Conservative actor Tim Allen began reading through the entire Bible roughly one year ago. Since then, he’s completed the entire Old Testament and is now reading through the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans.
“Finished the Old Testament and it is such a gift when I get out of the way and the words and meaning flow,” Allen wrote in an update on June 2. “This week I am now in the book of the Gospel of Paul. A Roman Jew familiar with Plato, Stoicism, and other Greek schools of thought. I am amazed in seven pages!”
Presumably, Allen meant he is now reading Romans, since the Apostle Paul didn’t write one of the four Gospels.
In a follow-up post a day later, Allen admitted as much: “Ok specifically reading Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans.”
We’ll give the actor a pass on his simple misspeak. It’s undoubtedly a good thing that the 72-year-old actor is diving into God’s Word. And it’s inspiring that he’s doing so later in life after, admittedly, not taking the time to do so during the height of his acting career.
Last year, Allen shared in a post on X, “Never took the time in all my years to ever read and really read the Bible.”
“So far amazing and not at all what I was expecting,” he added.
God’s Word is “amazing” indeed. We read in Hebrews 4:12, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (ESV).
As the Daily Citizen has previously shared, in their book, From God to Us: How We Got Our Bible, Dr. Norman Geisler and Dr. William Nix explain what it means when Christians say the Bible is inspired.
They write that the word inspiration (Greek: theopneustos) appears only once in Scripture, and it refers to the Old Testament being “breathed out” by God. In 2 Tim. 3:16, the Apostle Paul writes, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (emphasis added).
Furthermore, Geisler and Nix lay out three markers for what it means that Scripture is God-breathed:
- Divine Causality. God is the main author of the Bible. He is the ultimate source and original cause of biblical truth. God revealed His Word to the prophets, and spokespersons of God recorded the truths God revealed.
- Prophetic Agency. The prophets who wrote Scripture were not automatons. They used their own literary styles and vocabularies. The Bible which they wrote is the Word of God, but it is given and expressed through the word of humans. God used their personalities to convey His propositions.
- Written Authority. The final product of divine authority working through prophetic agency is the written authority of the Bible.
As Geisler and Nix summarize, “Spirit-moved men wrote God-breathed words that are divinely authoritative for Christian faith and practice.”
We should all keep those factors in mind as we read Scripture, knowing that when we do, we receive God’s very revelation of Himself to us.
If you’d like to learn how to read Scripture, read it more often, or better understand it, check out some of our available resources and articles below.
