)
And then that was my opportunity to step back out of a local church. And now I am the director of church strengthening for Converge Mid-Atlantic. So I work for Converge. Yeah. So I serve a hundred plus churches all over the East coast and in various ways.

Matt Whitman (08:21.027)
Wow, wonderful. Okay.

Matt Whitman (08:29.815)
Okay, well, yeah.

Rob Paterson (08:30.135)
Hey, hey, Matt, Matt, so that now that our listeners have gotten to know us a little bit better, what about you?

Jason Allison (08:34.569)
Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Whitman (08:38.095)
Well, I mean, that's the thing though, you know, people drop in and out of our programs and the things we do on the internet and it's always nice to have a reset for the people who are new or just jumping in. So thank you for indulging me there. I am an audience member who's new and jumping in. So that's great. Okay, so the deal with me, I am super, super descended from Baptist Christians going all the way back to the old world.

We came to this country in the very early going, the early 1600s, not long after the Pilgrims because they burned my great-great-granddaddy. James had a beef with him and burned him at the stake, last due to be burned at the stake in England. And my family took the hint, fine, we'll leave. So they went and worked with Roger Williams in Rhode Island and those families were connected for a long time.

We had this huge legacy of Baptist pastoring in Connecticut and Rhode Island and all of this for just forever and ever. And then something went wrong and it fell off after the American Revolution and kind of stayed that way through the course of my family moving west and from pastoring into ranching. And the depression kind of broke my family. Well, not kind of completely financially broke my family when they were ranching in

Western Nebraska back then and they moved to Wyoming and dad ran into an African inland missionary dude who was home on sabbatical or something and this guy just decided this young man right here this this Whitman kid he he ought to be a Christian and he was very persistent my dad became a Christian first one in my family for generations and dad went to seminary became

Baptist pastor did that for a long time. I was raised around that. That was a great experience for me. I don't have any fussy pastor's kid stories. My parents navigated that really well for us. But I didn't want to do it myself. I wanted to go and do other things with my life, even though I thought church was interesting and I intended to attend and be a part. So I went to Trinity, now defunct to International University in

Matt Whitman (11:00.814)
the Chicago area, Deerfield, Illinois, part of the Evangelical Free Church. That was a good experience. Studied Bible and history and philosophy and stuff and tried to kind of get on with it, but I kept getting sucked back into church things in good ways. Ended up going back to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and doing seminary there. again, just kept trying to go do other things, academic things. But I like it. I like the taxonomy of church.

love the Bible. I can't get enough of the Bible, church history, how people have responded to it. yeah, so I ended up pastoring for a really long time on accident. That went great in Wyoming. While I was pastoring, I started making stuff on the internet in the early age of YouTube and podcasting and all of that. And that accidentally worked. I was making it for my own church because

Rob Paterson (11:51.405)
you

Matt Whitman (11:59.226)
We're in rural Wyoming in the mountains. You got to drive five hours to get to Home Depot and back, you know. People miss a lot of church just because of the difficulty of living in that part of the world. And I wanted to preach straight through books of the Bible. So was like, all right, I'll just make little daily show style 10 minute summaries of my sermons that make no attempt to be a rehash of the sermon. It's its own thing, but you can stay up to speed on the story and the language we're using.

So did that and within two months, the outside the church audience was larger than the inn and it just kind of never looked back. And then eventually I was like, yeah, pastoring was awesome. And I loved it. I'm to go be involved in a church and a great attender of a church while doing my, you know, whatever you call this job, internet stuff full time. So there you go. Now you're caught up on me.

Jason Allison (12:54.83)
Wow. So so you are doing the as you call it, the Internet stuff full time. That that's your that's your gig. I love it. I love it. Well, and I mean, you you say that a little bit flippantly about you made these little things. But I mean, I've watched some of these and listened to some of these and it's very, very profound and deep and yet accessible for normal people, you know, like who are listening going.

And I think so. First of all, my first thought is pastors need to listen just to understand, hey, you need to realize that the people you're talking to are not seminarians and they are not that impressed with the big words that you use. They would like to actually understand what it means and how it impacts their life. And that's one of the things I've noticed a theme, you know, in some of the stuff that you've produced is it's very practical. It's very down to earth. And I enjoy that. What do you think?

Like, you know, maybe just start that. Tell us about your YouTube channel and then also the podcast, the 10 minute Bible hour. What are you doing with that? Why do you even do that?

Matt Whitman (14:06.574)
Yeah, I called my YouTube channel the 10 minute Bible hour initially because of the stuff I was just telling you about. It's just what it was. Here's church, but we're kind of boiling it down to 10 minutes and there's fart jokes and stuff. it is juvenile and internet culture in terms of the language of it. But the content, I would like to think it was the material. So I did that for a long time.

Jason Allison (14:20.462)
Perfect.

Rob Paterson (14:34.627)
Mm.

Matt Whitman (14:36.048)
the entire book of Acts that way and some other stuff and then just figured out that the video side is so hard. It takes a lot of work to make a YouTube channel go and to edit video and all of that. So I started a podcast in 2019. I just gave it the name, The 10 Minute Bible Hour, and the YouTube channel continued to do a bunch of other stuff, but it freed up the YouTube channel to let me do anything I was curious about.

more church history, more church taxonomy, what do different Christians believe, things like that. Dumb skits. I don't know. I did a lot of things on there. had fun. And then the daily podcast could just be absolutely slavish to the structure, which is new drive time episode every single weekday, 10-ish minutes of content. know, episodes are like 10 to 15 minutes.

And we pick a book of the Bible and we just go straight through it a little bit at a time. Take the rabbit trails because we don't have any episode cap. So we were in Matthew for three years, 800 episodes is what that ended up coming out to. And it was fine. There's no rush. And so really, you know, the old saying, the medium is the message. Well, that daily podcast thing gave me a very different medium with which to explore the Bible.

Jason Allison (15:40.526)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Whitman (16:00.536)
as opposed to the Sunday sermon, which I love and I loved doing, but it's so nice to have this format where I can say, instead of in church where, you know, this would come up and I'd be like, look, I really want to go and give you the quick history of the Achaemenid emperors of Persia, the emperors during the time of the Bible. But, you know, that's a conversation for another day congregation. Everybody says that there is no other day.

Jason Allison (16:26.168)
Right.

Matt Whitman (16:26.32)
That never happens. You're never going to do it. I don't know why we go up there as pastors and pretend that someday we're going to cover this. Of course not. There will be no Sunday where it's a Kemenit Persia Emperor Day. But on a podcast like this, I can have a Kemenit Persia Emperor Month. And it sounds like it'd be boring, but then you go and explore all these juicy stories from around like, you know, Leonidas and the 300 Spartans era and

Jason Allison (16:48.6)
Yeah.

Matt Whitman (16:53.072)
You can show everybody every little detail about something like that. I mean, I look, this connects with the Bible. This connects with the Bible. This is probably what Xerxes is doing right here. Here's the time. It's fun, but it's hard to find a place to do it. So this podcast, I love it. It's my favorite thing that I do is the daily program. Haven't missed a day in whatever it is, seven years, because we can just...

Jason Allison (17:05.571)
Yeah.

Matt Whitman (17:19.354)
We can run down everything and I don't have to impress anybody or sound smart because like it's a daily. So people know I there's no way I know all this. Come on. Like clearly I'm I'm Googling and I'll tell you when I am clearly I didn't remember what that verse is. You can hear me flipping pages and looking for it. And so it also gives me the opportunity to not know things in front of my audience and have them feel like, Hey, I also don't know things.

maybe I also could read the Bible for myself and do it pretty well. So that's kind of the rundown I want to do.

Rob Paterson (17:53.507)
Hmm

That's so good. Matt, I'm kind of wondering, because I think you've sort of, you know, tapped into something that maybe you always knew, but I think sometimes in the church we feel this pressure to, you know, spice up the Bible, you know, add our own kind of take or stories. And some of that is, you know, part of the preaching thing. But man, like you've discovered in even in your story with your vastly growing audience, I mean, people

just love the Bible. Maybe even people who don't love Jesus yet or would never step foot in a church, but man, they're hungry for the Bible. And this really spans across every type of person, brand new believers, people who believe for a long time, people who don't yet believe. Why do you think that is? What is it about the Bible that is just so interesting to people today?

Matt Whitman (18:48.856)
Yeah, that's an insightful question. There's a lot behind that I can tell. You play golf, both of you guys do. Dudes who have a garbage swing in golf, I'm probably one of them, they tend to have their arms and their hips and their shoulders do the work. But what ideally on a proper swing do you want to do the work?

Rob Paterson (19:12.451)
your core.

Matt Whitman (19:13.648)
Yeah, you want the core because it doesn't have to do anything. just does it. And when the core does the work, the club does the work because the club is well designed by people smarter than you. And if you're not flailing around all this other extraneous stuff and you're just moving through contact, it's weird. The club, it feels like you didn't do anything and it just happens. Well, letting the core and letting the club do the work, I think is kind of one of the tricks for teaching the Bible real well.

very well designed. It's built by somebody smarter than we're ever going to be and fancying it up a whole bunch to assuage our own insecurities, justify our paycheck, and make us feel like my seminary professor would be very impressed with what I wrote today. These are just the wrong reasons to preach. They're the wrong... I mean, you're hacking and flailing when you do that. You're going too hard. You just don't need to.

The text is very, very good. There's a reason it's the most read, most sold, most influential document in the history of this planet. And so what I find overwhelmingly is you don't have to do that much. The audience is smart. They didn't go to seminary. Well, that's fine. I might not be the smartest guy, but I didn't go to school for whatever they do, but I can kind of understand what they do if they just explain it to me in a way that...

is about me and not making them look cool. So I assume my audience is one, very smart, and two, probably didn't go to seminary. How would you explain it to somebody like that? Well, you would just be in it a lot, and a smart person is good at asking questions. They look at a thing and they're like, well, why is that red instead of blue? Okay, well, why would they have walked that way instead of that way? Well, how did they get in that position in the first place? Well,

questions aren't that hard and the answers are maybe a little trickier. You just ask the questions that any normal person would ask about the text and then see where that goes where you want to the again the the medium is the message one of the benefits of my thing is my daily Bible podcast does not hold out the promise of a life lesson at the end. Sometimes it just happens because the club is doing the work right the text just has a very applicable thing.

Matt Whitman (21:35.781)
But most of the Bible, I find that the real applicable takeaway from that verse or that passage is, well, I hadn't reflected on that thing about God much recently, and now I have. And it all just sort of adds up to this complex whole of Christian thought, of Christlikeness, of being a discipleship, that a lot of times doesn't have like a neat, tidy little, you know, swear less.

get up earlier, lesson to it. And so I think when we teach in front of people, we one, feel the pressure to justify our existence and prove that we're a special boy and we're very smart. And I think the opposite works so much better. Just prove that you're a normal person who asks normal questions like other people would ask, and then model the process of trying to answer that. I believe in that. And then the other thing is

Jason Allison (22:21.454)
Yeah.

Matt Whitman (22:32.052)
I think it's okay to give ourselves permission to not always apply so hard. Text is very, very good at speaking into the lives of people. mean, the text itself says that there's a God given set of eyes to see here and that God the Spirit works through this text. It's not just a normal book. He's really good at it. So you open the thing up, it doesn't return void. You just kind of get out of the way and it seems to work.

Rob Paterson (22:36.28)
Mm.

Jason Allison (23:01.036)
Yeah, I love that because, you know, I when I was teaching every single week, you know, as the pastor, I always felt this. It's almost like a burden that there has to be some cool new application, you know, from the text. And one of the one of the things I learned over time was just let the text do the work. And, you know, the people that I was pastoring, like you said, they were intelligent people.

that they didn't need me to connect every dot. And it was actually more effective when I was able to just let the text be the text and encourage, like you said, I love that asking the questions and encouraging, hey, where does this take your mind? What do you think about this? And man, it just changes the whole dynamic in all of that. But it also assumes there's some base knowledge at some point.

Rob Paterson (23:48.099)
Hmm.

Jason Allison (23:58.702)
And so if I'm new to the Bible, how would you recommend, I guess, getting up to speed on the Bible?

Matt Whitman (24:14.544)
Okay, obviously you just swung your right arm back and flung me forward a giant slow arcing yellow softball that I am just supposed to swing. I mean, it's the right question, both for what the exercise is here. I mean, you guys were kind enough to invite me on to, I mean, the exchange here is obvious. I want to help your audience because I like pastors and I like churches. One of the reasons, a reflection of that in my life is that I wrote a book.

Jason Allison (24:23.82)
I try.

Jason Allison (24:30.86)
Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Whitman (24:44.472)
about the Bible. Why did I write it? Because I want to help pastors and I want to help churches. So there's like three levels of dynamic going on in this conversation. Like one, you were kind enough to have me on because I wrote a book. That's the occasion to use kind of Bible language here. Yes, I mean, that's my seminary professors will be very impressed. I mean, that's the thing that gets us in the same room together. But then the next level of thing is I do stuff on the internet.

Jason Allison (24:58.616)
The exigency.

Rob Paterson (25:01.259)
Ooh, you guys are smart.

Matt Whitman (25:13.296)
to help pastors in churches, you do stuff on the internet to help pastors in churches. So we should be friends. And it would make sense that a whole bunch of people who you've connected with and who you know, are you're going to have a different circle than I have, but I they're going to have a whole lot in common. So putting our heads together to crack that nut and make my plan better and your plan better. Well, dang, that's a W. So thank you for that softball. hope it isn't. I believe that is an audience serving softball and those are my favorite kinds. So.

So how do you do it? Okay. Well, these would be my quick list. One, getting up to speed quickly on the Bible. I would start with the Gospel of John and read it, maybe even a couple of times before you read anything else. Then after that, I would pick up a resource that makes the thing make sense. One of those resources would be an audio Bible. I like the one that David Suchet, I think I'm saying that right. He's the dude from...

the pink panther? Super famous British actor, amazing voice. It's my favorite audio reading of the Bible, just beautifully presented. He reads it as though he understands what he's reading. So you put that on in the background and just power it. So one, start reading the thing. Two, start listening to the thing with your little in-between times instead of, I don't know, the

Jason Allison (26:15.201)
okay.

Matt Whitman (26:40.41)
the drivel, the dumb phone games, the things that we fill our in-between times with. Just pound Bible if you want to know it better. Keep working through it don't get discouraged when you get to stuff you don't understand. That's all right. Feel free to skip around and jump around. Thing number three would be go to church and jump in. Good local churches are going to have great answers for these questions that they've solved with your local culture in mind. So go lean on pastors. And the cool thing about a pastor is that

Somebody like me, I kind of know my audience. So I'm paying attention. I'm listening very closely, but I don't hang out with most of my audience. It's a whole lot of people from all over the world. Pastors do. It is so undervalued how important it is to have somebody study the Bible with you alone in mind every week. If a pastor is doing it right, they're not thinking about the live stream. They're not thinking about, are we going to get those numbers up outside of the church?

I backed into that like an idiot and didn't mean to, but it's not the right mindset. A good pastor is thinking, how do I take the text that is in front of me and make it make sense in the spirit of Ezra and Nehemiah explaining the law in language that would make sense to the people in the 440s BC? How do I make this make sense to my people, the people at my church, the people in my community who feel these pressures and go through these things and eat at these restaurants?

and aware of these tensions every week. People who are listening, hear me on this. Every week, there is a person who is flawed and is not going to nail it every time, but who is thinking of you and writing a customized biblical sermon with you in mind for your growth and for your benefit. Take advantage of that. Listen closely, take notes, follow up on them. Your local pastor is an incredible

incredible resource to help you get up to speed on this. Okay, so then beyond that, read huge chunks. Like read long. When you're starting with the Bible, don't necessarily read for quick epiphany like, found a thing. You're right. I need to work harder. You're right. I need to be nicer to my coworkers. Cool. Jot that stuff down. That's great. Also, you're going to find it to be pretty obvious as you're reading through the Bible that like, these are the values of Jesus.

Matt Whitman (29:05.37)
These are some places where I don't really do those values. Okay, obviously I should think about that. But where you're really going to catch those values is just reading, reading, reading, reading, reading, huge chunks, get to know Jesus, get to know the God of the Bible, pay attention to what he does in different situations, and it'll start to stick. Finally, at least on that list is something like what I wrote, this lightning fast field guide to the Bible.

or a podcast like what I do, or there's a ton of people way more talented than me on the internet doing the same kind of stuff. This is great because these kinds of resources, not just mine, but others as well, are built by people who are asking exactly that question. How would you onboard somebody quickly? Or how would you help somebody who's been around the Bible forever, but it hasn't stuck, get deeply into it? Now, my book is tonally, it is written in such a way that

A person who's been around church for a long time or a seminarian is going to read through it and there's going to be a lot of, I see what you did there. Okay. All right. You've been around this material a little bit. That's fun. You didn't say it like we say it, but I see what you did there. But to the person who's new to it, this book is written in the language that you or I would use when we're sitting at Chili's and we want to be understood or have somebody else understand us. There's

No attempt here to impress my seminary professors, though I value their opinions very much. It just, it isn't for them. It's meant to make it make sense for somebody on the front end and help somebody who's been around it a long time, really lock it in and finally see the Bible in terms of that big picture. So read the Bible a ton. Church, lean into your local church. It's more important than any book that some guy like me writes.

It's more important than any podcast. It's more important than any YouTube channel. Lean into the local church. Be discipled by them. That's how you learn the text most of all. But then finally, you can pick resources that make sense for you. And I'd like to think maybe I wrote one that might be helpful.

Rob Paterson (31:16.834)
You know, Matt, tell us a little bit more about the lightning fast field guide. Like, you know, it's not out yet, so we have not been able to jump in and read through it ourselves yet, which we're gonna, but maybe we have you back on after we've read it and go, we saw what you did there or whatever, but.

Matt Whitman (31:31.81)
Yeah, I'll back on because we hated it.

Jason Allison (31:33.372)
Yeah.

No.

Rob Paterson (31:37.251)
Just a roast or whatever. No, but I'd just be interested, like tell us a little bit about, know, like when someone gets this, what's it gonna, you know, what was the intent there?

Matt Whitman (31:49.809)
Sure. Yeah, you're dragging it out of me. I'm trying to mouse people back to church, but I will reluctantly tell you about my book now. Thank you for your persistence. It's called The Lightning Fast Field Guide to the Bible. The subtitle is Your Compact Companion for Exploring the Best Book Ever, and it really is very field guide-y. As you thumb through it, the people who designed it, I didn't do the layout. Zonderman is who published this. They did the layout, and it's awesome.

What you see is just every book of the Bible easily found with a quick thumb flip. And then my team and I made a little bit of art in the upper corner of each of these chapters. Each chapter corresponds with the book of the Bible. And this art that we made, it was straight up like the sticker books from when we were kids. I remember when the movie Willow came out, it was like the first grownup movie that I was ever kind of aware of or went to. And then I went to the little grocery store.

and they had a sticker book and you could buy the sticker book for like a buck and then for a quarter you could buy packs of stickers. And then the way I would do it is whenever I kind of, you know, whenever I kind of understood that scene that was going on or I even kind of memorized parts of this little willow ridiculous sticker book, I'd be like, now I can put the sticker there. Well, that's kind of what I'm going for here. Like on our podcast, we have these stickers. And so it's kind of a sticker achievement book in that way as well. But what it really is for any reader,

is a ruthlessly efficient distillation of each book of the Bible. And it's not like that first page in your study Bible that is usually going to be either very academically oriented or very applicationally oriented. This is much more of a, like, how you think about story guide. So, we have a way we think about Bible and a way that we talk about it. It makes sense to a few people, not to most. But then we have a way we talk about story.

Jason Allison (33:37.986)
Hmm.

Matt Whitman (33:46.822)
You think about any of the big epic film universes that have happened in our lifetimes, like Star Wars or the Lord of the Rings stuff or Marvel stuff or people like Harry Potter. People like different things, whatever it is. What happens is people get to a place pretty quick where they might not know every single detail about Star Wars, but they can get to a place pretty quickly where they can give you the rundown of the story.

But with the Bible, it doesn't work like that. For whatever reason, our brains go to a different mode. And it's amazing how few Christians who've read it a billion times just couldn't really tell you the order of events. Like they know there's an Abraham in there and they know that Babylon or something happened. And I'm not trying to make fun of people. It just runs together. It's all very ancient. There's no context. And so it doesn't stick like a story. But what's the stuff? Right now we could shift gears.

Rob Paterson (34:23.779)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Paterson (34:42.37)
Mm.

Matt Whitman (34:45.061)
We could pick some movie universe or something that we've all consumed together. We could flip on this podcast in a second, turn on a dime, and we could talk in depth about it, despite the fact we might not have every detail in perfect lockdown, because we know how to feel a story. We know where all the things fit, and we know why all the things happened. Lightning Fast Field Guide to the Bible is meant to get you there with the Bible. And the other cool thing about this...

Rob Paterson (35:03.34)
Mm.

Matt Whitman (35:14.211)
is if you forget, each chapter is going to take you like four or five minutes. So you level up a book, life happens and you kind of forget it and you're like, I don't remember what's going on in Nahum. Cool, if you have four or five minutes, you can get right back to that, yeah, I got it in my hip pocket level of knowledge and conversance with that book. And again, it's all written in that very human, very normal, but not dumbed down language of how you and I talk stories.

Why is this character doing this? Why is this movement in the story happening? And so it's not really a paragraph book. It's a field guide. So it's kind of like there are two voices in the book. One is whoever is throwing out the next category and the other is the answer to that category. So is it okay if I pick one? No, I don't want to pick it. Which one should we do? Pick a book.

Jason Allison (36:04.234)
Yeah, do it.

Rob Paterson (36:05.239)
Yeah.

Jason Allison (36:10.498)
Well, you said Nahum. I mean, I so when I first planted the church, we had this building and there was a groundhog that lived under the building and I named him Nahum. Yeah, I really because that was just the oddest name I could think of from the Bible off the top of my head when I saw this groundhog. And he kind of reminded me of him.

Matt Whitman (36:12.187)
Okay.

Matt Whitman (36:22.36)
why?

Rob Paterson (36:28.407)
Really?

Matt Whitman (36:31.365)
that you can run out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, I'll show you guys I know your audience can't see this but this is what Nahum looks like. And can you try to describe what that little bit of art looks like there? Can you see it at all?

Jason Allison (36:47.502)
Yeah. Is that a, it's some type of temple or building?

Matt Whitman (36:48.849)
I'm gonna get it closer.

Matt Whitman (36:53.455)
Yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, you know, got fire and stuff coming out of it. So the picture is meant to help you remember what's going on in Nahum. What we have there, you remember the those big like bull winged creatures that you see in the British Museum that the the Assyrians were into? I think they call them Lama sow, but I never know how to pronounce it exactly right. Yeah, yeah, they're like that. Right? Yeah. So we just, you know, kind of made a little sketch here of

Jason Allison (36:58.252)
Yeah, it's on fire.

Jason Allison (37:13.548)
I called him Griffins or whatever, but yeah.

Rob Paterson (37:13.741)
Mmm.

Matt Whitman (37:22.481)
an Assyrian temple approximating Nineveh and it's all getting burned out and wrecked and stuff. Well, that's meant to be the mental hook about what's going on in Nahum, which is the long awaited destruction of wicked, awful Nineveh. So you open a Nahum and the first thing you get is this vital statistics area up here. These are the vital stats that I give with each one. Position 34 of 66. So that's just where it is in the Bible.

Chapters 3, verses 47, word count 855, which ranks 59th of 66. Most used words, Lord Nineveh, chariots, loka, city, fire, mountains, prey, plunder, water. Group, minor prophets, prophesying to Judah and to Nineveh. It's weird how many of the prophets in the Bible, before I did this project, I was like, you know, I think I know who that was written to, but...

Rob Paterson (38:14.979)
Mm.

Matt Whitman (38:15.921)
like not ready for prime time. I'm not ready to go on the internet and say I know who that was written to for sure. So I thought it'd probably be really helpful to just have that front and center here. Date, late 600s BC and then I used some internal metrics from Harper Collins to put together a popularity rank. And you'll be delighted to know that Nahum is the 63rd most searched book of the Bible. So not a real hot one.

Jason Allison (38:24.28)
Yeah.

Jason Allison (38:43.218)
No.

Rob Paterson (38:44.676)
Okay, so what's the least popular or least searched?

Matt Whitman (38:48.247)
so I had, that's a great question. I had two ways I could do it. There was a weighted search where I kind of ran a formula. So it's relative to the length of the book because the amount of material that is in the book would make it more likely to be searched. And in the end, I thought, nah, I'm just going with raw data. So I think Obadiah ended up being the least searched just because. Yeah. I think that's right.

Jason Allison (39:11.406)
Poor Obie.

Matt Whitman (39:16.401)
Yes, Obadiah is 66 of 66. And I easily found it because of how well the book is laid out. Something I'm not saying because I didn't do it. So then each book of the Bible opens with a lightning fast summary, which is in this case, God will destroy Nineveh and the Assyrians. that's interesting because if you're reading straight through this book, it'll be really fresh in your mind that two books earlier, we have Jonah.

Jason Allison (39:21.23)
I

Rob Paterson (39:22.221)
Hahaha

Matt Whitman (39:45.744)
And Jonah ends where the big riddle, the big quiz at the end is, why didn't God destroy Nineveh? The book just ends. There's no, like there's a lot of animals in there. The end. Wait, what? We're just done here? And so the worst, most oppressive people that we've seen, that we ever see in the Bible, the serious, the absolute worst. It just looks like that's it. We don't know if the repentance sticks. All we know is.

Jason Allison (39:57.09)
More cows than people.

Matt Whitman (40:15.035)
God spared them and the real character that we're concerned with in Jonah is Jonah. He's a bad prophet. He did a lazy job. Repent. He doesn't even say repent. He's just like, it's going to be destroyed. That's it. And so we learn about God. We learn about Jonah. We don't really learn much about Nineveh. And it's, you know, for the reader going straight through the Bible, you're like, well,

Yeah, but what about the bad guys? mean, Habakkuk a little later on, it's like, yeah, what about the bad guys though? Well, I mean, it's understandable we'd think that, but the way the Bible is put together by God, it leads us toward other more relevant, more important questions. Well, Habakkuk, you'll recall, is the guy who was like, why'd you let it get so bad that you had to punish us? And also, why are you using people who are even worse than us to punish us? And God, you'll recall, like, they'll get theirs.

Rob Paterson (40:54.69)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Whitman (41:09.605)
Justice is the Lord's, I'm good at this. So in Nahum, then that's what the rest of this field guide chapter is about. Unique feature, Nahum resolves questions left unanswered by Jonah. Did you see how much quicker that was than when I said it off the top of my head?

Rob Paterson (41:25.059)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Matt Whitman (41:27.461)
That's goal here. Get my bloat out of the way and make it efficient. Then next category. This book is simple. Nahum predicts the fall of Nineveh and with it the reviled Assyrian Empire. Who wrote it? Nahum. That's everything we know about him. Historical setting. Assyria was the worst empire ever and everyone was sick of her. In 612 BC, the Babylonians and Medes destroyed the Assyrian capital of Nineveh and effectively ended the Assyrian Empire.

Then after that, we're covering years covered, tone and feel, its resolute and righteous judgment and vividly creative in its description of Nineveh's day of reckoning. Nineveh after Jonah, we connect the dots between the two books. A Psalm of praise to open a book of woe, the first eight verses are a song celebrating the glory of God, his habit of delivering those who trust in him and his wrath against evil. So you're kind of getting a sense here. Not every book is going to have the same categories.

Jason Allison (42:19.468)
Yeah.

Matt Whitman (42:23.345)
because most books don't open with a Psalm of praise to open a book of woe. But because it's, mean, look, it's got a silly cover with a silly lightning bolt on it. The whole thing is playful, legit, but playful. so it let me, the format just lent itself to me having fun and just asking the obvious next question that any normal person would wonder about next and going through the, you going through all of it like that.

Jason Allison (42:37.261)
Yeah.

Matt Whitman (42:51.877)
So chapter rounds out with, you know, Nahum seems harsh, Nahum resolves a lot, Nineveh overrun, most applicable moment for modern audiences. this is a fun one. Does Nahum point to Jesus? No.

Jason Allison (42:52.046)
Yeah.

Jason Allison (43:10.111)
Hahaha!

Matt Whitman (43:10.289)
And, no, it's about, it's about an Invo getting obliterated. Why is it hard? yeah, that's kind of how it'll work.

Rob Paterson (43:15.235)
That's so good. That's so good

Jason Allison (43:24.334)
Go ahead, Rob. You're going to say something.

Rob Paterson (43:24.461)
Yeah, Matt, I was. So man, I have a million questions right now, which probably means we need to have you on again because if you'll come back to the Church Talk podcast. Yeah, but just practically as a pastor, and I have people, I'm thinking of one guy in my church right now who's just really getting connected. He grew up in a Christian home. He grew up going to church. He's super faithful, my church, but he's hungry to

Matt Whitman (43:36.01)
I'm having a blast. It's cool.

Rob Paterson (43:53.732)
man, I want to know the Bible more and something like this is perfect. So I'm probably getting a case of these and giving them out to people who are are kind of at that place. So I think that's really cool. I'm just curious, you know, a lot of times in the church, we pastors, we just we complicate things, you know, and my my go to when somebody says to me, hey, what's like the best translation to get? I always say get a red Bible and they're like, why does the color matter? And it's like, no, no, no. When you will read

Matt Whitman (43:58.673)
Yes.

Rob Paterson (44:22.871)
You know, so whatever translation that you'll actually pick up and read and like is gonna be better than maybe the best translation that just sits on your shelf and doesn't do anything. But I'm curious, like, you know, when you have somebody who is like this and is hungry for the scriptures, is there like a go-to translation? You're like, hey, start here, this will make sense to you. Then, you know, it'll flow well, those types of things.

Matt Whitman (44:23.161)
you got me. Yeah, good.

Matt Whitman (44:49.691)
The... Look, I mean, sometimes the market takes us to dumb places, like what the market wants. Sometimes the market takes us to good places because it's crowdsourcing. This has been tested and the market has chosen. You basically got three to five big publishers who all have a signature translation. They need to. Part of the reason those five exist is because of copyright work.

Outsiders, you know, at first they balk at this and they're kind of offended. Why is the Bible copyrighted? Will you go try making a scholarly reliable translation of the Bible? It takes decades of training and even then you don't have time to do the whole thing. It's really hard. Greek is hard. Hebrew is hard. I don't think I remember any Hebrew from seminary at all. And I can function with the Greek, but I don't like to do it in front of people because it's hard.

I can't do this work myself, not to the degree that people who dedicate their lives to it can. So it makes sense that there has to be a way for that to, for them to be funded. know, you can't, it's their job. This is people's lives. So as a result, you've got, you know, five publishers with signature translations. They're all good. And people can get cheap clicks on the internet.

by acting like there's some kind of scandal behind this translation or that translation, avoid such people. These people, people who are doing click harvesting over scandals do not have the well-being of your heart in mind. They might even have a point, but you can get that same information for somebody who wants to show care to you and shepherd you. The reality is if you go grab a New Living Translation, it's a good translation, I know.

Rob Paterson (46:18.435)
Mm. Yeah.

Matt Whitman (46:43.514)
I know a bunch of the people who participated in it there. I can assure you privately, they're absolutely solid as they are publicly and academically. I know people involved in the English Standard Version, the New International Version. Same thing, I would absolutely vouch. The Southern Baptists have a translation, they used to call it the Holman Classic, now I think they call it the CSB. Yeah. It's great.

Jason Allison (47:09.282)
Mm-hmm.

It's like the Christian standard version or something. Yeah.

Matt Whitman (47:14.424)
something like that. Yeah, and I've got copies of that on my shelf and use it from time to time as well. The message is a little different animal. Like what it is trying to do is different than the Bible translations that I just mentioned. You take that into account when you use it. It is a different exercise, but I'm not even gonna pick a fight with that. I think there's a lot of great translations out there. And I also think that

I also think that King James is way more readable than people act like. It's from a different era, it's doing a different thing, it's drawing on a different set of sources from a different scholarly era. But people aren't stupid, come on. You can read Shakespeare and it's easier than Shakespeare. Even the old King James, I think, is very understandable. And the new King James is great. So the reason I went through and I listed each of these by name is because I...

I could see what you were doing there, Rob. You were talking to people who are overwhelmed by the paradox of choice when it comes to translation. They don't want to read a fake version of the Bible and get fake God and put in all that work to read this huge thing and then find out, it wasn't real. Anything I just reeled off, like these are good people. They're talented people. And the reality is the tiny handful of places in the Bible where one translation might do something a little different than another.

is because you're moving from a language that contains an idea neatly with one with a word, and English doesn't contain the idea as neatly. So that's okay. That's an invitation to think and engage deeper with the text, not panic.

Rob Paterson (48:51.011)
Yeah.

Jason Allison (48:58.126)
Yeah, well, yeah, that was yeah. I'm so it pains me to say we're out of time. I mean, it's a podcast. We can go as long as we want, but we also know people are only going to listen for so long. And so we got to at least be sensitive to that. But and I'm with Rob. I hope we can have a conversation again, because this is so much fun. When you were reading the thing about Nahum and so forth, it reminded me when I was in college, so 200 years ago,

Rob Paterson (48:59.223)
helpful. Thank you.

Jason Allison (49:27.436)
We had to go through the New Testament and basically write what you just listed, right? Each book, the theme, the main, you know, that was our project for one whole semester was to, you know, and so, and I remember I actually have referred back to that work that I did, you know, way back because it does everything. It's succinct. It's easy. It helps me set the stage if I'm trying to help other people, you know, understand it.

Matt Whitman (49:46.971)
Yeah.

Jason Allison (49:56.332)
without going into a 20 minute diatribe on it, you know, that is unnecessary. So I can't wait for it to come out. I can't wait to get my copy. I'm with Rob. I'm probably going to have to buy a case and start giving them to pastors and say, hey, read this before your next sermon, because you need to hone this in a little bit because you're wandering all over the place.

Rob Paterson (50:18.465)
Ha

Matt Whitman (50:19.887)
Well, I will say this, Jason, I love that comment because the way I wrote this book, this is I've tried to explain it. If you pick up a copy of this and you read it, I think a lot of readers are going to feel like, well, it's as though I wrote this book. It's as though I carved out the time to do the work, maybe go grab a quick degree in this material. And that's how I would write the book. That's the words I would use. Those are the questions I would ask. So.

Sure, I did the work over here, but it's written in a way that will feel like these are your own personal notes, carefully taken after carefully studying each book of the Bible. And I think this is going to be a book that people keep by their side, on their desk, and are constantly... It's great as a read-through, clean end-to-end, no substitute for the Bible, but it'll give you... It'll level you up real, real quick, right? But as that...

as that quick reference, that quick jog your memory, I think it'll really pay off in that way as well. Thanks for letting me talk about my own thing. I feel a little weird about it, but that was very generous of you.

Jason Allison (51:21.933)
Yeah.

yeah, no, we we we wanted you to talk about it because it seems like a very valuable resource that our our listeners I know will benefit greatly if they tap into it. And along with that, I mean, you know, your your 10 minute Bible hour podcast and and YouTube channel like that. Those are we've had and we're actually doing a second interview with him, I think next week or sometime soon. J.D. Walt.

Is has become a friend of ours and he does a daily podcast that is a Bible reading, you know type It was more devotional. It's a different, you know focus but it's and there's something about that daily You know having this same voice speaking into your life That is the firm scripture that I don't know There's something powerful in that that over time really builds up in a very positive way And so I just love that

Rob Paterson (52:02.785)
Mm.

Jason Allison (52:18.984)
And we're excited to share these links and have other people tap into it as well, because it's just not that you need more followers or listeners, but I just think your voice is saying some things that people need to hear. So we appreciate that. Thank you for doing that. Yeah.

Rob Paterson (52:32.589)
That's right.

Matt Whitman (52:34.257)
It means a lot. Thank you. Rob, sorry you feel lousy. Hope you get to feeling better,

Rob Paterson (52:38.625)
Thanks.

Jason Allison (52:39.566)
He's not going to look any better, but that's all right. We do what we can. It's good. yeah. yeah. We go way back now. 15 years. Well, thank you to our listeners. We want to let you know. Feel free to reach out. You can get ahold of us. We can help in any way that we can. We'd love to. All these resources, the links and stuff will be in the show notes. We appreciate you.

Matt Whitman (52:45.585)
Okay, so you're actually friends. That's good.

Jason Allison (53:06.402)
Please know that we are praying for you and we are cheering for you and we can't wait to Hear how God is working in your life. Have an amazing week and we will talk to you soon